The Great New Wonderful
Issue #28
Review of the post-9/11 abstract dramatic film
By Rebecca Flint-Marx
Published: June 1st, 2006 | 2:14pm
In The Great New Wonderful, Maggie Gyllenhaal plays a fiercely competitive cake designer. Her face is all stern concentration and dismay: Only once or twice in the course of the film does her expression twist into the sly half-grin that’s become something of her trademark. This brief flash of wry levity in the literal face of despondency in many ways sums up The Great New Wonderful, which is set in New York City in the months following September 11. It is the story of several characters who occasionally come together, whether in their struggle to cope or, more literally, in a crowded elevator.
Although the film was billed by some as a “September 11th” film, the actual event is referenced only obliquely: One character uses a noise machine to blot out the sounds of sirens outside her window, while another glances toward the sky as a plane passes overhead.
The catastrophe serves a more prismatic function, allowing director Danny Leiner to examine the more quiet traumas suffered by his characters. In addition to Gyllenhaal’s designer, there’s a couple (played by Judy Greer and Tom McCarthy) who are dealing with their increasingly violent young son; two South Asian security guards (Nasureedin Shah and Sharat Saxena) whose conflicting temperaments come to a head when they are assigned to protect a visiting dignitary; an older woman (Olympia Dukakis) enduring a dull, loveless marriage; and an outwardly sunny office worker (Jim Gaffigan) increasingly tormented by the shrink (Tony Shalhoub) who has come to his workplace to help its employees deal with an unnamed tragedy.
Despite the film’s multiple storylines, nothing much happens. This isn’t an insult. Rather than attempt to find answers to questions that haven’t really even been posed, Leiner and his screenwriter Sam Catlin prefer to let their characters simmer in their anxiety. We don’t know, for example, why Greer and McCarthy’s child has become such a monster, or how Dukakis’ marriage atrophied. Leiner and Catlin’s refusal to find tidy solutions feels honest and true, especially in a movie whose milieu is a city plunged into despair and almost paralyzing worry. Which is not to imply that The Great New Wonderful is a downer. By its end, most of its protagonists have found some way to persevere and, as the title suggests, discovered something within themselves as unexpected and beautiful as the film’s title suggests.
Comments
Please login to be able to comment on this article.
more