Ryan McNeil
Every year in the month of May, I re-read one of my favorite books of all-time – “High Fidelity” by Nick Hornby. When I first read the book in my early twenties, I identified with its love of music and its fixation with the past. As time passed, I remained a fan of the book, but identified with it less and less.
Re-reading the book now is like looking back on who I was. Like the old sweaters in my closet it’s looser in places and snugger in others – and that’s a good thing. It means I’ve grown and gained a bit of perspective. I have new appreciation for all of that music, and have forsaken past fixation for past fondness.
Unfortunately, not everyone is as keen to change with the times.
JULIET, NAKED begins by introducing us to Annie (Rose Byrne) and Duncan (Chris O’Dowd). The couple lives in a seaside British town where she works at the local museum and he teaches at a small college. They have no children, and while she is feeling the pull, he is pulled in another direction entirely.
Namely, Duncan is pulled towards all things Tucker Crowe (Ethan Hawke). Crowe was a singer/songwriter in the 90’s, cut from a similar cloth as Jeff Buckley. Like Buckley, Crowe was limited to one studio album, but not due to death. Crowe just walked off one night and was never heard from since.
Now Duncan is a superfan of the enigmatic troubadour, to the point where he runs one of the largest fansites dedicated to Crowe’s work.
One day, Duncan is sent an advance copy of a second Tucker Crowe album. The original record – “Juliet” – has now been stripped down to the bare acoustic bones and presented as “Juliet, Naked”. Duncan doesn’t take long to post details of the record on his site. Soon after, Annie – who has also heard the record – posts her dissenting thoughts in the same space.
While Duncan is incensed and embarrassed that his own partner could post thought so contrary to his own, there’s someone out there who agrees with Annie: Tucker Crowe himself.
Crowe, has been hiding in middle America as a burn out. He now has several children with several women, and never much made any good on the promise people like Duncan saw in him. He is close to his youngest son – literally, since he lives in the garage of that child’s mother.
Soon, Tucker and Annie begin to email back and forth – about the album at first, but eventually about grander ideas.
A gentle kinship is formed between the pair of lonely souls, and it doesn’t take long before a face-to-face is arranged. But these plans underline how Annie and Tucker gained the broken hearts they now lay claim to. They are who they are because plans didn’t come together as they were suppose to…and that’s not about to change now.
JULIET, NAKED often skims the surface of some very real issues surrounding life and love. Tucker, Annie, and Duncan are all at critical moments in their life, and all seem to be trying to pull themselves out of a gutter of the past. Poor life choices, wondering “what if”, being fixated on the frivolous…these are all very real traps that people find themselves in when life approaches its middle. Unfortunately, very little of it is given much gravitas before the credits roll, and that denies this film from reaching its full potential.
However, if one pulls the headphones on a little tighter, and turns the volume all the way up, there are some curious chord changes contained within this cinematic song. Duncan’s fandom, for instance, feels apt for this age of fanboys and gatekeepers. His sun rises and sets on Tucker Crowe – every morsel and crumb of the artist’s life. His relationship? His career? They come off like background noise and facilitators. His fixation on a singular person in a singular moment in time is unhealthy, tragic, and sad.
Tucker Crowe’s music is supposed to be steeped in contact and connection, and yet Duncan closes himself off from all of those emotions. He is so consumed by the artist, he loses a true understanding of the art. Duncan has made his life all about a handful of songs at the expense of the experiences that give those songs true meaning.
Duncan’s infatuation with Tucker Crowe is a joyless scenario to witness, and sadly this sort of infatuation is hardly fictional.
In light of this, Annie’s connection to Tucker is tangible. She has companionship, and yet she feels alone – a dirty little byproduct of being second priority in the eyes of a superfan. The distance between them isn’t enough to blow it all up, and yet its more than enough to want…more. She wants someone to ask her what she thinks, but not what she thinks about a song or a TV show. She wants to open up about heartbreak, but her own heartbreak – not the heartbreak of one singer twenty years ago. She isn’t alone in life, but she is lonely. Into that loneliness walks Tucker Crowe.
Some affairs begin when a person looks at another in a way, or touches another in a way. For Annie, it’s how Tucker responds to her thoughts and feelings in a way.
Unfortunately, Annie isn’t really able to expand on that response because JULIET, NAKED becomes mired in Tucker’s own messy life choices.
We want to believe that our heroes are mysterious recluses, closing their castle gates to us meagre villagers while they isolate themselves to their own brooding genius. The fact of the matter is that our icons are every bit as messed-up and broken as we are. They are just as selfish, just as depressed, just as anxious. We theorize and hypothesize about what more they could have given the world (if they hadn’t quit…hadn’t broken up…hadn’t died…etc). However, as Tucker Crowe reminds us, we never suggest that they might have just become too broken or boring to give the world anything else.
Tucker hung it all up because real life became “too much”. Tucker’s tragedy is that he never finds a way to face up to real life. The film’s tragedy is that Tucker’s tragedy is never fully explored.
Life doesn’t always go to plan. Artists’ careers are cut short, men and women bet big on the wrong women and men, doors open only to quickly get slammed shut. What matters is that we don’t become fixated with these moments…don’t identify with everything about them.
We need to understand the difference between fixation and fondness. If we can’t, we will just soon find ourselves stuck in one spot…listening to those same songs over and over…never hearing anything new in those beautiful notes.
Matineescore: ★ ★ 1/2 out of ★ ★ ★ ★