Genius

Director Michael Grandage's movie Genius about the relationship between legendary Scribners editor Maxwell Perkins and flamboyant author Thomas Wolfe has received generally tepid reviews. I for one am delighted an editor is finally receiving some screen time! Wolfe was an author whose moods, enthusiasms, and output were not easily corralled, even by someone with Perkins's experience. After all, he'd brought works to the public from other outsized personalities and authors with personal difficulties—notably Ernest Hemingway and F. Scott Fitzgerald.

It's easy to imagine the slammed door that would greet an author today who showed up with a 5,000-page manuscript as Wolfe did with his second book, Of Time and the River. The challenging task of turning this into a readable manuscript epitomizes the editor's dilemma, as Perkins puts it, "Are we really making books better, or just making them different?" Getting 5,000 pages down to a still-hefty 900 made it different, all right. And better, at least in the sense of more likely to be read, too.

Colin Firth, as Perkins, keeps his hat on during almost the entirety of the movie, symbolic perhaps of how his character tried to keep a lid on his difficult author. Jude Law as Wolfe is by turns outrageous, contrite, drunk, and sentimental. Pretty much like the novels, actually. His performance is consistent and always interesting. He shows Wolfe as a man with a lot of words bottled up inside him who couldn't always control the way they poured out.

It's odd to see an all-British and Australian cast playing so many titans of American literary history, including Perkins and Wolfe, Guy Pearce as Fitzgerald, and Dominic West as Hemingway. (The Hemingway scene necessitated an ending credit for "marlin fabricator.") The women in the lives of the protagonists are Laura Linney as Mrs. Perkins, perfect as always, and Nicole Kidman, who believably portrays the obsessed Mrs. Bernstein. She's left her husband to cultivate and promote the much younger Wolfe and is not lacking a flair for the dramatic herself.

The movie is based on the National Book Award-winning Perkins biography by A. Scott Berg, transformed into a screenplay by John Logan. New Yorker critic Richard Brody dings the script for its departures from the detailed and more richly peopled original, including the book's fuller explanation for the rupture between Wolfe and Scribners. While I disagree with some critiques of the filmed story, Brody says a lawsuit and Wolfe's unsavory political views played a part, and leaving the latter out seems a mistake. A fuller exploration of the break-up could have put some meat on the bones.

Portraying in cinema an intrinsically intellectual and abstract enterprise is difficult (The Man Who Knew Infinity struggled with the same challenge.) Like me, reviewer Glenn Kenny at Roger Ebert.com apparently had not read the book, so did not have Brody's reservations. Kenny found "the exchanges between editor and author exhilarating. Logan's script . . . is invested in the craft of words like few other movies nowadays, even those ostensibly about writers." Wolfe blasted onto the American literary scene like a runaway train and left it before he could accomplish a judicious application of the brakes. Yet, he eventually realized who'd kept him on track, as his moving deathbed letter attests.

It's a movie about Thomas Wolfe and Max Perkins, with four great actors: Colin Firth as Perkins, sporting a New England accent with overtones of having studied in England; Jude Law as Wolfe, sporting a generic Southern accent; Laura Linney as Mrs. Perkins and the always welcome Nicole Kidman as Wolfe's mistress. It's acting pyrotechnics time and extremely satisfying.

"Genius" is the story of the great editor Maxwell Perkins and his relationship with Thomas Wolfe, author of Look Homeward Angel, You Can't Go Home Again, and other novels and stories.

One thing before I start - the IMDb message board has to be the only place where people ADMIT they've never heard of Thomas Wolfe, much less read anything he wrote. I'm not sure I would be so forthcoming with that info.

The cast is fantastic: Colin Firth as Perkins, Jude Law as Wolfe, Laura Linney as Mrs. Perkins, and Nicole Kidman as Aline Bernstein, who brings Wolfe's novel to Perkins in real life.

Perkins is shown as a hard-working man, working with people like Fitzgerald and Hemingway and trying to balance his work with family, which consists of a wife and five daughters. He reads Wolfe's 300,000+ word novel and realizes the man is great genius - he also writes too many words.

When he talks to Wolfe, he realizes why - he talks too many words, too. He's unmarried and having an affair with stage designer Aline Bernstein. It's a turbulent relationship that lasts around five years.

His relationship with Perkins is turbulent too. At first Wolfe accepts Perkins' drastic cuts in his work; later on, he fights them. Nevertheless, Wolfe becomes a son to Perkins and Wolfe considers him his only friend.

Jude Law and Nicole Kidman are unrecognizable in makeup, hair, and accent, and they both do terrific jobs. Law is a bombastic, exuberant, undisciplined Wolfe; Firth, who actually looks more like Thomas Wolfe than Law, is always excellent. Here he plays a restrained man who allows room for the temperaments of his various writers and attempts to be the voice of reason.

Guy Pearce has a small role as F. Scott Fitzgerald. Something I read said he stole the movie. I love Guy Pearce, I would see him in anything (and have) but to me he wasn't Fitzgerald. Fitzgerald was a sweet-looking man, also a weak and drunken one, and Pearce did not portray that. Probably he did what the script and director dictated.

I found this movie a good story that was not well-paced and on the talky side. I know today we're not used to movies with a lot of dialogue, but there's always room for sharp, witty dialogue as in "All About Eve," for instance. This didn't have enough of that kind of writing and became tedious and sagged in spots.

The end of the film is very touching. I recommend seeing this for the performances.

A bunch of great actors portraying a bunch of great writers (plus a publicist, though that would be an understatement for the role he played). As you can imagine the acting is superb, male and female talent have a lot to bite and chew off with their roles. The dialog is great and I was surprised this didn't do better or was promoted better (at least in Germany).

Then again it's not an easy watch, what with lots of dialog and drama. But the tension it builds (especially concerning the relationships of the characters within) is really great. Flaws are here to be exposed and the actors cherish them, playing them perfectly. It's a period piece and therefor may interest some people more than others. But if you like good drama, you could do worse

This was a very thoughtful, moving film, seamlessly made and directed with divine skill. The storytelling was so trans-formative that both my husband and I could barely leave the theater till every credit ended and the last note sounded. We have a symbiotic relationship with England and hats off to this film. Colin Firth was perfection. Jude Law in a southern role was a moment of challenge but I got over it and let go along for the brilliant ride. Enjoy seeing Nicole Kidman and Laura Linney in every scene give award winning performances and I hope others agree with nominations. Go see this movie. It is top rate in every aspect. The mood, music and total experience is a gift!