erasing clouds
 

DVD Review: Sideways

by j.d. lafrance

Alexander Payne is part of an exciting new wave of filmmakers who grew up during the ‘70s and were subsequently influenced by the movies from that era. His contemporaries include the likes of Wes Anderson, Paul Thomas Anderson, and David O. Russell to name but only a few. Like his fellow filmmakers, Payne eschews the Hollywood trend of emphasizing special effects and trendy actors in favor of character-driven, comedy-drama hybrids and using character actors like Laura Dern, Matthew Broderick and Kathy Bates.

Payne’s last film, About Schmidt (2002), continued his fascination with American cinema in the ‘70s by featuring one its biggest (and most prolific) stars, Jack Nicholson. His latest movie, Sideways (2004), continues the road movie motif from Schmidt and combines it with the buddy film. Jack (Thomas Haden Church) is a failed actor about to be married. He decides to go on one last week of uninhibited fun with his best friend, Miles (Paul Giamatti), a school teacher and struggling author. They go on a wine-tasting tour through California’s Central Coast and squeeze in a bit of golfing as well.

Miles is an avid (nay-elitist) wine aficionado while Jack is completely ignorant of wine beyond what tastes good to him and what does not. Miles is trying to get his book published with little success and he has grown cynical and a bit defeated as a result. Initially, he comes off as an unlikable loser not above stealing money from his mother. Jack counters Miles’ repressed nature by coming off as something of an instinctive kind of person who indulges in his raging id. He was on a hit TV show...11 years ago and is now relegated to doing voiceovers in commercials. Along the way, Jack and Miles meet Maya (Virginia Madsen), a beautiful waitress who Miles knows from many years ago, and Stephanie (Sandra Oh), who works at a winery and catches Jack’s eye.

Jack and Miles are complete messes as human beings. They lack direction and are hypocrites. Miles says he is an author but his book is going nowhere, while Jack is getting married and proceeds to hit on anything in a dress. They are hardly a sympathetic pair. And yet Payne is able to get a good amount of comedic mileage from the pair. Miles is a wine snob who rambles on about the taste, color, and so on, only to have Jack sum up his opinion simply, “I like it,” which comically deflates Miles’ pontificating. An interesting thing happens during the course of the movie. At first, Miles starts off as an unsympathetic character while we warm up to Jack’s funny repartee as the charming rogue. Halfway through the film they flip roles and it is Jack who is exposed as a pathetic womanizer and Miles becomes more sympathetic thanks to Maya’s influence.

Maya is easily Miles’ intellectual equal. She knows her wine and this clearly impresses him. She is smart and beautiful, so why is she even wasting her time with a sad sack like Miles? She gets to know him beyond his looks and liquefies the pretension of his character. She pierces his wine-speak armor that he throws up constantly with her easy-going nature and Miles realizes that he does not need to always impress her. Like a fine wine, Maya allows him to breath and he gets better as time goes on. She is a romantic who is able to cut through his cynicism and soften his hard edges. She humanizes him.

Fresh off the success of American Splendor (2003), Paul Giamatti is one of those actors who makes it look so effortless as he inhabits the characters he plays completely. Miles is a neurotic mess; a depressed cynic who is definitely a half glass empty kind of guy. Giamatti is able to tap into his character’s deep reservoir of pain and anger and pull out an incredible performance that is, in some ways a variation of his take on the equally acerbic Harvey Pekar in Splendor.

Ever since Ned and Stacey, Thomas Haden Church has been an untapped resource, and with Sideways he has finally been given the role of his career. As Miles’ crass, philandering best friend, he plays Jack as a middle-aged frat boy who still calls women, “chicks.” Haden Church’s deadpanned delivery of smart-ass lines works well against Giamatti’s uptight straight man. Together, they make an excellent team.

For years, Virginia Madsen has been biding her time in direct-to-video hell and so it is great to see her in a high-profile role like this one. From The Hot Spot (1990) to her recent run on the American Dreams television program, she has always been an interesting actress to watch. With Sideways, Madsen is given strong material to sink her teeth into and she delivers a nuanced performance. Sandra Oh has been quietly building a nice body of work over the years and has been unfairly overlooked in the numerous awards that have been lavished on this film. Granted, of the four main cast members, she has the least amount of screen time but she makes every moment she has count.

The men are idiots in Sideways and it is the women who are smart and truthful. The men lie, cheat and are forced to face the repercussions of their actions. This provides them with a chance at redemption as embodied by Miles who learns to loosen up and finally let someone new into his heart. Payne’s movie harkens to classic, character-driven movies, like Five Easy Pieces (1970) and The King of Marvin Gardens (1972), by rejecting traditional mainstream tastes in favor of presenting unsympathetic characters and a conclusion that refuses to wrap things up neatly.

20th Century Fox’s recent DVD release includes a modest collection of supplemental material. There is an audio commentary by actors Paul Giamatti and Thomas Haden Church. As a review in Entertainment Weekly has pointed out, this track is almost a sequel of sorts as Haden Church goes into vintage smart-ass mode while Giamatti plays the straight man and tries to keep things on track by occasionally commenting on what we are seeing. Haden Church then proceeds to deflate this by delivering ironic statements like, “Also, I love your head in this scene,” in a deadpan style that is very funny. He also offers hilarious non-sequitur comments like the number of times he scratches his face in a given scene (he describes it as “physical facial Tourettes”). Usually, most actor commentary tracks are a bore as they either tend to narrate what we are watching or are unable to articulate anything about their craft. This is one works because it is so entertaining as the two men riff on the movie.

Also included are seven deleted scenes with written introductions by Payne that explain why they were cut. Most of this footage was rightly excised, including a nasty subplot involving a dog being hit and killed by Miles’ car. However, there is a funny exchange between Jack and Miles that ends with Jack simulating the sound of a vibrator.

Rounding out the DVD is a theatrical trailer and a “Behind-the-Scenes Featurette” that is pretty standard stuff with clips of Payne and the cast talking about the movie mixed with clips from the movie.


this month's issue
archive
about erasing clouds
links
contact
     

Copyright (c) 2005 erasing clouds