The Words: Definitely Not a Thriller

Bradley Cooper is working a lot this year, and his most recent film to hit theaters The Words may be the deepest role we’ve seen him in yet. Its a puzzling film to get a grasp on, as it is a sort of romantic period piece drama within a modern romantic drama within a futuristic romantic drama—but for some reason, it has been solely marketed as a thriller.

There are three plots in The Words. The first is the story of melancholy, middle-aged writer Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) reading a selection from his new book to a room full of stuffy intellectuals and one young grad student Daniella (Olivia Wilde). A budding seduction is occurring between the two during the reading, and Clay is struggling with it because of his recent separation with his wife. We are lead to believe that Clay’s new novel is a biography of young, failing writer Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) finding a 40 year old unpublished novel while on honeymoon with his new wife Dora (Zoe Saldana) in Paris. Rory becomes obsessed with the novel, and re-types it to have the feeling of writing something remarkable. Dora finds the manuscript and tells Rory it’s his best work ever and that he has to give the manuscript to his agent. Poverty stricken and desperate, Rory lies to everyone and publishes the book under his name. After commercial success, Rory is eventually approached in a park by an Old Man (Jeremy Irons) who angrily tells the story of a young man who wrote a novel and then lost it. The third and final story is set just after World War II, and it’s the story of the Old Man, his French wife, and the death of their child that lead to The Old Man writing the story of which Rory has taken credit for.

The Words is a drawn out story that walks the line between fiction and reality, intermixed with heightened moments of exhilarating and touching drama. At times I couldn’t separate myself from the character on screen. I could relate to each of Rory’s obstacles as a struggling writer: the sheer embarrassment of asking his parents for money, the pain of rejection letters, the crippling depression of failure that makes a writer lay on the couch and watch terrible movies contemplating stepping away from the keyboard altogether. Mixed in with these gut wrenching moments of real tension are long periods of contemplation that will not bend or relent, forcing the viewer to sit quietly as an action-less scene is unwound like a slow spinning top trying not to topple.

The film tells just enough of a story to leave the viewer moved emotionally, but not enough to satisfy the appetite for a complete story. Directors Lee Sternthal and writer/director Brian Klugman spend a lot of time focusing on the emotion of a scene, and very little on the action of a scene. Many of the impactful moments of the film take place between two people talking while sitting, standing, or lying. Obviously every film doesn’t need to be an action film, but it was difficult to get a grasp on the lives of the characters beyond being writers because there wasn’t much else about them that was revealed.

I was confused most of the film as to when the “twist” would occur as The Words is marketed as a thriller. What does the Old Man want and when will Rory’s world come crashing down? Unfortunately, the movie never really dives into any of that, it only implies some of it will occur at some point after we have stopped watching. The film ends on a sort of half-twist without finality or surprise and leaves the viewer with a sense that the screenplay would probably be better suited as a novel, or perhaps three short stories (which it basically is). The three shorts are excellent, but when paired together they don’t accentuate each other in a way that lift each story to new heights and create a bigger picture for the larger story as a whole.

From a characterization point of view, Bradley Copper delivers one of his most surprising performances to date. His usually quick tongued comic exterior is stripped away as he portrays the true nature of failure incarnate, a man on the brink of life’s great question of “Who am I?” Bradley dips in and out his passion for writing and learns a great lesson from the Old Man to not love the words more than you love the source. The rest of the cast delivers well, but it is Cooper’s performance that stands out in this sea of melancholia as an an homage to Hemingway.

It’s my job to put a stamp on a film: yes or no, do or do not watch. But, with The Words I can not make a call because I’m not sure how I feel about it. Perhaps this movie was terribly boring, or perhaps it is an Academy Award Contender. Truthfully, it was just too personal for me to tackle the screenplay as a whole work, but I’m certain something is missing from the screenplay. To sum up, The Words is an amazing collection short films that takes a feature length amount of time and leaves this particular viewer with more questions about himself than he was prepared to answer.