Movie Review—Genius

Genius

by Peter J. O'Connell

Genius. Released: June 2016. Runtime: 104 mins. MPAA rating: PG-13 for some thematic elements and suggestive content. 

Geniuses: F. Scott Fitzgerald, Ernest Hemingway, Thomas Wolfe, Maxwell Perkins . . . wait, who? Yes, Maxwell Perkins, who has been called an “editor of genius” both for the great writers he “discovered” and championed and his own skill at the craft of editing. 

Genius is a story of the relationship between Perkins and Thomas Wolfe. The film begins in 1929 when Wolfe (Jude Law) brings a massive manuscript, entitled O Lost, to Perkins (Colin Firth) at the Scribner's publishing house. Perkins struggles with both the text and the author but eventually gets the work to publishable size under a new title, Look Homeward, Angel, which becomes a classic.

A friendship springs up between the two men, who are of contrasting personality types. The near-alcoholic Wolfe is disheveled and logorrheic and is in a relationship with Aline Bernstein (Nicole Kidman), a married theatrical set and costume designer much older than he is. Perkins is a staid workaholic—he works in his office, on the commuter train, and in his suburban home—who always wears a wide-brimmed hat--in the office, on the commuter train, in his suburban home. (This affectation is never explained or even referred to in the film.)

The relationship of editor and author begins to be almost a surrogate father-son one. The relatively early death of his father affected Wolfe deeply, and Perkins, according to his wife, Louise (Laura Linney), always wanted a son, but had five lively daughters instead. Perkins, however, seems more interested in his work than in his family.

And Perkins has to work hard to bring Wolfe's second novel, Of Time and the River, down to publishable size. The original manuscript fills three crates, and Wolfe keeps adding pages as Perkins keeps cutting. Moreover, Wolfe wants to “liven up” Perkins. This effort is strikingly illustrated when Wolfe takes the editor to an African-American night club and has a jazz version of Perkins' favorite song, “Flow Gently, Sweet Afton,” played. 

Eventually, tensions fueled by the Wolfe-Perkins relationship arise between Aline and Thomas, Aline and Maxwell, and Louise and Maxwell.  Hemingway (Dominic West) puts in an appearance to denigrate Wolfe, and F. Scott Fitzgerald (Guy Pearce) shows up several times. Fitzgerald has the opposite problem to Wolfe's logorrhea; he has writer's block. He also has a problem that he considers more significant than any of Wolfe's; he has to care for a wife who is descending into madness.  

As Wolfe's fame grows, other publishing houses attempt to “poach” him from Scribner's. Wolfe also becomes irritated by comments that his success is due to Perkins rather than to his own genius. Finally, there is a break between the two men.

Director Michael Grandage has chosen a cast of almost exclusively British and Australian actors to play the iconic American characters of the story. Jude Law has the difficult task of having to portray a character who is simultaneously appealing and annoying. He succeeds at the second part of his task. Colin Firth has the challenge of portraying a character whose own creative inner force is encased in a stolid exterior. He succeeds with the stolidity. One definitely wishes that Grandage had cast a more “New York” actress than Nicole Kidman as Aline Bernstein.

Grandage also has chosen a palette for the film that is grayish/brown, much like the clothes worn by the characters. Presumably, that was done to fit the Depression era in which the story takes place. What it actually does, more than create a historical feel, is add an even more muted quality to the action, which, despite the geniuses on display, is quite muted. 

Genius is admirable in its attempt to be a kind of dual biopic about important cultural figures, but as F. Scott Fitzgerald might have said, the movie is definitely “this side of paradise.”

“Footnote” to the film: Thomas Wolfe's literary reputation has undergone several ups and downs. Writers as diverse as Ray Bradbury, Jack Kerouac and Hunter S. Thompson have spoken of his great influence on them. William Faulkner at first admired Wolfe but then concluded that his writing was “like an elephant trying to do the hoochie-coochie.” In 2000, the centenary of Wolfe's birth, literary scholar Matthew Bruccoli published a reconstruction of O Lost, the pre-Perkins version of what became Look Homeward, Angel, and proclaimed it superior to the published version.