GREATEST, THE - DVD review

If it didn't have pervasive language, brief nudity, and some awfully cavalier parental attitudes toward teen drug use and sexual relations, "The Greatest" (2009) could pass for a Lifetime movie. It's a film that seems designed to wring emotional performances from the actors and tears from the audience--just the kind of melodrama you're likely to get from a made-for-TV movie. Almost every one of the film's 99 minutes is focused on the grief experienced by a family who recently lost "the greatest" among them in a car accident. Throughout the film there are long reaction shots as the camera fixes on the faces of the mother, the father, the "fuck-up" brother, and the dead son's brand-new girlfriend. Their grief is as real as anything you'll see in life, and so as a mimetic transcription of reality "The Greatest" succeeds.

But as art? Here's where it disappoints. If the purpose of art is to make order out of chaos, I'm not so sure that "The Greatest" does that. Oh, eventually the family has their cathartic moment, but the way this film is structured isn't any more artful than if reality-show cameras followed around a grieving family all day long. And if the purpose of art is to uplift, "The Greatest" falls short here too. We feel the weight of the 18 year old's death the same as those in front of the cameras, and so therefore we feel appreciably better when that weight is lifted in the third act. But as far as insights go? Forget it. There's nothing new here that might inspire people who are trying to cope with their own grief, and nothing terribly profound that emerges in the dialogue. It's grieve, baby, grieve, and then cry for happy in a resolution that stands out as the only contrivance in an otherwise true-to-reality film.

Now if all of this makes it sound as if "The Greatest" is a bad film, that's certainly not the case. I can't think of a more effective way to make us identify with the grieving parents than to shock the heck out of us in the beginning so that we feel the parents' unthinkable nightmare. And riding in the car with them after they've laid Bennett (Aaron Johnson, who appears early and in flashbacks) to rest, with none of them speaking, watching each of their faces? We're speechless ourselves. "The Greatest" may be a melodrama, but it's a good melodrama, and highly believable. We believe, for example, that 18-year-old Rose (Carey Mulligan) would be so uninformed as to think you couldn't get pregnant "the first time," and it makes sense that, given her mother's substance abuse problem and her recent admittance into rehab, this girl might turn up on the doorstep of the family she saw only once before--across the coffin at the funeral of their son . . . and her lover.

They had never met before, but when she comes to the house to blurt out that she's pregnant with Bennett's child and the boy's father (Pierce Brosnan) convinces his wife they have to put her up because she has no place else to go, it's an intrusion for Grace (Susan Sarandon). True to life, her reaction to her son's death is different from Allen's, who feels compelled to "hold it together" for the sake of the family. And it's different from the reaction of their drug-addicted son, Ryan (Johnny Simmons), who was too high to even remember the funeral. Worth mentioning too is the curious character that Allen meets in a grief support group, ably played by Lenny Kravitz's daughter, Zoë. Collectively, their reactions are absolutely believable, and that's as much to the credit of writer and first-time director Shana Feste as it is the actors.

But the grief does feel unrelieved for a LONG, long time. Some scenes could probably have been cut a little sooner than they were. Overall, though, the scenic construction works, because for each scene that seems unbelievable or random (like Allen, a professor, accompanying Rose to a college party--are you kidding me?) there's one that packs a punch . . . like the frazzled mother grasping at straws, keeping a vigil by the hospital bed of a survivor of the accident because she wants to hear about her son's last moments. That resonates, but of course it's also the stuff melodrama is made of.

I'd have given "The Greatest" a 5 out of 10 if it weren't for three things: Sarandon, Mulligan, and Brosnan, in that order. These three talents make the movie work. Sarandon is amazing, whether it's weeping in agony upon waking or looking dazed and disoriented because her whole world has suddenly gone out of balance. And Mulligan? She brings unbridled zest to the film, exuding the same optimistic perkiness that we saw in "An Education" (2009). As an actress she adds life to every scene, and since this pregnant girl's function in the script is to bring life back into the Brewer household, both literally and figuratively speaking, Mulligan is the perfect choice. She displays perhaps the widest range of the three stars, though in fairness to Sarandon more is asked of her. And Brosnan? Except for a moment of anguish when his character is supposed to break down and he doesn't quite nail it, the actor shows more deep-seated emotion in this role than you've seen before. Their performances elevate this film to somewhere between a 6 and 7.

Video:
The video quality is what we've come to expect from DVDs these days, in terms of the level of grain and sharpness. It upscales pretty well on a Blu-ray player, but don't expect much in the way of color saturation. "The Greatest" offers a deliberately sedate palette throughout most of the film. It's presented in 2.35:1 anamorphic widescreen.

Audio:
There are times when the audio seems as muted as the colors. I found that I had to really crank up the volume on this one, since it appears to have been transferred at a low volume. It's mostly dialogue and weepy background music (which stays in the background), so there's nothing really dynamic about this English Dolby Digital 5.1 audio. An additional audio option is English 2.0, though I'm not sure why anyone would want to watch in that mode. And subtitles are in English SDH only.

Extras:
Aside from fairly standard interviews with the three stars and Simmons, which basically offer the actors' takes on their characters, the only bonus features are six deleted scenes and a trailer--nothing revelatory.

Bottom Line:
If you appreciate fine performances and don't mind melodrama, you'll find this film worth watching. Even if you want more from a film than a depiction of reality, you'll still appreciate the stars' performances. But you'll find yourself thinking it could have been so much better if rendering grief effectively didn't seem like the only goal.