Films aren’t so much born as worried into existence, and with some films the worrying — the concern that the audience won’t get it, or get out for it, or make the required time commitment — never stops.
Take, for example, “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby.” There are three separate versions afoot. The one available currently came into being at the insistence of producer Harvey Weinstein, whose company backed writer-director Ned Benson’s ambitious story of a marriage.
Benson conceived of his project as two separate films. One, subtitled “Him,” was written, filmed and edited to explore the male protagonist’s point of view. The other, subtitled “Her,” flipped the perspective, and established its own color palette. “Him” and “Her” premiered in tandem at the 2013 Toronto International Film Festival. They’ll be available in limited release and, ideally, as a streaming or cable option next month.
But Weinstein wanted a one-off too — a third version, combining aspects and scenes of the other two. This may explain the curiously indistinct quality of “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby,” subtitled “Them,” which begins the same way the “Her” version began: with the attempted suicide of Eleanor, played by Jessica Chastain.
Surviving a jump from a Manhattan bridge, she recuperates at her girlhood Westport, Conn., home, under the care of her NYU psychology professor father (William Hurt) and violinist mother (Isabelle Huppert, never more than an inch from a glass of wine). James McAvoy plays Conor, her estranged husband, struggling with his restaurant business and struggling to connect fully with his restaurateur father (Ciaran Hinds).
In a sprinkling of flashbacks Benson reveals the courtship of Eleanor and Conor, the stressors and joys, while focusing primarily on the aftermath of their shared tragedy. The loss of a young child guides the characters’ actions and nudges the marriage to its tipping point. Is all really lost for these two?
I’d be more curious to see “Him” and “Her” if Benson’s self-consciously florid dialogue in “Them” didn’t make my head hurt. “Tragedy is a foreign country,” Hurt intones at one point. “We don’t know how to talk to the natives.” That’s almost a good line, but by the time you’ve established why its metaphoric deliberation doesn’t breathe easily, two or three more just like have plopped into the mouths of the characters.
Chastain is wonderful; McAvoy is very good; Hinds, excellent and unassumingly true; Viola Davis as Eleanor’s sounding board, fierce and moving against all odds (the role is purely functional). Benson has courage as a writer and as a filmmaker: He sends Eleanor and Conor into the lion’s den, emotionally speaking. Many will find this romance shrouded in pain an affecting experience. For me Chastain’s unerring honesty is the only element keeping “The Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” above the realm of pure affectation.
“Disappearance of Eleanor Rigby” – 2 stars
MPAA rating: R (for language and sexuality)
Running time: 2:02
Opens: Friday at the AMC River East 21; Century 12/Cinearts 6, Evanston; Landmark’s Renaissance Place, Highland Park
