Paul Schrader (2007)
The Wikipedia synopsis is as follows:
‘Carter Page III …, a middle-aged gay man in Washington DC, is a “walker”, a single man who escorts other men’s wives to social events so the husbands do not have to. One of the women he escorts, Lynn Lockner …, is the wife of a United States senator and is carrying on an affair with a lobbyist. When she finds the lobbyist murdered, she embroils Carter in an investigation that leads to the highest levels of the federal government.’
As usual, Paul Schrader wrote the screenplay as well as directing. The cast includes Woody Harrelson (Carter), Kristin Scott Thomas (Lynn Lockner), Lauren Bacall, Ned Beatty, Willem Dafoe, Mary Beth Hurt and Lily Tomlin. DoP Chris Seager’s lighting is as stylish as the clothes, by Nic Ede. In spite of all this, The Walker is very dull indeed – largely because the events that might be expected to turn the characters’ moneyed, socially predictable world upside down have no such impact. They seem merely to confirm Schrader’s antipathy to what he’s describing. His evident dislike of his characters makes him unwilling to show us anything likeable or entertaining in the way they live and behave. There’s the odd bitchy line that’s amusing but they’re fewer than you might expect. It’s hard to fault any of the main performers – Tomlin and Beatty (who play a Mrs and Mr DeLorean) and Dafoe (Senator Lockner) are all, in their different ways, incisive. Not for the first time, Lauren Bacall’s speech rhythms lack variety and her wit seems to be an expression of her own personality rather than characterisation: even so, she often hits the mark. Yet no one catches fire: Schrader’s hostility is freezing. And this expensively inert movie is feeble as a crime thriller.
The only people for whom Schrader shows sympathy are Carter Page III and his boyfriend, a photographer-artist called Emek Yoglu. Emek is played by Moritz Bleibtreu, who gives the most nuanced performance in The Walker. It’s a basic problem of the film that Woody Harrelson isn’t good as Carter and it’s to Harrelson’s credit that, according to IMDB, he refused to do any publicity for the movie because he was so dissatisfied with his work. Early on, Carter says that he can always spot another gay man: you wonder whether the character is meant to be as obviously camp as Harrelson makes him. (I was never clear whether, as a walker in public, Carter was meant to be less flamboyant than when we see him behind closed doors – whatever, it’s hard to spot the difference.) The only good and surprising thing about Harrelson’s portrait is that – in spite of seeming uncomfortable playing a performing queen – he is, in his scenes with Moritz Bleibtreu, as part of a homosexual couple, relatively natural and effective.
14 April 2011
