Title: THE TWO JAKES

Date: 6/15/1995; Publication: Magill's Survey of Cinema;

Magill's Survey of Cinema

06-15-1995

THE TWO JAKES

Abstract:
Jack Nicholson returns as private detective Jake Gittes in this long- awaited sequel to the classic CHINATOWN (1974). Ten years later, Gittes finds himself drawn back into the past as he becomes embroiled in murder and deception with land developer and client, Jake Berman.


Summary:
When a screenwriter sits down to write a film script, she or he is bound by certain expectations inherent to the craft. The writer has an obligation to structure a story that has a beginning, a middle, and an end, a story that by its very nature is self-contained within the limitations of the medium. That is not to suggest that the characters have no history or future, but that those aspects of their lives must be dramatized within the framework of the story. Simply put, a writer must have a reason to write, he must have a story to tell, and that story must have an end. Yet Hollywood, in its never- ending search for commercial box-office success, insists on bringing back, via the sequel, characters whose stories have already been told. Some have been perfectly presented, some slightly more flawed, but more often than not, these stories have served their purpose. They have said whatever the writer set out to say and thus, the sequel simply rehashes the same old material without shedding any new light on the lives of the characters. There is a cliche: let sleeping dogs lie. One could say the same about private detective J. J. Gittes. His story was already told in CHINATOWN (1974).

In THE TWO JAKES, the successful and prosperous Jake Gittes (Jack Nicholson) agrees to help another Jake, a real-estate developer named Berman (Harvey Keitel), gather proof of his wife's adultery. Unbeknown to Gittes, Berman acquires a gun and, in a presumed moment of passion, kills Bodine, the lover of Kitty (Meg Tilly), during a tryst at a local motel. Complications begin when Gittes discovers that the dead man is also Berman's business partner. Bodine's widow, Lillian (Madeleine Stowe), accuses the Bermans of framing her husband in order to gain control over the entire development plan and all its profits. When Gittes hears Katherine Mulwray's name mentioned on a wire recording from the motel room, he is once again drawn back into the past as he attempts to unravel the mystery.

There are things to like about THE TWO JAKES if the viewer has an eye for detail and can divorce himself from making comparisons to CHINATOWN. Director Jack Nicholson gives the film very American sensibilities that echo post-World War II sentiments and captures the textural fabric of life in Los Angeles in 1948 in the smallest of details. There are references to anti-Semitism, while the recurring earthquake tremors underscore the instability of life and remind viewers that one is never on solid ground. It is these small touches that give the film a fully developed richness. The problems lay in the story itself, a mystery that is no mystery (to anyone but Gittes, that is), and a cast of characters who operate with little motivation. One glance at Kitty Berman and anyone who has seen CHINATOWN immediately knows Kitty's true identity merely from her attire and her nervous smoking gestures. This lack of suspense is further exacerbated by the film's length, unnecessarily long and encumbered by a forced, poetic voice-over narration, laden with metaphor, that was written in postproduction by Nicholson in an attempt to clarify certain story elements for those viewers unfamiliar with CHINATOWN.

When screenwriter Robert Towne wrote the nouveau film noir classic CHINATOWN, he succeeded in telling a story in which the underlying message was that one can never escape the past. It resurfaces at the most inopportune times and without warning. That message came through poignantly and powerfully. The story was so finished, so complete that by the time the end credits rolled, CHINATOWN became a paradigm of storytelling. By the film's end, there simply was nowhere left to go. The audience knew everything it needed to know about the characters, and CHINATOWN had the good sense to let its backstory, its history, be the driving force of the film. Perhaps it was the reputed conflict between director Roman Polanski and screenwriter Robert Towne over the altered ending of CHINATOWN that motivated Towne to revive Jake Gittes. Towne accused Polanski of imposing a more cynical, fatalistic tone than the writer had originally conceived. (Towne had envisioned that Evelyn Mulwray would escape with her sister/daughter, Katherine.) Without Polanski's more cynical sense of irony, pervasive evil, and personal tragedy, however, the life and times of Mr. Gittes become boring and trite. In THE TWO JAKES, Towne has his character relive the same old story but without the eloquent fashion of the original. Instead of insight, the audience is left with myriad unanswered questions about what happened during those ten years that followed the events of CHINATOWN that could have turned J. J. Gittes into the man he is in THE TWO JAKES.

In some screenwriting circles it is expected that there should be a modicum of character movement within the course of a story. That is, by the end of the film, the main character must have learned something, must have undergone some degree of change. Unfortunately, it has become the accepted modus operandi in Hollywood filmmaking to deliver sequels in which all the character change occurs in the earlier film, if at all. Some films, such as ROBOCOP II (1990), attempt to disguise this lack of evolution by having the main character merely repeat the same internal conflict he faced previously. Other films, such as THE TWO JAKES and LETHAL WEAPON II (1989), forget about character change altogether and simply send their men to do battle with only external forces, unencumbered by any internal self-exploration.

Jack Nicholson is an actor best known for subtle, controlled performances that masked an unpredictability behind his rakishly seductive smile. Nicholson had displayed a depth of character that few other actors could match, even in supporting roles such as his portrayal of Eugene O'Neill in Warren Beatty's REDS (1981). Yet his more recent performances, particularly the Joker in BATMAN (1989), show no restraint or finesse of technique and seem to be little more than a parody of his own offscreen persona. The actor has become bigger than the sum of his parts.

One of the characteristics of film noir, those darkly pessimistic films that emerged in the 1940's, was the presence of the femme fatale, the sexually appealing and conniving female who would lure the male into danger. She was a wantonly wicked woman whose raison d'etre was like that of the black widow spider: seduce and kill. Men seemed threatened by the new woman that emerged during the war years, and when American GIs prepared to return to the workplace, women were encouraged to surrender their new-found sense of independence and return to the role of homemaker. It was a turning point--or so it seemed at the time--and in retrospect, one can excuse this cinematic treatment of women as transitional. One cannot accept the misogynistic depiction of women that is present in THE TWO JAKES as merely being a convention of film noir; the filmmakers had an obligation to move their film beyond the previous constructs of the genre. The French did when New Wave filmmakers, such as Jean-Luc Godard with his brilliant A BOUT DE SOUFFLE (1960; BREATHLESS, 1961), took film noir in a new and exciting direction. CHINATOWN also succeeded in adding another layer of texture and complexity to the genre. THE TWO JAKES, however, seems content to rely on old form without exploring new content.

In an interview, Nicholson said that he believed the message conveyed by CHINATOWN was such a powerful one that it needed to be said again. As a filmmaker, he had an obligation to find either new characters or a new story through which to say it. Reviews for the film were decidedly mixed with most negative criticism citing Nicholson's labored and unfocused direction and uninteresting performance as major faults. (Reviewed by Patricia Kowal.)


Country of Origin: USA

Release Date: 1990

Production Line:
Robert Evans and Harold Schneider; released by Paramount Pictures

Director: Jack Nicholson

Cinematographer: Vilmos Zsigmond

File Editor: Anne Goursaud

Additional Credits:
Production design - Jeremy Railton - Richard Sawyer
Art direction - Richard Schreiber
Set decoration - Jerry Wunderlich
Sound - Julia Evershade
Costume design - Wayne Finkelman
Music - Van Dyke Parks

MPAA Rating: R

Run Time: 137 minutes

Cast:
Jake Gittes - Jack Nicholson
Jake Berman - Harvey Keitel
Kitty Berman - Meg Tilly
Lillian Bodine - Madeleine Stowe
Cotton Weinberger - Eli Wallach
Mickey Nice - Ruben Blades
Chuck Newty - Frederic Forrest
Loach, Jr. - David Keith
Earl Rawley - Richard Farnsworth
Tyrone Otley - Tracey Walter
Lawrence Walsh - Joe Mantell
Kahn - James Hong
Captain Lou Escobar - Perry Lopez
Ralph Tilton - Jeff Morris

Review Sources:
Boxoffice. CXXVI, October, 1990, p. R75.
Chicago Tribune. August 10, 1990, VII, p. 27.
The Christian Science Monitor. LXXXII, August 10, 1990, p. 10.
Commonweal. CXVI, October 12, 1990, p. 579.
Drama-Logue. August 30-September 5, 1990, p. 23.
Entertainment Weekly. I, March 1, 1991, p. 62.
Films in Review. XLII, January, 1991, p. 43.
The Hollywood Reporter. CCCXIII, August 8, 1990, p. 5.
L.A. Weekly. XII, August 17-August 23, 1990, p. 40.
Los Angeles. XXXV, September, 1990, p. 170.
Los Angeles Times. August 10, 1990, p. F1.
The New York Times. August 10, 1990, p. B1.
The New York Times Magazine. September 10, 1990, p. S28.
Newsweek. CXVI, August 20, 1990, p. 60.
Rolling Stone. September 20, 1990, p. 47.
San Francisco Chronicle. August 10, 1990, p. E1.
San Francisco Examiner. CXXVI, August 10, 1990, p. C1.
Time. CXXXVI, August 20, 1990, p. 62.
Variety. CCCXL, August 8, 1990, p. 2.
Video. XIV, March, 1991, p. 50.

Named persons in Production Credits:
Robert Evans
Harold Schneider

Studios named in Production Credits:
Paramount Pictures

Screenplay (Author):
Robert Towne

Color

Video Available.

Genre:


Crime, Mystery, Suspense/Thriller

Notes:
Sequel to CHINATOWN (1974), also written by Robert Towne, directed by Roman Polanski.

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