Genius is a movie about Thomas Wolfe. I don’t mean the 1960s journalist who coined the term “radical chic.” That writer became known as Tom to avoid confusion with the Thomas Wolfe who wrote novels in the 1930s and was, in his day, considered one of America’s greatest novelists. His literary reputation has fallen far since then, as detractors have pointed out the huge drop in quality between his first two novels, which were edited by Maxwell Perkins, and his last two, published after Wolfe’s early death without Perkins’ input. This film, based on A. Scott Berg’s biography Max Perkins: Editor of Genius, tries to use Wolfe as a window into Perkins (who also edited Fitzgerald and Hemingway), but the results are decidedly underwhelming despite a deluxe cast.
The movie starts in 1929 as Wolfe (Jude Law) lands in New York from North Carolina to visit Scribner’s and meet the legendary Perkins (Colin Firth), expecting him to reject the voluminous autobiographical novel that he submitted to the publisher. He’s surprised, then, to hear Perkins tell him his novel has been accepted. Under Max’s prodding, Tom makes drastic cuts and a change of title — from O Lost to Look Homeward, Angel — and makes the bestseller list, but success changes Tom into a full-tilt diva who’s weirdly codependent on Max. As Tom submits the 5,000-page draft of his second novel, Of Time and the River, he’s afraid to leave his editor’s side but also spends all their time together raging over every lost word and obstinately trying to add to a book that’s already gone beyond doorstop status to door-sized.
Michael Grandage is a Tony-nominated theater director making his first film, and his inexperience shows. Every scene set in New York is shot in the same gloom. You get the impression that the sun never shines in that city. The only visual relief comes during brief interludes in Florida with Ernest Hemingway (Dominic West) and in California with F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce). Tom’s girlfriend Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman) is particularly badly handled, as she goes from voice of sanity to unstable wreck trying to kill herself in Max’s office and back again. With this going on, Aline’s jealousy over what she sees as Max’s possessiveness of Tom makes no sense. This part badly needs, you guessed it, an editor.
There’s also the weirdness of having all these leading lights of American literature portrayed by British and Australian actors, especially since Firth’s American accent remains not the best. He does make one scene, though, that sheds some light on the writing process, as Max reads off a passage from Tom’s initial draft of Of Time and the River, a flowery page that’s chockablock with metaphor upon metaphor. Under his gentle advisement, he gets Tom to chop that down to three sentences that are, not incidentally, more powerful. Genius wants to be a tribute to the decent, boring artisans who make the great artists better without asking for any credit, and this is the one scene where it starts to get there. If only there weren’t so much subpar drama surrounding it.
[box_info]Genius
Starring Colin Firth and Jude Law. Directed by Michael Grandage. Written by John Logan, based on A. Scott Berg’s book. Rated PG-13.[/box_info]
