Now Showing: Insignificance

We all have that movie that leaves us speechless. It ends; the lights come up, and you feel… numb. The feeling may only last until you get outside, or it may stay with you for years.

For me, that movie is Insignificance. I don’t remember where I saw it the first time, but I remember the long walk up the aisle and into the lobby, my head spinning from what I just watched. Not in a bad way; not like I’d just seen something so horrific I was afraid to go outside (I’m talking about you, Night of the Living Dead). I just needed time and space to process it. I probably still do.

Here’s what happens in Insignificance: Professor, Actress, Senator, and Ballplayer share various interactions over the course of a long night in a New York hotel room. Although they aren’t mentioned by name, you would have had to have been raised in an isolation tank to not recognize Professor and Actress as representing Albert Einstein and Marilyn Monroe. Dig a bit deeper into your cultural history, and you will discover that Senator represents Joseph McCarthy, and Ballplayer represents Monroe’s Husband, Joe DiMaggio. And while knowing a bit about each player will enhance your enjoyment of Insignificance, it’s still fascinating to listen to their conversation even if you only know them by their movie names.

And what do these four icons talk about in Insignificance? Everything from the Theory of Relativity to the House Un-American Activities Committee to batting averages to the pressures of being a star both in Hollywood and in the solar system. The dialogue is about as wide-ranging as half a dozen less literal movies put together, but it never feels like the characters are talking over your head or down to you. It may not seem possible, but hearing Actress explain Einstein’s theory of the universe using a toy train, a flashlight, and a balloon is both entertaining and enlightening.

Playing such familiar personalities is never easy because the actor has to walk that fine line between character and caricature. It’s a little less daunting for Tony Curtis (Senator) and Gary Busey (Ballplayer) because McCarthy and DiMaggio are less iconic cultural icons. Many people may recognize their names, but few in the audience will be able to judge whether Curtis is doing the man justice with his impersonation. The same goes for Busey playing Joltin Joe. The good news is that they both give compelling performances that stand on their own.

The work of Theresa Russel (Actress) and Michel Emil (Professor) is measured on a different scale. Put a certain-style blond wig on just about anyone and have them talk in a whispery little-girl voice, and nine out of 10 people will guess who they are supposed to be. Russell does so much more than that, first establishing who she is by playing with certain Marilyn mannerisms, then diving deep to show us the woman underneath all that hair and makeup. The same goes for Emil, although it’s debatable whether Einstein’s mannerisms have been as exhaustively detailed as Monroe’s. He certainly looks the part — more than Russel resembles Monroe –, but it is the way he brings that look to life that makes the character so compelling.

With all that history, real and imagined, up on the screen, it takes a strong director to keep it all moving towards a satisfying conclusion, and it’s hard to think of someone more attuned to the task than Nicolas Roeg. It’s more than simply pacing the performances, although that’s critical in a film like Insignificance. Roeg has a strong visual style that supports and enhances the stories each character tells, whether it’s a creepy flashback to McCarthy’s childhood or a cinematic representation of Einstein’s inner thoughts about the universe.

There’s no better combination of Roeg’s command of style and substance than the way he introduces Actress to the audience by taking them to the night Marilyn Monroe filmed her iconic white dress scene for the Billy Wilder classic The Seven Year Itch. Anybody could have shown a Marily character standing over a subway grate, with her skirt blown up. It takes a visionary to take us behind the scenes to show us what it took to capture that image on film.