Spotlight

Spotlight Date: 23-June-02
Spoiler Rating: Medium

The Whole Wide World (1997)

In the movies, love is something granted by God or Fate which exists outside two people like a shared asset, a fitting compensation for their beauty, goodness, or patience if only they would just recognize it. Romantic movies generally end with the purportedly eternal union of the lovers or, sometimes, their tragic separation. In either case, ecstatic or ironic gratification is built around the idea of divine justice; either the lovers accept their reward of happiness or it is snatched out of their hands after they've lost themselves to it, and we are left to conclude that life is either wonderfully poetic or terribly unfair.

While this formula has brought a tear to my eye before, I've decided that I need more from a romantic film. Why should I watch another tale of two people with little or no personalities stumbling upon a pot of gold or wisdom through no act of their own? For a love story to resonate, I need to understand the personal qualities and circumstances that bring two people together (and, possibly, break them apart), the failings and strengths, the needs and questions of each that are answered by the other. If there is joy, let it be the product of their deliberate communion; if there is loss, let it result from the choices they have made.

Which is why I delight in "The Whole Wide World." This movie is a rare, unforgettable love story that offers two interesting and fleshed-out people who try to reach out to each other over a gulf of idiosyncratic fears, expectations, and fantasies. (It also features the most spectacular kiss I've ever seen on film.) There is no notion of a match made in heaven here ‹ in fact, it's just the opposite. The love portrayed is a yearning for the grounded, earthly, practical pleasures and achievements that two people can derive from each other and their surroundings. The whole wide world, without divine intervention, is a big enough canvas for a great romance.

Based on the book "One Who Walked Alone," by Novalyne Price Ellis, the film concerns her real-life relationship in the 1930s with pulp fiction writer Robert E. Howard, creator of such characters as Conan the Barbarian. Novalyne, played by Renée Zellweger, is a no-nonsense, independent-minded, intelligent Texas woman who is working her way through college as a teacher and who aspires to become a writer. Through a mutual friend, she meets Bob Howard (Vincent D'Onofrio), an awkward, moody man to whom she's drawn because of his imagination and success at getting his stories published. At a slow, careful pace, the movie portrays their long friendship and courtship, during which Novalyne attempts to draw the anti-social Howard out of his fantasy world and out of his house, where his over-affectionate, invalid mother keeps him closely tethered.

The story portrays love not as the end for these two people, but as the means by which they, particularly Robert Howard, can obtain a satisfying future. Zellweger has the harder role as the more down-to-earth lead with less at stake. She deftly depicts Novalyne as a woman who follows most of the rules and dreams of polite society and has definite expectations for her future, but who never seems narrow or self-righteous. She sees Robert Howard clearly, with all his delusions and weaknesses, and yet admires his eccentric talent and strangely internalized nobility. She does not view him as inferior or a rebel that needs to be tamed; rather, she recognizes that his personality and lifestyle are perilous, and she cares for him enough to want to remove him from harm's way. Her love is entirely personal, sprung from her compassion, her desires, and her rather strict expectations of how a life should be lived, and there are lots of strings attached. But Novalyne's offer of love is exactly what makes the movie exciting; we get the sense that we are witnessing Howard's one Big Chance, upon which his whole life depends.

For his part, D'Onofrio is fantastic, finding the perfect vehicle for his native intensity in the tortured character of Howard. He is at once a dangerous animal and a helpless child, brilliant and tender, ferocious when envisioning universes peopled with demons and goddesses, but terrified when faced with the thought of a neighborhood Christmas party. He is extremely sad, but not pathetic. He is aware that he is a "misfit" skulking precariously on the outskirts of society, and that Novalyne is right to try to prod him into it, but his terror is too great to allow him to give in to her. He is trapped --- partially but not entirely by his mother, whom the movie wisely doesn't dismiss as the easy villain. Howard's real problem (perhaps planted and nurtured by his mother but now much larger than she) is that he feels more secure in the fictional worlds he creates, where he can imagine himself triumphing over fear, pain, death, and confusion, than in the actual world in which he lives. He needs Novalyne, but she is firmly planted in a reality where he doesn't have the courage to live; she wants to help him and make a life with him, but his isolation is impregnable.

This is a true story, and a story truly told, about real people with real hang-ups and desires who came together in an extraordinary way. There is no storybook ending. But despite the pain it depicts, watching "The Whole Wide World" is wholly satisfying. It dares to show us the personal reasons two individuals came together and the internal forces that broke them apart, which are things most romantic movies avoid in their (Robert Howard-like) attempt to avoid the messiness of life and human interaction.

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