Message in a Bottle

Director: Luis Mandoki
Cast:
Kevin Costner
Robin Wright
Paul Newman
Ileana Douglas
Genre: Romance

One of the coolest things about Shakespeare's Globe Theater (besides the fact that it burned down during the canon scene of Henry VIII—which is okay, because Henry VIII isn't that exciting anyway) was their messaging service. More reliable than email and visible anywhere in South London, it was simple: a white flag atop the theater meant they were showing a comedy, and a red flag signified a tragedy. Or the other way around. Either way, the Elizabethans understood what they were going to get, knowing the ending to the play well before lining up to get tickets. For Shakespeare, "comedies" and "tragedies" were only really different in one key area: in the comedy, our Hero gets to live, and in the tragedy, he usually gets poisoned by the end of Act V. And then there's the "problem comedies," plays like "Measure for Measure" and "All's Well That Ends Well," that have kinda happy endings, but are so dark and full of the evil of mankind that you probably won't leave the theater with your sides aching from laughter.

But even more interesting to me is your average Elizabethan's tolerance for tragedies at all; I mean, here's a ragtag fleet of unwashed hoi polloi with barely any teeth, trying their damndest to survive the plague, and yet they still have a place in their heart for Othello and Macbeth. Nowadays, we have rear-window wipers, polio vaccines and frappuccinos—but we only go to the theater to escape the tragedy we consider our everyday lives, lining up to laugh at semen jokes and guys getting kicked in the crotch.

It is a curious thing, then, that you find "Message in a Bottle" opening this weekend. How this delicate little piece managed to float past the boardrooms of modern day movie studios is nothing short of miraculous; certainly not tested for audiences, "Message" is not the best movie you'll see this winter, but maybe the bravest. The gracefully aging Robin Wright Penn is a researcher at the Chicago Tribune, fresh off a divorce and trying to make sense of her place in life. When she drops her son off in Boston, she travels to the Cape and finds...yep, a message in a bottle. After using all the modern-day tracking devices available, she finds out who her anonymously mournful romantic really is, and sets off to visit him in the glorious Outer Banks of North Carolina.

Kevin Costner is the rugged boat builder and writer of lost love poems, and although he's a little dopey here (shades of his "Tin Cup" character) Costner is always at his best when he's the Natural Man in His Element, with the same swagger that made him so irresistible in "Fandango" and "Bull Durham." But don't get me wrong: "Message in a Bottle" is not a guy's movie, and in fact, may be the farthest thing from it you'll experience all year.

"Message" takes its own sweet time getting going, and even then, it seems like the screenwriters were more in love with the ocean than the plot. You'll have to stick with it, and you may find yourself getting wrapped up in Penn's aching love affair; you may actually want to see the two star-crossed lovers end up entangled in each other's embrace. But the ending is something you definitely CANNOT prepare for. Even Paul Newman, who gruffly cackles through this movie with all the best lines and all the best looks, looks like God hit him with a ton of bricks by the time credits roll.

Are we capable of enjoying such a story in a modern world that demands that Tom Hanks and Meg Ryan find each other? Is there still such a thing as a weepy catharsis at the expense of one of our heroes? I dunno, and it'll be interesting to see what happens with a movie that will force its audience to find the delicate balance between an Elizabethan tragedy and a total bummer.

—Ian Williams

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