By Scott Ross
A miraculous dramatic comedy from a period notably short on intelligent movies for adults.
I was absolutely knocked out in 1989 by the writer/director Steve Kloves’ wonderful portrait of two lounge pianist brothers and the girl singer — as such creatures used to be known — whose presence in the act speeds its inevitable disintegration, and it looks (and sounds) equally good today, and certainly better by comparison with what’s been on view in the years since.
Before he got seduced by the relatively easy money afforded by adapting the Harry Potter series, Kloves was one of our most promising screenwriters, with a wonderful grasp of human relationships and a dazzling gift for sharp, funny dialogue that felt entirely organic, not the usual strategically-placed sour wisecracks that inform so much contemporary American comedy. The Fabulous Baker Boys concerns a pair of sibling musicians, Jack (Jeff Bridges) and his older brother Frank (Beau Bridges) whose long-term dual-piano act is slowly killing Jack’s psyche and eating away at his natural talents. When in desperation they audition female singers and stumble upon the brash Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer) she gradually lifts their act and enables them to play much better venues than they’re used to, but Jeff’s and Susie’s growing mutual attraction threatens to derail their progress. It’s a rich, funny group portrait of genuine human beings in conflict with themselves and each other that almost never stumbles dramatically. I could do without the needy little girl Jack lets come in and go out of his apartment window more or less at her whim, although the cliché is sharpened from what feels like a flabby plot device when Susie comments critically on the situation.
And that observation constitutes the entirety of my negative response.
The Fabulous Baker Boys was beautifully shot (by Michael Ballhaus), crisply edited (by William Steinkamp), effectively scored (Dave Grusin) and imaginatively directed by its writer, with three spectacular performances at its center. Beau Bridges, whose once-interesting career had by the late 1980s more or less dissolved, gives Frank Baker marvelous contours. Although he is incapable of recognizing, as Jack does, how lousy their act is, even he cannot ignore its declining popularity. He embodies a certain smug middle-class complacency that basks in getting by without ever having to extend yourself, or take a chance. Frank is content to play the same song the same way he and Jack have always played it, for the rest of his life. He’s a mediocre man, happy in his mediocrity; he considers moribund perfection sacrosanct. He fusses endlessly with minutia, and has no idea how stifling the routine he cherishes has become (and maybe always was) for his younger brother. He’s stuffy and somewhat humorless and yet you never dislike him for it, or dismiss him, even when it becomes obvious that Jack is subsuming his genuine talent for his less gifted brother’s sake.
Jeff Bridges had by 1989 amassed a trunkful of great characterizations yet for some reason true movie stardom seemed to elude him. Some of us thought it was in his grasp in 1984 when in the director John Carpenter’s surprisingly sweet-natured Starman he brought the shape-shifting alien forth from an initial blankness to full humanity. Yet even though his performance received a Best Actor Academy Award nomination, the movie that contained it was a flop at the box-office. For years that seemed to be Bridges’ fate: To give great natural performances in movies no one saw. Even when the picture was as good as The Fabulous Baker Boys it under-performed, only becoming a hit when it went to video cassette. (There was a message there that Hollywood overlooked; people were breaking their movie-going habit, catching up with good work only when it hit the home video rental houses.) As Jack Baker, Jeff Bridges performs miracles by working for minimal effect. He lets us see how Jack’s devotion to his older brother is killing his performer’s soul without a lot of wordy exposition and overstatement. When Jack plays jazz after hours in a small club we see the bliss on Bridges’ face, and the look of contentment speaks volumes; it’s the first time in the movie that Jack hasn’t looked pinched and depressed. Bridges’ natural sexiness pours from him, and that too is without ostentation, so that when Jack and Susie come together it feels as inevitable as the eventual breakup with Frank.
Playing Susie between two great performances (Madame de Tourvel in Dangerous Liaisons and Katya in The Russia House) Michelle Pfeiffer in 1989 was uniquely poised to become one of the most important figures in American movies. Yet despite those roles, and this one, she never really did. I have never been able to comprehend why an actress as good as Pfeiffer, and as beautiful, seemed unable to catapult into the stratosphere of movie stars, especially after The Fabulous Baker Boys, in which she gave one of the great, unforced sexy performances not merely of its era but in American movies. Although Susie is too smart to accept Frank’s tired musical platitudes she isn’t as knowledgeable about show business as she thinks she is. Yet her beauty, and her intelligent way with a song, lifts the brothers’ act higher than either could imagine. When Frank is called home by an emergency she and Jack turn the act into something special by being themselves, but even though Susie triumphs, she goes too far; her incendiary performance of “Makin’ Whoopee” drives the tony nightclub audience wild but it’s also a very public seduction of Jack, which leads both to their becoming involved and to the ultimate dissolution of the act.
That Susie is a former hooker doesn’t quite explain her risky behavior on stage with Jack; although she is not naturally vicious, she seems to need not merely to shake things up but on some subconscious level to destroy them. If a male screenwriter or director dared to depict a Susie Diamond in today’s intolerant atmosphere he would doubtless be pilloried as a sexist “hater.” Thus do idiot conventions of the moment poison popular art and obliterate the possibilities of complex human characterization. No wonder all we get at the movies now are superhero comics.
Text copyright 2022 by Scott Ross
So few critics, so many poets 