DAVE
** (Worth seeing) Directed by Ivan Reitman Written by Gary Ross With Kevin Kline, Sigourney Weaver, Frank Langella, Kevin Dunn, Ving Rhames, and Ben Kingsley
At first Dave is too awed by his surroundings to question the decisions being made. (While being shown the president’s press-briefing room, he’s preoccupied about whether he can keep a souvenir ballpoint pen.) Eventually, though, Dave sees the light, and after quickly acquainting himself with the country’s major problems and their solutions in one extended work session with a Baltimore chum (Charles Grodin at his funniest), he defies Alexander and takes over the decision making. And to make sure we don’t think Dave’s simply a bleeding heart or a goody two-shoes for wanting to help the homeless and the unemployed–a problem Capra, living in a less cynical era, would never have had–the script takes care to clarify that Dave’s real motive is to win back the humanitarian First Lady, whom the real president alienated long before, so he can climb into bed with her.
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I hope our guilt and fearfulness about AIDS won’t reduce this film to a mere rallying cry–a very real danger in a culture that often takes its cues from the movies. Americans were unwilling to seriously discuss an issue like John F. Kennedy’s assassination until a joker like Oliver Stone (one of the authenticators in Dave) made a movie about it. Indeed, considering that the press actually took seriously the burning issue of whether or not to commit a night of adultery for a million dollars–an “issue” that would never have been entertained for an instant at any other time, or for any other reason than selling a Sherry Lansing stinker–the likelihood of Silverlake Life being addressed on its own merits seems very small indeed.
What isn’t explained in the film–it would have been impossibly complicated to do so–is that Joslin started Silverlake Life as a series of short pieces about Massi and Massi’s illness when he thought that his lover would be the first to die. Then, as Joslin’s own illness grew worse, Massi took over more and more of the filming himself, and Friedman stepped in to complete the work five months after Joslin’s death. Thus the film is a kind of round-robin of mutual regard–each lover as seen by the other, and ultimately both as seen by Friedman. Paradoxically yet vitally, the act of filming becomes not merely an act of witness but an anchor of meaning, and perhaps for this very reason necessitates the kind of focus and discipline that makes some forms of courage and nobility possible.
