La brûlure

Like a good relationship that goes sour, "Heartburn" is impossible to love but hard to write off entirely. Despite its fine cast and script by Nora Ephron, the film is disjointed and, ultimately, dishonest.

Meryl Streep and Jack Nicholson play two Washington journalists who meet at a wedding, and — seemingly in the next scene — are saying their own vows. The developments that follow in their relationship are just as abrupt and just as believable. The rapid-fire pace of their many separations and reconciliations stretches credibility to the limit, and it's hard to generate any interest in these characters when it was never clear what drew them together in the first place.

Streep does a fine job as magazine writer Rachel, but Nicholson's cad is all too familiar in his role of Mark, the womanizing columnist. Supporting players Stockard Channing, Maureen Stapleton, Jeff Daniels and Kevin Spacey, while uniformly excellent, seem underutilized and distract from the main plot.

"Heartburn" is worth watching, if only for its strong cast, but it's as memorable as leftover lasagna.

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.

You got (the now late) Mike Nichols, you got Streep, you got Nicholson, you got Nora Ephron adapting her own semi-menoir about her relationship with Carl Bernstein. Given the pedigree behind everything involved with the film - and, for me, I'm a sucker for a good infidelity drama - it's only a shame this isn't, you know, one of the top films of the 80's. It doesn't quite get there, but it's not for lack of trying on anyone's part. Heartburn is an entertaining picture, even as it doesn't quite move to a beat of a fast drummer, nor does it have very easy solutions to its dramatic conflicts. But that's a good thing here; Nichols and Ephron know this story has people who can't resolve or move on too easily, despite all signs pointing in a direction the audience can read.

It's basically this: girl and boy meet, boy marries girl - though girl doesn't really want to marry exactly, and one of the funnier set pieces shows Rachel stewing about in the bedroom adjacent to the wedding as friends and family come to try and support (sort of) this whole union - girl and boy find a real 'fixer-upper' house, girl is going to have boy's baby, things are happy... and then suspicion creeps in for the girl. A lot of this is not very much 'plot' driven, though Nichols knows how to tell his story.

If there's anything 'off' it might be that the pacing is a little lackadaisical. Not quite the same as 'slow' exactly; you just have to be keyed in to the rhythm that's going on here. The filmmakers here are emphasizing character more. You get scenes, sometimes very funny, like when Mark just breaks out into a goofy song following the news that he's having a baby... and then breaks out into song again the next morning to wake up Rachel. A lot of the movie is more funny in a sly, observational way. It's not as 'LOL' type of funny as work Ephron was to do after this, and some might say like those other movies it's a little "chick" centric. I can't say if it can be so easily pegged, albeit there are piffy bits like Rachel watching the TV and getting messages about the infidelities going on.

Nichols knows this material needs the help of its actors, and of course he has two of the best... ever, really. The charisma and combination just works, there's no doubt about that. And there's both real comedy and real drama to work on (probably more drama than comedy). And sometimes things happen in the movie that seem to be more incidental than anything to push it forward - i.e. Kevin Spacey's debut as a thief - but even this ends up kind of playing a part in the story, at a key moment, near the end. The actors make all these beats very, painfully, awkwardly, sadly and bittersweet-like real. When Rachel suddenly realizes that moment where things are "wrong" in a hair salon, the way it comes to her, how Nichols moves the camera (and, one of his gifts, knowing when NOT to cut), and how she looks and she goes from 0 to 60... it's wonderful stuff.

Why not great? Maybe a little too loose in parts, and the Carly Simon score is grating after a while and dates the movie (the songs too). But all in all, Heartburn is a very good movie about this relationship and its peaks and valleys, but also about the nature of indecision, and how something as seemingly clear-cut as 'stay with your husband - or go' is a real, concrete, existential dilemma. Underrated, really.

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.