State And Main (DVD)

Author's product rating:   

Did you enjoy it?	Loved it
Story	Good
Characters / Performances	Outstanding
Special Effects	Unmemorable
How does it compare to similar films?	Good

Advantages:	classy, intelligent film, excellent cast
Disadvantages:	few dvd extras, Rebecca Pidgeon

Recommend to potential buyers:

yes

Full review

This is one of my favourite films. It's understated quirky black humour and it has a great cast, plus a sharp script by David Mamet.

********The story
The basic premise is that a Hollywood film crew show up in a small Vermont town having been mysteriously kicked out of their previous location, in order to film scenes for their movie (duh). They pick the town for its existing 'old mill' although after they arrive they discover it burned down years earlier. The movie is essentially about the culture clash between the arrogant blinkered crew led by William H Macy's character, and the naive bemused townspeople. Without giving away the plot, the interactions between these two groups eventually involves the law and it has a realistic but also somewhat cynical ending. The strength of the film is in the interaction between the characters so I'll move on to some of them, featuring in particular the director and my favourite cast member, Philip Seymour Hoffman.

********Cast/Crew
Director: David Mamet. He also directed Heist (also excellent), The Winslow Boy, Oleanna, The Spanish Prisoner, Glengarry Glen Ross etc) but I think may be equally if not better known as a playwright (eg Glengarry Glen Ross too). Because of this, the clever dialogue in his films is very precise-sounding; it has a very line-by-line feel about it, which does sometimes come across as a little artificial, especially if spoken by Rebecca Pidgeon, his real-life other half, who is in lots of his films but bugs the heck out of me.

Joseph White: played by Philip Seymour Hoffman. Hurrah for Philip Seymour Hoffman, often has a secondary role (eg The Talented Mr Ripley, Punch Drunk Love, that scary one about the devil, red-something. Sorry, forgot the title :) but here he's really the pivotal character, the underappreciated bumbling script writer who spends half the film looking for his typewriter that begins to feel more connected to the town life and the characters in it. He inadvertently makes an enemy of a local minor official (Doug Mackenzie, played by Clark Gregg) by befriending his fiancee (Ann, played by Rebecca Pidgeon).

Ann: Rebecca Pidgeon. As I said, in a lot of David Mamet films. Her portrayal of this character is better, I think, than she does in Heist. Seems like someone should tell her that dry humour doesn't necessarily mean you have to be stony faced.

Bob Barrenger: Alec Baldwin. The male lead in the cast so, I suppose, playing himself. He's surprisingly good at being demanding in a self-important but also childish way. His flirtations with a local teenage girl are central to the second half of the film.

Claire Wellesley: Sarah Jessica Parker. SJP plays the female lead who seems to be on the edge of serious therapy, and she does a good job of being entirely self-obsessed and needy. She spends a lot of the film in a tizzy about a contract she signed to show her boobs in the film. SJP is just about this side of glam to make the not-quite-a-list character believable. Neither her character nor Alec Baldwin's are malicious towards the townspeople, they're just blind to other people.

Carla: Julia Stiles: I like Julia Stiles and she's great in this. I was convinced by her character's crush on Alec Baldwin's character and she pulls off vulnerability and decisiveness.

There are other great cast members, such as the Mayor and his frighteningly obsessive wife, who completely redecorate their home in honour of their town's guests, and some of the best lines are almost thrown away in little asides between 'extras' after the main characters have left the scene. There's also a secondary story line involving a camera man's efforts to get the shot he wants without an old stained glass window getting in the way.

********Availability/Price
This film is old enough to be cheap as chips. It's £6.97 from Amazon but they also have it 'new and used' from £1.95, which is cheaper than a rental. It's £6.99 at play.com.

********Overall
If you liked Grosse Pointe Blank, Heist, Fargo and the Tao of Steve, you'll probably like this, although if I put those 5 films in a list, this would probably come below Heist and Fargo, and hence I'd give it 4 stars. My favourite line comes from a scene where the writer Joseph is trying to explain to Ann why there was another woman in his room with a blatantly made-up story.
Joseph: You believe that?
Ann: I do if you do.
Joseph: But it's absurd.
Ann: So is our electoral system, but we still vote.

It's a clever, satisfying, gentle-hearted character-driven movie and though the characters and locations are sometimes a bit sterotyped I hereby recommend it.

State and Main (2001)
Dir and writer: David Mamet
Length: 105 minutes
Classification: 15