I was excited when I heard that Al Pacino was going to star in a movie based on Philip Roth's novel The Humbling. I've read all of Roth's novels and I was hugely impressed by the film version of his first, Goodbye Columbus. Alas, the other film versions of Roth's novels have been disappointing, from the miscast Human Stain, the lackluster Elegy (from his novel The Dying Animal) to the ineptly terrible Portnoy's Complaint. I hoped that Pacino would help make The Humbling memorable.
Pacino is great in the movie. So is Greta Gerwig, whose magnetic personality revives Pacino's aged actor and draws her female and transsexual exes back to her, despite her starting a new relationship with a man.
What lets the film down is the script. Several people have commented here on the Last Act's similarities with Birdman. I don't know who came up with the idea first of having a troubled older actor having a breakdown on the stage and confusing fantasy and reality. Roth's Simon Axler is aware of what's happening to him and around him. He doesn't have any illusions about Pegeen and her past: as in the film, her ex lover, the dean, warns him constantly that Pegeen uses people and dumps them when she's through with them. He knows he's bankrupting himself by buying her expensive clothes (it would have helped the film to show them going around Prada stores in New York rather than an ordinary looking clothing store near Simon's house.) In the book Simon doesn't return to the stage. Pegeen comes to spend the weekend at his house. He's ready to tell her that he can father a child, after meeting with a doctor and having a fertility check. Before they can have dinner and talk, Pegeen appears with a packed bag and tells him it's over. She takes her expensive clothes and he suspects she's leaving him for the woman they picked up at the restaurant. I was let down that the threesome scene, so pivotal in the book, is revealed to be a fantasy sequence in the movie- we see Simon waking to find Pegeen and the woman hand in hand, ignoring him. The novel's Simon enjoys Pegeen's audaciousness, and despite his back problems encourages her in exploring her desires. The sex toys make an appearance in the film too, but as a symbol of Simon's not being able to satisfy her. Pacino's Simon isn't anywhere as adventurous as Pegeen, and it's no wonder when she leaves him.
I was also surprised by Sybil's speech to Simon revealing that she discovered her husband abusing her 8 year old daughter. She's tragic in the book, and ends up killing her husband, then killing herself. In the film the abuse is brushed away and quickly forgotten. Like Sybil's family, Simon and the audience see her as a deluded character who's fixated on Simon's acting as a hit man to shoot her husband, as he once played a Death Wish type role in a movie.
The movie begins with several promising themes about losing one's gift, one's way in life, and fantasy being taken for reality, then reality as fodder for sensationalism- Sybil turns into another hot story on True Crime TV programs. The movie would be far more powerful if it followed the novel more, if it ended with Simon alone, with his life empty, turning to a Hemingway style suicide, thinking of Sybil as a last inspiration. Instead, there's a final scene derivative of Birdman's real gun being fired on stage that is utterly unconvincing. Surely if an actor stabs himself with a real knife the other actors wouldn't continue with the final lines of the play but would call an ambulance instead.
The Last Act is worth watching, but I recommend that people read the book before they see the movie, and think of how it could have been a heartbreaking view of a man who like King Lear, has to face his hard existence after he has lost his power and the one who he loves.
Pacino is great in the movie. So is Greta Gerwig, whose magnetic personality revives Pacino's aged actor and draws her female and transsexual exes back to her, despite her starting a new relationship with a man.
What lets the film down is the script. Several people have commented here on the Last Act's similarities with Birdman. I don't know who came up with the idea first of having a troubled older actor having a breakdown on the stage and confusing fantasy and reality. Roth's Simon Axler is aware of what's happening to him and around him. He doesn't have any illusions about Pegeen and her past: as in the film, her ex lover, the dean, warns him constantly that Pegeen uses people and dumps them when she's through with them. He knows he's bankrupting himself by buying her expensive clothes (it would have helped the film to show them going around Prada stores in New York rather than an ordinary looking clothing store near Simon's house.) In the book Simon doesn't return to the stage. Pegeen comes to spend the weekend at his house. He's ready to tell her that he can father a child, after meeting with a doctor and having a fertility check. Before they can have dinner and talk, Pegeen appears with a packed bag and tells him it's over. She takes her expensive clothes and he suspects she's leaving him for the woman they picked up at the restaurant. I was let down that the threesome scene, so pivotal in the book, is revealed to be a fantasy sequence in the movie- we see Simon waking to find Pegeen and the woman hand in hand, ignoring him. The novel's Simon enjoys Pegeen's audaciousness, and despite his back problems encourages her in exploring her desires. The sex toys make an appearance in the film too, but as a symbol of Simon's not being able to satisfy her. Pacino's Simon isn't anywhere as adventurous as Pegeen, and it's no wonder when she leaves him.
I was also surprised by Sybil's speech to Simon revealing that she discovered her husband abusing her 8 year old daughter. She's tragic in the book, and ends up killing her husband, then killing herself. In the film the abuse is brushed away and quickly forgotten. Like Sybil's family, Simon and the audience see her as a deluded character who's fixated on Simon's acting as a hit man to shoot her husband, as he once played a Death Wish type role in a movie.
The movie begins with several promising themes about losing one's gift, one's way in life, and fantasy being taken for reality, then reality as fodder for sensationalism- Sybil turns into another hot story on True Crime TV programs. The movie would be far more powerful if it followed the novel more, if it ended with Simon alone, with his life empty, turning to a Hemingway style suicide, thinking of Sybil as a last inspiration. Instead, there's a final scene derivative of Birdman's real gun being fired on stage that is utterly unconvincing. Surely if an actor stabs himself with a real knife the other actors wouldn't continue with the final lines of the play but would call an ambulance instead.
The Last Act is worth watching, but I recommend that people read the book before they see the movie, and think of how it could have been a heartbreaking view of a man who like King Lear, has to face his hard existence after he has lost his power and the one who he loves.