Opening Night

It was once suggested by Pauline Kael, never a fan, that Cassavetes thought not like a director, but like an actor. What Kael meant was his supposed lack of sophistication as a filmmaker; to take that comparison further, to me, it never feels like Cassavetes is directing himself in a film, it feels like Cassavetes implanting himself inside his own creation, like Orson Welles. Cassavetes is just as much of a genius as Welles, but far more important as a true artist (as opposed to a technician or rhetorician). This is like a cross between Italian passion (though Cassavetes was actually Greek) and Scandinavian introversion. Never before have inner demons been so exposed physically.

It's about the mystery of becoming, performing, and acting. Like a haunted Skip James record, it's got the echoes of ghosts all around. Rowlands' breakdowns, which are stupefying and almost operatic, surprising coming from Cassavetes, are accompanied by a jumpy, unsettling piano. Who is this dead girl? The metaphysical possibilities are endless, and it's amazing to find this kind of thing in a Cassavetes film, just the overt display of intelligence (there is also a brief bit of voice-over at the beginning). But then, he always was intelligent, he just never flapped it around for easy praise. This is not "Adaptation"; here, the blending of reality and fiction and drama is not to show cleverness but to show the inner turmoil and confusion it creates.

There's so much going on. The pure, joyous love when Rowlands greets her doorman; the horror when she beats herself up... The scene where the girl talks about how she devoted her life to art and to music is one of the most effective demonstrations of understanding what it means to be a fan of someone. You can see some roots of this in "A Star Is Born," and Almodovar borrowed from it for "All About My Mother." I think the ending is a little bit of a disappointment because of the laughing fits, but the preparation leading up to it is almost sickening. (You can shoot me, but I think the alcoholism, despite its urgency in many of the scenes, is a relatively small point about the film.)

It's a living, breathing thing, and it feels like a process: it could go any direction at any time. Like "Taste of Cherry," we are reminded that "you must never forget this is only a play." Yet it is dangerous: when Rowlands says that line, is it great drama? How will the audience take it? Is she being reflexive or does she just not care? Her (character's) breakdowns are incorporated into the performances, and ultimately the film, in such a way that it's like witnessing a female James Dean. 10/10

This is the film that nearly broke Cassavetes for good. It played in a single LA theater for a few weeks to empty seats before being shelved, never really opening. People would not have flocked to see it but it must have been dismay that shakes you to your core, to go through all this work and just shelve it at the end. In a few years time it would be playing in MoMA.

Cassavetes' whole project of making films is one of the most fascinating in the medium. We have only tidbits on screen really. The rest is tucked away in the filming process that went into discovering each film. It's in the hours of footage he never used. The four hour versions of Husbands and Woman we'll never see. His struggles to make each one are comparable to Welles, remarkable men both.

The story goes that he was so spent after making Woman that he was never the same again. He had said his piece and in the most pure way possible. Before and after are iterations of the same way of seeing anyway, as is always with makers who have something to impart and don't just show up for work. But he was fervent to keep going: he used the profits from that film to make Chinese Bookie and this out of pocket.

Bookie saw him reflecting on his own place as proprietor of lively improvisations while having to deliver a gangster plot to appease money men. It was not just cynical work. It was a meditative search for a true face from among different masks; suave playboy, entertainer, killer. It continues here, the same business with roles and faces.

As always, actors fumble and fret within the constraints of a story imposed on them. The camera swims as one of them would, as if culled from inside an actor uncertain about his presence, losing and finding again. The whole has that thick, viscous quality I love about him, it demands concentrated staying in that space where nothing is yet decided. This is Cassavetes' room. By this point you'll know whether you like it or not.

This is about an actress asked to go into that room and portray a role: woman pushing forty, childless and unmarried. It's for a play they're preparing for New York out in the sticks. She is all of those things in "real life" so what would make better sense than to portray truthfully?

But this is the whole thing with Cassavetes, why you deserve to have him in your life above all those other filmmakers who mollycoddle you with redemptions. With him truth is something you set out to find by shedding self, it's not handed down by any role and you have to make sure of that. It's what you find after you have stopped tossing the room for it. After words and guises have been peeled back, what is there?

This whole film is about an actress, Rowlands, fighting to shed that self that stands in the way of true expression. The play role expects middle-aged desperation about life, self- pity. Melodrama stuff. But she can't do it, won't. She could tap into those parts of herself but that would be giving into those parts, nurturing them, conceding to be the person the story says you must be.

So she won't do it. People plead with her, cajole, scold or lecture her but nothing does it, she is adamant. It has a few blunt devices along the way: seance and ghost of a younger self. Her refusal to do the sensible thing aggravates. In the all important premiere she finally arrives late and drunk and everyone concedes that it's not going to happen.

All of this ribs on Cassavetes own method of sustained, structured collapse where the point isn't to use actors to convey certainties of drama, it's to use drama to chisel the persons who will live through its effect on them. Whatever that comes to be. It all has to arrive to a point of intense uncertainty. A cessation of thought so that things will be free to mean themselves.

You'll see what he does in the end. It's Cassavetes and Rowlands on a stage in a culmination of a parallel life in which they never married.

It's marvelous. It doesn't really work and you will probably note that he misses. But if you're someone who tries to be the person you truly feel in your heart to be, you will rejoice to see the baring and nothing pretty, sad or redemptive salvaged out of it so we'll applaud. It's the reach that drives it, the transcendent reach for that idea all about masks dropping and having to face yourself bare, and in his reach he is as vast as Tarkovsky.

Let's go straight to the point: this is The Movie I would take with me on a desert island (with dvd player). It's just perfect. If a reason for you to see a movie is that you love the actors, you like to see them free to involve in the space and feelings, this movie is for you. See the scene when Myrtle (Rowlands) come on stage drunk and Maurice(Cassavetes) has to improvise because she doesn't follow the script anymore. If you're sensitive to the camera's movements, you'll be fascinated by the way the camera moves on stage, the particular flow, that give you the impression camera follow the actors as if it was lead by the theatrical principle of "private space"... amazing. And the story is just a brilliant mix of tale and realistic drama. Cassavetes is again arguing with Hollywood and the majors' politics, but this time, he do it through Broadway, making one of the most exciting movie about theater. Well, this movie is a bliss.

Opening Night is *such* a fun movie to watch. John Cassavetes was smack dab in the middle of his stride as a director, having completed A Woman Under The Influence (his watershed picture, a hugely intense, absolutely fantastic movie that manages to zone almost completely on nothing but individual human emotions - fear, love, self-doubt) and The Killing of a Chinese Bookie (an awesome awesome awesome movie with Ben Gazzara where he's working for and running from the mafia around Los Angeles, incredible, resonant, mostly handheld cinematography that places emphasis on human faces and a script that is full of realistic dialogue - probably because the film is heavily improvised) just before this. What it's all about is a middle-aged actress whose overriding insecurities as a human being are drawn to the surface by a single incident: the accidental death of an adoring, enigmatic fan. As she muddles her way through previews of her upcoming Broadway play 'Second Woman' (of which she is the star), her health -- mental and otherwise -- begins to deteriorate. She just can't get it together, and an unsympathetic (and when they feign sympathy and support, they're unbelievable) cast of supporters doesn't help matters. She drinks and drinks and drinks and falls down some and messes up a lot. Will she get it together in time for Opening Night?

Underneath this, John Cassavetes stages and films various scenes of the fictitious play in front of an actual audience, aware of the film cameras filming a movie or not. In that sense, these bits of the film are incredibly interesting. John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands share unmatched chemistry on stage, being that they were one of the most in-love couples in the annals of film history, and it shows. Cassavetes reminds me you of his dynamite ability as a nuanced, fun-to-watch character actor, and Gena Rowlands reminds you of why she's believable as an adored, successful stage actress. These are somewhat arcane stage performances, but are delightful.

What is wrong with Opening Night? It's a movie for people who love movies, with long takes, memorable camera moves, first rate acting, high-concept ideas, a solid beginning middle and end, a great score, and a central theme that is very compelling. Some of Cassavetes' best work, a real brawny film, tall and beautiful, heavily recommended to people who are sick of cotton candy movies, sick of feature-length trailers, sick of all the crap. If you want a thick, expansive thing, Opening Night sits on the shelf, waiting.

Many reviews here explain the story and characters of 'Opening Night' in some detail so I won't do that. I just want to add my comment that I believe the film is a wonderful affirmation of life.

At the beginning Myrtle Gordon is remembering how 'easy' it was to act when she was 17, when she had youth and energy and felt she knew the truth. Experience has left her emotionally fragile, wondering what her life has been for and, indeed, if she can even continue living. A tragic accident triggers a personal crisis that almost overwhelms her.

Almost - but not quite. At the eleventh hour she rediscovers the power of her art and reasserts herself ("I'm going to bury that bastard," she says of fellow actor Maurice as she goes on stage). It seems almost sadistic when Myrtle's director prevents people from helping her when she arrives hopelessly drunk for her first performance. He knows, however, that she has to have the guts to make it herself if she is to make it at all.

Some critics wonder if this triumph is just a temporary pause on Myrtle's downward path. I believe this is truly her 'opening night' - she opens like a flower to new possibilities of life and action, she sees a way forward. It is tremendously moving.

Gena Rowlands is superb. The film is superb. Thank you, Mr Cassavetes, wherever you are.