TIME: Almanac 1993/TIME Almanac 1993.iso/time/082090/0820421.000

Text File | 1992-08-28 | 3.7 KB | 83 lines

                                                                                CINEMA, Page 62

Everything Is Not So Jake


By RICHARD SCHICKEL

THE TWO JAKES
Directed by Jack Nicholson
Screenplay by Robert Towne


    A sequel to Chinatown (released 16 years ago), eight years
in the making -- or more accurately, in the preproduction
squabbling, with its release twice delayed in the past year --
The Two Jakes redefines the cliche "long awaited." It also
redefines "disappointing," and possibly "excruciating" as well.

    The year is 1948, and in postwar Los Angeles, Jake Gittes
(Jack Nicholson,  of course) is enjoying newfound prosperity at
his old trade. For a private eye specializing in "matrimonial"
cases, a fluid society with a rising divorce rate is bound to
mean good times. But some things don't change. Once again a
routine investigation of sexual hanky-panky leads Jake to the
discovery of much larger depravities. In Chinatown it was the
desire to control water in the San Fernando Valley that set the
power elite at one another's throats; in The Two Jakes it is
the desire to control the oil underlying the Los Angeles basin
that's making folks murderously crazy. Perhaps predictably, the
new case refers Jake back to the dark, terrible and (for him)
unfinished emotional business with which the earlier case
concluded.

    Right. And then? Yes . . . er . . . um . . . At this point
in a review it is customary to provide a little more detailed
summary of the story, giving potential customers some concrete
idea of what they're being asked to buy into. Well this time,
forget it. What can be reported without hesitation is that
there is another Jake, that he is played by Harvey Keitel, and
that early in the film he catches his wife (Meg Tilly) in bed
with his business partner and rubs him out. After that, you're
on your own. In showing that what seems to be a crime of
passion is actually one of dispassion, having much more to do
with big money than a little sex, and in trying to tie this
mess into Gittes' sad past, writer Robert Towne crosses the
line between complexity and incomprehensibility.

    And he places an insupportable burden on director Nicholson.
This script is, of necessity, endlessly expository: dramatic
confrontation is either crowded out entirely by speculative
talk, or it arrives so encrusted with a multiplicity of
mysterious motivations that it is robbed of impact. Try as he
will (and try he does), Nicholson cannot give The Two Jakes the
forward motion or the style it desperately needs. And in the
end, he fails to supply that satisfying sense of closure any
mystery must have. One leaves the theater not knowing for
certain why anybody did anything in this movie -- and by this
time, not much caring.

    What this film misses most is a character like Noah Cross,
whom John Huston played with chilling false charm in Chinatown.
The trail that led to him was as convoluted as the story line
in this movie. But we knew all along the footprints had to
arrive at his doorstep, and when they did, we confronted an
unforgettable monster, whose political and economic immorality
was of a piece with his sexual perversion. Dramatically he was
an antagonist who functioned as a powerfully clarifying force,
resolving, vivifying all the movie's ambiguities. There is just
no one like him here, though Ruben Blades, the singer who is
turning into a delicately ironic actor, might have fulfilled
the role if his gangster character had been more fully
developed. Unfortunately, like everyone else in this huge,
wasted effort, he is merely glimpsed wandering in a labyrinth
that never draws us into its enigmas and finally stupefies both
curiosity and involvement.