Because I love the cast (Ben Kingsley and Penelope Cruz), I really wanted to see Elegy. I left Elegy unwatched in my queue because the premise seemed vaguely like a Woody Allen movie without the neurotic elements: an aging professor embarks on a journey of self-discovery when he has an affair with a seductive young student. Again! Yawn! Then I saw Learning to Drive, and Elegy jumped to the top.
Elegy is about Ben Kingsley’s character, a professor and minor celebrity on the NPR circuit as a cultural critic, who has lived a life of sexual freedom cosigned by his poet best friend, played by Dennis Hopper, and long-term booty call, former student and entrepreneur, Patricia Clarkson. As another academic year closes, he sets the stage for his annual dalliance with his latest sexy potential conquest/student, but his latest target, played by Penelope Cruz, awakens something in him. He becomes self-conscious about his age, her desirability, his relationship with her, lives in terror of how it will inevitably end and then self-sabotages the whole thing. The relationship acts as a catalyst for him to struggle with the lack of substance in his life, the sense of loss and his shortcomings as he assessed his life.
Elegy just isn’t for me. I’m just not into storylines where men are shocked that one day he will die, struggle with their mortality and examine their life way too late in life. (I’m talking to you, Ridley Scott. That crap hasn’t been cute since Blade Runner.) I like it less when they use a woman to find meaning instead of appreciating the woman as a person, a point consciously addressed in Elegy. Everything that is alive dies. Why do you think you get to be different? Also Cruz is tortured by being forced to act with various ill-fitting wigs that distract from her performance. Those wigs are only second to Joseph Gordon-Levitt’s prosthetic nose in Looper.
I think Dennis Hopper was the best part of Elegy. His performance was fearless, surprising and desperate. I adore Kingsley, but he really came alive in his scenes with Hopper, but seemed to fall back in his scenes with everyone else. Elegy features a great cameo by Blondie, i.e. Debbie Harry. I did not know that Peter Sarsgaard was in Elegy, but when he is finally shown, I practically squealed. Sarsgaard was perfect in his role for Elegy, and I’m glad that I did not know in advance who his character was .
I really wanted to like Elegy, but I just didn’t like the story and Kingsley seemed to be resting on his laurels. Maybe I won’t necessarily rush to the theater just because Isabel Coixet is directing the film after all because for me, Elegy was a miss, and Learning to Drive was a mess.