jrarichards Review of Solitary Man

Solitary Man (2009)

Well-acted, sad, ambiguous, and with rather little new to say - even in 2009

[7/10 · 25 October 2015]

There is no doubt that we need morality plays in our lives (and this well-acted and well-staged film feels very much like a play). Furthermore, we need morality plays to be nuanced enough to not come over as sermons - if we want the latter we can go any time free of charge on a Sunday and see them done by the real experts! The problem with the nuancing in "Solitary Man" is that we get too many messages that are too mixed. We don't need a film to remind us that advancing age demands some changes of approach and behaviour, and yet on many levels Ben Kalmen played here by Michael Douglas (rather "ouch"-worthily given recent real-life news concerning the actor) proves that there CAN be many a good tune played on an old fiddle. After all, the guy proves influential enough with university-age young people to get one - a pretty sexy portrayal by Imogen Poots - into the sack, and to successfully convince another - well-acted by Jesse Eisenberg - to make a change of lifestyle that works quite spectacularly well for him. For the same reasons, these aspects at least do not convince us very effectively that being a sex addict and pretending to be eternally youthful are mistakes! There IS a comeuppance in fact, and Kalmen even gets beaten up and severely threatened for his pains, but it's not - quite - enough for we the viewers to recognise the need for a change of ways. Admittedly, addiction to sex is not Kalmen's only failing - he has also been regularly too busy for his family and (few) friends (notably a lovely guy called Jimmy Merino who Danny DeVito plays so genuinely and warmly that we feel we are encountering a different species from that represented by most other characters in the film). For Kalmen has had a single-minded addiction to business that moved (at some vital point) from genuine success to "success" built increasingly on corrupt methods. Here the film ought to have it easy, given that - while we chastise (but perhaps secretly envy) a sex addict, we all hate crooks. The snag here comes with the overwhelming impression - generated by the 50% of the film devoted to the world of business - that, "they are all at it, and Kalmen differs only in having been unlucky enough to get caught". Thus, when others in the car-dealership trade, bankers and so on turn their backs on Kalmen, we tend to feel sorry for him, and chastise those around him for their small-minded meanness, knowing that their professed interest in clean behaviour is just hypocrisy. So much, then, for this element of the morality play! However, in writing "at some vital point" in the above part of the description, I allude to what could have made the film more of a winner - the fact that Kalmen's descent into both corruption and sexual excess was not brought on by the ageing process alone, but by a more concrete aspect of that process associated with doubts about his health. This would have been something interesting to ponder on, but here the film lets us down badly, since it leaves "us out here" with Kalmen's own version of events, which is that he never wished to know - and so never did know - if he was really ill, just opting to act as if every day might be his last, without even knowing the veracity of the suspicion, given that there was no full diagnosis. A greater, clearer-messaged film than "Solitary Man" could have afforded to leave us focused on the fact that it may always be better to act as if we do not have time to spare - though the moral response to that would not be to go overboard, but rather to wise up. But as "Solitary Man" is the film it is, we viewers do need the crumb of satisfaction granted by knowing that he either was - or was not - responding to a health scare that did not even exist. As things work out, we never get to know - which looks perilously much like punishment from the makers for those who have devoted 90 minutes of their lives in the hope of this film ultimately having one really good and clear point to make...