Albert Brooks' MODERN ROMANCE (1981)

Roger Ebert said in a review of a movie called She's Out of Control (it's a fiery review between him and Siskel, of course) that an exhibitor told him once that if a movie isn't any good after the first reel, it isn't going to improve after that. I'm not sure that is always true, but on the opposite end there are absolutely times when you are at around the end of Reel 1 (to use the editor speak of the Albert Brooks character Robert here) and you realize... oh, this is truly a great, unendingly perceptive and massively funny movie about many things, but especially how "Stuff" and physical fitness and other things we give ourselves to do wont solve ::taps the brain::.

It'd be a sort of anti-miracle for Brooks to fuck this up, and thankfully it's totally not the case. By the time he is talking to himself in the mirror, it's hard not to see that Brooks and cowriter Johnson understand this man so intuitively - and that is that this guy won't understand himself.  Or the woman he professes to love - for a while, anyway. Maybe (no, definitely) not even after the movie is over.  

But we also don't understand ourselves or the way we set events into motion some/most of the time, so it's hard not to relate to Robert, despite the fact that maybe you or I haven't had a break-up like this. 

And every time, for example, Robert picks up the phone or makes a call (especially to Mary), you cringe thinking that it cant get much more relatable and... oh so true in its human misery and self sabotage. Even the telephone itself becomes the Medium of Anxiety and a tool of perpetual dissatisfaction.  In other words, the slope to be our own worst selves is slick and illogical. 

I mean.... 😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬😬x100

At the center of it is Brooks in this titanically funny performance that is like a feature length version of those sections of Taxi Driver where Travis creates his own problems and then deals with (or actively doesn't deal with) the break-up, both over the phone and on his phone (incidentally Brooks was there, where he was a very different character, normal compared to everyone else), only here it's instead of an unstable loner dumped for being a fool, it's a needy, neurotic man someone who initiates a break-up and knows as soon as he does it that it was a mistake. 

And like in TD, Kathryn Harrold is a beautiful and active partner for Brooks to play off of, sympathetic, equally understanding and totally bewildered by Robert's actions, and eventually completely in "IVE HAD IT" mode, and plays everything so straight that it makes Robert's horrible self so much worse/funnier.

The break up is the set up that Brooks sails into an ocean of conflict and dramatic possibilities, of "Let's make up" and then screw things up again, and as a performer/director he takes Robert into beats that are howlingly funny and all based on mounting feelings of contradictions and self recriminations (or in simpler terms, what if Travis Bickle was a nicer person, but still kind of a headcase). 

Notice the scene in particular where he takes Ellen out to the date and that car ride where the Michael Jackson song comes on, and he immediately turns around and takes her back to her place. Everything he does in that scene is perfectly calibrated for us to laugh, but it doesn't feel false or like it's going for an easy comic moment. It's... yikes, man.

One more thing: I still recall when I took a screenwriting course in college that one of the "rules" we were told is that a character talking to themselves is inherently unrealistic and is always hanky because, well, we don't talk to ourselves in daily life so having a character do that is a way to get around making things more visual.

 That may be the case in other films, but Brooks can and does sell Robert talking to himself because a) it's mostly comedic and the laughs come without it being too shorthand and b) it fits how he overthinks things and talks and talks things to himself (but not always as he does with others) - and he has control as an editor and can solve problems, but with himself it's bupkis - but to my earlier point he doesn't understand what he should (or to rationalize things like, say, jealousy).  

The longer the movie goes on and the more Robert has in his mind all of his doubts and insecurities, the more it becomes something different and special, and so sharp a satire you feel cut up by the end. 

Wonderful, wonderful film. See it before it leaves Tubi end of November 2023.