Chapter Two: The Two Jakes
By Brett Beach
July 2, 2009
BoxOfficeProphets.com
There are a number of reasons why I am kicking off this week's Chapter Two with that particular quote. The first and most obvious is that The Two Jakes, the sequel to Chinatown, is the focus of the column and I have found that a relevant (and catchy) epigram at the beginning of any essay helps keep me focused on what it is precisely I am attempting to communicate. Secondly, it is my favorite quote from a Robert Towne screenplay that abounds with any number of similarly juicy "kickers." Last, and perhaps most importantly, it deftly (though quite accidentally) captures the peculiar kind of critical limbo which The Two Jakes fell into almost upon its release in 1990 and continues to inhabit two decades hence
As the fairly belated follow-up to a multiple Oscar winner and (to boot) a film whose stature as a "classic" was already fairly well enshrined by the late 1980s, The Two Jakes would seem to have been a likely candidate for a film that would be swiftly eviscerated and then writ large in the ignominious hallows of "Unnecessary Sequels." The box office and early critical reception bears out this thinking. Released wide in August of 1990, The Two Jakes lasted all of three weeks and made just over $10 million. Reviews were mixed and interest just wasn't there for an audience to turn up in the summer months for more adult film making.
Although it certainly wasn't intended as such, The Two Jakes wound up being Jack Nicholson's follow-up to Batman and now stands as a fascinating contrast between the wild success of the former and the faint commercial ripples of the latter. Consider this as well: at the tail end of 1990, The Godfather III would be released to a respectable final gross of $67 million but a legacy wherein it is regularly accorded status as an abomination (i.e. when people list their top five favorite films and many inevitably choose The Godfather and The Godfather Part II as a single entity and take great pains to flush GF III down the proverbial toilet. Much more will be said on this when GF II makes its appearance in this column at some undetermined point in the future).
The Two Jakes has escaped GF III's fate by the simple virtue, I feel, that many people continue to be unaware of its existence or practice a particular kind of amnesia and choose to forget that it is out there (regardless of whether they have seen it or not.) Either way, it escapes notice by not always being compared, favorably or otherwise, to Chinatown at every turn. By default, then, this has helped it achieve a peculiar form of respectability, akin to Noah Cross' definition. However it may have been viewed 20 years ago, it has taken on neither the air of an underrated masterpiece nor that of a unqualified train wreck. In viewing it for the first time since catching it on its initial video release back in 1991, I find this to be an accurate and fair representation. The film has much to recommend it for and should be sought out, but with the understanding that its pleasures are fleeting and in the final analysis, ephemeral.
All this is amusingly ironic (in the true sense of the word) because The Two Jakes is about nothing so much as the hold the past maintains on us - particularly if we don't want it to let us go. For Towne, Chinatown was always meant to be the first in a trilogy about the latter-day desecration of Los Angeles encompassing a time period from the mid-1930s up to the cusp of the ‘60s. During that time, the development of L.A. and the struggles over water rights, oil rights and ultimately issues of privacy would have formed the backdrop for the character of private eye Jake Gittes (Nicholson) and his involvement with assorted characters and power brokers at the heart of these turmoils.
Roman Polanski's assured direction of Chinatown (which, like his take on Macbeth in 1971, seems informed by the still-fresh pain and psychic scars he bore from Sharon Tate's murder in 1969).
Coupled with Towne's corrosive and cynical screenplay, a classical detective story set 40 years in the past echoed the level of national distrust that the Watergate scandal and Nixon's resignation earlier in 1974 had pushed to new heights. It is the character of Cross in Chinatown - frighteningly embodied by Huston as the pinnacle of genial amorality and corruption - that gives the film the sharp edge that still cuts deep. Cross, a man with no qualms about devastating the land of his city or raping his daughter Evelyn (Faye Dunaway), and who remains unpunished at the film's end, is more than just a simple villain or an easy metaphor for the corruption on which Towne fixates. He is persuasive, jovial, crass but entertaining, and as he tacitly acknowledges in the line of dialogue at the start of this column, he has survived long enough to somehow rise up above whatever he may have done.
It is the specter of Cross that - for better and for worse - hangs over The Two Jakes. It would have been foolhardy to bring the character back with another actor (Huston had died in 1987) or to create a similar kindly face of evil (although Richard Farnsworth as an oil baron suggests similar veins of false joviality and aw-shucksness). Cross was never meant to be the focus of the second chapter; it is Katherine (played here by Meg Tilly), Evelyn's daughter/sister, and her relationship with her failed protector Gittes that is at the heart of Townes' screenplay. The level of menace that Cross/Huston brought ends up being missed, however. It is also brave that The Two Jakes makes no attempt to forge Chinatown-like twists and turns into its story. The flip side is that after a certain point, the two hour and 15 minute tale becomes dramatically inert, and in one crucial aspect, treads water mercilessly.
Nicholson stepped into the director's chair (Polanski was in the midst of his still continuous exile from the United States and Townes' attempt to head the production back in the mid-1980s hadn't met with much confidence) for only the third time in his career, following the sports drama Drive, He Said (1971) and the offbeat western Goin' South (1978). Being an actor, Nicholson favors quiet moments and quirky dialogue exchanges over spectacle and really, aside from some bookending explosions, there is no action in The Two Jakes.. Nicholson (the director) has an obvious affinity for the character of Gittes and exhibits a remarkable restraint in keeping Nicholson (the actor) from engaging in any numbers of scenery chewing that could derail the story. Gittes in The Two Jakes is now a decade older, a veteran of WWII and living fairly comfortably. He is still the (wobbly but dependable) moral compass of the story. As he addresses someone at one point, "My business may be disreputable but I'm not. I'm the leper in town with the most fingers."
(Side note re: Nicholson and playing outside the audience-friendly persona of "Jack" that has cropped up in the last two decades. Consider the fact that between 1997 and 2002, he starred in exactly three films - As Good As It Gets, The Pledge, and About Schmidt - and was nominated for Oscars for all but the one that he should most have been recognized for. I'll leave you to do the legwork on that one)
The best moments of The Two Jakes are when the past rears its ugly head - when Jake first hears the name of Katherine Mulwray uttered on a recording and it jolts him out of a fitful sleep or he encounters other figures he once thought lost to time. The casting of several actors from Chinatown to reprise their roles helps with this atmosphere. Notable among the new cast are Harvey Keitel as Jake Berman, a businessman and cuckold who hires Gittes, and Madeline Stowe as a widow who suspects a conspiracy. They imbue their respective parts with low-key menace and knowing sultriness and bring a heat to the story that helps things percolate but never really delivers a satisfying boil.
The "surprise" at the crux of the story is that Kitty Berman, the other Jake's wife, is really Katherine Mulwray. This becomes obvious early on to the audience but not until much later to Gittes and this proves to be the film's Achilles heel. Much is made of Jake not wanting to face his past dead on, but it seems improbable that it takes him so long to acknowledge that Katherine is a dead ringer for her dead mother. The film concludes on a number of conversations between the pair (as well as that old standby, a courtroom scene) that add up to much less than the sum of their parts. Perhaps it is fitting that a film about uneasily reconciling with the past doesn't end on any false dramatic moments or beats. It is a shame that this also dooms it, like a fleeting nostalgic moment that trips across our thoughts, to fade from our memories the longer we consider it.
Next time: I take a cue from the world of comic books and movie franchises and deliver my origin story. It involves a religious rock opera, one of the most loathed sequels of all time, Paris Hilton's aunt and Lucinda Dickey (again?!)