Roger Dodger (2002)
Note: Sorry
- some spoilers. This film is too deep to discuss
without getting somewhat specific at times.
Dense, verbose and disturbing, "Roger
Dodger" is so amazing, so jam-packed full of ideas
and has a subject so complex that my head was swimming
for three days after seeing it. Seriously. The idea
of sitting down at my trusty word processor and trying
to write a review that could adequately reflect my
impression of this film was so daunting that it took
me three days to even try and attempt it. It is films
like this that make me feel inadequate to even write
about films let alone consider a career as a filmmaker.
The titular Roger is a fast-talking,
intelligent, urbane and darkly witty Ad Executive
played by Campbell Scott. Like a sort of "Reservoir
Dogs" for Mensa members, "Roger Dodger's" first scene
is a dinner table discussion between several witty,
intelligent, urbane types, including Scott and Isabella
Rossellini. Here the discussion of the men and women
set up the theme of he film, which is nothing less
than the evolution of the function of the male gender
in society, in particularly as sexual partner and
provider. Scott's dialogue is so intense, so smart
and so complex that when he presents it in the cocky,
assured and pedantic manner with which he presents
all of his dialogue in the film, you begin to believe
he has a point. This is Roger's biggest flaw: like
us, he has begun to believe his own bullshit.
Other events clue us in to the exact
nature of the relationship between Scott and Rossellini
and we also get to see what he is like out on the
prowl looking for mates. This establishes him as a
character while also allowing more discourse on the
theme of the film. Scott's Roger is darkly brutal
and overtly honest in his conversations with women.
He tells us, when speaking about his job in advertising,
that his approach is to make people feel bad about
themselves so that he can market junk that they don't
need to feed the supposed void in their egos and make
them complacent. He takes the same approach in trying
to "sell" himself to various women at different nightclub
type settings. His misogynistic approach may gain
him conversations with w omen, but doesn't seem to
allow him entree into their bedrooms.
Enter Nick, Roger's 16-year-old
nephew visiting colleges in New York. Nick has heard
stories about his uncle from his mom. Roger explains
that they are rather estranged and we realize that
Nick really knows little about his uncle. But Nick,
like seemingly all 16-year-old boys, is interested
in females. And as a somewhat fatherless child, he
thinks he has found a mentor on the gender in Roger.
We worry about the impression Roger makes on Nick
because, as a young man, his bullshit detector isn't
as finely attuned as ours. Hell, Roger's spiel is
even beginning to work on us; what will his exposure
to Nick create?
Juxtaposing Nick's innocent and
unassured youth against the misogynistic bravado of
Roger's cynical woman chaser is one of the most compelling
and troubling pairings in all of cinema.
Roger's initial soliloquy, teaching
Nick about the sexual world that surrounds him, is
disturbing and repulsive, a nearly unfathomable diatribe
of misinformation and misogyny. Roger's idea of what
sexuality and the admiration of the female gender
entails is so troubling that it almost becomes ludicrous.
Seriously, his dialogue here is so outlandish, so
off-the-mark and so wrong-headed as to be awe-inspiring.
It is impossible to believe that Roger isn't just
trying to be funny. Within seconds, we realize he
is serious and our image of him as having any intelligence
or worldliness crumbles.
Scott is amazing as Roger. This
is the performance of a career and Scott makes every
second of it count. This is award winning stuff, the
kind of performance that should garner him an Oscar
nod. He makes Roger the urbane, pedantic and sexually
charged equivalent of Jeff Goldblum's Chaos theory
expert in "Jurassic Park." But instead of expounding
on the random anarchy of the universe, Roger expounds
upon the perverse (in his subconscious) dynamics of
heterosexuality. (Instead of a summer blockbuster
about dinosaurs, it's an art movie about the Jurassic
proportions of heterosexuality).
Meanwhile, the real find of the
movie is Jesse Eisenberg as Nick. Fresh-faced and
seemingly naive, Eisenberg perfectly essays the gawky
and awkward moment where a teenager becomes a young
man. Intelligent, quick and hungry for knowledge,
his Nick is also sensitive, caring and quirky (and,
let's face it, he's a gay man's dream boy). This film
is really about Nick because filmmaker and scripter
Dylan Kidd's film is really about the evolution of
man in the sexual arena. And Eisenberg performs beautifully
in this realm. In a year of outstanding young actors
in amazing films (the Culkin brothers come immediately
to mind), Eisenberg becomes a true forerunner for
the best young male lead of 2002. His Nick is breath-taking,
beautiful and charged with perfect emotions. This
is a breakthrough performance.
There are certainly other notable
performances in the film as well. Rossellini's work
here is nothing short of the best stuff she's done
since working for David Lynch. And Elizabeth Berkley
and Jennifer Beals, working together as two women
the guys pick up at a nightclub (note that they are
older than Nick but younger than Roger), provide both
the perfect females foils for Roger and the perfect
female love interests for Nick. Beals work with Eisenberg
practically crackles with sexual electricity before
evolving into tender and heart-throbbing romanticism.
The duo never miss a beat while exploring this arc.
Kidd's script is compact, verbose
and Mamaetian in its dialogue. This is a film about
words and ideas and Kidd has a razor-sharp wit and
an insightful understanding of his characters. His
ability to create Roger on the page, a character who
says one thing while he thinks another, proves him
to be as capable behind the typewriter as he is with
the camera. In his debut film, Kidd sets himself up
to be one of the most important filmmakers of the
next 10 years. This is the kind of script that makes
someone a superstar in the filmmaking arena.
But all of this, the script, the
acting and the themes, would not be nearly as sharp
and perfect as they are without the aid of cinematographer
Jaoquin Baca-Asay. Using somewhat jerky hand-held
shots containing constantly obscured visuals, Kidd
and Baca-Asay set up the story to be like a war film.
The hand-held style compliments Scott's performance
of a wannabee sexual lion out on the prowl caught
on camera scoping out his prey (an episode of the
"Wild Kingdom" set in NYC?). This film is beautiful
in its ability to take a film about words and ideas
and make it both flow and enthrall. Note how the camera
"spies" on its subjects with intense close-ups yet
seemingly must peer through objects that often obscure
our view. These objects - leaves, other people, props,
etc... are so close that they become mere out-of-focus
blurs on the screen. But this gives the film such
an illusion of spying, it seems to be allowing us
entree into a world that we are not suppose to see.
Like Lynch turning over a rock and
showing us the disturbing and nauseating world of
insects that live underneath (before giving us the
same view of Northeastern suburbia) in "Blue Velvet,"
Kidd's camera intrudes in the seedy underworld of
male/female relationships in modern society (New York,
about as modern as it can get). In doing this he seemingly
allows us to see it for the harsh, troubling and outlandish
world that it really is. We are astounded.
With "Roger dodger," Kidd deconstructs
the coming-of-age and loss-of-innocence films that
were the staple of 80's John Hughes-esque cinema.
Imagine a sort of Hughes male "player" grown up to
become a lonely and misogynistic, nearly 40, Ad Exec
in New York in 2002 and you get a vague notion of
just what is going on here. Roger has not grown, has
not evolved. He represents old-school heterosexual
male morality, a sort of pubescent cocksman wannabee
suspended in a retarded sexual adolescence.
But the true theme of the film is
the juxtaposition of this old-school "player," who
is called so because he considers sexuality and male/female
relationships a "game," against the new man personified
by young Nick. As a sensitive, open, articulate and
intelligent young man, Nick is on the verge here.
His innocence and honesty is what truly attracts the
30-year-old women he meets in the film to him. But
it is no accident here that he does not sleep with
them. His sensitive, caring young man isn't playing
the game and, as a consequence, whether subconsciously
on the part of the females or not, he gets no play.
(To be fair, we see Roger score only once in a failed
relationship).
Is Kidd trying to say that sexuality,
in particular heterosexuality, is nothing more than
a game? Or is this film truly about the evolution
of man as a sexual being, as the opening of the film
suggests? Kidd's ambiguous ending, which is perfection
by the way, may be asking us to decide. Sexuality
is as enigmatic, as disturbing and as problematic
as Kidd suggests with all his characters and plot
here. Perhaps he is saying that sexuality will be
a "game" only as long as we allow it to be a game.
His Nick is the possible cornerstone for a sexual
new world order, if only he knew it to be so. As the
ending suggest, it is only his own intelligence, his
own honesty, and his own actions that will determine
the course of his sexual and relationship- oriented
travels. The (hetero)sexual new world he inhabits
as an adult male will be determined by him and him
alone.
Notes:
Kidd, a video-store employee, had
found Eisenberg to play Nick but was having trouble
getting the script read. The project was virtually
dead. He began to carry the script around in his hometown
of L.A., hoping to run into a "name" actor he could
get interested in the project. He ran into Scott at
a coffeehouse and the rest, as they say, is history.
Rossellini came on board at Scott's
invitation without even reading a script. The two
have appeared together in 4 films.
Berkley and Beals' roles were adversarial
in the original script, but since the two are friends
in real life, Kidd allowed them to be more relaxed
and friendly in the on-screen performances.
The excellent score is by Craig
Wedren.
Kidd and Scott are also credited
as producers. Scott helped get the script to a Production
company that would found the film.
The film won several awards at the
Venice Film Festival.
