Review

Review Date: 3-November-02
Spoiler Rating: High
Juju Judgment: Just OK

Auto Focus (2002)

One of the more fascinating, if terrifying, threads in the vast tapestry of human frailty and sickness is the person who has little or no self-perception, who walks through life sometimes winning, usually failing, but always clueless or in denial as to why he is doing either. Unfortunately, such a character is also one of the hardest to capture on film in any way that generates real interest, be it of a compassionate or loathing kind. Either because some craving for divine justice makes us wish other people would recognize, pay for, and learn from their faults, or because this scenario simply makes for a better narrative, it is very difficult to become too involved in a story where the protagonist just doesn't get it. In the case of "Auto Focus," the new film about "Hogan's Heroes" star Bob Crane, the handicap of the subject's obliviousness is made worse by the fact that director Paul Schrader tries to tell the story through Crane's eyes, which see virtually nothing. Although "Auto Focus" offers a few interesting moments and a gutsy performance by Greg Kinnear as Crane, in the end it renders both itself and its subject as empty, futile, and cold.

Bob Crane hit the big time when "Hogan's Heroes" came on the air in 1965; by the time he was murdered in a hotel room in 1978, he was a Hollywood has-been with two broken marriages and a huge library of homemade pornography cataloguing years of raunchy living. In "Sunset Boulevard" style, Schrader starts and ends the movie with voice-overs from the dead Crane, looking back on the road that led him to his demise. He picks up the story when Crane was a popular disc jockey with a respectable suburban housewife (Rita Wilson), three cute kids, and a regular pew at church on Sunday. Even then, however, Crane's immoderate sexual appetite was starting to emerge, as we discover when his wife confronts him about finding girlie magazines in the garage. Shortly after he starts shooting "Hogan's Heroes," Crane meets John Carpenter (Willem Dafoe), a slimy little weasel of a man who sells cutting-edge stereo and video equipment to the stars. This little satyr is just the guide Crane needs to lead him into the seedy underbelly (a great phrase — I've always wanted to use it) of stardom. Crane, who tells people he's a respectable guy and so wants to believe it, starts out slowly, chastely playing drums in strip bars before starting to pick up women with Carpenter, giving up his grapefruit juice for vodka and throwing off his neatly ironed dress shirts for naked romps on video.

Naturally, Crane's first marriage disintegrates before too long, but he moves right on, marrying his "Hogan's Heroes" co-star Patricia (Maria Bello), who swears that she understands him and therefore won't interfere with his pursuit of a good time. Even though he has some leeway on the home front, however, Crane is still constricted by jealousy in the form of his buddy Carpenter. The relationship between these two debauched men should be, and for the most part is, the centerpiece of "Auto Focus," but Carpenter is so unsavory and oddly delineated that you almost shy away from this part of the story. Schrader and Dafoe paint Carpenter as pathetic and repulsive but ask you to pity him just the same — for being, possibly, a closeted homosexual in love with Crane, for being unable to pick up chicks without leeching off someone else, and, in a completely incongruous and unnecessary scene, for losing his job with Sony. Most of the exchanges between Crane and Carpenter are delivered as dark comedy (as when Crane notices Carpenter fondling him in a video of a recent orgy) and are therefore too stylized to pack a realistically sad or disturbing punch. Although in real life Carpenter was acquitted of Crane's murder (which remains unsolved to this day), the movie points the finger right at him, not as if he were an evil man or a dispenser of justice, but more as if he were just another bump on the rocky road of life, like the vasectomy that didn't take or the odd female who wouldn't put out.

Indeed, every step of the way, Crane finds some excuse for his behavior, and Schrader follows right along with him, becoming, along with Carpenter and Patricia, an enabler of Crane's perversions. It's no surprise that the only character who resonates is Crane's long-suffering agent (Ron Leibman), who remains kind and caring but doesn't fail to point out to his wayward client that his dirty habits are not doing him any good. If Crane really was as the movie depicts (and, presumably, the book on which it is based), he never defined himself by what he felt or what he did, but only by what he said aloud to himself and other people ("I'm a nice, normal guy!"). In its glossy, rather arch telling of the story, "Auto Focus" lets Crane get away with this, allowing just enough seediness into the story of the pervert and the troll who killed him to make it titillating without being too stark, gruesome, or (heaven forbid!) moralistic. While it may be worth considering that such destructively delusional people might (and probably do) exist, that doesn't mean that we should feel comfortable watching someone else get off on it.

Copyright © 2002 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.