LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS

Written by Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz

Directed by Edward Zwick

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal, Anne Hathaway and Oliver Platt

Jamie Randall: You're my little blue pill.

Ordinarily, I would say that any film that starts with The Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes” is destined to be a disaster. LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS takes place is 1996 though so I guess I can be reasonable. The catchy ditty that consumed the airwaves that year is blasting in a high-end stereo store, where Jamie Randall (Jake Gyllenhaal) is using his charms to make the sales and get the ladies while he’s at it. He hasn’t a care in the world until he meets a girl (Anne Hathaway) who has no choice but to take life seriously. The twosome are charming together and so disaster is averted but sadly, only so far as to achieve disappointment.

Director Edward Zwick (DEFIANCE) often makes socially conscious films and LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS is no different (although arguably much less serious than say, BLOOD DIAMOND, as far as issues go). Jamie is a pharmaceutical representative for Pfizer at just the right time to cash in on the Viagra explosion. This allows Zwick to explore supposedly scandalous themes like the evils of the drug companies and how they’re ruining our immune systems while getting disgustingly rich. Zwick is never really interested in the matter at hand though. He just uses hot topic scenarios as backdrops for the real story - in this case, the reluctant love between Jamie and Hathaway’s Maggie Murdoch. To make matters worse, and of course much more poignant, Maggie has early on-set Parkinson’s. And so the real question is how life can be so terribly unfair as to give these two people a transformative love that will only get harder and harder to hold.

My answer to that is pretty simple. That’s life, folks. For all of Zwick’s fascination with serious subjects, he rarely seems to comprehend the actual impact of these hardships on the people involved. Maggie pushes people away because she doesn’t think its fair for anyone to have to deal with her condition. Meanwhile, Jamie is frustrated that he can’t fix her with a pill like everything else and has to accept that love is hard. While these are real struggles, the tone is kept pretty light while both of them accept that love is a drug all unto itself. Fortunately for LOVE AND OTHER DRUGS, Gyllenhaal and Hathaway get along brilliantly. They are playful and sharp, like lovers should be, and thanks to Zwick’s somewhat voyeuristic gaze, they are hot and naked a whole heck of a lot too. They are certainly the only addictive element to the film though and when the buzz wears off, there is no withdrawal at all.

DEFIANCE

Written by Clayton Frohman and Edward Zwick
Directed by Edward Zwick
Starring Daniel Craig, Live Schreiber and Jamie Bell


Viktor Panchenko: But Jews do not fight.
Tuvia Bielski: These Jews do.

DEFIANCE opens with what felt to me like an unintentional act of its own defiance. Black and white footage made to look archival, graces the screen in a harrowing montage. There are the screams of children being pulled away from their parents; there are the images of Nazis senselessly putting guns to the backs of people’s heads and pulling the triggers. There is even a score driven by the violin work of Joshua Bell that sounds an awful lot like the one in that Spielberg movie with the girl in the red coat. Director, Edward Zwick’s message is clear. He doesn’t want to talk about the holocaust. Why should he? We all already know the story there. In case we don’t, he is sure to throw in a few facts up on screen between the quick and horrible imagery. The holocaust is not the story he wants to tell. However, reducing the holocaust to a montage so that the audience is brought up to speed is such an offensive trivialization of a mind-blowing tragedy that it is a miracle that DEFIANCE ever manages to recover from its first few moments.


The story that Zwick is in such a rush to get to is actually well worth telling, just not worth the steps he took to get there. Daniel Craig, Live Schreiber and Jamie Bell are the Bielski brothers. The SS has killed their parents and most other siblings and they have sought refuge in a nearby forest. Before long, they run into a number of other people who have found themselves in the same situation. The numbers grow into a community and even though they barely have shelter to keep themselves warm through the winter and rarely get to eat more than a bowl of potato soup, they have something far more valuable; they have their freedom. As DEFIANCE is quite pleased to boast, the Bielski’s beautiful acts and the thousands of lives that were saved by these acts are the untold holocaust story. Unfortunately, the story itself isn’t told all that genuinely. Instead, Zwick, along with co-writer, Clayton Frohman, chooses to highlight conventional devices like brotherly alpha male conflicts instead of focusing on the gripping reality around them.


Like Zwick’s last offering, BLOOD DIAMOND, DEFIANCE is set in a dire situation to make the conventional plot points seem that much more horrific. It is the kind of movie that makes me wish it would have been better than it was as the story itself is quite moving. Somewhere in the middle of the lengthy stay in the forest, DEFIANCE finally finds its footing and allows the true bravery of the Bielski’s to shine. I only wish Zwick’s sense of satisfaction in being the first to show the Jews taking a stand and fighting back didn’t taint the whole thing. Oh, and I think someone should tell him that Spielberg beat him to that punch too.