It’s actually surprisingly difficult for me to dislike ‘The Majestic’, and I won’t say that I am all the way to dislike. I really want to like it, but I can’t quite get there.

The idea of an attempt to put together something Capraesque was certainly one that appealed to me. Even the thought of Jim Carrey in the lead role didn’t immediately shatter my hopes. Perhaps not my first choice, but things were still possible. Frank Darabont (‘The Shawshank Redemption’, ‘The Green Mile’) as director, however, made me nervous. Darabont’s short history as director is one of getting where you’re going, and continuing to go anyway.


In ‘The Majestic’, the everymanly named Peter Appleton (Carrey) is a screenwriter working in Hollywood as a ‘nobody special’ who writes B-movies. He suddenly finds himself snatched up by the whirlwind of McCarthyism when he learns that he has ‘been named’, and is on the blacklist. Appleton, a self-proclaimed coward and non-political person, appeals for a way out saying that he will name any names they want him to. As he says, he is a writer and he’ll make up names if he has to.

Unfortunately, it doesn’t look like he’s interesting enough to make a deal with. He’s only interesting enough to have his life ruined. Naturally, he goes out on a binger with his monkey (don’t ask me), wrecks his car, falls off a bridge, smashes his head, loses his memory, and is washed up on a beach. You knew that was coming right?

We move past the introduction when Appleton wakes up in a small town with no memory of his past. Everyone in town seems to think he looks familiar, especially one man who claims Appleton is his son Luke. It isn’t hard for this man, Harry Trimble (Martin Landau), to convince himself, and the town, that Luke has returned.

The majority of the movie then focuses on the town’s reactions to Luke returning, and Appleton’s reactions to being/being thought to be Luke. Since Luke was MIA, and the town lost quite a few of its young men to the war, Appleton finds himself being made into a rallying point for the town. He is thus much praised. He also, however, finds himself being put under the microscope, not only by Luke’s old girlfriend Adele (Laurie Holden), but by another returned veteran who served with Luke.

Adding to the fun, Harry (that’s Luke’s father, in case you forgot) owns The Majestic, the local movie theater, which is run down and has been closed for years. Sparked to new life by his son’s return, Harry wants to renovate and reopen the place. Appleton thinks it’s a crazy idea, but he isn’t overly hard to convince.

And basically, Appleton goes about being showered with adoration, courting Adele, attending dances mostly in his honor, and learning what it means to ‘be Luke’.


Not to give things away (none of it is really what you would call a surprise), but the point of the story is that Appleton eventually does get his memory back, and it is just before the ‘authorities’ catch up with him. Authorities who are now more convinced that he’s a Communist because he ‘fled’.

As soon as he regains his memory, Appleton snaps right back into his ‘I have no convictions, just tell me where to sign’ mode, and he’s off to the Senate hearing, statement as prepared for him in hand. There is a small confrontation with Adele whose only purpose is to provide the movie a spot to say ‘Luke would have done X’ (oddly, Appleton knows this).

I don’t think it is really giving anything away to say that Appleton succumbs to Luke. In a scene that is somehow subdued and overly dramatic at the same time, Appleton stands up to the Senate Committee (the chief bad guy Commie hater being rather comically played by Bob Balaban).



There is, to be totally fair and honest, a lot that is good about this movie. There is certainly no mistaking that it is throwing itself full force at Capra, and in many ways it does this well. Visually, it is as Capra as one might imagine. In its general theme, it is almost more Capra than Capra. Not only does the small-town, simple, honest, hard-working man win, this movie goes Capra one further and makes it so that that man isn’t even the man in question. That small-town man not only wins the fight proper (against the ‘powers that be’), he also wins the fight over ‘the man who isn’t him’. More than winning in actuality, in this movie that man gets to win in theory. His mere legend wins. He isn’t even around anymore and he gets to go on winning. Capra, I think, would have liked that.


But, there are also a lot of problems here, and in the end they outweigh (to some degree) what is good.

Our point here is going from the man who says he’ll make up names if he has to, to the man who stands up for the first amendment and won’t be bullied, even if it means going to jail. Nothing particularly wrong there, but this movie doesn’t quite make that work.

Appleton is only barely known to us as the first guy. When he hasn’t got his memory, and goes about learning to be Luke, he seems a right enough chap in himself, and not just because he is having Luke thrown at him. He is rather Lukeish on his own. He doesn’t have nearly enough difficulty with the possibility of his being, nor with fitting himself into the role of Luke. When he regains his memory, he whips back into Appleton mode, and manages to recall only that he isn’t Luke, and never was. This may, in fact, be rather true to life as far as what happens when someone regains their memory (and I have no idea), but it doesn’t work in this story. We, in the audience, know that he actually ‘was Luke’ for a while there, and its distracting to see that he doesn’t.

When he is going through his ‘inner turmoil’ in front of the Senate Committee, it seems clear that he is only trying to piece together what to do in terms of how the town thought of Luke, how Adele thinks/will think of him, and by way of, ‘Hey, I could be Luke’. This as opposed to what it seems the audience is probably looking for, which would be something more along the lines of, ‘Hey, I already was Luke’.

This seemed to make the movie take a turn to me. First, the movie is too long for its own good, as the ‘making of Luke’ part goes on and on, whereby we forget about the original Appleton, and his motives/views lose their flavor for us. But, in this overly long bit of the movie, where we are all saying, ‘I get it already’, what we seem to be getting turns out not to be precisely what the movie is saying, or at least what it ends up saying. It seems the end result of the film is that it thinks that given half a chance, and with a little encouragement and a bit of backbone, anyone can become/make themselves Luke. But, what we thought it was saying was that given half a chance, and with a little encouragement, anyone already is Luke. Not miles apart, but different enough to be odd.

Appleton’s character, and Carrey’s portrayal especially (and perhaps the movie in general), tries to take on that Capra-film Jimmy Stewart quality of ‘realer than real’ and ‘livelier than life’, but Carrey doesn’t pull it off very well, and there are times when you feel that the movie is one stumble away from turning positively campy, or perhaps musical-like.

What we have is a movie that takes a lot of Capraesque qualities (besides those mentioned, there is also the ‘give away’ when Appleton plays the piano, the scene where we later discuss the give away, and even the discoverer of the give away’s whole ‘the town needed Luke’ attitude), puts them together, overshoots, and by doing so losing something very Capra. Love him, hate him, even if you are indifferent toward him, Capra is extremely watchable, and this film isn’t, at least not very.


I think this movie is, in theory as well as in some aspects of the execution of that theory, a five-star movie. I have to take away two stars for going so far past too far in so many ways. Nevertheless, I mildly recommend it. If for nothing else, just for what you might call its historic value. To see where Capra might have gone (visually) if he were around today, and also simply by virtue of being exposed to something Capraesque.


Recommended:
Yes

Viewing Format: DVD