4/5
I sometimes describe great films as being populated with people I feel like I’ve known for years. James White is a film full of people I have known for years. The mother who’s mind and body are dissolving too quickly for her to cope with; the fraught son who simply isn’t equipped to handle the world, even if at times it seems like it’s the world that’s consciously attempting to handle him; the friends that watch through gritted teeth as their lifelong buddy gradually disintegrates from the inside out, turning into an explosive ghost of the person they hold dear; these are all characters plucked straight from my most intimate recollections, and the movie’s greatest achievement is to embody them when it could have simply written them.
For the sake of objectivity (whatever that is), I tried mightily to distance myself from the film, to view it not as myself but as someone who had never experienced these things, perhaps to see if it would work for someone further from the material. I failed. It consistently struck too close to home, ringing throughout with too much truth for me to shake. In retrospect, it was foolish to even try to pull myself from the moment, for that is where cinema comes alive. I have a feeling it was nothing more than a defense mechanism — by poking holes in the movie and finding flaws, I didn’t have to process how deeply it managed to cut. Much like James White, now that I think about it.
The film’s first image is of James himself, hair greasy and eyes blank, drifting in and out of sense during an all-night bender. The camera stays fixed more-or-less parallel with his face, never giving him enough space to escape the audience’s scrutiny. What follows isn’t an unbroken shot, but it mimics the sinking anxiety of one. The director refuses to let James hide — this is who he is, a piping mess, and from this angle, we see what he desperately tries not to.
He arrives the following morning at his mother’s apartment, awkwardly stumbling his way through a sea of grieving relatives. We learn that James’s father has just died, although we wonder if James is as aware of that as everyone else. He meets his father’s wife for what we later realize is the first time, and when she tells him how much his father loved him, he simply stands there for a moment, stone faced, before asking her daughter if she wants something to drink. This is the movie’s purest example of James’s coping — if grief presents itself, he removes himself from the situation, pumps himself with alcohol, and pretends it isn’t following him. But it is. Always.
That tragedy is basis enough for a movie, but for James, that’s just the beginning. His mother, powerfully played by Cynthia Nixon, is a recovering cancer patient, and when her ailment resurges, she once again relies on James to take care of her. From the very beginning, their relationship is one of split motivation. She needs his help to survive but wants him to leave. He wants to leave too, but he’d never forgive himself if he did. The two of them settle for something in-between, where James is there but never enough and rarely when he says, and his mother only asks him to stay when she’s desperate, angry, and delirious. Towards the end of the film, the two share a scene as powerful as any I’ve seen this year during which all tensions relax and all things unspoken are settled through a moment of mutual escape.
The film packs a lot into eighty-five minutes, and it’s a testament to writer-director Josh Mond that the film never once feels crowded or unbalanced. Its events unfold not as a precisely calibrated plot but rather as a doomed series of inevitabilities. The world does things to James, he buries those things inside of him, and they slowly stretch him at the seams. The brilliant thing about Christopher Abbott’s performance as James is that the role gives him every chance to overflow into histrionics, and yet he never allows himself to reach that point. There is one scene in the film during which he has a meltdown, but rather than succumb to an eruption of anger, Abbott turns James into a man drowning in the depths of himself.
As a movie, James White is an extraordinary experience, well-made and spotlessly performed. After such an intense experience, however, I could have used a bit more closure. That’s not to say the film isn’t rewarding in its own right, but when the film abruptly ends, I wondered if there was more that Josh Mond simply wasn’t showing us in the name of enigma. Then again, perhaps that’s entirely the point. James is a character incapable of reaching clarity, and the movie only goes as far as he can. Catharsis is a byproduct of self-reflection, something James isn’t remotely ready for. Trust me; I know the feeling.
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: www.spencermoleda.com and [email protected]
Spencer Moleda is a freelance writer, script supervisor, and motion picture researcher residing in Los Angeles, California. His experience ranges from reviewing movies to providing creative guidance to fledgling film projects. You can reach him at: [email protected]