VENICE: Al Pacino makes two appearances this year at the Biennale and director David Gordon Green’s Manglehorn is perhaps the lesser of the two appearances as a film despite its scoring a slot in the main competition. Pacino’s other Venice vehicle was Barry Levinson’s The Humbling which screens out of competition in Venice.
In Manglehorn Pacino plays a reclusive small town locksmith Angelo Manglehorn who has never quite recovered from losing the love of his life, Clara. He is so fixated on her memory, that he feels closer to his cat than the people around him. He finds some small comfort in his rather boring job and the various contacts he makes with people around him.
Rooted in the past Manglehorn has encounters with his son Jacob a commodities trader played by Chris Messina with a well-meaning Manglehorn blowing it in terms of the relationship while Messina as Jacob in these encounters is given little chance to develop his character beyond an unconvincing cliché. Likewise with the other character in Manglehorn' s life Gary played by Harmony Korine who used to be a baseball player when Manglehorn was a coach. Gary now runs a massage and tanning salon where there are seedy goings on which likely though it may seem it takes the Pacino character quite awhile to cotton onto.
It seems though that Manglehorn is kind to children and dumb animals and has a good relationship with his son’s young daughter Kylie played by Skylar Gaspar and his cat Fanny.
A victim of his own self-made emotional prison Manglehorn writes letters to the one great love of his life Clara who he lost 20 years ago while sleep-walking through the life around him. But the letters continue to be returned to Manglehorn representing his almost unlimited capacity for rejection. The voiceovers and the letters somehow work against this film which might have been a subtle character study but turns into a heavy handed drama with characters that the actors struggle to bring to life.
When he establishes a friendship with a kindhearted woman from the local bank he has to decide whether he will remain consumed with the emotions of his past love or open his heart to the possibility of a new one.
Pacino makes what he can out of this story but he really cannot save this film which suffers from too many problems to succeed event with star power and fine actors like the Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine and Chris Messina.
Cinematographer Tim Orr provides some beautiful wide shots and the small town Texas setting and attention to visual details that have characterized Green’s films give visual interest here too with many down to earth scenes verging on a kind of surrealism but it’s not enough to save the film overall.
Green has directed two moderately successful indie films in his two previous outings, his off-beat Prince Avalanche which garnered excellent reviews critically, and his Joe starring Nicolas Cage. But with Manglehorn it seems he has missed the boat.
Credits: Manglehorn (USA)
Director David Gordon Green
Cast: Al Pacino, Holly Hunter, Harmony Korine and Chris Messina.
