Movies into Film

Directed by Brad Silberling

USA, 2002

MOONLIGHT MILE

Gyllenhaal, Hoffman, and Sarandon (Photo: Touchstone Pictures)

There’s a story to be told that lurks within writer-producer-director Brad Silberling’s new film Moonlight Mile. And then there’s the story he tells us—one that steps carefully over what he takes great pains not to show. The film is a study in avoidance, and while Silberling’s cleverness at times yields something fresh, he should have sifted through grief’s embers less neatly: what he leaves out might have kicked this extended music video into a stratosphere immortal. In other words, it’s a cheat.

Gorgeously photographed by Phedon Papamichael, Moonlight Mile moves magnificently in the first few scenes: the familial dislocation of dressing for a funeral as a phone keeps ringing; the car procession that snakes through a montage of kissing lovers, children at play, and lush farmlands as a raucous blues blares over the soundtrack—an epic vision in a cinema starved for unforgettable images seems to unfold. Later, the sights of snow-swept sidewalks in small town New England beautifully linger.

The movie, however, mostly contents itself with a lot of life-goes-on tomfoolery that might have been welcomed had Silberling and company stared down grief convincingly—that’s what’s missing here. If In the Bedroom is Veuve Clicquot, then Moonlight Mile errs dangerously close to Miller Lite. As JoJo, the mother of an only child shot dead by a sniper, Susan Sarandon lacks an interior life. She doesn’t get to be the tower of strength that Sissy Spacek was. Sarandon’s trademark way of zinging out lines somewhat compensates Silberling’s failure to shape the mother dimensionally, yet she never has a scene that belongs to her alone. When JoJo’s bitchiness gives way to sorrow, her breakdown seems empty.

Dustin Hoffman and Jake Gyllenhaal fare better. Hoffman heads straight for the pathos Silberling steers around, so that when Hoffman’s calm surface cracks you can feel the fire beneath. (Hoffman and Sarandon make such a fascinating mismatched couple, it’s criminal that Silberling won’t grant them their pyrotechnics.) As a bridegroom stranded in the house of his never to be in-laws, Gyllenhaal makes almost every insecure gesture completely natural.

Unfortunately, Silberling sends Gyllenhaal into a tedious romance with the local postmistress who moonlights as a barmaid. Played with smug felicitousness by Ellen Pompeo, she wore me down with her premeditated lack of affect. Silberling directs these godawful scenes as if the audience adores his taste in early 70s rock; the music swells as the drama drains out.

And here’s the insurmountable problem: you cannot have such a “therapeutic” ending if you’ve mourned a cipher. We never learn anything about the victim, except for her symbolic worth. On top of an insulting emotional dodge sprung midway, Silberling expects us to project our grief into his void. The survivors recover from their loss in record time, and the director genuinely believes he’s done a public service. – NPT

October 2002

Movies into Film

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