The Humbling (2014)

Content by Tony Macklin. Originally published on January 26, 2015 @ tonymacklin.net.

The Humbling begins like a Master Class in acting, with Al Pacino emoting grandly.

About 1/2 hour into the film, actress Greta Gerwig arrives straight from her senior class play.

King Lear becomes Glee.

The Humbling is based on a short novel by Philip Roth. The screenplay - by Buck Henry and Michal Zebede - has a touch of Henry's glib humor and Zebede's woman's touch. It is touchy.

The Humbling is the story of Simon Axler (Al Pacino), a classic stage-and-screen actor who is aging and deteriorating. At the start of the film, we see Simon looking soberly into a mirror and speaking Shakespearean lines with different inflections, in preparation for a performance of As You Like It.

"Was it honest?" he asks himself after one interpretation. "Were you affecting it or were you really saying it?"

He can't tell anymore. His craft and identity are slipping away.

During the performance, in desperation Simon intentionally dives off the stage. He is hospitalized. In a clever sequence as he is wheeled down the hall, Simon speaks to a nurse, and asks her if she believes what he says as he is performing in front of her. She does.

Simon goes to a psychiatric hospital. At a therapy session he meets Sybil (Nina Arianda), who eventually asks him to murder her husband. She selects him for the deed since he once played a mass murderer in a movie. She stalks him.

At home in Connecticut, Simon meets Pegeen (Greta Gerwig), the daughter of two actors with whom he had worked many years ago. Pegeen is a teacher at a local college.

She's a lesbian, but starts a romantic relationship with Simon. Ah, those Rothian relationships. Man meets liver; man meets lesbian.

Shortly after Pegeen arrives, there's a sequence of Simon's running his electric train on a track over piles of Playbills.

Unfortunately, soon after that, The Humbling goes off the rails.

Sometimes a great writer (Roth) and a great actor (Pacino) combine to create a great waste of time and talent. Veteran director Barry Levinson pulls the frayed strings.

The Humbling is an example of a film in which one actor is much better than the material as it's presented. At the beginning, Pacino seizes the screen, but eventually he loses his grasp as the film flounders around him.

The cast - other than Gerwig and Arianda - mostly gives walk-through performances. Dianne Wiest, Dan Hedaya, Charles Grodin, and Kyra Sedgwick have skimpy roles.

Al Pacino tries to rule the stage.

But in The Humbling, he is surrounded by merely players.

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