Random Hearts Review
by "Stephen Graham Jones" (stephenj AT odsy DOT net)October 10th, 1999
Random Hearts: menage-a-quatre
In Eyes Wide Shut--which Sidney Pollack also had a bit part in--a husband overextends himself trying to deal with his wife's betrayal. Random Hearts isn't so different, insofar that 'Dutch' Vand Den Broeck (Harrison Ford) also goes to great lengths in an effort to deal with his wife's adultery. An occasionally misguided effort, but then we all know love isn't rational. Random Hearts is kin to Kubrick's swan song in more ways than just story, though. Pollack seems to be consciously imitating the precise camerawork and haunting music of Eyes Wide Shut (length as well). They just feel the same. However. Random Hearts, in spite of a sub-par title, has a much stronger story.
Instead of grounding it in myth, per Kubrick, Pollack (or, novelist Warren Adler) chooses instead to order the unlikely romance of Dutch and Congresswoman-hopeful Kay Chandler (the aquiline Kristin Scott Thomas) around something like the cuckold's idea of fair play: that if you slept with my wife, I'll sleep with yours. And vice-versa for Kay. And what kicks it all off is a variation on another trope: the husband dying in the wrong bed. Except of course this time it's a plane. And they both die. And Dutch, Internal Affairs detective that he is (his job is to investigate 'improper conduct'), is compelled not only to try to make sense of this affair through good, solid policework, but is also intent upon making Kay face up to what's happened.
All of which makes for a strong story, especially since Dutch's motivations are so complex: Is he investigating because knowledge will be some sort of curative, in spite of how much it'll hurt to 'know?' If so, then it's a rather masochistic narrative, as if he's punishing himself for never having realized what was going on. Too, though--and he even goes so far to say this, which is of course our cue to doubt it--he could just be trying to figure out why his wife would feel the need to have an affair. As if the reason is going to present itself in the form of something tangible she and her lover left behind, yes, as Kay deftly points out. Which is to say he's on a fool's mission. But then, they both are. Grief isn't easy. And, by sifting through the immediate past, they don't make it any easier.
What's really nice about Random Hearts, though, is that Pollack/Adler has Dutch and Kay more or less begin repeating the 'crimes' of their deceased/adulterous spouses, in that they start keeping secrets from each other, getting paranoid, all that, which plays out wonderfully, if a little long. The high point of it though is that soon enough Kay's in 'competition' for Dutch--with Dutch's dead wife. Meaning now he's the one cheating. If sleeping with your wife's lover's lover is fair play, then this would have to be a moralistic refraction of that: that fair play and the idea of poetic justice aren't that distant, are in fact causally related, in that in order to bring about fair play, Dutch has to 'become' his wife. It's all pretty delicious.
Just so things don't get too monotonous, though, Random Hearts also has some distraction, in the form of Dutch's ongoing Internal Affairs investigation, which, because it doesn't tie into Kay's election campaign in all the high-stakes ways we expect it too, doesn't make us get into any suspended disbelief games with the movie. It does matter some, though, of course, but in such an offhand way that you wonder how you missed it. Or, rather, wonder how you dismissed it. Which is what good moviemaking is all about. Random Hearts is a good movie, in spite of the fact that it seems to end in the same airport as Love of the Game. It is a love story after all, and airports do more or less represent conventional moments of decision as far as relationships are concerned. And, any last second typicalness is more than made up for by the atypical complexity that comes before. It's not often that a movie can end in as generic a place as an airport terminal and still manage to remain unique. Random Hearts does just that.
(c) 1999 Stephen Graham Jones
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