Les mystères de Pittsburgh

This film pretty much mirrors my own experiences in Pittsburgh prior to leaving and only returning years later to bury mom. At a party, Art meets the attractive Jane, whose boyfriend, Cleveland, is both friendly and strange. These two mess with Art's mental state. Although Jane doesn't mean to, but Cleveland is a twisted manipulator. The first little "joke" Cleveland plays on Art should have sent Art running as far from Cleveland as he could get. But Art is pathological pushover.

As with my own complications, the fractured relationship with the gangster father. Art's possessive girlfriend. Jane's ambivalence. Cleveland's weird manipulation and emotional, if not attempting a sexual menage a trois. Art, as I did, cannot see how Cleveland is using him to get out of a bad criminal situation - then the climactic ending arriving out of thin air involving Art as the summer ends as mine did on a very small world.

Based on the novel by Michael Chabon, The Mysteries of Pittsburgh is about the young son of a notorious gangster who spends his last teenage summer roaming around with two friends. The year is 1983, and young Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) is at a crossroads. Completely opposed to his father's lifestyle, Art plans to become a stockbroker. Visually contrived with painful attempts to create beautiful hip indie cinematography, the whole film feels like the director - whose previous effort Dodgeball was funny if outright commercial - is desperately seeking indie credibility by cobbling together aspects of other indie films but sprinkling it with stars like Mena Suvari, Sienna Miller and Nick Nolte. Like so many of the star-laden premieres at Sundance this year it felt like this was a secrety studio-sponsored vanity project to help the director earn some indie credibility points - it failed in that respect and as a film in its own right.

For those who find it difficult to appreciate the adaptation format of film making from a famous novel, THE MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH as now released on DVD should help explain the naysayers' opinions. In a very valuable session of conversations among Michael Chabon and Rawson Marshall Thurber (screenwriter and director) and the producer and cast, the transition of this complex novel into a very altered story is comfortably explained and the person most happy with the result seems to be the originator - Michael Chabon!

That being said this film stands well on its own terms. June and July in hot Pittsburgh generate mysteries among a variety of people, especially the young college graduate Art Bechstein (Jon Foster) who while working in a bookstore wastes time with a fling with the supervisor Phlox (Mena Suvari) with disinterested post grad classes dealing with becoming a broker and having monthly dinners with his mobster father Joe Bechstein (Nick Nolte), until he encounters an odd couple: bisexual biker and thief Cleveland (Peter Sarsgaard) and his female consort, the violinist Jane Bellwether (Sienna Miller). The bizarre interactions among these characters drive Art to make many decisions and discoveries - including his falling in love with both Cleveland and Jane. The summer winds down with Art finally discovering his own identity despite the clouds of mystery that have surrounded his life. It is a piece of life as lived by disparate characters whose direction in life seems at odds with the natural flow of finding happiness and success. But then the question is asked - what is happiness and what is success if not survival?

For this viewer the explanation by the makers of this film was interesting enough to encourage a repeat watching of the movie. A good movie not a great movie, but it still tastes strongly of Michael Chabon's genius. It deserves more attention than the critics have given it.....Grady Harp

Wow. What a terrible adaptation of a beautiful novel. Here are just a few gripes. - The screenwriter eliminated two major characters from the book. - Plot has been grotesquely altered. - Voiceovers sound as if they were directly lifted from written passages (which may read well but are not the same when spoken, especially with Chabon's writing style). - The acting is more wooden than a log cabin. (Esp. Bechstein) - This is supposed to be set in 1983??? Feels more like 2003...

To be fair I couldn't bring myself to finish watching this movie, so it's possible that it redeemed itself... (sarcasm). I truly hope that no one paid to see this, or at least anyone who read the book hoping for something decent (a la Wonder Boys). I like Chabon as a writer but he should be ASHAMED of this adaptation.

No stars.

MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH is a truly 2009 "coming of age" story of three young people who meet in Pittsburgh and take a journey which will change their lives forever. The cast is superb; and I found Jon Foster's voice and performance refreshing inside a seasoned cast of Nick Nolte, Sienna Miller, "American Beauty's" Mena Suvari and the incredibly talented Peter Sarsgaard. Reviews have been mixed on the film, but I thought it took off in the second act, with humor of the challenges facing the characters, and the pathos of how "love" can take a turn when you least expect it. The dialog, at times witty and with a cynical barb to it, and the location of Pittsburgh, with its hills and older homes, adds to the story. I really liked this film, and once again, the cast is delicious to look at, and watch.