So, being a good Jew I put “Munich” in my Netflix queue. Being a good hipster, I watched it weeks ago and then was too lazy to put it back in its slip-cover and stuff it into the envelope, seal said envelope, and walk all the way downstairs, open the door and put it into the mailbox. So I went to Blockbuster this evening because I had nothing to watch.
At the suggestion of my BFF, the Blockbuster sales clerk (who knows me by name), I rented Leaves of Grass starring Edward Norton and Edward Norton. That’s right, a heaping double spoonful of everybody’s fave actor. He plays his own twin in the film and it wasn’t CGIish at all; it was very well done, helped not a little bit by his excellent acting skillz.
On the front of the box underneath the title there was the disclaimer: “Drugs, Murder and Brotherly Love”- Oh boy oh boy oh boy. This sounded like my kind of movie. But I was unprepared for the general craziness that ensued.
To give a brief plot summary, Edward Norton plays identical twins Bill and Brady Kincaid. Bill is a classics professor at Brown University and Brady is a hydroponic ganja-grower in “Little Dixie” Oklahoma. After being (falsely) informed of his brother’s demise by crossbow, Bill goes home to Oklahoma for the first time in what we are told is 12 years. Lo and behold his brother is not dead, just in trouble with the HJIC (Head Jew in Charge) of the Marijuana business of Southeastern Oklahoma, “Pug” Rothbaum, played by Richard Dreyfuss (HJIC in real life, too). Having left the Northeast and his cushy lifestyle in academia behind for the weekend, Bill meets the lovely Janet, played by Keri Russell (also Jewish). He is then pressured into visiting his estranged mother, (Susan Sarandon…wishes she was Jewish), and by doing so becomes embroiled in his brother’s dangerous and foolhardy scheme. Director Tim Blake Nelson (Jewish AND from Oklahoma) also stars in the film as “Bolger,” Brady’s best friend and general stoney ass-whooper. You cannot fail to enjoy this character as it carries distinct shades of “Delmar O’ Donnell” from O! Brother Where Art Thou?
"Oh George, not the livestock!"
This film starts out as a comedy; we see Bill get sexually accosted by one of his female students who declaims her love for him in a poem she wrote in Latin. And it is hilarious to hear Edward Norton speak less-then-perfect English, as we are so used to his measured cadences and dulcet tones; in this film, his Oklahoma twang is spot-on. His shoulder- length hair, parted in the middle is perfection and with just a hint of a burgeoning pot-belly and a blood-stained hunting-cap, Norton shows us what he can do with any material no matter how serious or how uproarious. So, yes the film starts as a comedy but it will surprise the viewer with its not-too-platitudinous philosophic aphorisms and deep insight into what it means to be happy.
So to break it down a little further for les HJs:
As one should infer from the title, Walt Whitman is all up in this movie; and he was a HUGE hipster:
I don't think I need to spell this out for you.
Edward Norton is a well-known philo-Semite and dated this:
Look at that fucking smirk.
Screened at SXSW last year, chock-full of obscure literary references, lots of drug-speak, crossbows, literally dripping in Hollywood Jewry; this film is an HJ wet-dream.
Disregard how retarded it looks and rent it.
