Hollywoodland

Hollywoodland might just be the most competent failure I’ve ever had the pleasure to witness. There’s so much brilliance in it that one must feel mercy for it despite the fact that it turns quickly into a sloppy and poorly handled film.

The film stars Adrien Brody as a noir style detective looking into the mysterious death of TV Superman George Reeves (Ben Affleck). At the same time, a parallel narrative details Reeves’ affair with a studio executive’s wife (Diane Lane), his rise to fame, and eventual demise. The entire cast gives phenomenal performances (yes, even Affleck). Lane and Brody are both natural character actors. They seem to slip effortlessly into the roles of vintage noir archetypes while maintaining enough earnestness to humanize the clichés. Affleck is sincerely acceptable as the late Reeves and does his best work here as an actor with a sullied reputation (familiar territory for the often trashed actor).

The film has a beautifully simple authenticity that the cast, costumes, and settings all work toward achieving. Everything feels right for the period, but nothing is so dramatically antiquated that the film feels burdened by its era. First time feature director Allen Coulter delivers a visually rich and appropriately harsh template for his classic tale of Hollywood tragedy and corruption. The real problem here is that neither he nor screenwriter Paul Bernbaum seems to know exactly what type of story to tell. The decision to blend biopic and crime saga seems to be an attempt at letting one improve upon the other, but really they both get in each other’s way. The film feels overstuffed with Reeves’ career and romances standing beside the investigation of his death which also stands alongside the career and romances of the detective looking into his case. It’s a film so enrapt in its material that it seems to forget that people actually have to sit through the whole thing. It’s most certainly overlong and in need of some serious redirection. Had the flashbacks been minimized to better accentuate the noir tale, the film might feel less muddled. While they seem meant to emphasize the tragedy of Reeves’ death, they also take away half the film to sulk in his melodrama. For a moment when Affleck’s eyes meet Brody’s in a haunting fantasy near the film’s end, the two narrative cross paths in brilliant fashion, but at nearly every other moment in the film one seems to intrude upon the other. It’s an interesting stylistic device, but its use is almost always unfortunate.

Despite losing some sharpness due to length and poor editing decisions, the main stories (both of them separately) do work extraordinarily well for a film that leaves you with no overall sense of closure. It’s when the film ends and neither narrative has expounded upon the other with enough intensity to justify their pattern of interspersion that the weakness of the film seems apparent. It works as a biopic. It works as a noir. As both simultaneously, it can be quite a tedious experience.

Grade: B-