American Odyssey

"Because it is my name! Because it is the only one I will ever
have. Because I cannot have another ..."

Molly Bloom, in _Molly's Game_

_Molly's Game_ certainly makes great mileage out of its famous name.
Jame Joyce's _Ulysses_ is playfully evoked when a drunken gambler
speaks of being the only Irish poker player in a Brooklyn game run
by Russian Jews. The inspiration behind *that* book, Homer's _Odyssey_,
also comes up: Molly Bloom likens herself to Circe who entertained men
and turned them into swines.

But director Sorkin clearly conceived of Molly, Olympic hopeful turned
Poker Princess turned felon, as Odysseus himself. Played with great
subtlety and depth by Jessica Chastain, she is wily, resourceful,
"a woman of many turns" indeed. She builds a multi-million empire
out of nothing and loses it all; after 15 years of war and wanderlust,
she finds her way home.

The jump-cuts, inserts, montage, egomaniacal poker players, and constant voiceovers by Chastain have invited comparison with _Goodfellas_. I'm
glad Sorkin's film has more in common with his "The Newsroom" than
Scorsese's vulgarian epic or even the Sorkin-penned _The Social Network_.
There are already too many films glorifying sociopathic gangsters and
loutish degenerates; why do critics and audiences find misantropy fun
and "colorful," when their dehumanizing antics are a close cousin to
misogynic behavior and sexual harassment?

Like "The Newsroom," _Molly's Game_ is slightly corny, but inspirational
and fascinating too. It is about an intelligent, observant woman, deeply flawed but still possessing an unshakable core of integrity, trying to herd (and occasionally mother) feral gambling addicts towards a sustainable community without breaking laws or destroying lives. Predictably she
fails, succumbs to guilt, drug-addiction, and intrusion from the real
world in the form of organized-crime and the FBI. The quote from her,
above, is a paraphrase from _The Crucible_, when John Proctor clings
on to tarnished honor before his execution. First-time director
Sorkin has nevertheless channeled Scorsese's hyper-energetic visual style
to good effect. The film is also inevitably a commentary on movies and
the American character. As Manohla Dargis likes to say, every film is a metaphor about Cinema. Molly Bloom's quiet, observant style mirrors the professional actress' routine: absorbing human behavior for future use.
What she overhears about the art world -- that a few critics, curators,
and controlling gatekeepers arbitrarily anoint winners to raise their marketability -- is also what has corrupted art-house cinema.

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Who says actresses are not the auteurs of their own careers. Intentional
or not, Sorkins has cut Molly Bloom from the same archetypal cloth as Chastain's other iconic American heroines Maya (_Zero Dark Thirty_)
and Madeline Elizabeth Sloane (_Miss Sloane_). All are loners driven
to win at any cost. (All three likely vote Republican, just as the
protagonist in "The Newsroom" is a registered Republican.) If Maya
evokes gunslingers in classic Westerns, Sloane could be Achilles in
_Iliad_ -- conquering hero with a fatal flaw.

_Miss Sloane_ and _Molly's Game_ are indeed fascinating mythological
bookends. The protagonist in the earlier film dominates every scene,
her devastating foresight and biting repartee the terror of D.C. Molly
Bloom is brilliant (3.9 GPA and once destined for Harvard Law School),
but she prefers to watch from the sideline. Here Chastain excels
in reaction shots, in the way she casually deflects sexual advances
and hostile tirades in between bouts with Excel spreadsheets. Both
Sloane and Bloom puff themselves up in expensive battle dresses.
Sloane appears cool and elegant, always in control. Bloom may wear
gaudy, revealing outfits but she is much more introverted. (Her
exotic plunging-neckline-with-accountant-glasses look may be lifted
from _A Most Violent Year_.) She hides behind a poker-face, but is
too smart and honest to deny her fears, or the destruction she has
unleashed. She talks mostly in flat introspective voiceovers; in rare
but delicious instances, tremors on her cheek reveal the terror and self-disgust she has held down with adderall and cocaine. In a career
full of compromised women and flat-out villains, Chastain has never
gone to places as dark and soul-destroying as Molly's gambling dens.

Maya at least has a mentor, and Sloane has a boy-toy who turns out
to possess surprising loyalty. By comparison, we don't even catch
a glimpse of Molly's first roommate in Los Angeles. Molly's only
"friend," Pat the driver/bodyguard, promptly betrays her to the
Italian mob. In the ensuing, terrifying beat-down scene and its
two-week aftermath, Molly heals her own injury like John Rambo in
the mineshafts. Her indomitable self-reliance, borne of endless
solitary training sessions on Colorado ski slopes, becomes a
self-imposed prison. Unlike Odysseus, there is not even Greek deities
to whom she can make sacrifices. Or is there? The mob gets rounded
up before it can pressure her into partnership; maybe Hermes is her
patron after all.

By framing his heroine in such extraordinary isolation, Sorkin has
created an unforgettable individualist who never lays blames, asks or
expects mercy. Molly stoically refuses to divulge the identities
and secrets of her unsavory clients despite repeated legal and financial bribes. For all her world-weariness, she is open-mouthed with surprise
when a lawyer or wayward father stands up for her. This stiff-upper-lip heroism wins her the admiration and service of Charlie Jeffey (Edris
Elba), a lawyer who is not even "a little bit shady." The thrust-and-parry between the two headliners becomes the heart of the film; he is the caring father she never had.

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_Molly's Game_ is far from a perfect film. The unlikely reunion with
her therapist father, who illuminates her life-choices in 3 minutes,
works better if we are allowed to treat it as _Knight of Cup_-style
theater of the mind. (After all, the "poor man bagel" episode earlier
marks the film's narrator as unreliable.) The extended end sequence
showing Odysseus back at home, plus flashbacks to her Olympic trial
crash-out, cannot match the frugal poetry of Elizabeth Sloane walking
out of prison. (Jessica Chastain acts with her entire body there, not
just her expressive face; with her hair in a ponytail and shorn of power
suits, she looks 16, fragile but free.) The choice of music could
be improved; Leonard Cohen's "The Stranger Song," which memorably opened Altman's _McCabe and Mrs. Miller_, would have enriched the film by
linking it to yet another pioneer hustling in another Frontier town.
("Ah you hate to see another tired man lay down his hand like he
was giving up the holy game of poker.") But the casting is brilliant.
The girl playing the rebellious Bloom as a teenager has the exact voice
and mannerism one would imagine of Chastain at 14, and Kevin Costner is suitably arrogant and tender as her father. The critique of foundational American traits -- self-reliance and zero-sum capitalism -- is dead
on target. And there is no doubt that Sorkin has created one of the
most psychologically complex and interesting female protagonist in
recent memory. I wish there would be a sequel, ten years down the
road, to tell what has happened to this American archetype.

(for A.)

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