GRAND CANYON
I have made so many attempts to review this movie but this story is so multifaceted that it's almost impossible to do it in a few words. It's about a million different things at once, a simple story, yet very complex as well, but it blends as smooth as silk. Every character is substancial and unforgettably etched into your memory.
The early '90s in Los Angeles, just months before the 1992 riots made headlines, is when this story takes place. In a lot of ways, I found GRAND CANYON very similar to another excellent '90s period portrait, BOYS N THE HOOD. In one part of town, a single mother named Debra (Tina Lifford) is raising her daughter Kelly (Destinee DeWalt) and her at risk teenage son Otis (Patrick Malone). In the "other" part of town, Mack (Kevin Kline) is a successful lawyer with a wonderful wife Claire (Mary McDonnell) and a son (Jeremy Sisto) who doesn't seem to be involved with drugs or gangs or anything like that. One night Mack meets a tow truck driver named Simon (Danny Glover) and these two very different families become connected by the unlikely friendship between Mack and Simon. This is a movie that moves with abrupt grace from quietness to violence. Anyone who thinks this movie is a quiet, unremarkable slice of life will have to think again. Violence plays a major role in the story, as it seems to have a hand in the events that unfold and change the characters' lives.
To try to sort out everything in this movie has proven impossible for me. But the point of the whole thing is that Mack and Simon become the best of friends, a friendship that defies obvious racial, social and economic barriers. I believe it's very possible for something like this to happen, even if it's only once in a blue moon. Mack was rich and white, but he was still a very good person, and the reservations Simon had about him at first are not surprising. Glover gave Simon a very warm, sweet spirit, and Kline did the same for Mack. Other standouts were Lifford who blew me away, especially in a scene involving an insurance salesman, and during a sudden explosion of violence in her own house. Malone as Otis was amazing, from the dismissive, "I'll never live to be 25" to the heartwrenching, "I've seen some bad shit, Simon."
I was also very impressed with Mary Louise Parker as an office collegue who has fallen in love with the married Mack. She embodied the thematic lonliness of the movie in a remarkable way. Another great performance was that of Steve Martin as Mack's friend Davis, who's nonchalant view of the world around him is changed drastically by the ever present and thematic violence. But GRAND CANYON isn't really about violence, it's more about people and lonliness and urban isolation and about the separation of the "haves" from the "have-nots"...and about the human need to reach out and connect.
Mary McDonnell as Claire, the wife of Kline's character, also embodies these themes well as she watches her son Roberto growing up and getting ready to "leave the nest". She feels old, mortal and painfully lonely even though she tries to fill her days with constructive work and community causes. When she finds an abandoned baby girl in the bushes, she abruptly realizes a new direction for her destiny.
Grand Canyon is about LA, a "big, ugly town", but after you meet the characters, you feel a sense of hopefulness. Maybe it's not altogether a "big, ugly world." I gave it an A+.
CAST:
Danny Glover as SIMON
Kevin Kline as MACK
Steve Martin as DAVIS
Mary McDonnell as CLAIRE
Mary-Louise Parker as DEE
Alfre Woodard as JANE
Tina Lifford as DEBRA
Jeremy Sisto as ROBERTO
Patrick Malone as OTIS
Sarah Trigger as VANESSA
Destinee DeWalt as KELLY
and Marlee Shelton as AMANDA
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