Closer (2004)

Watched the movie 'Closer' on Netflix.

There is this possibility that a movie, a western movie, that has been praised by rating agencies and viewers, that has received half a dozen awards and has even been nominated for the Oscars - you, an Indian, will find despicable, primarily because of cultural difference.
This movie is one such.

My puking began when the two male protagonists start their thing in the cybersex chat room. One of them is an imposter pretending to be the woman he is in love with, a different woman than the one he is living in with! If he is living in with a woman already, and also in love with another, why the hell does he need to sex chat with a strange male??
The two men spew sleaze and profanity at one another, unseen, unknown, enquire about the size of their genitalia, get all worked up, seemingly deriving pleasure out of it.
Just imagine what you, an Indian would think of a colleague or a neighbour doing this. Creepy, cheap and sexually frustrated - is what you would think. Sick and morbid, downmarket, scum of society.
But guess what, these guys continue to be protagonists even after that. Because it's totally acceptable in the west!

What follows in the movie makes you feel sorry for these creatures - the characters on screen and the people and culture they represent.
A weak, animal like people endowed with nothing more than basic instincts, who fornicate just like animals. They could be married, committed, taken, but anyone 'hot' they run into, anyday, anywhere could weaken them in minutes and turn them into dogs on heat and they will be cheating on partners, lying, pretending and then crying, begging, like weak creatures with no spine or self control whatsoever.

This movie has two men and two women doing just that. Everyone sleeps with everyone else and then apologizes and professes love, and cheats again, in cycles of repetition, so many, that you don't know who the original pairs are, who you wish to become united in the end, and it doesn't matter either. When they say 'I love you', it seems meaningless.
The characters are so adrift, unhinged, grounded in nothing, rooted in nothing.

That this movie was critically acclaimed, and received awards and nomination for Oscar makes me feel sorry for these people. Pathetic.

I like Julia Roberts, but now, a tad less for choosing to do this movie that seems to have very little reason to exist. But that's my fault, perhaps, misplaced expectation, given that she belongs to that society and is unable to see the depravity of it all.

I am not prudish (I loved Silsila that has Big B having an affair with Rekha while being married to Jaya), but still, this movie is an evening wasted.

I am glad Bollywood hasn't stooped down to producing crap like this. 'Not yet, but coming soon' - is what I thought of saying, given how liberal and westernized our youth are becoming, but I am hopeful we won't go that far, we will take the U turn and return home to our good old Indian ways.

Natalie Portman was beautiful, I thought.
Jude Law is handsome, but the other hero, Clive Owen, looks like a serial killer.