The Weather Man Review
by samseescinema (sammeriam AT comcast DOT net)November 18th, 2005
The Weather Man
reviewed by Sam Osborn of www.samseescinema.com
rating: 4 out of 4
Director: Gore Verbinski
Screenplay: Steve Conrad
Cast: Nicolas Cage, Michael Caine, Hope Davis, Gemmenne de la Pena, Nicholas Hoult
MPAA Classification: R (strong language and sexual content)
The Weather Man is one of the few films of 2005 that has truly blown me off my feet. It's simply pitch perfect. Director Gore Verbinski has created a film that bridges the two genres of coming-of-age and middle-aged crisis together into a somehow cohesive portrait of a truly forlorn and troubled man.
The film opens with the image of a lake's frozen surface of ice rising and falling, cracking and breaking and grinding together; essentially what David Spritz, the weather man, will do in Verbinski's film. It's a quiet, gorgeous shot that sets a sober tone that will persist throughout the movie. We then meet David, rising from washing his face in the sink (another obvious symbol of cleansing). "That was refreshing," he narrates. "I am refreshing." He continues with his morning routine in his apartment overlooking Chicago, drinking coffee and practicing his hand motions for the green screen. His job is, of course, to be the weather man for a local news channel; a profession that has made him wealthy for very little work and education. We sometimes see David talking to the channel's meteorologist, urging desperately for some reasoning behind the predictions he'll forecast. "It's wind, man," the meteorologist says, "it blows everywhere." This, David thinks, is why he periodically gets fast food thrown at him.
On top of the fast food, David also must deal with his serially troubled family. He's recently divorced from Noreen (Hope Davis), who's now dating a dork named Russ (Michael Rispoli), has two children, Shelly (Gemmenne del la Pena) who's grossly overweight, and Mike (Nicholas Hoult) who's recently out of rehab for using marijuana, and has a father, Robert (Michael Caine) who's been freshly diagnosed with lymphoma. Yes, I know; The Weather Man, on the surface, seems like a downer. But fear not. The Weather Man takes this all with a kind of resigned, wry humor that rings true across all the depressing points.
Nicolas Cage has obviously mastered the morbid, sad, depressed, forlorn character. Many of his recent roles (and his part in Leaving Las Vegas) could fit under the volley of adjectives above. With The Weather Man, he plays a similar everyman. He plays a guy most men will immediately relate to. David's in his forties and wealthy, but leads a life with little meaning. We find him just as he begins panicking over his family. He sits outside the old house one night-the house that his wife and kids and Russ now reside in-and says, "someone in this house should be happy." He feels he has let his family down. Also, he feels he has let his father down, which is where the coming-of-age story lies hidden. Because although David is dealing with a middle-aged crisis of sorts, where he sits back and realizes how unsatisfying his life is, David is also innocent in a sense. Not innocent in the right and wrong sense of the word, but innocent in the sense that he hasn't come to terms with adult life yet. This is mostly attributed to his father's lack of acceptance. Although Robert, his father, takes a concerned interest in David and his family, he expresses a kind of ubiquitous criticism to David's life. David vows to himself that before Robert dies, he's going to show him something that will prove to him that David's actually worth a damn. But to a Pulitzer and National Book Award winning father, this obviously proves to be an uphill battle. The coming-of-age story all comes to climax, however, in Robert's car, in a scene that's understated, real, and entirely thoughtful.
I had to see The Weather Man twice, actually. Because, on first viewing, I was hit hard; the film hit me like a rock, as most great films do. I couldn't keep it off my mind for the next week, and then gave in, shelled out another ten dollars, and saw the film again, just to make sure it really was as good as I'd remembered. Just as much as Sideways, I found, The Weather Man is a pitch perfect film of accepting one's identity. It hasn't garnered as much attention as last year's "indie cindy" Sideways (for whatever random reason of the box office), but is certainly just as worthy. Cage and Caine put up their usual stellar performances, with Cage even deserving of an Oscar had he not reprised the role in his many previous films and director Gore Verbinski also continues his blazing trail of success, coming off of Ring, Pirates of the Caribbean and its upcoming sequels; showing the he does have the artistic versatility to not only make compelling horror and adventure, but also plunge the depths of the male human spirit with frightening precision.
-www.samseescinema.com
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