Review
Review Date: 17-August-03
Spoiler Rating: Medium
Juju Judgment: Junk
The Secret Lives of Dentists (2003)
"The Secret Lives of Dentists" reminded me of Dostoevsky, though such a comparison is higher praise than it deserves. The similarity lies in the use of fever, as both an atmospheric motif and an actual incident of the plot, to depict a man's submission to a crippling inner turmoil. Instead of the man's soul, however, the movie has at stake his carefully scripted and diligently earned upper middle-class lifestyle, and it fails to achieve true wisdom or emotion by not giving this lifestyle enough respect. "The Secret Lives of Dentists" wants to be an incisive look at the paradoxical nature of married life --- how it is both unfeasible and necessary --- but it is instead a jarring mockery of the very things its characters appear to be fighting for.
The man in turmoil in this case is David Hurst (Campbell Scott), a 38-year-old dentist who shares a beautiful suburban home, an idyllic country cabin, three boisterous daughters, and a thriving practice with his wife, Dana (Hope Davis). After ten apparently smooth years of marriage, David receives a shock when he suddenly realizes that Dana may be having an affair. The movie unfolds primarily from his point of view, as his fear, suspicion, and agitation grow to affect not only his sanity but the health of everyone in the family. David's personal suffering includes hallucinations involving a disgruntled patient named Slater (Denis Leary, suddenly become Willem Dafoe), who appears as a bigger, more lifelike version of the classic red devil sitting on one's shoulder to express the angry and pessimistic viewpoints in which the normally impassive David would never indulge.
The trouble with stories about strained marriages is that you mostly see the characters at their worst, when they're jealous, angry, dishonest, or in denial. This undermines the success of the tale from the get-go, because if you don't care for the people or their relationship, it's hard to maintain interest in their pain or its outcome. Such is the case with "The Secret Lives of Dentists," where we're left to squirm uncomfortably with the emotionally impotent David and cannot get a clear handle on Dana, who exists, for the most part, just outside the range of the camera's (and David's) vision. The absence of sympathetic main characters leaves the viewer with only the more superficial things to latch onto, i.e., the Hursts' pretty children and possessions. Indeed, as David himself admits, it's the whole package that he's terrified of losing: the husband-and-wife team bringing home the bacon and raising the family, with the two cars and the big house and the weekend getaways. (No Golden Retriever though; maybe that's their problem.) While we're not sure exactly what Dana desires (although we can guess at the end), we know that David doesn't just want these things, he needs them: to give his life structure, to satisfy his craving for permanence, and to prevent him from losing all sense of self.
So, we're dealing with a man whose imagination is limited, personality fragile, and independence nonexistent. That's okay. As secret lives go, I bet that's pretty common. But even as the film focuses on people who need a life built on trappings as much as feelings, it portrays that life as somewhat shallow and absurd. Director Alan Rudolph paints the traditional family as laughably chaotic, as many others have done before, but he takes the wrong tack and conveys sarcasm more than affection. Throughout the picture, Rudolph peppers the domestic gravity with black comedy, mostly through Slater, who becomes annoyingly redundant after the first couple of scenes. His clichéd brand of poker table philosophy doesn't resonate as a reflection of David's inner conflict and feels more like the last resort of a screenwriter frustrated by how to get a laconic central character to express himself. Slater's lowbrow antics and the crudely injected humor of other minor characters (David's hygienist, an impertinent doctor) do little but muddle the plot and blur the distinction between David's stress-induced delirium and the everyday confusion of his life. In addition, the representation of parenting as an exhausting, thankless, crazy gig gets a little too enthusiastic; what with innumerable scenes of children vomiting, as well as the imaginary Slater's smoking, drinking, and peeing by the side of the road, David's experience seems more like a post-bender nightmare than a rough spot he'll remember nostalgically in his golden years, when all the turmoil will look like so much middle aged foolishness.
The blending of the ridiculous and the dramatic seems to point to the conclusion that adult life involves tricky negotiation between pleasure and pain, togetherness and isolation, order and disarray --- like the struggle of a feverish mind grappling to bring things back into proper focus --- and that this is why people like David crave as much stability as possible. However, without inherently likable characters and with such a jumbled view of their life to go on, you don't come away from "The Secret Lives of Dentists" feeling that the Hursts should try to preserve what they've established, even though it isn't perfect and will be difficult to maintain. It's one thing to argue that marriage and family are worthy, if impracticable, mainstays for life, and another to say that these things are impossible constructs relied upon by people who can't feel satisfied without them. The movie, I think, shoots for the former message but ends up with the latter.
Copyright © 2003 The Jujube (M. I. Kim). All rights reserved.
