It’s a little peculiar that writer/director
Cameron Crowe, who has made an acclaimed career out of
depicting the character-transformations of troubled
youths when rocked by life-changing events (i.e.:
Almost Famous), has such a high disregard for the
very idea of transformation itself in his latest
picture, Elizabethtown. Crowe’s Drew Baylor
(Orlando Bloom), a shoe executive who becomes suicidal
when he leads a company to bankruptcy, is filled with
such macabre ideas in the beginning of the movie that he
hooks himself up to an exercise bike that will stab him
in the heart as he rides it to his death. He is so
depressed that when he receives a phone-call right
before turning the fatal mechanism on, only to hear that
his father has died, Drew senses a comparatively bright
turn around the bend for his life. And so there proves
to be. He refrains from pulling the plug on things—at
least temporarily—and hops a flight to his dad’s home in
small-town Kentucky. On the way there, while dozens of
long-lost relatives who see him as the big
family-celebrity await him, Drew meets Claire Colburn
(Kirsten Dunst), a flight attendant who connects with
him. In an instant, he becomes a threat to himself no
more; now, Drew is simply a searcher for his life’s
fulfillment.
In essence, Crowe doesn’t care
about how Drew reaches the point he does,
internally, but rather dwells on the mere fact that he
reaches it. Sure, there are many themes regarding
self-discovery and how it can transform a human’s
outlook on life to be found in Elizabethtown, but
all of them function as external plot-devices.
Then again, it’s hard to
really deem Elizabethtown a bad movie because of
the things that Crowe ignores, considering the fact that
he gets so much else right. The film plays best as a
straightforward-but-highly-romantic love-story. Dunst
and Bloom give two of the best performances of their
careers here, sizzling with a chemistry that Crowe
captures magnificently. The scene featuring Drew and
Claire’s all-night phone-call is exemplary of this; it
is executed in a very simple manner, but allows the
audience to observe their budding relationship in such
an intimate way that its lucidity only lends to its
perceptiveness.
At 123 minutes long,
Elizabethtown sort of dwindles to its conclusion,
but this is hardly a problem when the company of the
characters is as enjoyable as it is. (Not to mention:
Crowe chopped down his original cut by almost a
half-an-hour in favor of this shorter one). Even if it
is a step down from the writer/director’s previous
efforts, it allows him to indulge in all of his artistic
temptations—from musical to location-wise, some more
successful than others—in a comforting, eloquent manner.
I reckon that the movie’s pretty damn good, too.
-Danny, Bucket Reviews