The Words

It was the Youth Day holiday in South Africa yesterday. My wife, being the young and ambitious politician she is, was away the whole day, leaving me to figure out what to do with time that seemed drearily interminable. I didn’t feel the urge to go out, so I shuffled around in the study room reading blogs, news, and played some chess online. I followed the chess games at the Tal Memorial Tournament currently underway in Moscow, and played through games from the just concluded Spicenet Tanzania Chess Tournament. By the end of the day my head was protesting, yet that great constant that has withstood its own test so far – Time – still needed to be spent.

So as I waited for pizza (which always somehow reprimands me for my culinary laziness) at the local complex, I drifted to the movie rental store. The Anna Karenina movie immediately caught my eye, and I impulsively grabbed at the DVD cover as if in competition with someone. A queue at the pay point encouraged me to browse more titles, and that’s when I saw The Words, whose simple and innocuous cover belied an interesting plot summary displayed on its back about a writer at the pinnacle of literary success who has to face the consequences of stealing another man’s work.

I decided to take both before I glanced at the time – 8 p.m.–and the rain check I took forced a difficult choice on me. Since I have delusions of being a writer, I decided on The Words, and it wasn’t disappointing.

Starring Bradley Cooper as Rory Jansen, the exotic Zoe Saldana as Rory’s wife Dora, and Dennis Quaid (whose goofy smile never ceases to surprise) as Clayton Hammond, The Words is astounding in its poesy and profundity. The words and phrases used, as well as the tone and the acting, are delightful to the literary mind. It is as uniquely relevant to aspiring writers as it is to junkies of the romance genre. Officially a romantic drama, it is a poignant tale of choice and consequences, and the emotional motivations behind them.

It begins with Clayton Hammond, a successful writer, preparing for a public reading of his new novel – The Words. He looks at himself in the mirror, as though to look into his soul and figure himself out, before stepping out to the podium. There he tells the story of Rory Jansen, a struggling writer in New York facing rejection after rejection from publishing houses for his literary troubles. Forced to take on a day job and temporarily abandon his literary ambitions, Rory is in love with Dora, whom he marries, and they proceed to Paris for a honeymoon simple enough to accommodate his shoestring budget. They buy a seemingly nondescript antique leather briefcase in which, later back in New York, he discovers a manuscript containing a story– the kind he has always wished he could write but couldn’t.

The story in the manuscript is of an American man in the army in Paris during the Second World War, who falls in love with a French lady and marries her. They have a daughter, who however falls ill and dies. This tragedy in the young couple’s lives forces a schism between them, and they separate. The young man, emotionally scarred, writes his story, and puts the manuscript in – you guessed it – a leather briefcase, which he sends to his wife. The deeply emotional manuscript reunites husband and wife, but the wife, on her way back to the husband, forgets the briefcase – and the manuscript in it – in the train. The young American man is irretrievably disconsolate, and leaves his wife.

In short, Rory is so taken by this manuscript that he, urged on by his unsuspecting wife Dora, submits it and accepts the offer to publish it. It becomes a literary commercial and critical success. An Old Man however comes to him and reveals that HE wrote that manuscript, that he WAS in Paris during the Second World War, and that it was his wife and daughter in that story.

The plot in the movie is revealed in a sweeping, almost epic, multilayered way. Yet the deep emotional sentiments are captured in a very vivid and stark manner. Rory is forced to confront himself as the Old Man apparently only wished to let him know who the author of the manuscript is and the story behind it. Rory wants to relinquish all rights of the novel to the Old Man, but he won’t let him. Here the Old Man’s utter regret comes to the fore – the story he wrote became dearer to him than the woman who inspired it. He made his choice, and has lived with the consequence ever since. He reveals that he has never been able to write again, and that he had seen his wife only once again, but she had remarried and had a son.

Rory also finally makes his choice – he keeps his secret. In that particular scene he is doing a public reading, announcing – staring straight at me with blue eyes lacking in conviction – the author as Rory Jansen. Dora has apparently forgiven him, or so I thought.

The movie took me back to Clayton Hammond at his public reading. He finishes and retires to his place with a much younger lady he has just met at the reading – Daniella, played by Olivier Wilde. As he gets some wine Hammond again confronts himself in the mirror. Deep blue eyes stare back at him. Daniella is impatient and wants Hammond to reveal what really happened in the end to Rory Jansen. Hammond wants her to read it, but Daniella prods. Hammond challenges Daniella to predict. She powerfully drives the point home that Rory – and the way she said it I was pretty sure she was talking about Hammond himself – had robbed himself of self-discovery as a writer; that by stealing someone else’s work and achieving success with it, he would never ever know his true capabilities, no matter how much or well he subsequently wrote and published.

For a fleeting moment I could see the “busted” look on Hammond’s blue eyes. Perhaps he had told his own story? Perhaps he is suffering from the consequences of his choice (assuming that he is indeed Rory Jansen)?

But then he shoots back at Daniella with the same passion and accusing tone, “What if Rory, Dora, and the Old Man are just characters I created in the book?” He agitatedly tells Daniella that there is a thin line between fiction and real life, and that the two never cross. She seems to believe him, and both succumb to the attraction they have felt since they met. But then he pulls back. She wonders why as she recalls he had told her he is separated from his wife, and had evaded her pointed question as to why he still had his ring on.

And then Hammond faced me directly with those haunted blue eyes. There is a flashback showing Rory saying sorry to Dora. Hammond’s blue eyes faced me again. And the movie ended.

That ending was particularly pleasing as I had to think for myself. I had to debate whether Hammond in fact told his own story and was living with the consequences faced by his character, Rory. I had to figure out whether Dora, who had thought that she had had a peek into her husband’s soul after reading the deeply emotional manuscript which Rory initially didn’t tell her is not his, forgave Rory and what happened to their marriage. This was no spoon feeding movie.

Well, you too have to watch it and figure out for yourself.