Jules
In “Jules,” the movie that won’t be mistaken for “E.T.” or “Cocoon” but will remind science fiction fans of both early and often and does not discourage them from doing so three elderly men encounter what appears to be an extraterrestrial. The film is set in Boonton, Pennsylvania, a town just rural enough to allow for a 1960s looking flying saucer to crash into the backyard of a man named Milton Robinson (Ben Kingsley) without being seen by anyone else in the community. It’s rare for a movie to examine this country’s older citizens’ increasing relative isolation in the 21st century, at a time when technology supposedly brings everyone closer together. Those parts of the story tend to resonate more strongly when they’re being addressed directly rather than broached through science fiction metaphors.
Aside from his weekly contact with city officials and residents who attend its council meetings, Milton doesn’t have much regular interaction with anyone other than his veterinarian daughter Denise (Zoe Winters of “Succession”). We assume he’s widowed, although the film does not get into that side of his life, and has another adult child, a son, whom he hasn’t spoken to for years because they’re estranged (the son apparently resents him for unspecified failures of parenting). Played by Kingsley who seems to have thought hard about the character’s accent, facial comportment and gestures, and been fitted with a hairpiece and glasses that make him look like he could be Noam Chomsky’s long lost brother Milton is the kind of older man you might see every week at your local post office or supermarket but never really notice until he stops coming around.
What gives his life meaning are these regular appearances before the city council where he always raises two points changing Boonton’s slogan and putting up a crosswalk at one particular intersection. Unfortunately, even this relatively modest semblance of routine is imperiled by Milton’s early onset Alzheimer’s, which the story establishes early on by showing the character asking those same two questions repeatedly at the council meetings and putting a can of green beans in an upstairs bathroom medicine cabinet.
The movie is about time, memory, the past and regrets over mistakes made. But once that flying saucer crashes into Milton’s backyard and Jules shows up a mute little gray creature with a powerful gaze the film becomes more concerned with when the visitor will be found out and his relationship (such as it is) with Milton and other key characters brought to an end.
The film remains grounded thanks to the performances of Kingsley, Harriet Sansom Harris and Jane Curtin. The three play Sandy and Joyce, two other regulars at the city council meetings who become concerned about Milton and take an interest in his personal life. So do the details of the characters’ lives. We learn that Sandy has a daughter with a mother in law (whom she hasn’t spoken to in three years) and Joyce was happiest when she lived in Pittsburgh.
Curtin is a criminally underused performer whom I’ve always loved for her prickly real world intensity, she’s perfect here as someone whose energy level falls between Kingsley’s near-catatonia and Harris’s radiant warmth. But we don’t really get to know her until halfway through, up until then, she’s mainly there to act as ballast for Sandy, providing a contrasting view of life beyond La Z Boys and “Matlock.” The reversal comes off fine because it seems true to the character but it also calls attention to how little we’ve learned about her up till now. There are ways of establishing mystery without making it feel like you’re holding out on us.
What follows is another example: Joyce states that the happiest time in her life was when she lived in “the big city” which turns out to be Pittsburgh (which is such a great line). That second parenthetical observation is what I mean by “bursty” writing. It’s one thing for Tichina Arnold’s character in Everybody Hates Chris to say something like “If you got all your teeth, you ain’t from New York City,” because we know sitcoms love broad stereotypes, it’s quite another thing for a movie this well observed and acted not only to acknowledge that there are people who move away from their podunk towns because they need more than those towns can offer, but also recognize that many of them will eventually return this is the familiar story that doesn’t get as much play as the one about people who don’t return. (Another wonderful detail although Milton and Sandy refer to the visitor as Jules, Joyce decides it looks more like a Gary and persists in using that name even as the others continue to call it Jules.)
The whole thing written by Gavin Steckler and directed by Marc Turteltaub is sensitive, intelligent, sweet, and presented with considerable integrity; even the direction seems determined to be scrupulous about not showing you anything you don’t actually need to see. But every so often it seems to be battling a case of TIFC (“The Indie Film Cutes”), every so often it succumbs, too. The pizzicato heavy score (by Oscar nominee Volker Bertelmann) has an insurance policy feeling to it, like a network TV score that keeps assuring you these characters are harmless and heartwarming even though their actions make them seem unhappy and socially maladjusted.
Perhaps it is one of those movies that could have had greater impact, could have really dug in and lodged itself in our minds if only it had dared to be truly weird instead of just idiosyncratic, or maybe if it had played harder with psychological reality. In particular, there is an act of extremely shocking violence late in the film the kind of thing that almost never happens in anything but a horror movie and yet the characters for whom this act has the most profound consequences sort of just go like “huh, well I did not see that coming, OK then” and later discuss it mainly in terms of their relationships with the visitor, who looks and listens and sometimes reaches out for connection and occasionally acts but never speaks. (Jade Quon’s entirely physical performance fills out the ensemble cast and is the movie’s stealthy triumph. It’s hard to keep an audience mesmerized when your part as written requires you never to interact with any of your scene partners normally.)
The opening section does enough justice to depicting the routine of an isolated elderly person with dementia sensitive observation laced with close detail that you might start thinking about how much more realistic and therefore also deeper a movie focused on exactly that might be, although I suppose such a film would have been even less likely to get made or seen by anyone (unless it were called “The Father” and starred Anthony Hopkins). All told, “Jules” has an unfinished quality to it, like a shoe that fits but hasn’t been tied.
For More Movies Visit Putlocker.