Real Life (1979)

Albert Brooks’ twenty years ahead of its time satire of our unattainable, inexplicable quest to imbue our entertainment with “reality”; to reproduce real life that’s blessed with sense, perspective and general watchability. That all of these elements are elusive and contradictory seems to always be beside the point. Reality television, in its current incarnation, is largely a blatantly false soap opera, catering not to our need for reality but to our obsessive drive to experience the most outwardly, obviously voyeuristic sensation that we possibly can, devoid of any distracting elements such as craftsmanship and story; the windows of Hitchcock’s Rear Window, without the killer and (unfortunately) without Grace Kelly.

Real Life isn’t targeting the spectators of reality television though (reality tv had yet to become a fashion statement). This picture instead concerns the ego of a wannabe creator of the sport: a filmmaker played (using his name) by Mr. Brooks himself. Real Life, Brooks’ first as director, has that not quite tangible tang that is always both the best and worst quality of an Albert Brooks film. Real Life, like the hero of Brooks’ Defending Your Life, doesn’t push its reason for being far enough-every joke (most of which are promising) hangs in the air, unfulfilled. This lack of fulfillment is disappointing but it is also precisely this lacking that gives a Brooks movie its charge. The tempo of Brooks’ pictures is original and true-and uncompromisingly reflects the self-loathing temperament of their filmmaker. This is why Modern Romance remains Brooks’ overall masterpiece-that picture picks up joke after un-punched joke too, only to eventually arrive at a cumulative effect that is unexpectedly heartbreaking- a major (in its minor key) movie of inner despair’s toll on basic human interaction-on the self-denial of the damn thing called love.

There’s always a POP moment in a Brooks movie though, at least the goods ones, that brings the entire picture together. In Modern Romance it was Brooks’ appeal to his woman, his assurance that, yes, he’s insane, but he’s devoted to her in a way that sanity prohibits (the picture, particularly for us fellow neurotics, is quite, legitimately, romantic). In Real Life, it’s also a moment near the end-when Brooks, after one setback and failure after another, caves in a fit of desperation and egomania. Brooks gets on his knees, and begs, begs, pleas for another shot at his failed attempt to capture an average American family, just as they normally would be (after countless intrusions).

The little things you wished Brooks had pushed farther up until this point: the attempt to sleep with the wife in order to save her marriage (have to see it to understand it); the racism, elitism and resentment batted back and forth between Brooks and a black colleague; the inner disintegration of the family (including a subtle Charles Grodin): all come to inform that final Brooks meltdown at the end; where he offers, after many promises of integrity, to splice just about any popular film into his real entertainment. Brooks has already sung for the public, has already played the literal clown, now, reduced to nothing, he faces the lowest of the low dark side of his manipulative, diseased effort to capture something “real”. This scene, and the ending this outburst triggers, is a major, unsettling, comedy moment, worth, like Modern Romance, all of the half starts that have occurred before. Here’s hoping that Albert Brooks, who has appeared to have succumbed to bitterness in his last few films, rediscovers his blistering black comic humanity of the unsaid, particularly in a world where Real Life’s finale is now just another thing on Fox, a taking off point for Meet the Baios, perhaps.

★★★

Posted on May 29th, 2008 in Reviews, Comedy, 1979 |

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