WORLD TRAVELER (Bart Freundlich, 2002)

Reviewed: April 29th, 2002 - May 2, 2002

I saw this movie over a week ago but I haven't been able to bring myself to write about it until now (it's also taken me four days to finish this damn review). Because I don't wanna do what I know I'm gonna have to do. I don't wanna have to ultimately not recommend it. To say all the many things that are wrong with it. To get angry at it for all its lost potential. I wanted to like this movie so badly. It's so earnest. And it tries so hard to be so profound and serious. And the actors are so great. But World Traveler just doesn't work. There's no way around it. I liked many things about it... but there's just too much wrong, wrong, wrong. Ultimately a failure. Such a shame. This movie could have been fantastic.

Almost every major critic seems to be comparing World Traveler to Bob Rafelson's seminal Five Easy Pieces (1970), but watching it, I kept thinking about Alison Maclean's brilliant Jesus' Son (1999). Both star Billy Crudup as substance abusers on a rambling, episodic road trip. Let me do a laundry list of all the reasons why Jesus' Son succeeds when World Traveler doesn't.

(1) Crudup as the protagonist of Jesus' Son (his character's name is Fuck Head) is well developed. He's a nice guy. We care about him. Crudup as the protagonist of World Traveler is a total blank. And he's essentially an asshole. We aren't given any reason to care about him. That said... I did. I honestly did only because Crudup is such a fucking phenomenal actor. But reading other critics it seems I'm in a microscopic minority. Totally understandable. We're not given any reason to care. Writer/director Bart Freundlich should have either made Crudup more sympathetic or at least shaded him in better and thus allowed us to empathize with this asshole.

(2) Jesus' Son has a powerful romance to hang itself onto. Attention filmmakers: if the love story at the heart of a film is strong enough most everyone is willing to overlook a hell of a lot of other crap. What does World Traveler have in the way of romances? Not much. A few of the individual segments of Crudup's road trip lead to possible (sometimes actual) flings. Most of them are just teases though, which would be fine if they were more interesting or realized. For example, Crudup picks up this hitchhiker named Meg. They get to talking, we learn a little about Meg. Meg is played by the remarkable, young Liane Balaban (I'm pretty sure no relation to Bob). She dominates the screen. I immediately fell in love with her. She rules. We wanna see so much more of her. Meg and Crudup go to an airport together. What will happen...? Well who the fuck knows! because Meg instantly leaves the story, never to be seen again. When we're most wondering where this storyline was headed and what will develop, Freundlich ends it. And to add insult to injury, the reason this storyline ends is so that Freundlich can insert a contrived, way too overly expositional scene in which Crudup runs into an old high-school classmate at said airport. They drink and reminisce, and we're told how much of an asshole Crudup was back when he was younger. Get it... nothing's changed! ........Get it? Get it? Do you get it? Once an asshole always an asshole! Crudup's classmate is also shocked to learn Crudup's settled down with a wife and kid (who he walked out of in the opening scene of World Traveler, hence the central premise of the film is born) because he was such a womanizer way back when. Get it? Once a womanizer, always a womanizer! Get it? .......wait, but do you get it? It's as if, finally, midway through the film, Freundlich realized oh shit I've really gotta put the character development into super turbocharged overdrive, this guy's such a nobody right now... what can I do???!!! Uh... super false High-School Classmate Reminiscence Scene! Ding! Expound as much information in as short a time period as possible. VERY VERY BAD Idea. It doesn't work.

Now I realize the nature of an episodic film obviously means storylines have to be dispensed with in a somewhat quick fashion. But Freundlich dispenses with them too quickly, maybe because he's made the wrong film. Maybe World Traveler shouldn't have been sprawling, should have been more focused somehow (obviously difficult to figure out how exactly given the central conceit of the film). Back to romances, the film's main one is the way too short-lived fling (understand I'm not saying that the romance should have been longer but that the storyline should have been expanded, and thus whatever actual romance is there would be all the more effective) between Crudup and the [insert all words used to describe Samantha Morton here] Julianne Moore. This is the longest, most fascinating episode in World Traveler and it still felt abbreviated. Expansion could have gone a long way towards fleshing Crudup out a bit, but Freundlich seems so fucking stubbornly insistent on making him vapid at all costs. I think the Coen Brothers' The Man Who Wasn't There is a perfect template of how to handle a passive protagonist who never does much of anything and everything simply happens to. The Coen Bros used a lot of voice-over, yes, but I'm not necessarily saying that's how Freundlich should have solved his problem. What Freundlich should have picked up on was the Coen Bros use of a tight plot and fantastic supporting characterization to develop their main character through osmosis. Freundlich makes a major mistake in his shortchanging the supporting characters cause then he's left with nothing.

(3) Another thing Jesus' Son has going for it is that it spans many years, thus its episodes strike precisely and accurately as glimpses into a man's life, scenes and moments which add up to a complex characterization. World Traveler doesn't span much time, and that we can't hold against it, but the fact that its scenes and moments do not add up to anything, we can. Thinking more and more about World Traveler I realize it's essentially a shallow, empty film just like its lead character, and it lacks any of the humanity and warmth and compassion that a film like Jesus' Son has in spades.

Towards the end of World Traveler, Crudup goes to meet his father. We find out his father abandoned him and his mother oh-so-long ago. Wait... get it? His father abandoned him... so he abandoned his son! GET IT?!

C'mon Freundlich! This is so fucking BOR-ING! While these father/son scenes in and of themselves are handled effectively, particularly in the acting, this is a trite, trite, trite way of delivering a character's ultimate motivation. I want to make it very very clear that I don't think motivation should ever be rammed down a viewer's throat. It should either be subtle or even nonexistent. I really don't think we ever have to know exactly why Crudup left his wife and kid if the rest of the movie is engaging and powerful. It'd merely be hinted at. There's a big difference between a character being a blank and a character's motivation being constantly apparent, a big LCD screen in the back of a stadium.

Moreover, the very end of World Traveler (that is, after Crudup leaves his father's house) does not work because it is easy and undeserved. However it is executed very gracefully and I guess simply because of Crudup, it did move me. Again, Freundlich has a knack for execution... maybe he should just be a director. Leave the writing to people more talented.

Additional note: The dumb dream sequences are completely unnecessary. They don't work at all, making but lame metaphorical sense.

Despite the fact I've just spent however many paragraphs slamming World Traveler, it does bear repeating that this film is a noble failure. I think it would be completely wrong to call Freundlich pretentious, an obnoxiously overused term. World Traveler is not pretentious because Freundlich is sincere. He may not be hitting notes of extreme truth like he thinks he is, but I truly believe he tried his best with this film. And I do applaud him for attempting what could have been, in different hands, a masterpiece. At least he's taking risks. And if you're just in the mood to see some actors at the peak of their craft or to study how a potentially great film can veer so wildly off track, see World Traveler.

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