Kodachrome (2017)

“No art worth a damn was ever created out of happiness,” says Benjamin Asher Ryder (Ed Harris). According to this logic, writer Jonathan Tropper and director Mark Raso must be the happiest motherfuckers that ever lived. Or the dumbest, which comes to about the same. Now, since Ben is repeatedly described as a “bastard,” that must mean that he’s as great a photographer as we’re told that he is. Oddly, the photographs that accompany the closing credits, and which I assume are supposed to illustrate Ben’s work, are none too shabby — why, then, wait until after the movie is officially over to show them off? (imagine that Harris, in his Pollock biopic, had relegated the character’s paintings to a tacked-on montage). 

I guess because these are the very photos that the protagonists had to drive all the way to Kansas to have developed before Kodachrome film became a thing of the past. Even so, aren’t there any other examples of this allegedly famous photographer’s oeuvre? I’m afraid Ben’s pictorial talent is an Informed Ability, just like his terminal cancer is an Informed Attribute. Ben’s nurse Zooey (Elizabeth Olsen) tells Ben’s son Matt (Jason Sudeikis) that Ben has liver cancer and a life expectancy of “three months … maybe four.” 

Movies like Kodachrome never fail to remind me of The Shootist. In that western, John Wayne seeks out a doctor played by Jimmy Stewart for a second opinion concerning his failing health. The good doctor confirms that Wayne has terminal cancer and only a few months to live. Wayne then asks, “Well, what can I… What will I be able to do?,” and Stewart replies, “Oh, anything you want at first. Then, later on, you won’t want to.” 

Ben, however, has the type of Movie Cancer that almost makes you wish you had a tumor as well. Never mind that when we first meet Ben, he’s banging away at a drum set with the greatest of ease; it’s the idea that a man dying from a metastasized, stage IV hepatocellular carcinoma (the script doesn’t get into the specifics, but come on, we’re all adults here) could (or, for that matter, would want to), “drive halfway across the country” (even as a passenger) in any vehicle other than an ambulance or a hearse.  

To put it in perspective, when Ben is finally, yet briefly, hospitalized, and Matt informs the doctor that “We were actually on our way to Kansas,” the doctor’s answer is “Oh, that’s off the table.” Off the table? It never should have been on the table to begin with. Needless to say, though, that Matt will sneak Ben out of the hospital and they’ll both be on their merry way.    

Before this, pretty much the only ‘symptom’ Ben exhibits is pissing his pants in public, and even this is a requirement of the screenplay rather than a natural, organic occurrence — there simply is absolutely no reason for Ben to be where he is at when this happens, and with 3-4 months to go, wetting his pants should be old news; why is he not wearing a diaper or a catheter?  

Here’s a better question, though; why bother casting Harris, an actor who can actually act, a man who can give you your money’s worth if you’d only put him to good use, why, I repeat, get a performer who can consistently and convincingly show you instead of just tell you, and then have him phone it in? Unless, of course, the Big C is outside Harris’s considerable range, which I very much doubt.  

Then again, the cliché-ridden material gives the actor little or nothing to work with. All things considered, the only reason I can think of for Harris to have become involved in this project (other than an easy paycheck) is that it must have reminded him of the vastly superior Nebraska from four years prior — and how couldn’t it? Tropper and Raso brazenly copy Alexander Payne’s formula almost point by point, but whereas they may know the words, they certainly don’t know the music. Nebraska boasts people who behave like actual human beings, character development, and an earned happy ending. What does Kodachrome have? Nominal cancer and a superfluous romantic subplot.

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