To utilize a neurological disorder at the center of your film’s narrative carries a massive weight of responsibility. Cinema has historically utilized mental illness in a ham-fisted manner—as nothing more than a trope to propel melodrama. The nuances are lost. A delicate touch must be used, and if not gentle, you must at least be aware of how close one can veer towards exploitation. Unfortunately, “The Roads Not Taken,” Sally Potter’s facile study of Leo (Javier Bardem), a man wrought by an unidentified mental illness, ventures far more into the realm of exploitation.
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Leo is bedridden and requires the assistance of his doting daughter Molly—played by Elle Fanning, who delivers the sole decent performance of the film, a fine respite from Bardem’s trite mumblings—to leave his New York apartment. His illness is never actually elaborated upon, but we know that he struggles to remember things, including, at points, basic words—dementia seems most likely, but the film would be better served by specifying. As such, he is treated as a nuisance by most, including his ex-wife, Rita (Laura Linney). Everyone is curt with Leo, but his ex-wife is particularly disgusting in her verbal assaults.
Leo lives directly adjacent to the tracks, and apparently enjoys the noise, a point never really elaborated on. As a character trait, it’s devoid of nuance and feels lacking in thought. From a formal perspective, the location is designed to echo the ‘noise’ inside Leo’s head, as supported by Potter’s sound design, which is well crafted, bombarding us with the frenetic echoes of urbanity. It’s certainly successful in promoting Leo’s isolation, but “The Roads Not Taken” relies upon it far too much. Characterization is lost to a superficial, if well realized, device.
The film follows three interweaving narratives. There’s the real world, containing the most egregious sequences in which Bardem portrays his character as a bumbling bundle of confusion, and two hallucinatory fantasies. In one, Leo lives in Mexico and shares an apparently precarious relationship with his high school sweetheart, Dolores (Salma Hayek). In the other, Leo has absconded to Greece, where he is a wistful, turtleneck adorned writer. A less than bountiful range of cliches. Roads are certainly taken, but some would best befit a stop sign.
To Potter’s credit, the fantastical and the real are melded together very well—they bleed into each other as if paint combined on a mixing palette, led by Leo’s eyes and well-framed match cuts. “The Roads Not Taken” certainly shines through in a broader technical light, but it feels somewhat of a pointless exercise to nail down the film’s successes. Content is unfortunately lacking. This is the biggest disappointment of “The Roads Not Taken,” especially when considering Potter’s broader filmography—“The Party” is a delightfully rich smorgasbord of interesting characterization. It’s unlike this director to be so vapid.
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And vapid the film is, in spite of its metatextual insistence of meaning. The Grecian Leo is the most illustrative of this. “The writer is always working, my friend,” he says to a bartender, tapping his temple, a pen and notepad in his other fist, “in here.” This isn’t followed up by a delightful and necessary rejoinder nor befuddlement—this silly quip is delivered and expected to be received with the utmost sincerity. Leo, who has abandoned his child to write in solitude, later tells a girl, “You have to make sacrifices when you’re a writer.” To which she replies, “Including your daughter?” Satiating self-awareness, a rare and welcome treat. But far from enough to balance the books.
There’s nothing inherently wrong with the simplicity of “The Roads Not Taken,” but it sorely lacks nuance. And it seems that the conceit of Leo’s mental illness is being wielded, quite brashly, as nothing more than a dramatic device. Perhaps a shrewder approach would lend to the film’s success, but as it stands “The Roads Not Taken” contains all the subtlety of a loud klaxon. A story such as this is far more befitting of a meditative, measured approach than the melodrama presented.
It’s altogether frustrating that the film is so strongly held back by these issues. It does feel as though there is something good to be found here. As mentioned previously, Fanning turns in some admirable work, but the script relies on the melodramatic when what is required is delicacy. There is some fine chemistry between Fanning and Bardem, as well, but it is, again, soured by the insistence upon emotional provocation. “The Roads Not Taken” is perfectly satisfactory in terms of style, but the film leaves much to be desired when it comes to content. [D+]
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