During the 1970s, there existed an era of American film unseen since the film noir movement of the 1940s. Gritty, introspective urban dramas like Taxi Driver and The Conversation explored deeply flawed male protagonists in degrading environments—which primarily existed in their minds more often than not—and we still look to those films today, whether to revel in the grainy, brooding imagery and rigorous camera work, or to hold a mirror up to ourselves and find out more than we thought we needed to know. In a way, these films depict what Holden Caulfield would have become had he remained in the city and never been put in an institution.
Which brings me to Two Lovers, arguably the first great film of 2009, and one that owes as much to those ‘70s films as it does to the talent and willingness of actor Joaquin Phoenix (in what is supposedly his last performance) to embody fragility, giving the most unsettling and ambiguous performance he’s ever done. Portraying Leonard, a Jewish man-child living in Brighton Beach with his positively French-Israeli parents, Phoenix brings his rugged handsomeness to a spontaneous, mumbling, fidgety demeanor, so weirdly endearing to every other character in the film that someone in the theater where I saw it cried out, “How the heck does he get so many women?”
Indeed, Two Lovers mines the few extraordinary elements remaining in the familiar love-triangle setup, finding unpredictable ways of heightening tension between the characters; yet half the fun of the movie is gauging exactly how these seemingly bizarre relationships are formed. It might not make sense at first that a guy like Leonard gets a pretty, old-fashioned Jewish girl (Vinessa Shaw) to fall head over heels for him (“I want to take care of you,” she says); or that he’s able to enter nearly every loophole possible when it comes to spending time with the adventurous neighboring shiksa (Gwyneth Paltrow)—indeed, superficially, the movie can be seen as what happens when a good Jewish boy goes too far. But this is a film that bends reality even as it lets it falls into place, making the viewer question the plausibility of these relationships just as Leonard is constantly and increasingly in danger of completely screwing them both up. To give away other subtleties would ruin the experience, but rest assured, the dichotomy promised by the title is raised to such high stakes that you will either be hissing in disapproval or purring from a rush of blood to the head.
Indeed, unlike most romantic dramas, Two Lovers isn’t afraid to be funny in all the wrong places, nor does it ever allow you to pick apart all of its secrets. We don’t know why Leonard suddenly breaks out into a painful hip-hop verse to impress some ladies (and why they love it), but clearly these characters have needs, and director James Gray uses incredible restraint in conveying this, as in his previous films (including the severely underrated We Own The Night).
Gray is the rare American director that makes lovely and subtle use of interiors to tell a deceptively simple story, which I believe is about the ability of human beings to endlessly rationalize fantasies within the disturbingly complex framework we call reality. He is clearly fascinated by the depths some men are willing to plumb in pursuit of an impossible dream, so much that the first scene of his movie even depicts the protagonist attempting to drown himself in the ocean. Indeed, the film is rife with provocative imagery, from an infectiously rapturous dance club sequence to close-ups of Leonard’s childhood photos during a heated sexual encounter. These scenes are what give the film a certain mystique, which carries it to the very end: without spoiling it, I can say that the last image of the film is something I won’t forget for quite some time.
If you want a film with a strangely compelling protagonist, where every frame is taken seriously, and consistently invites interpretation, you can rent Taxi Driver, or you can see Two Lovers. Hell, why not do both?
