Somewhere

Sofia Coppola is one of the most audacious artists working in film.

Her latest, Somewhere, has the barest hint of a three-act structure.  It doesn’t seem to care where its people go.  Nothing blows up, nobody falls in love, the fate of the world hangs not in the balance.  Basically, Coppola uses it to explore ennui.  It is absolutely fascinating.

In Somewhere, Stephen Dorff plays a movie star who appears to live at the Château Marmont, a swanky hotel in West Hollywood (Fun fact: I used to know a guy who’d been mayor of West Hollywood.  His name was Steve Martin, and he was a lawyer who always had a funny story about some sex-related case he’d worked on.  We called him Steve Martin the Sex Lawyer.).  He has an ex-wife, a daughter, several hangers on, and a brother whose company he enjoys.  He has unlimited access to sex, drugs, and all the accouterments of the high life, and he’s empty inside.  He doesn’t love his work, he isn’t very good at sex, and he’s lost interest in pretty much everything but his daughter.  This is a film about a guy who’s going through the motions.

So what makes Somewhere fascinating?  What makes us care about some lazy rich guy’s ennui?  Coppola’s observational power does it.  When we watch Somewhere, we feel like one of Wim Wenders’s angels, looking on sympathy as this fragile human puts his faith in things and drugs and sensations.  We feel for him as he comes to realize that they are nothing, that the finest food and drink are ashes in his mouth, that he is dead inside.  We hope that he’ll find his way, that he’ll learn that detachment is a wall that doesn’t keep the world away from him, but him away from the world.  We urge him, silently, to engage: to engage the daughter who loves him, to engage the work for which he’s suited, to engage not living, but life.

Perhaps he will.  I don’t know.  But I do know that Coppola brought me into his world, as she has brought me into the worlds of people before him.  She made me care.  She made me engage.  She made me evaluate facets of my own life (he writes, from yet another empty hotel room).  Her steady gaze makes me not just look, but see.  I expectantly wait her next film and the opportunity to see once more.