“Somewhere,” which won the Golden Lion at the 2010 Venice Film Festival, has, for example, an unusually accurate portrait of how publicists work from the client's point of view. Some become friends, some remain employees, but during work, they function as parents and guardians. The star's contract requires him to do some press. The phone rings, and the publicist tells the star where to go and what to do. He takes on a certain passivity. The car is there, he takes the car. The press is there, he talks to the press. Some stars are more interested and interesting. Not Johnny. He flies to Milan to accept an award, and the event plays like a bus ride with a jacuzzi.
He seems to suffer from anhedonia, the inability to feel pleasure. Perhaps he hardly feels anything. The film only indirectly suggests some of the reasons he got this way. It is not a diagnosis, still less a prescription. Johnny stares at the wall and the film stares back.
This is more interesting than it may sound. Coppola watches this world. The familiar strangers on the hotel staff are on a first-name basis because a star's world has become reduced to his support. Hookers and sex partners come and go. There are parties filled with strangers, most of them not excited to see a star because they see stars constantly.
Then his daughter. What led to the divorce Cleo probably knows better than he does. The child of an actor, she has learned to play a star. She observes his drinking, his detached attempts at fatherhood, the woman he makes no attempt to explain at breakfast. Why does a man like this inflict partial custody on a blameless child?
Coppola is a fascinating director. She sees, and we see exactly what she sees. There is little attempt here to observe a plot. All the attention is on the handful of characters, on Johnny. He has attained success in his chosen field, and lost track of the ability to experience it. Perhaps you can stimulate yourself so much for so long that your sensitivity wears out. If Johnny has no inner life and his outer life no longer matters, then he's right: He's nothing.
ncG1vNJzZmivp6x7s7vGnqmempWnwW%2BvzqZmq52mnrK4v46spqadp52ys7GMa2dqaA%3D%3D