| WINE, WOMEN
AND
GETTING IT WRONG
HINT OF GOOSEBERRY?
Left to right, Sandra Oh as Stephanie; Thomas Haden Church as Jack; Virginia Madsen as Maya; and Paul Giamatti as Miles in Sideways.
sideways
A TRIP THROUGH THE CALIFORNIA WINE COUNTRY SOUNDS LIKE FIRST PRIZE IN A VERY UPMARKET COMPETITION. BUT MILES (PAUL GIAMATTI) AND JACK (THOMAS HADEN CHURCH) TAKE SO MUCH EMOTIONAL BAGGAGE WITH THEM, THEY MANAGE TO TURN THE JOURNEY INTO A MID-LIFE CRISIS. HAL HAYES REPORTS ON SIDEWAYS, THE LATEST FILM FROM THE TALENTED AND IDIOSYNCRATIC DIRECTOR ALEXANDER PAYNE.
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He may have an Oscar nomination under his belt for his second feature, Election (Jack Nicholson also got one for About Schmidt), but director Alexander Payne clearly feels he was born in the wrong decade. For one thing, his movies hark back stylistically to the Hollywood ‘golden age’ of the seventies; for another, they tend to be about people who were young (or, in the case of Nicholson’s Schmidt, already middle-aged) when those movies were in the theatres.
“I am most moved by stories that are about human beings and human nature, that are about flawed people and ambiguous moments that don’t necessarily come to any neat closure,” says the 43-year-old Nebraska-born writer/director. “Perhaps too many films in this current era have eschewed humanity for slickness. I’m interested in revitalising the American cinema of the seventies, with its emphasis on real people and real struggles.
“I think we desperately need human movies right now,” he adds. “I feel like this very human style of film-making has gone far too out of style. People often say to me, ‘Your films feel so fresh and different’. But really, I’m not trying to make new films: I’m trying to make films like the old ones.”
All the same, Payne’s latest movie, Sideways, represents a number of new departures for him. For one thing, it’s no longer set within a day’s drive of his town of Omaha. For another, it has not one but two protagonists: Miles, played by Paul Giamatti, who won acclaim last year for his portrayal of Harvey Pekar in American Splendor, and Jack (Thomas Haden Church), as odd a couple as any that set out on the road in the era of Five Easy Pieces or Two-Lane Blacktop.
Miles is a teacher, recently divorced and clinging to an unfulfilled (and probably unfulfillable) desire to write a novel. Jack is a washed-up actor who is about to get married but can’t stop trying to prove he’s God’s gift to women. Miles is an oenophile (the correct term for a wine buff), whose mission in life is to find the perfect pinot.
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