The Riot Grrrl Next DoorJulia Roberts is a larger-than-life hell-raiser in Erin Brockovich.
Posted Friday, March 17, 2000, at 9:30 PM ETErin Brockovich
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Universal Pictures
Have you ever noticed how freaky Julia Roberts is? Everything is outsized—those teeth, those eyes, those coltish gams, that smile that's wider than most people's heads. Those feelers, too: She's such an edgy, hypersensitive creature that she practically gives off a hum, like high-voltage wires. In Erin Brockovich, Roberts has her most galvanic role, and she's sensationally appealing: In showbiz parlance, she kills. She plays a twice-divorced mother of three who can't find work and who gets screwed out of an accident claim after her car is totaled by a doctor in a Jaguar. The chip on her shoulder is the size of a linebacker's pad, so Erin browbeats her way into a job as a secretary for the bleary hack attorney (Albert Finney) who fumbled her injury case, then throws herself into a pro bono suit against Pacific Gas & Electric, the company that powers much of California. It's no contest, though: PG&E doesn't have Julia Roberts' wattage.
PRINT
DISCUSS
E-MAIL
RSS
RECOMMEND...
Facebook
MySpace
Mixx
Digg
Reddit
del.icio.us
Furl
Ma.gnolia
Sphere
StumbleUponThe movie is all Julia, all the time. It hasn't just been tailored for her, it has been sewn onto her, like one of her character's skintight mini-dresses. Those costumes are cut to show yards of cleavage and miles of thigh; the movie is cut to show epic orneriness and bounteousness of soul. The film, which is based on a true story (the real Erin shows up fleetingly as a waitress), doesn't account for its heroine's magical radar for injustice—how she senses from the start that PG&E is responsible for the heartbreakingly high cancer rates in an arid settlement east of Los Angeles. But it doesn't need to. A former Wichita, Kan., beauty queen, Erin has a dashed sense of entitlement, and when multibillion-dollar corporations tell her to go away or else, they're ensuring she'll keep digging into water records. She's spoiling for a fight.
March 10: Mission to Mars, Ghost Dog: The Way of the Samurai
March 3: What Planet Are You From?, Drowning Mona
Feb. 25: Reindeer Games, Wonder Boys
On paper, the story of Erin Brockovich might seem smugly pat—knee-jerk anti-corporate. But the director, Steven Soderbergh, keeps the menace vague, the horror intangible. He and his great cinematographer, Ed Lachman, don't force the idea that this landscape is malignant. But the poison is implicit in the harsh light and baked-out colors and in the flags that blow clank-clank in the hot breeze: In one shot the movie establishes those devil winds the Santa Anas. Some people thought the jump-cuts in The Limey (1999) were too ostentatious, but that kind of reckless experimentation can lead to the sort of fluid mastery that Soderbergh displays here. This time, he mostly lays back. He keeps a compassionate distance from the movie's cancer victims—he lets you see them through Erin's eyes and share her sense of helplessness.
Focusing on something outside herself and her own messed-up personal life gives Erin a miraculous clarity, and that outrage infuses Roberts' performance. Early in her career, the actress reportedly needed lots of stroking and calming down, like a skittish thoroughbred. But she now has a hard-won self-possession, and the joy of Erin Brockovich is watching her cut loose, talk dirty, stride into an office on those long legs and blast the hell out of anyone in her way. Sometimes the effect is discomfiting, as when she makes fun of overweight secretaries or too-prim female lawyers. (She starts to seem like a distaff Eddie Murphy.) But whenever she gives it to Finney, it's movie magic, because he's as outsized as she is and a lot more insulated.
It's hard to remember Finney as a lean and beautiful boy, because he has learned to use his thickness with such sly wit. He plays a man who has made his peace with having become a hack, and he uses his extra flesh to keep the world at bay. He's not used to someone getting under that beefy exterior, and when Erin whales on him he bellows in incomprehension. (More and more, Finney's voice resembles John Huston's, with its plangent belching rumble.) But Erin does more than goad this tired old man. She revives the warrior in him, and you can taste Finney's relish in tugging on his cheap suit jacket and tying his ugly tie and leaving his paneled office to do battle with the corporate Goliath. He comes to bask in Erin's sexy glow—even to revel in unleashing her working-class feminist rage on his startled adversaries. This is a glorious performance.
The script, by Susannah Grant, is a smooth piece of work with some wonderfully spiky badinage. Grant handles Erin's romance with her next-door neighbor (an unrecognizable Aaron Eckhart from In the Company of Men, 1997) with a light touch: The joke is that she turns the bearded, burly motorcyclist into Mr. Mom while she goes off to war. The screenplay's only real flaw is structural, and it's possibly built into the story. The film suggests that arbitration (as opposed to a potentially more lucrative jury trial) is the only way to go in light of the absence of a "smoking gun"—proof that PG&E officials at the San Francisco corporate headquarters knew of the dangerous levels of chromium in the groundwater and chose to do nothing about it. But when a key piece of evidence does emerge, the lawyers stick with their original strategy and the resolution comes too fast. It's a bit of a letdown that the bad guys at PG&E remain so faceless and that the only resident (the eloquent Cherry Jones) resistant to Erin's charms succumbs with so little fuss. You could also argue that climaxing with Erin's bonus check smacks of insensitivity. I would, but that's the legal profession for you.
But the last scene has a different agenda; it leaves Erin Brockovich poised to segue into a long-running TV drama with next year's (tall) Calista Flockhart and some Ed Asner type as her gruff boss. But maybe that's not a bad thing. Ally McBeal needs a counterweight, and The Mary Tyler Moore Show could use an update. Instead of a hapless woman whose lovable dithering inspires a mix of fatherly, brotherly, and lustful feelings in her male counterparts, why not make America's sweetheart a busting-out firebrand with a lively capacity for outrage and a filthy mouth? There's a role model for my daughter.
Is It More Important for Your Turkey To Be Organic or Local?
Why Gift Cards Are a Terrible Gift
Is Sarah Palin's Approval Rating Really as High as Barack Obama's?
Justice Scalia's Most Eccentric Habits
Adam Lambert's Refreshing Non-Apology on the CBS Early Show
Democrats Have a Lot To Be Thankful For
Highlights from The Fray:
Has anyone else noticed that Julia Roberts acts like a giant magnet on David Edelstein's usually reliable critical compass? Whenever she's in a film, he can't resist (a) being much more favorable to it than the movie probably deserves, (b) telling us how beautiful Roberts is, what with her giant mouth and eyes and all, and (c) comparing her at some point to a horse.
Every critic has a blind spot, and perhaps David Edelstein came of age when Pretty Woman was on general release. But the horse part really worries me. Today's review of Erin Brockovich descibes Roberts as having outsize teeth and "coltish gams". He goes on to say that Roberts used to be a "skittish thoroughbred". Have we heard this before? Several times, in fact, and almost verbatim each time. In his review of Runaway Bride (thank you, Slate archives), Edelstein says Roberts is "alternately warm and skittish". And writing about Notting Hill, he tells us Roberts used to be--surprise--"a skittish thoroughbred who needed to be handled (i.e., directed) with care." Oh, and don't forget her "features, which are huge..."I wonder if David Edelstein is aware of this odd tic in his reviewing. Does he have a manila file marked "Julia Roberts/Horse Comparisons"? Or does it come from some deep, equine-fixated part of his brain that speaks to us only through the medium of Julia Roberts?
--Kieran Healy
(To reply, click here.)
To Kieran Healy: Thanks for the close textual analysis. A look at the two previous reviews confirms what you wrote. I'd had no idea I was repeating myself that closely. My colleague David Denby used to describe William Shatner as looking like a "muscular dentist" in every Star Trek movie review. It became a running gag, and I suggested that he just put a shortcut on his computer so that whenever he types Shatner it says "muscular dentist." Clearly I need a similar key with Julia Roberts and "skittish thoroughbred" and larger-than-life features...
Now to defend myself: Julia Roberts is a real movie star. I hate to exhume the phrase "larger than life" but that's what she is and why she's on the cover of almost every magazine at the moment. She's a good actress, too. If you don't agree, fine, but I can't find a false note in her performances in My Best Friend's Wedding, the Law and Order episode she did with her boyfriend, or Notting Hill. The only time I ever cut her some slack was on Runaway Bride, which even my wife told me I was nuts for not simply panning outright, but that movie made about 150 million, so clearly a few other people responded to the chemistry she had with Richard Gere. I think her rapport with Albert Finney in Erin Brockovich is even more winning.
One reviews an actress like Julia Roberts differently from, say, Julianne Moore or even Gwyneth Paltrow. She doesn't disappear into her parts: She's Julia. And there are certain qualities that recur from role to role--certain impressions one has watching her that remain consistent. If I were a certain notorious gasbag critic, I'd write: "As I said when I reviewed Notting Hill..." and then quote myself at length. (I recall a review of his where he quoted himself from a decade earlier and in the middle of the quote was a quote from himself from five years before that.) But I don't quote myself--or even spend much time rereading what I wrote last month or last year. So I regret using the same adjectives in those reviews but not the fact that the sentiments were so similar.
--David Edelstein
(To reply, click here.)
(3/20)