Colin Firth and Jude Law Portray editor Max Perkins and his newest client, Tomas Wolfe. Perkins is a tight wound package of seriousness, work being his life. Wolfe is a frenetic writer, eating up everything around him with voracity. The polar opposites take on Wolfe's first novel, "Look Homeward, Angel." I admit, Law's Wolfe is energizer- bunny out-of-control frenetic at times, but it's that kind of mind that gave us one of the greatest (if not the greatest) American novels of all time. Having read "Angel," I completely bought into it. The relationship between editor and writer becomes extremely close, at times casting aside the women in their lives. Laura Linney is Louise Perkins, devoted wife to Max and their 5 daughters. She is also trying to keep her own writing career alive, with little help from her work obsessed husband. Nicole Kidman is Aline Bernstein, a married woman currently shacking up with Wolfe. She was his inspiration in writing "Angel" and is over zealously jealous of Tom's relationship with Max. Like, seriously, wack-job crazy. This role was the weak link for me, didn't like her from her second appearance on screen. The movie moves through their lives, another published book, and on to Wolfe's untimely death. (I am pretty sure that isn't a spoiler.) I don't want to go in to the plot anymore, except to say that I agree with another reviewer about the scene in the jazz club. A really great way to show how minds, and the streaming of thought, can be so different between people.
The cinematography is beautiful, sepia tones bring you back to the years right before and during the depression. Extravagance and soup kitchens, back-to-back. The music bangs out with Wolfe's bombastic behavior, and mellows with Max.
This movie is a movie about writers and readers, for what editor isn't a closet writer? It's also for the same audience, with several nods to a few other greats of that period; Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald, but mostly, to Wolfe. When Max is reading "Angel" through for the first time, his daughter walks in. She looks at the page and says, "Wow, that's a really long paragraph" and Max answers "It started four pages ago..." THAT is Wolfe. That book was the most difficult book I have ever read. This movie is also about, who exactly is the genius? Wolfe is, obviously. But does that make Max, who edited, made these books marketable, and made Wolfe a celebrity of his day, any less of a genius? That is left for the viewer.
