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. What do I mean by smart?

"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...".

THE SWIFT REPORT 2023

I am writing this post without much enthusiasm, but with a sense of duty. This blog will be 20 years old soon, and though I rarely post here anymore, I owe it some attention. Of course in 2023, "Swift" now means one thing only, Taylor Swift, the billionaire musician. Gone are the days when I was asked if I was related to Jonathan Swift. The pre-eminent cultural Swift is now alive and TIME PERSON OF THE YEAR. There is no point in belabouring the obvious with delay: 2023 was a low-point in the low annals of human history - war, invasion, murder, in too many nations. Hate, division, the collapse of what truth is, exacerbated by advances in AI that may or may not prove apocalyptic, while global warming still seems to threaten the near-future safety of humanity. It's been deeply depressing. The world lost some wonderful poets, actors, musicians, and writers this year, as it often does. Two people I knew and admired greatly, Ian Ferrier and Kevin Higgins, poets and organise

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

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