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The Morning After
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The Morning After is the type of
certified “quality” drama that presumes to have a grip on your heart and soul
from the first frame. Bad presumption! It’s the kind of bleeding-heart movie
whose most blatant and calculated desire is to win an Oscar (it was duly
nominated). It’s as full of formula as any so-called “genre film”, but pretends
not to be – rather, it offers itself as realistic, authentic, moving, indeed
gut-wrenching.
It certainly wrenched my gut, but in a way it probably
did not intend. The Morning After tries to be both a contemporary thriller and a film of liberal, social
conscience – addressing, in turn, the problems of alcoholism (and surviving
it), race relations, and class conflict. In the end, it fails to be
successfully either just a good story, or a film with an urgent message.
It stars promisingly enough, at the “morning after” of
its title, with a hung-over Alex (Jane Fonda) waking up next to an unfortunately
dead one-night-stand. Did she kill him? Who, in fact, was he in the first place? The booze just won’t let her remember (just as the film
won’t let us forget a single, heavy-handed detail) – and so we may be in for a
twisty plot resonating with problems of individual and social identity, in the
vein of William Friedkin’s great Cruising (1980), or even (in a comedy mode) Susan Seidelman’s terrific Desperately Seeking Susan (1985).
Alas, The
Morning After, like Jagged Edge (1985), cops out and goes very soft – while Fonda grimaces and yells
histrionically in search of that coveted Oscar. The film pits the spoilt and
snobbish Alex against Turner (Jeff Bridges), a guy who is the very salt of the
earth – a very Bridges role. He’s always a delight to watch perform, but his
role here is a sorry one: exaggeratedly caring in a roughneck,
reality-principled way.
Naturally, since this is what John Flaus once called a
“liberal fantasy massage” movie in which everyone must learn a deep, human
lesson, Turner has one minor flaw that he eventually overcomes – I am referring
to his blue-collar racism – and spills one revelation that provides the film
with its big, tear-jerking moment: yes, he, too, was once (and therefore will
always be) an alcoholic. It doesn’t count for much, in dramatic terms.
Weaving in and out of all these smarmy manoeuvres is
the trace of the film’s own “subtle” racial stereotyping and scapegoating – all
of which is foisted onto the handy character of Joaquin (Raúl Juliá). But
Lumet’s film – like a previous vehicle for Juliá, the atrocious Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985) – is one
that, on the surface, declares it can embrace all racial and sexual
differences, all imaginable lifestyles, all political preferences. That’s the
classic liberal declaration: underneath it, the same old conservatism, and the
same old exclusions, are always at work.
Come to think of it, liberal-minded film criticism
works in pretty much the same way.
MORE Lumet: Close to Eden, Guilty as Sin, Night Falls on Manhattan, Power, Prince of the City, 12 Angry Men, Fail-Safe © Adrian Martin December 1986 |
