Elizabethtown
Director: Cameron Crowe
With: Orlando Bloom, Kirsten Dunst
Runtime: 123min
Cameron Crowe is well known for his quirky, sleek, delicate and effortlessly humourous films, and Elizabethtown does not disappoint. This moving, sentimental but light and streamlined human drama falls well within the mould of what we have come to expect from Crowe, but is also one of the first films that both Orlando Bloom and Kirsten Dunst have had to sell on their own acting ability, without the help of a more established actor or wigs and set pieces.
Bloom excels as the hapless Drew, and Kirsten Dunst is unavoidably charming and irresistible. The two succeed entirely, and it is the characters of the film that make it so engrossing. As with Almost Famous and Jerry Maguire, Crowe’s characters are the film’s greatest asset. From the complicated but unavoidably human Drew, to the intriguing and eccentric foibles of the people of Elizabethtown (where Drew journeys to meet his deceased father’s relatives), there is a rich and colourful spread of the amusing, the charming and downright bizarre.
For a film carried largely by its characters (the sets are very basic and the story is very simple), it is engaging throughout, although there is a definite lag in the plot halfway through, as we are bombarded with sentimentality. It soon picks up though, in a hugely warming and amusing scene involving a stage and Susan Sarandon. Warming, though, is the best way to describe this film. Amidst what is essentially a tragic plot line in an industry that of late has dabbled in apocalyptic darkness (see Star Wars or War of the Worlds), Crowe creates a reassuringly moving film that explores the delicate subject of death, loneliness, rejection and survival with light and hope.
Whilst it is necessary to forgive a certain amount of slush, this is easily done because of the film’s portrayal of real people, their feelings, and its subtle humour; gone are the excessively dark undertones of Vanilla Sky and Almost Famous that could so easily have prevailed throughout. Sentimentality is an unavoidable part of family and love when touched by grief, and it is this reality that grants Elizabethtown its freedom from sickly romcom. The film concludes with an original and brilliantly idiosyncratic tour of America, from Kentucky to Oregon, and an intelligent summary of the human condition that puts the sentimental tosh of the likes of Love Actually to shame. Funny, intelligent, original and talented, this film has something for everyone, warming the heart and generously filling a gap. Worth the trek to Vue.
Dan Kipling
