Director: Fred Schepisi
Writer: John Guare
Photography: Ian Baker
Music: Jerry Goldsmith
Editor: Peter Honess
Cast: Stockard Channing, Will Smith, Donald Sutherland, Ian McKellen, Mary Beth Hurt, Bruce Davison, Heather Graham, Anthony Michael Hall, Eric Thal, Richard Mason, J.J. Abrams, Kitty Carlisle
Six Degrees of Separation is one degree of separation from a 1990 stage play of the same name, based on a real-life con man, which approximately sums up most of the problems here. Well, except for the conceit of a high concept that never quite comes off. Google AI summarizes: “Six Degrees of Separation is the theory that everyone on Earth is connected by a chain of no more than five other people (six acquaintance links).... [It may be] illustrated by the ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game, where any actor can be linked to Bacon in six or fewer roles.”
The funny thing (funny dumbass, not funny ha ha) is that this idea has little to do with anything going on in this picture, beyond something that one major character is fascinated by in a daydreamy sort of way. That is the unbearably named Ouisa, pronounced “wee-zuh,” short for Louisa (Stockard Channing). Donald Sutherland plays her husband Flan. They are rich New Yorkers living off Central Park. Sutherland is excellent, as he always was, but he can’t save this mess. Will Smith plays Paul, who says he is the son of Sidney Poitier. That claimed connection might have something to do with the six degrees. I don’t know. I never figured it out. I did notice that Will Smith did not slap anyone in this picture.
Six Degrees of Separation is one degree of separation from a 1990 stage play of the same name, based on a real-life con man, which approximately sums up most of the problems here. Well, except for the conceit of a high concept that never quite comes off. Google AI summarizes: “Six Degrees of Separation is the theory that everyone on Earth is connected by a chain of no more than five other people (six acquaintance links).... [It may be] illustrated by the ‘Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon’ game, where any actor can be linked to Bacon in six or fewer roles.”
The funny thing (funny dumbass, not funny ha ha) is that this idea has little to do with anything going on in this picture, beyond something that one major character is fascinated by in a daydreamy sort of way. That is the unbearably named Ouisa, pronounced “wee-zuh,” short for Louisa (Stockard Channing). Donald Sutherland plays her husband Flan. They are rich New Yorkers living off Central Park. Sutherland is excellent, as he always was, but he can’t save this mess. Will Smith plays Paul, who says he is the son of Sidney Poitier. That claimed connection might have something to do with the six degrees. I don’t know. I never figured it out. I did notice that Will Smith did not slap anyone in this picture.
I really had a hard time with this one. IMDb classifies it as satire, comedy, drama, and mystery, which is another point that suggests how muddled this picture is. First, all the problems of making a movie out of a play are here, along with the usual awkward attempts to make it cinematic somehow. The genius of theater is confining its storytelling to a space defined by the edges of a stage. The genius of cinema is that it can go anywhere and do virtually anything. Putting them together is never an easy mix, short of parking the camera in the best seat in the house, which doesn’t happen often enough.
Six Degrees of Separation is formally “A Fred Schepisi Film” (it could well be the director’s most famous picture). Schepisi’s attempts to free the script from the stage involve a lot of cross-cutting between flashbacks and scenes where the principals are recounting the story of Paul the con man to their rich friends at fancy parties, in fancy hotel lobbies, etc. There’s also a lot of decent New York City B-roll on view.
Paul the con man is another main problem here, the “based on real life” problem, taking off from the story of a man named David Harrington, who convinced well-heeled New Yorkers in the 1980s that he was the son of Sidney Poitier. I guess the satire is of those New Yorkers, who are so evidently shallow and quick to embrace celebrity as profundity. They all go dreamy-eyed thinking about Poitier’s career. They hated the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of Cats, but when Paul tells them his father is working on a film version and he might be able to cast them as extras they are thrilled.
The humor in Six Degrees of Separation is too often broad or precious or both, but I admit it won a few smiles from me here and there. Paul, for example, knows that the perfect gift for richies is a pot of jam wrapped in cloth. The rich do make such fine easy targets, playing on our various resentments. But mostly the amped-up frenetic rhythms here just feel false. This might be a problem of the original play, but even if so the movie does not fix it, instead leaning into it.
Six Degrees of Separation is more star-studded than I remembered (Will Smith! Stockard Channing! Donald Sutherland! Ian McKellen! Heather Graham! Anthony Michael Hall! Bruce Davison! Kitty Carlisle!), but with this cast and a release date of December 8 the picture is fairly judged as Oscar bait, which worked to the extent that Channing got a nomination for Best Actress. I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of the Oscar dramas to know whether the nomination was for this role really or for some past neglect on the Academy’s part. Channing is always an easygoing and even welcome presence, but she rarely has more to offer than a kind of throaty pleasantness, in my memory, and in any event she did not get the prize and it has been her only nomination to this point.
I only got around to looking at Six Degrees of Separation recently, but I remember it as a picture I meant to get to, intrigued by the social connectivity idea. But it’s just as well I never did. The movie makes a hash of the idea, never finding a way to use it effectively. Somehow these filmmakers actually made it much less interesting. I suppose, if you’re inclined to thematics, you could put it on a double bill with Catch Me If You Can, which is a much better movie about a charming rascal.
Six Degrees of Separation is formally “A Fred Schepisi Film” (it could well be the director’s most famous picture). Schepisi’s attempts to free the script from the stage involve a lot of cross-cutting between flashbacks and scenes where the principals are recounting the story of Paul the con man to their rich friends at fancy parties, in fancy hotel lobbies, etc. There’s also a lot of decent New York City B-roll on view.
Paul the con man is another main problem here, the “based on real life” problem, taking off from the story of a man named David Harrington, who convinced well-heeled New Yorkers in the 1980s that he was the son of Sidney Poitier. I guess the satire is of those New Yorkers, who are so evidently shallow and quick to embrace celebrity as profundity. They all go dreamy-eyed thinking about Poitier’s career. They hated the Andrew Lloyd Webber production of Cats, but when Paul tells them his father is working on a film version and he might be able to cast them as extras they are thrilled.
The humor in Six Degrees of Separation is too often broad or precious or both, but I admit it won a few smiles from me here and there. Paul, for example, knows that the perfect gift for richies is a pot of jam wrapped in cloth. The rich do make such fine easy targets, playing on our various resentments. But mostly the amped-up frenetic rhythms here just feel false. This might be a problem of the original play, but even if so the movie does not fix it, instead leaning into it.
Six Degrees of Separation is more star-studded than I remembered (Will Smith! Stockard Channing! Donald Sutherland! Ian McKellen! Heather Graham! Anthony Michael Hall! Bruce Davison! Kitty Carlisle!), but with this cast and a release date of December 8 the picture is fairly judged as Oscar bait, which worked to the extent that Channing got a nomination for Best Actress. I don’t know enough about the ins and outs of the Oscar dramas to know whether the nomination was for this role really or for some past neglect on the Academy’s part. Channing is always an easygoing and even welcome presence, but she rarely has more to offer than a kind of throaty pleasantness, in my memory, and in any event she did not get the prize and it has been her only nomination to this point.
I only got around to looking at Six Degrees of Separation recently, but I remember it as a picture I meant to get to, intrigued by the social connectivity idea. But it’s just as well I never did. The movie makes a hash of the idea, never finding a way to use it effectively. Somehow these filmmakers actually made it much less interesting. I suppose, if you’re inclined to thematics, you could put it on a double bill with Catch Me If You Can, which is a much better movie about a charming rascal.
No comments:
Post a Comment