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The Big Brass Ring
TIFF [1999]
William Hurt,
Miranda RichardsonDirected by George Hickenlooper. Produced by Donald Zuckerman & Andrew Pfeffer.Written by George Hickenlooper & F.X. Sweeney. Based on a screenplay by Orson Welles and Oja Kodar.
Starring: William Hurt, Miranda Richardson, Nigel Hawthorne, Irene Jacob
(Contemporary World Cinema programme)
Yes, film buffs, you read that right: "Based on a screenplay by Orson Welles..." But I'm sad to report we're a long, long way from the elusive successor to Citizen Kane here...
THE STORY:
As the year 2000 race for Governor of Missouri winds down to a battle between not one, but two, independent parties, Blake Pellarin (William Hurt) finds his climb to the top rocked as various suppressed individuals emerge in St. Louis mere days before the election. Blake's wife, Dinah (Miranda Richardson) is heir to an oil fortune (Blake says she's "richer than God"), and her fortunes have allowed Pellarin to lead a lavish, insulated, and secretive life. But when incriminating photos of Pellarin surface anonymously, along with a few cryptic cloak and dagger clues, Pellarin tracks down Dr. Kimball Menaker (Nigel Hawthorne) to vanquish some ghosts and make a deal.
Menaker was more or less the surrogate father to Blake and his brother after they were both orphaned. But shortly after Blake's brother Billy was drafted to Vietnam and Blake went off to college, Menaker disappeared into self-imposed exile in Cuba. Menaker threatens to expose Blake's sexually "adventurous" past to nosy reporter Cela Brandini (Irene Jacob), unless Blake agrees to one condition: once Menaker gets Blake "the Big Brass Ring", i.e. The Presidency Of The United States, Blake will make him Secretary Of State. When Blake refuses the deal, Menaker sweetens the threat: it seems brother Billy didn't die in Vietnam at all, and is currently housed in the city, a forgotten, crippled, impoverished vet (played by Greg Henry).
Will Blake play ball? Will the incriminating photos end up in the hands of the media? Is that even Blake in the photographs? Will Dinah leave Blake with only days left to the election? Can Blake keep his brother hidden until after the vote? Will anybody in the audience CARE once this film crawls to its ridiculous, near-incomprehensible climax?
ROBERT L 'S REVIEW
The Big Brass Ring began as a screenplay intended by Welles to bring about his commercial comeback. His version was set in Europe, shortly after the Presidential race of 1980, and was apparently considerably less melodramatic and tawdry (it was published in paperback briefly, but I've never been able to track down a copy). As revised by Hickenlooper and Sweeney, "TBBR" plays like the most absurd episode of Falcon Crest you've ever seen, with plot points that make General Hospital during the Liz Taylor years seem like a Cassavettes film.
I detected little of the great Welles onscreen during the Elgin premiere, but I did catch a whiff of another favorite writer: Harlan Ellison. Not the Ellison of I Have No Mouth And I Must Scream or Jefty Is Five, mind you, but the Harlan E. who co-wrote the 1966 Stephen Boyd camp howler, The Oscar.
Perhaps Welles aspired to loftier, more profound heights with his original version, but the script by Hickenlooper and Sweeney is yet another dreary entry into Political Potboiler 101. What's "The Big Brass Ring" trying to illuminate for us? Politicians are phony crooks, no one says what they mean, and the media is shallow and manipulative and interested only in scandal, not facts.
Big revelation, there.
All of this dressed up with unconvincing Southern accents and portentous, overwrought dialogue.
Hurt (to Richardson): "Ah'm sorry ah stole your necklace".
Richardson (well sloshed on the bottle): "Mah necklace? You stole mah YOUTH!"Hawthorne even quotes Shakespeare in a nod to Welles' Chimes At Midnight. Just about everyone ELSE in the cast quotes Ben Franklin, Abraham Lincoln, Joseph Conrad, and half the "literature" section of yer local Barnes & Noble's.
Talk Back
As if the dialogue isn't bad enough, the visual symbolism would make a sophomore black-clad Creative Writing major cringe: During one of his many visits to Hawthorne's refuge on a gay restaurant/ship (!), Hurt expresses concern for the health of his mentor's pet monkey. Carrying him back to his hotel so that the animal can be taken to a vet, Hurt literally has a "monkey on his back". Still with me?
Things get even more ridiculous and confounding from there: Richardson keeps imbibing and eventually tosses a drink in Hurt's face, Jacob lures Hurt into bed and captures his footprints through some bizarre, Rube-Goldberg-type apparatus of her invention, Greg Henry hams it up as diabetic brother Billy, complete with sallow complexion, greasy hair, and blacked out teeth.
Ultimately, it's revealed that Billy and Blake MAY have had their birth certificates switched, but I'm still not sure if it was Billy or Blake in those incriminating gay porn photos. Ah, who cares? I literally bolted for the exit as the end credits started to roll.
On the plus side, the film is handsomely shot by Kramer Morganthau, and Hawthorne seems to be having a grand ol' time tearing into his extremely theatrical, and utterly absurd, role. Interestingly, Welles had intended the role of Menaker for himself.
The Big Brass Ring was shot independently, and intended for theatrical release. But when it had trouble acquiring a distributor last spring, it was ultimately sold to America's Showtime network, where I understand it's already been airing.
You've been warned.
Talk Back
Reviews: All the Rage
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