Last Chance Harvey

Yet another snowstorm came through New England on Saturday night. One would think it would be normal for Massachusetts to get this much powder, but there have already been so many snow days this winter that my sisters' son may have to go to school on Saturdays to make up the lost days.

My big plans for an early pre-noon movie were seemingly spoiled, as I didn't want to go out in the stuff while it was still coming down hard. But when I went inside from the guest quarters for coffee, my sister informed me that their real estate agent had called, and that a couple from Westford was coming over in two hours for a showing of the house. It was a good sign in this market. My sister and her husband had signed the papers putting their property on the market only the day before.

But this news had the effect of sending everyone out in the snowstorm, to empty the house for the showing. After quickly tidying up my quarters and stowing away the futon back into sofa-form, I hopped in the car and headed off to Lowell, intending to catch a showing of whatever was playing when I arrived.

The back roads were treacherous, and my car slid sideways on the ice three times even before I got to the Interstate. I wondered what kind of sadist sends people out into a storm to look at a house on a day like this.

On the freeway, my stress level soared as I cursed the idiots who insisted on tailgating me even as we all tried to creep along in the one available lane. It was quite a relief to finally pull into the parking lot of the Showcase Cinemas, right in time to buy a ticket for Last Chance Harvey.

The auditorium was broiling hot---just the opposite of Leominster, where the heat is forever broken. That's what you get for the extra two bucks in Lowell.

The first scene of the movie introduces Dustin Hoffman's character, Harvey, who turns out to be a divorced commercial musician who writes jingles for television commercials. In the first shot, his hands are at the keyboard of a piano while he is attempting to play a jazz melody. But he keeps stumbling over a certain passage. Then he relaxes and changes his tune, literally, to a lighter piece, one that turns out to be one of his own compositions.

In story terms, this first scene must set up the life journey of the character, and the voyage he will undertake in the narrative. It turns out he once wanted to be a jazz pianist. The alteration from one melody to another is symbolic of his meeting Emma Thompson's character, Kate, which has not yet happened. She will interrupt his life and cause him to begin playing his own joyful tune, literally, at a later point in the story.

The first thirty minutes of the film follow a type of storytelling in which we go back and forth between the two romantic principals before they have met, following them as they draw closer together, propelled by fate to meet other.

Each glimpse of them is done through classical anti-symmetry---that is, whatever action one character is doing, the other character must somehow be doing an analogous but somehow opposite action. This works both for the romantic contrast, and also for creating a dynamic story.

For example, we meet Harvey while he is sitting alone in a studio. Another person comes into the studio and talks to him. On the other hand we meet Kate while she is walking outside, and talking to other people. She enters a house and meets another person. She goes upstairs in a house. He goes down the ramp of a parking garage to his car.

They travel---she goes by train, while he goes by plane. She sits alone, silently looking out a window at the scenery. He is a middle seat on the plane, attempting unsuccessfully to chat up the woman next to him. She keeps getting phone calls from her mother. He keeps trying make phone calls to his business associate.

The antisymmetry of the characters must continue in this fashion until eventually the two romantic leads become aligned, both physically and emotionally. In Last Chance Harvey, this alignment does not occur when they first meet, an incident which comes and goes as part of the antisymmetric progression, seemingly just a blip within both of their lives.

One could call this missed opportunity "failed serendipidity," an apparent thwarting of fate that arose as a reaction to Harvey's failure with the woman on the plane. For the romantic tension to succeed, there must be as many obstacles as possible to the two characters getting together.

Both have troubled relationships they must deal with. For Kate, it is her relationship with her mother. For Harvey, it is his relationship with his daughter, who is getting married. He has not been a part of her life for a long time, and he learns that she wants her step-father (James Brolin) to give her away at the wedding.

The eventual real encounter of the characters only partially resolves the antisymmetry, indicated by their body positions at the table while they are eating lunch. Only later, when they are walking together side-by-side do they become symmetric, and their energies begin flowing together.

At this particular moment, they are walking along the Thames in London with the dome of Saint Paul's Cathedral fuzzy in the background. It is an old movie trick, the introduction of a church to indicate that a romantic union has blessing of the Almighty.

The characters then walk through an open air book market, where they talk about books and stories in general. Thus the movie enters the rarefied postmodern zone of "narrative about narrative." They spend the scene weaving a common story that includes them both, instigated by the man (he must be the active one, in classical terms).

After their story-weaving, we see them beside the same river railing as before, with Saint Paul's in the background once again, but much clearer than the first time. The verdict of the Almighty concerning their union is obvious.

The story was very well crafted in this way for the first hour of the movie. I was very impressed with the screenplay and the direction, both by Joel Hopkins.

But after an hour, the story did such a good job of resolving the antisymmetric tension to bring the characters together, that it boxed itself in. The quality of the narrative just disintegrated into cliche. There was nowhere to go, so instead we had to sit through a phony plot twist to create another round of tension that keeps the characters apart, just so they can come back together for the final resolution.

It was a nice try, all in all, but ultimately the movie just couldn't figure out a way to bring everything together in a way that lived up to the first hour. The resolution felt forced and contrived. At only 92 minutes, the movie felt like it just ended a little too soon, as if it ran out of steam.

Hoffman and Thompson both received Golden Globe nominations for this. Although they did a fine job, and are both superb actors, I really couldn't see anything spectacular about their performances, as the roles seemed rather undemanding of their talents. The superior aspects of the movie were mostly on the screenplay level, as were its deficiencies.

The story touched only lightly on the obvious theme of inter-generational love, which I wrote about in my write-up of The Curious Case of Benjamin Button. It didn't seem like a very important part of this story, but they had to throw a pro forma mention of it in.

It wasn't the worst way to spend a snowy afternoon. The roads were better coming home, but I still kept thinking, "If I get killed because of this, those people from Westford better damn well make a good offer on the house."