Look Again: Re-Review of Nurse Betty

Nurse Betty (USA, 2000)
Comedy/Thriller
Directed by Neil LaBute
Starring Morgan Freeman and Renée Zellweger

Headline: Betty Oops

Rating: Two Specs (out of 5)

NURSE BETTY is a “problem picture” - but not the kind that Hollywood great Stanley Kramer used to produce and direct. This time around, it’s not the issue that defines the critical condition the film is in, it’s the lack of a guiding center (call it heart). Indeed, NURSE BETTY is almost a case of cardiac arrest, and this can be traced to the toxic misanthropy that director LaBute (In the Company of Men) is known - and in some circles praised - for.
The film is DOA in the cutting room, simply because it attempts to freakishly graft two moods and multiple genres onto one movie-going experience. On the one hand, it is an ultraviolent, hip black comedy about two witty, bickering contract killers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock) searching for a nameless-but-valuable shipment (as in the far superior Pulp Fiction).
On the other, it is a touching road movie about a naive young woman (Renée Zellweger, as Betty, in a strong performance) coming to terms with her true self, referencing The Wizard of Oz. Then there’s the whole David Lynch factor: small-town eccentrics (especially quirk king Crispin Glover) trying to solve a big time crime, which suggests nothing so much as Twin Peaks, right down to the soap opera subtext.
It may not be fair to complain about a film’s copycat tendencies, unless it attempts to wear its charming originality on its hospital-green sleeve. NURSE BETTY wants you to laugh at the bloody mayhem, and cry at the female protagonist’s psychological (and geographical) journey - and meanwhile learn something new about how “reality” and “fiction” are mixed, fragmented and ultimately lost in the TV Nation which is America (as if this wasn’t in fact a cliché of the Springer era).
When Betty accidentally witnesses the scalping of her smug, despicable husband, used car salesman (telegraphing his scum-of-the-Earth status) Del, she snaps into a protective fugue state, which sends her from Kansas to LA, in search of her “ex-fiancee” - the unreal TV Doctor Ravell (Greg Kinnear, as sweetly bland as ever, and as the role demands) from her favorite daytime soap.
In Betty’s wide-eyed, sugary wake come the argument-prone killers. Freeman is impressive with his cowboy attire and well-read gravitas, but his crush on the “Doris Day” heroine soon spins into a melodrama screaming for a mercy killing. By the time Betty finds - and then ironically embraces - her delusional identity as quasi-Nurse Betty, only fans of real life soaps will have their Kleenex out.

IQ AND THE POETS - ARE YOU SMART?

When you open your mouth to speak, are you smart? A funny question from a great song, but also, a good one, when it comes to poets, and poetry. We tend to have a very ambiguous view of intelligence in poetry, one that I'd say is dysfunctional. Basically, it goes like this: once you are safely dead, it no longer matters how smart you were. For instance, Auden was smarter than Yeats , but most would still say Yeats is the finer poet; Eliot is clearly highly intelligent, but how much of Larkin 's work required a high IQ? Meanwhile, poets while alive tend to be celebrated if they are deemed intelligent: Anne Carson, Geoffrey Hill , and Jorie Graham , are all, clearly, very intelligent people, aside from their work as poets. But who reads Marianne Moore now, or Robert Lowell , smart poets? Or, Pound ? How smart could Pound be with his madcap views? Less intelligent poets are often more popular. John Betjeman was not a very smart poet, per se....

Poetry vs. Literature

Poetry is, of course, a part of literature. But, increasingly, over the 20th century, it has become marginalised - and, famously, has less of an audience than "before". I think that, when one considers the sort of criticism levelled against Seamus Heaney and "mainstream poetry", by poet-critics like Jeffrey Side , one ought to see the wider context for poetry in the "Anglo-Saxon" world. This phrase was used by one of the UK's leading literary cultural figures, in a private conversation recently, when they spoke eloquently about the supremacy of "Anglo-Saxon novels" and their impressive command of narrative. My heart sank as I listened, for what became clear to me, in a flash, is that nothing has changed since Victorian England (for some in the literary establishment). Britain (now allied to America) and the English language with its marvellous fiction machine, still rule the waves. I personally find this an uncomfortable position - but when ...

"I have crossed oceans of time to find you..."

In terms of great films about, and of, love, we have Vertigo, In The Mood for Love , and Casablanca , Doctor Zhivago , An Officer and a Gentleman , at the apex; as well as odder, more troubling versions, such as Sophie's Choice and Silence of the Lambs . I think my favourite remains Bram Stoker's Dracula , with the great immortal line "I have crossed oceans of time to find you...".

E Y E W E A R, THE BLOG - FREEDOM MEANS BEING UNAFRAID TO WRITE WHAT YOU THINK

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