This story of a down-and-outer and his social world in 1938 is based on a novel by William Kennedy. Kennedy didn't make much money on the book but it was published and received plaudits and that satisfied him. Still, the plaudits can't reflect the amount of effort that went into constructing a world that was historical real. That world, the bums in upstate New York during the Great Depression, wasn't so long ago that a writer could feel free to invent habits, props, and language that didn't exist; and it was recent enough so that the picture presented had to be accurate -- the brand names, the streets, the fashions -- because, after all, some people could remember them. It must have taken a lot of research.
But what a milieu! The icy breeze scatters dead leaves and detritus along the street at dawn, past a dark brick wall, and at the base of the wall a windrow of newspapers and rags stirs itself and out crawls Jack Nicholson, middle aged, flabby, filthy, in hand-me-downs. He can barely get it together enough to shuffle into the bleak streets of Albany. He sits and tries to use a piece of yarn as a shoelace but he loses the duel of wits and resignedly wraps the yarn haphazardly around his shoe and ankle.
An acquaintance approaches, goofy and broke, and announces with a chuckle that he has cancer and the doctor just gave him six months live. "No kiddin'? Geeze, that's too bad, Rudy. Got enough for a jug?" The whole business of poverty, scratching, distaste for work, a liking for liquor, and dying drunk on the sidewalk to be gnawed at by wild dogs goes beyond Dickens into the worst of "Down and Out in Paris and London." The plot has something to do with the guilt Nicholson is carrying around for having dropped his baby on the floor and broken his neck. He wanders from saloon to Methodist soup kitchen, shuffling along aimlessly, forming temporary social bonds and discarding them. He looks like hell and he's magnificent.
So is his poor man's inamorata, Meryl Streep, whose eyes are reddened and whose teeth are blackened. She adopts a husky emphatic voice that more or less animates her. She's hopeless but a lot livelier than Nicholson's road kill. There's genuine pathos in her character. She's cajoled into singing a song, "He's Me Pal," in the local tavern. She starts slowly but get into it and fills the song with élan, swinging her arms, kissing the customers, and booming out the high notes with a reasonable vibrato. Boistrous applause. But then she sings it again later, presumably drunk, and spoils it because she's unable to carry a note. The customers aren't scornful. Worse, they just ignore her. Nicholson and Streep were two of the best actors of their generation and they deliver the goods, although Nicholson is sometimes so sluggish that one wonder if the role is getting to him. It seems an effort for him to move at all.
It's a gripping movie but, my God, it's tragic. I had to bleed myself with leeches to relieve the depression.
