Less Than Zero (Marek Kanievska, 1987)

[John Cope]

This movie came back to mind recently per the minor dust up over Rules of Attraction and I was motivated to go back and look at it again. It really is a tremendous piece of work, profoundly despised by most fans of Ellis' book but escaping, I think wholly, from the grasp of their accusations.

Certainly the criticisms are understandable and there is no question that the film is worlds away from what is depicted in the novel. Still, my own feelings are that this is an adaptation in the truest sense of the word. Similar in some respects to what Roland Joffe was probably trying to do with his easily maligned version of Scarlet Letter, this film takes raw material and seeks to not just translate events to another medium but completely re-configure the attitudes of the principals. To imagine the newfound results of such circumstances. This is what is hated of course; that anyone would presume the right to take such liberties (an argument easier to endorse I suppose with the Hawthorne than the Ellis). Anyway, it's an unorthodox approach but I have no problem with it and actually appreciate the effort. Once again, this is easier to do with material you may not necessarily like to begin with but, since all film "adaptations" are divergent, why not an extreme re-imagining? It's as though maintaining the title is the ultimate crime here. I consider it more an act of radical appropriation and in the case of Less Than Zero a gesture that pays a certain skewed tribute to its antecedent.

What's good about the film is its staggering earnestness, especially considering its mid-80's context and the wild cynicism of the book. Here even Robert Downey Jr.'s characteristically self-conscious performance style reads like defensive posturing which serves to defuse its cynical potential. His star turn, privileging as it does the inherent drama of his character's self-destruction, is unsurprisingly great and poignant but it's in Andrew McCarthy's character that the film finds its purpose. At first he registers as vacant and too unacceptably wide eyed and naive as we witness his increasingly horrified reactions to his friend's drug fueled disintegration. But finally I think we can recognize in the depth of his emotional responses and spiritual conviction a quality of nobility that transcends surface caricature. I propose that this kind of element, especially as it is so at odds with the book's unceasing nihilist portraiture of romanticized indifference, is at the heart of why this film was rejected and continues to be. There is simply an unwillingness amongst many, especially the book's core audience of sophisticated pedants, to embrace any emotional openness or unguarded receptivity.

The earnestness of Kanievska's film extends to its aesthetic as well, specifically the extremely stylized, heightened depiction of any and all events, no matter what their inherent dramatic weight. I consider this profoundly sincere rather than glib or itself a cynical move because the style supports the emotional quality of the content. It is not at odds with it and its consistency maintains an unassailable continuity of tone. Also, the style simply serves to intensify or ever so slightly highlight what are often scenes created for memory anyway. The great sequence in which McCarthy and Jami Gertz (in this film at the apex of her beauty) stop their car and kiss passionately as a veritable fleet of motorcycles passes over and around them could be accused of looking like the kind of cliched romantic clinch we might normally expect from a beer ad but it's also the kind of moment that could and would really happen, albeit likely with much more total comprehension of the circumstances, and its presence here indicates the ways in which Kanievska and his actors were sensitive to the emotional truth of melodrama; its value as necessary psychological infusion. Similarly, the scene in which Downey is confronted pool side and condemns McCarthy for lecturing him with morality (an accusation the Clay of the book would never hear) is remarkable for the sensuous close-ups, elegant lighting and the sensitivity of the glorious score by Thomas Newman. All these elements come together to elevate the scene from our banal TV movie expectations of it, positioning it back via the heightened style to a place of almost inaccessible human experience; inaccessible because the style emphasizes that quality of such an experience which removes it from the banal--the inherent potentiality for an unlimited imaginative investment which effects responses and how we conceive of those things that compelled them.

It is finally a movie more about McCarthy than Downey (which in itself would be fine with fans of the book as that was the case there as well); but what is critical is that we can sympathize with Clay's efforts to rescue Julian even though the effort is always in vain. The potency and tragic human weight of the piece is dependent on our own willingness to value a genuinely naive idealism; to see the value in allowing that to drive action and form character. Without that there is no impact at all and, Kanievska suggests, no way to escape the hellish pull of Ellis' particular vortex.

Given Ellis' outre rep, somehow this act of humanistic restoration is the ultimate tribute since to do such a thing so blatantly to a text of this sort was, in effect, comparably perverse. Perhaps this is why Ellis has said in recent years that he is finally warming to it himself.

[Polybius]

That's an interesting aesthetic take. One that I have to admit I'm in utter disagreement with, but considering the source material in this case, it's hard to get too worked up over.

I can remember reading the novel and thinking it was a pretty searing indictment of the worst Reagan era excesses but I can also clearly recall Ellis, whether through perversity or sincere conviction, claiming that he meant nothing of the kind. My conclusion at the time was that if he didn't care anything about the clear implications of a book that he'd written, I wasn't going to go to the mat for it in his place. (Not that anyone was asking me to...)

You put a nice spin on it, but I think Occam's Razor fits here and we simply have a film with a hip, recognizable title that was cranked out solely to take advantage of that. It's whole Mickey and Judy "Let's put on a show and save out junkie friend!" tone was a bit of a farce and after a while Downey almost seems like Terry Kiser, bobbing and sliding around in the backseat.

[beamish13]

I think the pathos in this movie are simply hilariously off-kilter. McCarthy proved that he's easily the worst actor of his generation in this film with his sobbing paean to Julian at the end (BTW, that scene completely contradicts an earlier moment in the film when Clay states that he's known Julian only since high school). Removing Clay's bisexuality/sexual ambivalence also does a huge disservice to the source material, as it makes him seem like a product of a completely different, more reactionary time. The entire film is essentially a Nancy Reagan-esque "Just Say No" fantasia where junkies die and monogamous couples live to see tomorrow. I've always had the sneaking suspicion that it was made solely to sell soundtracks (just like at Tommy Mottola's name in the credits).

[Polybius]

I would like to see someone perform John's radical extreme reimagining therapy on something like either of David McCullough's bestselling Presidential doorstops.

And, yes, you could make a decent case that HBO unwittingly did just that with John Adams.

[Fletch F. Fletch]

I think there were just way too many compromises made in the film in adapting the book to the screen and I think that's why, on those terms, the film is ultimately a failure. Also, I agree with the Ellis that the casting, with the exception of Downey and James Spader, was all wrong.

Having said that, the film's look/soundtrack/etc. really captures a specific time and place that makes the film, for me at least, fascinating to watch. That, and Downey's riveting performance.

[John Cope]

Certain friends like to label me "defender of the indefensible". Maybe this could be called the "Less Than Zero" defense.

McCarthy proved that he's easily the worst actor of his generation in this film...

What? Uh...Fresh Horses? (Once again, )

Anyway, to address a couple of these points:

I can remember reading the novel and thinking it was a pretty searing indictment of the worst Reagan era excesses but I can also clearly recall Ellis, whether through perversity or sincere conviction, claiming that he meant nothing of the kind.

I would guess it's the former. For him to miss that angle would have to mean he was as sociopathological as the characters in his work. Besides, I view Ellis as a satirist first and foremost; our contemporary Jonathan Swift.

Removing Clay's bisexuality/sexual ambivalence also does a huge disservice to the source material, as it makes him seem like a product of a completely different, more reactionary time. The entire film is essentially a Nancy Reagan-esque "Just Say No" fantasia where junkies die and monogamous couples live to see tomorrow.

Yeah but to me that's exactly what I value about the movie. Because Ellis' view is at heart a profoundly conservative and reactionary one, compelling a righteous remove from the action, the more blatant nature of Kanievska's film is a fitting acknowledgment of what lies beneath the surface and motivates the dismay that always emerges as embittered contempt. The James Bridges' film of Bright Lights, Big City does a similar job establishing the prominence of the implicit conservative foundation of Mcinerney's book through supposed "revisionism".

[Polybius]

I would guess it's the former.

So would I.