Written and Directed by Theodore Melfi
*** (three stars)
"No one knows what it's like to be the bad man...to be the sad man..."
-The Who ("Behind Blue Eyes")
Believe it or not, dear readers, there was once a time when I did not care even one bit for Bill Murray.
Granted, I was a young child at the time, very young, but I was already a devotee of "Saturday Night Live" and anarchistic spirit of the original cast of "Not Ready For Prime Time Players." So when Bill Murray arrived in the second season or so of the series, thus replacing the presence of Chevy Chase, whose star was rapidly ascending, Murray just gave me a skeptical to negative knee jerk reaction that I would imagine is akin to greeting a new kid in school. I just didn't like him and could not understand why he was even there n the first place. But soon, Murray starred in a sketch where he addresses the camera and the audience and then apologizes for not being funny on the program. It was a sly, sharp move that was not only very funny, it instantly made me love the man. In a flash the new kid in school became the big man on campus and I was ready to follow him absolutely anywhere.
It is truly amazing to have had a front row seat to the evolution of Bill Murray on screen for most of my life as he has seemingly created a certain persona that fits so beautifully within certain specific life stages and to that end, how we have all witnessed how that persona has grown, while also keeping the real world Bill Murray as somewhat of an enigma.The devil-may-care, gentle anarchist who is armed with the always perfect quips he characterized in the late Harold Ramis' "Caddyshack" (1980) and Ivan Reitman's "Meatballs" (1979), "Stripes" (1981) and "Ghostbusters" (1984) all seemed to grow into the early middle aged existential crisis of Harold Ramis' "Groundhog Day" (1993) which then settled into the later middle aged ennui and melancholy of Wes Anderson's "Rushmore" (1998) and "The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou" (2004), Jim Jarmusch's "Broken Flowers" (2005) and most certainly Sofia Coppola's "Lost In Translation" (2003).
With "St. Vincent," the debut feature from Writer/Director Theodore Melfi, Bill Murray has advanced into the twilight years and true to form, he is not about to settle into this next life stage quietly. For a figure who has become even more publicly beloved as he ages, Bill Murray could have easily taken the big paycheck, performed in "Ghostbusters III" and called it a day. Thankfully, he did no such thing and only continued to challenge himself and raise his own bar, thus ensuring creative evolution by delivering yet another career high performance that gives audiences everything we have loved about Bill Murray but in a most compelling package that finds him encased in a newfound gravitas. So, effective is Bill Murray in "St. Vincent" that he essentially saves the film itself from drowning in a morass of easy sentiments and unquestionable predictability. "St. Vincent" is a case of a great performance being housed inside of a pretty good movie, a movie that could have been better than it was. From a plot standpoint, there is essentially nothing in "St. Vincent" that you haven't seen before, which means that the writing, direction and performances had better be on point and then some. And to that end, with Melfi's sensitive work behind the camera and the film cast's strong work in front of the camera, "St. Vincent" gently succeeds through its empathy and soulfulness.
"St. Vincent" focuses on the cloudy life and times of Vincent MacKenna (Bill Murray), a sixty-something retiree who is an embittered and relentlessly acerbic, alcoholic Vietnam war veteran living in an increasingly dilapidated home in Brooklyn, New York. When he is not waging war at the local bank over his dwindling funds, or perpetually losing at the horse racetrack, Vincent passes the time by engaging in weekly sexual favors with his friend, Daka, the pregnant Russian prostitute (Naomi Watts). It is an endless cycle of disappointment and emotional emptiness that undoubtedly fuels the anger and recklessness that just may play out in the entirety of his final years. But then, new neighbors arrive in the form of the newly divorced Maggie Bronstein (Melissa McCarthy) and her young son Oliver (Jaeden Lieberher), who move in next door.
Oliver is also facing difficult times and life transitions as he is not only dealing with being a child of divorce, but also the experience of gaining an education within a Catholic school where he is simultaneously taunted by bullies and guided by the wry Brother Geraghty (Chris O'Dowd). Due to Maggie's work schedule, Vincent reluctantly agrees to become Oliver's babysitter in the afternoons after school, a daily period where he then introduces Oliver to a most unorthodox tutelage in the "school of hard knocks" as the twosome visit bars, racetracks and strip clubs together while somehow discovering an inexplicable symmetry that just may assist each of them with moving forwards in life.
Certainly from that description, you may already have an idea of exactly what may happen throughout the course of "St. Vincent" as well as its outcomes and I would say that you would be right. As I stated earlier, there is essentially nothing in this movie that you have not seen before from a plot standpoint and in some respects, the familiarity and overall predictability does hinder the film from becoming an experience that is truly unique. Characters behave as you would expect them to (although the"hooker with a heart-of-gold" character is never a good sign) in situations that are just prone to over-sentimentality but again, it is thanks to Theodore Melfi's sensitivity and willingness to take all of the cliches and treat them with a most humane presentation, a tactic that elevates it from a smarmy TV movie of the week on the Hallmark channel.
First and foremost, Melfi ensures that all of the characters and situations within "St. Vincent" remain emotionally true to their experiences, which allows all of the actors to hit the proper emotional notes that will keep the film grounded overall and is also often a quite dark experience that never falls for easy laughs. In a strange way, when you watch "St. Vincent," just imagine if John Hughes' "Uncle Buck" (1989) was not a comedy but actually more of a stark drama that explored Buck's loneliness, arrested development and middle aged ennui, and that just may give you a sense of what "St. Vincent" is like.
In a year when comedians are delivering some of the finest and most surprising dramatic performances of the year, from Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig in Craig Johnson's "The Skeleton Twins" to Michael Keaton's high wire performance in Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu's "Birdman," "St. Vincent" continues this very effective trend. Melissa McCarthy, a comedienne whom I adore for her fearlessness, but whom I fear is succumbing to a series of increasingly vulgar, freak-show caricatures on screen, is especially effective in her role as a single Mother and Chris O'Dowd also exudes a warm yet knowingly adult presence in his role as an educator.
But, "St. Vincent" is indeed Bill Murray's show and he truly makes the most of his leading performance which finds him mining a new existential pathos, rage and sorrow that merges with deepening levels of tenderness, poignancy, as well as his trademark humor, classic asides and one-liners. But make no mistake, Murray treats the character of Vincent MacKenna as a real pained soul, a deeply sad man growing sadder by the day of his miserable life, never knowing or feeling the actual value that he has within the world. There are many sequences within the film, especially during one honestly surprising turn midway, where Bill Murray reaches some acting notes that I have never seen him pull off before and he meets the challenges as if he had just been waiting to at long last tackle them.
As for the film's core, Vincent's relationship with Oliver, and therefore the acting relationship between Murray and the skilled and understated Jaeden Lieberher, every moment feels completely naturalistic, unforced, entertaining and honestly heartfelt. This is especially true by the film's very touching conclusion, which would otherwise be nauseating due to any sense of being cloying or painfully forced. For as much as I had wished that the film had been more original and more unpredictable, sometimes a simple story well told is indeed all you need to just make a good movie, With Bill Murray in the lead, we are indeed given just that. A good movie that is well told but with the added bonus of an excellent performance that I sincerely hope is remembered during awards season. Yes, Bill Murray is indeed that strong.
About a month ago, I stumbled upon an on-line article from the Vulture publication entitled, "Bill Murray Should Hire An Agent Already," during which the writer took Murray to task for his film choices over the last ten years or so, choices due to him famously not having an agent and being notoriously difficult to locate, pin down and hire to act in a film. Truthfully, I really have no idea of why this writer would spend the time attacking a process that Bill Murray clearly is happy with, a process that truly allows and affords him to make the films he wants to make and work with the people he truly wants to work with while also extending his enigmatic and rebellious public persona of a man who still marches to the beat of his own drummer, in ways that leave us as happily envious as gleefully mystified.
Whatever the means or reasons of his process and motivations, Bill Murray, through "St. Vincent," has beautifully found the next logical step in his career and legion of characters with class, dignity, a continuously inquisitive creative spirit and an almost punk rock attitude to movies and movie making. Unbelievably, that Vulture writer complains and laments in his article that "it would be nice to love him in movies again."
Brother, I've never stopped and with "St. Vincent," I really believe that you will love him even more as well.
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