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Record shop owner Rob Gordon (John Cusack) gets
romance advice from his employee Dick (Todd
Louise) in High Fidelity.
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John Cusack is an earnest slacker. He organizes his record collection in scholarly fashion. A Dickies T-shirt and worn jeans are his uniform of choice. His rundown Chicago apartment is intentionally low-scale.
Actually I'm not really talking about Cusack himself, but High Fidelity record shop owner Rob Gordon. It's just that Cusack's angsty performance as High Fidelity's lovelorn music junkie is so lifelike it's hard to separate the actor from the performance. High Fidelity, director Stephen Frears' smart and substantial update of Nick Hornby's 1995 comic novel, has made Cusack and Gordon moviemade Siamese twins.
"What came first, the music or the misery?" Rob asks himself. "Did I listen to Pop music because I was miserable? Or was I miserable because I listened to Pop music?"
Cigarette smoke and Pop music are constant companions for Gordon and his geeky shop employees Barry (Jack Black) and Dick (local-boy-done good Todd Louiso). They listen to Scotch songsters Belle & Sebastian; debate the relevance of aging new wavers Echo and the Bunnymen, Jesus and Mary Chain and Sigue Sigue Sputnik and test each other's trivia know-how with a slew of "Top Five" lists. Theirs are endearing shenanigans.
It appears that everything in Rob's life is failing. Championship Vinyl, Rob's record shop specializing in collectibles, is barely solvent. More importantly, his live-in girlfriend Laura (Iben Hjejle) has walked out. She's a successful attorney who has grown tired of Rob's slackerish ways. So it's no wonder that Rob is sullen. Of course, a parade of ex-girlfriends (Lili Taylor, Catherine Zeta-Jones, Joelle Carter) doesn't help boost his romance esteem. Because the hard-knock reality for Rob is that life isn't the same without Laura.
Music means everything in a lifestyle drama like High Fidelity. The movies Rob and his buddies watch and the bands they listen to are just as important as what they say. The scratchy sound of a needle hitting the groove of a record defines Rob's personality. A blast of Rock & Roll is the equivalent of high drama.
Championship Vinyl itself becomes one of the film's more endearing characters. Posters and handbills cover the worn storefront. Rare Smiths singles and original Frank Zappa albums fill the bins. High Fidelity couldn't ask for a cooler setting.
But the cinematic spotlight keeps returning to Cusack. He looks like an aging GenXer who refuses to grow up, a shaggy-haired Peter Pan in a worn leather jacket and Bauhaus T-shirt. Whenever Rob stares out from the screen, a pair of headphones balanced upon his mop of hair, you can't help but feel his cynicism.
Watching Cusack grow older has become one of the highlights of American film. He was one of the more believable, wayward teens in movies like Say Anything, The Sure Thing and Better Off Dead. Cusack looks good rumpled. His adolescent stutter is sincere. Tossed into a blur of faceless Hollywood hunks, Cusack's down-to-earth charms are what set him apart.
The good news is that the adult Cusack is just as likable. Playing Chicago White Sox third baseman Buck Weaver in Eight Men Out is what first displayed his knack for maturity. Recent films like Being John Malkovich (playing an unemployed puppeteer) and Cradle Will Rock (portraying tycoon Nelson Rockefeller) have highlighted Cusack's droll sense of comedy. And while his role as a Los Alamos scientist in the atom bomb drama Fat Man and Little Boy is melodramatic hokum, one only has to re-watch his performance in The Grifters, as a low-rent con-artist named Roy, to realize his knack for bringing utter believability to every performance.
But it would be a mistake to spend too much time describing the boyish qualities of Cusack's face. High Fidelity is one of those movies that thrives on its narration. Luckily, Cusack is an able talker. Never has pop culture banter been spoken with such verve and intensity.
Memory games involving Rob's self-examination of break-ups with past girlfriends pushes High Fidelity's sly sense of comedy in a tortured direction. Listening to Rob's endless girl talk, it's funny how clueless he is regarding relationships.
"I read The Unbearable Lightness of Being," Rob says. "I read Love in the Time of Cholera. They're about girls, right?"
There is a brief flashback to happier times. Basically, it's the time Rob met Laura while working as a DJ at a popular dance club. That was then. Now Rob only wants her to explain why she left and if she's slept with her new hippie boyfriend, Ian (a hilarious Tim Robbins).
"Do you still love me?" Rob asks Laura. Her response is some hard-knock advice.
"Make yourself happy, Rob," she says. But Rob isn't sure what she means.
"And why am I not happy?" he asks.
"Because you're the same person you used to be, and I've changed." Laura tells him.
The prospect of singlehood is not easy when your girlfriend comes to move her stuff out. Then again, it doesn't help that Rob's own mother is pessimistic about his prospects without Laura.
Opportune clowning from Rob's goofball employees prevents High Fidelity from becoming too morose. Black delivers razor-sharp sarcasm as the tubby Barry. Louiso makes an eccentric hipster with his shaven head, solemn stare and whispery voice. One couldn't dream up better mascots. Still, the most surprising sparkling cameo belongs to Lisa Bonet as singer Marie De Salle. Wailing an old Peter Frampton tune with unexpected emotion -- "Ohhh, baby, I love your way" -- Bonet tosses her long braids with funky verve. It's no wonder Rob gets nervous when she visits his store.
Fans of Hornby's book (myself included) probably will be put off by the film's decision to shift its setting from London to Chicago. But Frears, a Brit himself, makes the most of Chicago's travelogue locations. Rob watches movies at the vintage Music Box Theater. He gulps down beers at the Green Mill Jazz club. He catches De Salle's performance at Lounge Ax. Even Championship Vinyl occupies a corner in the arty Wicker Park neighborhood. Basically, if High Fidelity the movie had to ditch London for America, it couldn't do much better than Chicago's brand of working-class hipness.
High Fidelity sprints away from the pack of threadbare teen comic-romances by allowing its flawed protagonist to grow when one least expects it. Granted, Rob's changes are subtle. But the important fact is that Frears captures the core spirit that made Hornby's book so utterly enjoyable: Rob is as flawed, insecure and lazy as the rest of us.
It's surprising how confidently the film turns serious. Coming-of-age stories with adult characters are usually light and fluffy. The thrill with High Fidelity is how it portrays Rob's emotional insecurities so cynically.
It's a confident movie that resolves its story in anti-climactic fashion. For Rob, life's important moments come down to turning on the stereo, playing a CD and making a homemade tape of favorite songs. As I said, this is a life where music means everything.
CityBeat grade: B.
