The Words
There’s a lot of substance in “The Words” when it comes to the creative process. So much so that during, and shortly after, the film, I found myself contemplating, very seriously, my own life as a creative artist. I’m sure people who follow my music and own filmmaking will notice that this year has been quite silent on both fronts; “The Words” made me seriously question the direction of my life in that area. Unfortunately, the depth the film shows in that narrative is almost undone by a needless storytelling “twist” that is far less interesting that the story we engage in during much of the film’s running time.
The screenplay is by Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal, who also directed the film, and contains a framing device in scenes where an author (Dennis Quaid) is reading from his latest book, about an aspiring author (Rory Jansen, played by Bradley Cooper) who, when an original novel he has written is turned down, takes a lost manuscript he finds for his own, and becomes the success he always wanted to be. After he has hit the big time, he is confronted by an old man (Jeremy Irons) who, it turns out, wrote the story Rory has published as his own. Does he want money? Credit? I’ll let the film tell THAT story.
At its core, “The Words” is about storytelling, and how life inspires the creative mind to put pen to paper. Or finger to keyboard. Rory is so affected by this manuscript he’s found; he wants to know what it is like to have those words seemingly come out of his hands, and onto the page. But do they have the same impact when he re-types them onto his computer? More importantly, what does this do to HIS own ability to create? While the film touches on this, I found it lacking in real, emotional weight. The reason comes from the fact that Rory’s story is, in fact, the story in Quaid’s character’s novel which, we learn, might be more than just a work of fiction. Say what? The scenes with Quaid and Olivia Wilde (who plays a student grilling Quaid’s author) are well played by the two, but are completely flat dramatically. And because the main storyline with Rory and his wife (Zoe Saldana), and Rory’s creative dilemma, is just a story within what becomes the main story of the film, any emotional impact from Cooper and Irons’s performances is negated. The result remains a compelling film thematically, but the drama of the story is lost in the filmmaker’s narrative tricks.
