Reuben, Reuben (1983)

Cast:
Tom Conti, Kelly McGillis (in her film debut), Roberts Blossom, Cynthia Harris, and Joel Fabiani

Director:
Robert Ellis Miller

Synopsis:
Tom Conti stars in the titular role, a drunken, womanizing Scottish poet, Gowan McGland, who preys upon the bored stiff femmes of a New England college town. By swooning over them with his undeniably irresistible poetry and a wit without equal, it all inexorably ends in the same place, a bedroom full of passionate love making – all perfectly under the noses of the characteristically affluent spouses (or so he believed!)
Nevertheless, the circumstances take a hurried, and rather unanticipated change when he meets a young, strikingly attractive student, Geneva Spofford (Kelly McGillis), who has a grander influence on him than he can admit. And yet, behind that modest farmer’s daughter facade, lies the source of an apparent reawakening of the archetypal slothful poet, forcing to him to get a grip on his life – or else!

Undoubtedly Man’s Best Friend
William Harris
V
ery much in the British tradition of quality, Robert Ellis Miller’s Reuben, Reuben is incontestably modest, wittily intimate, and incessantly intelligent. Based on the novel (of the same name) by Peter De Vries and subsequent stage adaption, Reuben, Reuben doesn’t fail to deliver the same sense of satiric jocularity Peter De Vries was best known for. Featuring a cast of both honoured and emerging stars – for the era anyway – audiences will spill out of their seats for this Academy Award nominated film, in all theatrical glory.
As is the stereotypical poet long since misplaced his muse (among a few screws as all good artists do eventually), Gowan McGland (Tom Conti) takes a scheduled exile to the colonies to escape his speedily self-destructing life. Once there, he continues in his leech-like fashions as he beds the bored wives of the suburban town and, for lack of better terminology: abuses, the luxurious lunches and dinners of the credulous, affluent smug bourgeois husbands.
Rather unexpectedly, however, he falls for the most implausible of women: a young, strikingly beautiful daughter (Kelly McGillis – in her film debut) of a mere chicken farmer. And yet, behind that modest farmer’s daughter facade, lies the source of an apparent reawakening of the archetypal slothful poet, forcing to him to get a grip on his life – or else!
Tom Conti, who stole Merry Christmas, Mr. Lawrence (1983), from superstar David Bowie, draws out all the intricacies of McGland's idiosyncratic character and admirably conveys the drunken, womanizing, and slothful artist wonderfully. His masterful act is certainly Academy Award material. While there is no doubt much credit due to Epstein for the always appreciated waggishness and shrewd quip, it is the respectable delivery of the words that leaves the audience with both sympathy and bafflement after every remark – instilled vibrantly in his life ending speech, including the famous words “I've always seen myself as backing toward the grave, tooth by tooth, poem by poem,” (since Gowan has virtually ceased to write, one might think that he thinks he'll live forever!)
Nevertheless, as impressively as Conti delivers, so does his fellow supporting actors whose appearances are often too brief. The film’s landscape is full of that eras best New York performers, including, a considerable amount of praise for Kelly McGillis as the bright and enchanting, Geneva; Roberts Blossom who proves to be quite endearing as her independent thinking grandfather (there is of course, nothing “mere” about chicken farming!) Alongside them, the sight of both Cynthia Harris and E. Katherine Kerr only betters the film with their ultimately too brief and jokey observations about McGland and his unruly habits.
Reuben, Reuben remains the central piece in his collection of later works of the director Robert Ellis Miller who earned nominations earlier in his career for his work in The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter (1968), and Breaking Point (1963). Regardless of the seemingly lengthy dip in success, Miller’s contribution to this particular film cannot be overlooked, as Reuben, Reuben features his signature style of properly translating well-known novels into popular silver screen works.
Veteran screenwriter Julius J. Epstein (best known for co-writing Casablanca) has done a marvelous job on this film adaptation of Peter De Vries witty 1964 novel. He has taken great care to keep its clever textures intact. Epstein clearly has a fondness for De Vries's relentlessly intriguing language; the Reuben, Reuben screenplay is full of - without being overstuffed with - good lines. This is established perfectly when a priest from the local Anglican Church invites him to attend services so he can “feel a member of the congregation,” to which the poet responds “Who is she?” It has the kind of appreciation for the oddness of words one seldom finds in films.
Reuben, Reuben is, without a doubt, not a predominantly fat film in terms of budget as one can clearly tell from the lack of higher quality visual screening. Nonetheless, it may be that possible absence of paper that gives rise to the effectively quaint lighting and camera work. The setting, additionally, is well-off in reflecting the neighbourhood to whom the original novel is based upon: the Welsh poet, Dylan Thomas – the key being the rather mundane landscape for such an odd and almost sinister sequence of events to occur (of course Thomas’s death wasn’t as interesting.)
Unfortunately, the musical scores itself weren’t of any noteworthy praise, only acting to further an already dramatic moment as opposed to making it even more so.
Though Reuben, Reuben is ultimately gratifying, and as tastefully acted as any American film of that year, it does have a problem that could very well be intentional. As the movie-goers see it, the life of Gowan McGland (Tom Conti) is a little too pleasantly humorous to upkeep the film's concluding character. Had it been viler and more punishing, the viewer might feel that what happens is both foreseeable and arbitrary, a paradox usually embraced by great comedy. As it is, Reuben, Reuben turns out to be a gag, the kind that, like a pun, calls attention to itself and seems to be at the expense of the audience. It is the lapse in identification that seems to leave some more perplexed as to the central goal of the film (aside from the fact that you don’t mess with a dentist!)