Rarely have I felt as cynical about
the world because of a movie as I did after watching Nights
in Rodanthe, which is saying something given how many movies
I’ve seen that actually intend to provoke cynicism. Yes, it’s
true, a “romantic tearjerker” made for middle-aged women without
controversial intentions turned me into Camus for an evening.
Nights in Rodanthe struck me as such an artificial,
mechanical, useless piece of formula shamelessly designed to
appeal to a target audience and make money that it provided me
several existentialist epiphanies. If the masses really eat this
garbage up in the profound way that my screening’s audience did,
I thought to myself as I left the theatre, then there must not
be any reason to legitimize emotion. Shit happens – who cares
and so what, right?
I’ve been
recovering from that emptying experience for about a week and,
after seeing a few other movies that were able to restore my
faith in human emotion, I think I can finally view Nights in
Rodanthe as a mere isolated example of manipulative
ineptness. Isolated or not, however, the film still sucks.
There isn’t
anything inherently wrong with the characters or the premise,
which are based on those of a Nicholas Sparks novel of the same
name. (For the record, I’m not at all a Sparks-hater; I found
plenty of emotional truth in the cinematic-adaptations of A
Walk to Remember and The Notebook.) The story follows
a short love shared between Adrienne Willis (Diane Lane), a
suburban mother who is debating whether to take her
cheating-husband (Christopher Meloni) back, and Paul Flanner
(Richard Gere), the dashing doctor who enters the scene and
makes the aforementioned martial-decision a no-brainer. They
meet at the ocean-front bed-and-breakfast of Adrienne’s friend
Jean (Viola Davis), who has left business-duties to Adrienne
while away, right as a hurricane is about to blow through. (In
other words: what could possibly be a better way of escaping a
dangerous storm than leaping into the arms of a virtual-stranger
with whom you’ve decided you share a connection?)
The movie’s
failure rests in overdramatic touches that it expects the viewer
to not only buy, but be moved by. For example, Paul is forced to
tell Adrienne about a terrible event in his medical past that
inspired him to come to her friend’s inn, leading to two
confrontations with a local man that are so manipulative they
are downright insulting to the viewer’s intelligence and
sensibilities. These lead to further related revelations about
Paul’s rocky relationship with his son (James Franco), who plays
an eye-roller of a part in overwrought flashback-sequences. And
then there are, of course, the film’s phony attempts to make
Adrienne a “relatable” menopause-age woman for mothers in the
audience. In an opening scene, she and her teenage daughter (Mae
Whitman) fight over a nasty tattoo her daughter has gotten
without permission, only to later find that said daughter has
come full-circle and learned to show respect for Mom when
inevitable tragedy strikes in the third act. The only thing more
unbelievable than the fact that writers Ann Peacock and John
Romano and director Geoge C. Wolfe would have the nerve to think
viewers would fall for the material in the way they intend is
that viewers are indeed falling for it (if the audience I
watched it with is any indication, that is). Don’t even get me
started on the fact that the filmmakers themselves might even go
so far as to label the picture as spiritually-healing… in an
Oprahesque sort of way.
Why were
the women sitting next to me in tears as they watched Nights
in Rodanthe? Surely, these were educated Americans who knew
better than to be fooled by such an exploitative picture. I hope
for art’s sake that they were merely reacting to their
admiration for leads Gere and Lane, who have undoubtedly been in
better films and attract support from many fans of their age.
(And don’t think I’m being a misogynist here by outing women in
particular; the same problem exists among the men who thought
that Babylon A.D., for instance, was a great film.) But
if those women were really weeping because they found the
material compelling, then perhaps my initial nihilistic reaction
to the film was justified. Without the desire to revisit said
reaction, however, I will put Nights in Rodanthe past me
with a strong and simple warning: don’t see the movie. It is
devoid of both entertainment-value and artistic-merit.
-Danny Baldwin, Bucket Reviews
Review Published on: 9.24.2008
Screened on: 9.17.2008 at the AMC
Century City 15 in Century City, CA.
