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THE MILLION-DOLLAR HOTEL (Red; check out of it)
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A visual medium, film sustains some European directors who evince little interest in or facility with plot but have a continuing fascination with imagery and atmosphere. Think of France's Eric Rohmer, Holland's Paul Verhoeven (who gained defenestration fame with THE FOURTH MAN and parlayed that into TOTAL RECALL), Italy's Fellini, and Germany's Wim Wenders, whose WINGS OF DESIRE was static yet hypnotic and ultimately moving. At the opening of Wenders' newest movie (co-produced by U2's Bono, who provided much of the music), THE MILLION-DOLLAR HOTEL, Tom Tom Barrow (Jeremy Davies), whose resting facial expression connotes internal pain and anguish, slowly paces the hotel's rain-shiny rooftop. The sun is just rising over the glass-and-steel canyons of downtown Los Angeles. Tom runs toward the sunlight, faster and faster, until he launches himself off the roof, hurling himself toward the street. As he does, he realizes, in a slow-motion flash of transcendence, "Life is perfect."
As a setting for futurist dystopias, Los Angeles has few peers. In shots reminiscent of Ridley Scott's BLADE RUNNER, we see a polyglot City of Angels portrayed, in pointillist fashion, through the crazed, demented, dysfunctional or beatific denizens of the ironically named hotel, a high-rise flea bag also reminiscent of the BLADE RUNNER hotel.
For reasons never explained, media billionaire's drug-addict son Israel (Izzy) Goldkiss (an uncredited Tim Roth) chose the Million-Dollar Hotel as his incognito home, where he painted grotesque works of art consisting mainly of black tar. As the movie flashes back from Tom Tom's jump, we learn that Izzy is dead and his father has brought Detective Skinner (Mel Gibson), a grim, collar-braced, crime terminator (another dystopia set in LA) to find his killer.
Eschewing normal techniques such as searching for clues of interviewing suspects, which if left unchecked might have given risen to a plot, Gibson merely intimidates and eavesdrops on the hotel's inhabitants: skate-boarding half-wit Tom Tom (Jeremy Davies, first seen in SPANKING THE MONKEY); manic Indian Geronimo (Jimmy Smits) who may actually have painted Izzy's works; Dixie, a Liverpudlian singer (Peter Stormare) whose dead-on Lennon accent lends credibility to his claim he wrote all the Beatles' songs; several others (Bud Cort, Amanda Plummer, Gloria Stuart); and Joan-of-Arc bookworm Eloise (Milla Jovovich) whose introversion signals her beatitude.
Death brings Goldkiss identity and with it celebrity. That makes his paintings valuable, bringing out of the woodwork television interviewers and an art dealer (Julian Sands) who strides onstage, cowing the hotel residents with sneering promises of fame: "The line between garbage and great art is thin indeed," he chastises them, "and the artist seldom knows it. The artist is only a painter, and it is the dealer" -- a pause as he scans the room -- "who is the artist." This and other art jokes, of which there are several ("and we have a tar critic -- that is, an art critic") sparkle amidst the movie's prevalent gloomy high-contrast darkness and mumbled dialog.
Plotless, I called the movie as we exited, 117 minutes of tedium for 3 minutes of epiphany. Atmosphere, Nancy replied, more charitably, and the acting was good. Indeed it was, especially Gibson, who is a revelation as a tortured torturer (and who lambasted the movie). Everyone is credible even as few of them are likable.
The line between plotless and atmospheric is thin indeed, and even famous directors seldom know it. Nancy might be more charitable, but from my perspective, only if you truly adored WINGS OF DESIRE or are a relentless fan of visually arresting if probably incoherent MTV videos should you check into THE MILLION-DOLLAR HOTEL.