La brûlure

Am I blind, or did I just see that this film has an overall rating of 6.0/10 on IMDb and a 47% approval rating on RottenTomatoes?

Acting:

Alright, so let me start this review by stating that I'm a die-hard fan of Jack Nicholson. So, I might be slightly transparent about the flaws of the movie, but there aren't many. This film is very hard to get a hold of actually. I stumbled upon a used DVD store and being a collector of Jack Nicholson's films and a huge fan, I immediately purchased it. I hadn't ever heard of this film until then and made a quick research on IMDb and Wikipedia about the movie. This movie's story is written by Nora Ephron and is loosely based on her life and relationship with real-life journalist Carl Bernstein. On paper, the story of the movie goes like this: Divorced woman meets a sort-of heartless playboy, falls for him, marries him, has children with him, and leaves him after figuring out that he's been cheating on her. Sounds so simple, but in reality, it isn't. That's the reason why we have veteran actors like Nicholson and Meryl Streep on board. Meryl Streep is brilliant. Totally. Even in totally clichéd scenes, she performs to her fullest. Many people might be surprised, but this is actually the first film of Meryl Streep I've seen. I had always wanted to see her work ever since learning that she has the most number of Academy Award nominations for Best Actress or Supporting Actress, but never really got around to doing so. I wonder what her really brilliant performances would be like, if this was off the hook itself. Jack Nicholson plays the uber cool guy he always is and as we always have more often than not, there is a scene of him going totally crazy. But I don't want to give away too many things. You should check out the movie for yourself. This movie also marks the feature-film debut of Kevin Spacey, whom I was quite surprised to see actually, but it turned out that it was only a small cameo.

Story, Screenplay and Direction:

Enough about actors. Lets get down to the story, screenplay and ultimately, the execution of the overall film. This film is ultra-realistic. Except a couple of teeny-tiny moments in the film, you'll be surprised at how super realistic that this film is. Being born in the 90s, I was able to get a slight sense of how life revolved in the 80s and was super-thrilled and totally upset in not being able to experience the US of that era. That is also where the film goes awry, in a sense. It is so realistic, that it loses itself onto you at a point where you wouldn't know what is going on. There are hints of Mark (Jack Nicholson) being a brilliant and a sincere reporter, but we really don't get to see much of that. However, we do get to see a couple of scenes of Rachel (Meryl Streep) working in her NY paper where she's a food journalist, but it doesn't go beyond that. Basically, the emphasis is so much on the character's emotions, especially Streep's, that the film kind of weighs down a bit when you reach the 58 minute mark. Other than this slight niggle, this film is amazing. Streep showcases her character's emotions so perfectly that you actually start to feel for her and get a tight sense of what her character is going through. Jack Nicholson shines in whatever scene he's in, as always, but is ultimately weighed down by a superb display by Meryl Streep. I was surprised that she hadn't gotten an Oscar Nomination for this, but hey, Nicholson didn't either, for 'The Shining (1980)', which was one of his best works in the 80s.

Technical Work:

The cinematography is top-notch too, considering the fact that this was the 80s. I had initially thought that this was a Stanley Kubrick film, which always has the best camera work. But it was good to know that Mike Nichols also had an affinity towards great camera work and composition to each and every scene. Lastly, I had learned that this film had become even more popular because of the superb musical score by Carly Simon. 'Coming Around Again' is too good. Whoever you are, whatever era you were born into, you would surely have heard this song, even if you might not be able to recognize it just by reading the name.

Overall, this is a brilliant film, with a very few cons. You should definitely watch it, if only for Meryl Streep's performance.

This is a very, very highly underrated film.

It is some years since I saw this film, but I definitely thought at the time it was vastly under-rated, and now that I have seen the voter's scores for this, I am surprised all over again. Obviously, I have to log off and go to the video store to refresh my memory, but: the story was great, the song Joni Mitchell contributed was one of her all-time bests, and how could Meryl Streep ever be in anything that wasn't worthwhile? By the way, the book was better, punctuated with recipes. It is an autobiographical tale, which bursts the balloon of the Watergate heroes and is definitely one of the most entertaining and realistic of the cinematic versions of life and love.

This film is based on Nora Ephron's "novel". we're told, but the novel was a largely biographical depiction of her failed marriage to Carl Bernstein, the Washington Post journalist famous for his exposure of the Watergate scandal which brought down President Nixon,,a marriage which ended in divorce as a result of his long affair with a fellow journalist. The Carl Bernstein character, Mark Forman, is played by Jack Nicholson with his usual devilish, eyebrow-twitching, grinning charm but the film is carried by Meryl Streep as his long-suffering wife, whose character, writer Rachel Samstadt, seems to age without recourse to added lines or makeup or any of the usual Hollywood trickery but purely by a change of body-language and a certain implied physical heaviness. The film is well-served by its supporting players as well as its principals, notably Stockard Channing and Jeff Daniels. It's both moving and very funny and the fact that their first child, Annie, is played by Streep's real-life daughter makes the mother/child interaction natural and utterly charming.

The acting is superb by the whole cast and what could've become an over-dramatic film has wonderful moments of humor that works so well. Although the story is quite sad in parts the film is balanced out by a lot of humor. I found myself laughing out loud at this film a lot. Meryl Streep, Jack Nicholson are brilliant, and Carly Simon wrote the soundtrack which is also great. It is still well worth watching.

Overall rating: 7 out of 10.

Heartburn could have been, should have been, so much better. It had all the ingredients for greatness, with Mike Nichols, Nora Ephron, Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson, a great supporting cast, Nestor Almendros as cinematographer and good music built around some fine Carly Simon songs. And, it's a juicy true-life story based on Nora Ephron's marriage to Carl Bernstein. But Ephron's screenplay lets us down. The film is usually billed as a romantic comedy, and there are some gently poignant, quasi-comic moments. But it is mostly a drama, a sour take on an unhappy marriage. And parts are dull and slow. It was a genuine pleasure to see some great acting from Nicholson and Streep, but that wasn't enough to make their characters interesting nor to save the film.

Let's face it, these aren't the two most likable people on the planet, but that's only because writer Nora Ephron may have been a little too hard on herself. (Actually, she's hard on most everyone in this.) We care about this relationship, and the performances ofthe excellent cast make it intriguing at first, but viewers are just as likely to grow impatient with these characters as they do with each other. It's worth seeing, but a hard film to love.

Now, some words about the Carly Simon song, "Coming Around Again." I heard the song before I saw the movie and it no doubt affected my viewing of it. So many movies seem to just tack on any old song at the end credits, but this song really captures the essence of love and marriage and brings out all the emotions of a great film scene in merely a few minutes. I cannot believe the overblown "Take My Breath Away" from "Top Gun" (also overblown) won the 1986 Oscar for Best Original Song, and "Coming Around Again" was not even nominated! Perhaps this is why Carly Simon won her Oscar for "Let the River Run" two years later, to make up for this gross omission. (She would also duet with Streep during the end credits of "Marvin's Room"--an even better film.) The song alone is reason enough to see "Heartburn".