MYSTERIES OF PITTSBURGH

(USA – 2008 – 95 mins.)

Directed By Rawson Marshall Thurber

Review By Michael Ricciardi

A screenplay adaptation (by Rawson Marshall Thurber) of Michael Chabon’s Pulitzer Prize winning novel, Mysteries of Pittsburgh tells the story of (yet another) unfulfilled, searching, college student (Jon Foster), the son of a known (and fed-followed) mobster (Nick Nolte), who loses interest in his studies and falls in with an attractive, beguiling, on-the-edge living couple: a very pretty blond (Sienna Miller) and her dangerous boyfriend (Peter Sarsgaard), referred to throughout as ‘Cleveland’, who is employed on occasion by certain organized crime interests.. The three share many adventures over the course of three summer months while the young man’s father—with whom he has dinner twice a month like clockwork--vocally and angrily disapproves of his new friends.

It has been often noted that the challenge of transforming a novel onto the big screen lay in the time taken to experience and enjoy the two forms. A novel has no objective time frame, and so it can, through descriptive detail, action, and narrative construction, offer a fully–fleshed story and characters. Film, however, with its generally two hour limit, must often rely on quicker sketches, “subtext” (implied/conveyed by signs and symbolic action or details), evocative/suggestive tableaus or montages, and a host of other cinematic devices. Whether you agree with that or not, the truth is that films don’t always live up to books they adapt from; sometimes, they are two different creatures—each worthwhile in its own right.

This is a most difficult thing to judge (or review) when one has not read the aforementioned novel. However, that said, the film may still be judged on its own merits.

In Mysteries of Pittsburgh Writer-director Rawson Marshall Thurber (whose previous film was Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story) presents a reasonably interesting and compelling seeming set-up. The basic elements of a good story are all lined up and ready to be knocked down. The cast is competent and attractive. Its central character—mob errand boy “Cleveland” (played with energetic abandon by Peter Sarsgaard)—has got a good degree of charm and twitchy danger to him. The female love interest is a very pretty and sexy blond. The college student is handsome and earnestly seeking, something…

So why did I feel so bored by this story? Was it that versions of it have been done many times before? Why did I not find any of the people—save for Cleveland—very interesting? In retrospect, there was a shallowness to the lives of these people (as presented) that got me down, or let me down.

The father (played by Nick Nolte at his gravelly-throated best form) is a mob boss, who though he may love his son (like a good investment), has plans and ideas for the son that are nothing like what the boy seems to want, and certainly opposed to his “wasted” summer (and loss of interest in his finance-major studies). The young man is suffocated by his father, but finally, after having lost a valued friendship, stands up to his dad, turns his back on him, and walks away. For one brief moment (with a garbled sentence or two) the father is humbled, and sees what he has lost. The character development that we see on screen is just too sudden and too pat. There is resolution, but it’s exactly what we’d expect (or imagine for ourselves--if tasked to do so in a few minutes).

The film is mostly narrated (voice over) by its central character—the young college student—who embarks upon an exploration of his own sexuality as he is drawn into the lives of his new friends. Despite this, the story is kind of bland and uninteresting. He has the required disaffectedness, has the suppressed anger at his dad, questions about what happened to his mother (we infer that something not right has cause her to be missing), and puzzles to work out abut his emergent bi-sexuality. All of this is “established” in very neat, complete scenes (and more music-backed montages that I expected, given the mood and texture of this film). Story-wise, everything is neat and tidy seeming; no lose ends, no ambiguity, no complexity; the anti-hero is gone, the father issue is overcome, maturation is at hand, new beginnings are sensed. So what? I do not really care about these peoples’ lives; I might be depressed if any of these was my life, but then, if I was as shallow, how would I know that I was?

Mysteries of Pittsburgh is not a bad film at all, but having seen it and thought about it, the “mystery” I am left with is: why was this novel was chosen for a film adaptation (given the praise for it by the director), when it seems like the novel was not all that special or unique to begin with.

Either I’m missing something, or the film is.