The Tiger's Tail

I swear...John Boorman is always interesting. Here's another film of his from his later career that doesn't really work, but gosh darn it, I want to like it. I don't quite think it's good, but there's so much that just so darn interesting about it that it fascinates me quite a bit. Boorman is obviously a very intelligent man with a lot on his mind. I just wish that he more frequently used better writing partners because he alone often has trouble organizing things dramatically because this was one draft away, a draft concentrating on almost nothing but reorganization and structure, from something perhaps really special.

Liam O'Leary (Brendan Gleeson) is a real estate developer (shades of Where the Heart Is off the bat) in contemporary Dublin (meaning about 2006) who has hit a professional snag in that he's purchased land for a new project, a national soccer stadium, and he can't get all the right permits in line to account for his forty-five million euro loan (seriously, Where the Heart Is). Accepting an award for his enterprising spirit, he encourages his audience of fellow entrepreneurs to lean on government officials to let him build. His wife Jane (Kim Cattrall) loves him, though she feels distant from him. His son Conner (Brian Gleeson) is a Marxist who angrily quotes Marx and Lenin at his capitalistic father while happily taking his money and living in his opulent house. He's a man of concerns who gets little peace at home despite all his hard work to make it a good one. Suddenly, he starts seeing a doppelganger around him. First in his car in traffic, and then outside his house, and then outside the award ceremony where he gives chase, the doppelganger having seemingly mystical abilities to escape notice from anyone other than Liam.

This early section is surprisingly dominated by some rather hardcore melodramatics with Liam using the existence of his doppelganger to figure out that his mother is not his mother, instead his sister Oona (Sinead Cusack) is actually his mother, and the truth has been hidden from him since birth. Also, Oona had twins, gave birth to them in England, and came back to Dublin with only Liam. The other is obviously the doppelganger. Is all of this necessary? From a strictly narrative information point of view...maybe? Really, it could have been revealed less melodramatically at the very least. Once all of this information is out, though, things move into a more interesting direction.

The doppelganger starts stealing Liam's identity, culminating in Liam confronting him in front of his house, leading to a chase where the doppelganger is able to switch places with him, using Liam's insistence on the existence of a doppelganger that no one believed in his favor to have everyone instantly turn on Liam, making them think that Liam is the doppelganger. That's decent thriller mechanics right there, and the whole build up to it as the doppelganger is just out of sight, or sitting on Liam's boat, knowing he's in sight, with a young woman he plans to bed, ensuring the world knows it, is really solid stuff. However, we can see the standard Boorman pileup of ideas already forming. The capitalism vs. Communism debate between Liam and Conner that started the film seemed forced and, at this point in the film, out of place. The marriage drama feels underdeveloped and, again, out of place. The core of the film seems to be this idea of alternate lives which does, at some level, feed into both the political economy debate as well as the marriage troubles at some level, but the integration is minimal, at best.

Another idea that ends up popping up is something like a miniature version of what dominated Terry Gilliam's Twelve Monkeys about the nature of mental illness versus sanity and how we tell which is which or are unable to since Liam ends up getting picked up as a crazy person who thinks he's the big time real estate developer Liam O'Leary when the obviously real Liam O'Leary is happy at home with his wife and son. How can Liam prove his real identity? At the same time, the doppelganger is trying to liquidate all of Liam's assets for his own greedy ends, finding that Liam was only wealthy on paper, having leveraged everything in support of his large gamble. Well, Liam gets saved because the Irish government decides to release all non-violent mental patients. Again, another little idea thrown in about Ireland's support of mental health facilities that gets used to get Liam out of a sticky dramatic situation. I think it's easy to see my frustration with this film.

The resolution is about Liam and the doppelganger finding what's truly important to each of them: the doppelganger finding his mother and Liam once again finding his family, and an equilibrium finding itself. This is where things bring in the whole class differences implication from the earlier debates between father and son gains some dramatic purpose, and it's interesting. The poor, out on his luck guy decides to take over the upper class guy's operation, and finds it's leveraged and not just easy wealth. The upper class guy still finds a way to make his lower class existence advantageous to him through some low-end connections he makes (nothing too salacious, but it's enough to gain some blackmail on a competitor developer). It's not pure pablum like the earlier dialogue implies, giving dramatic shape to a debate while taking a side that seems somewhat surprising. Perhaps if this had been the sole focus of the film, Boorman might have been able to really dig into the idea because it does seem to be his central purpose for the film.

And then the film just kind of ends weird. It's not about ideas but simple dramatic structure. The doppelganger and Liam start on a plan, and then Liam discovers that Conner is in trouble. The amount of time and tone of the movie up until the knowledge that Conner is having problems feels like an ending (an unsatisfactory ending, to be honest), and then there's a new dramatic moment involving Conner. What happens afterwards is borderline perfect, but the structure of what leads up to that moment is just weird.

I am so torn on this film. There are real things to admire, from the pure thriller mechanics to what seems to be the application of the central idea in the later parts of the film as well as the final five minutes or so, but it's all arranged so...poorly. Really, Mr. Boorman, if you make another film, please, for the love of God, get someone else to write the script.

I want to give special mention to Brendan Gleeson, though. It's been obvious from Gleeson's breakout performance in Boorman's The General that he's a special actor, but this might be one of the best performances of his career. That it's been pretty much buried is actually really sad, not just because he's playing two characters that are actually fairly different, but because each performance is surprisingly nuanced. The rest of the performances are solidly good for what they do (a nod to Cattrall for her Irish accent), but it's Gleeson in almost every shot, and he carries the film. Ciaran Hinds also has some decent moments as a priest and childhood friend of Liam's.

I admire this film a surprising amount, but I just wish, really wish, that Boorman had brought in another writer to clean things up. It really did need it, and the film was one solid script rewrite away from bringing it all together.