Heights (2005)
Directed by: Chris Terrio
Written by: Amy Fox
Starring: Elizabeth Banks, James Marsden, Glenn Close, Jesse Bradford
I came to discover director Chris Terrio’s Heights in a rather oblique way. As I remember it, I downloaded a song that I had heard somewhere. The album identification of the file tagged it as belonging to the soundtrack of the film. I sampled the rest of the album on iTunes and came to really dig it, so I decided that I needed to see the film.
I finally got around to Netflixing it around the fall of my senior year in college, October 2007. I came away really surprised- at the time, it was everything I liked about film and was interested in story-wise all wrapped into one movie. Granted, time and repeat viewings have exposed some flaws (predictable story twists, mildly unrealistic, “actor-ly” dialogue, and hinged on the “everything is connected” cliche), but four years after its release it holds up as one of my favorite films.
First off, this film is very much a New York film. The film is drenched in an urban environment, threatening to trample the characters at any moment. The visuals adopt a cool, green-and-blue tinged color palette that evokes the cold weather and the cold nature of the characters. The handheld cinematography adds an immediacy to the story’s events and never distracts. True to the title, much of the action takes place on rooftops and lofts overlooking the city- from modestly cramped apartment buildings to opulent cathedral-like penthouses. Terrio does a fantastic job of instantly drawing you into this world of bourgeoise social climbers and their urban playground.
Very few “everything-is-connected” films (I believe the term is omnibus?) actually are able to pull off their conceits. Babel did it well, as did Magnolia…. I thought Crash did it excellently when I first saw it…but then I stopped to think and realized I’d been fooled. Heights pulls it off in that each character storyline is compelling and realistically grounded within their world. Sure, everything cleans up nicely and all the loose connections are tied together, but that’s how the story was designed from the start- to find fault with it is merely an issue of taste.
Many of the actors that appear in the film are well known, and I consider their performances to be some of the best of their careers. Elizabeth Banks plays a wedding photographer who is preoccupied with her own impending nuptials, as well as the direction of her career and her artistic leanings. Her fiance, played by James Marsden (in a role that appears from the outset to be like ever other role he’s played, only to be flipped on its head), is a rising attorney with a dark past. Glenn Close plays Banks’ mother, a famous Shakespearean stage actress in the midst of mounting a giant production of Macbeth. Jesse Bradford plays a starving young actor from the fringe festival world who looks to be making his big break when Close’s character takes a cougar-ish liking to him during an audition for one of her plays. All these characters (and more) weave in and out of each others lives, with Banks as the person who connects everyone together. The writing has a lot of potential to fall into cliche and melodrama, and admittedly it sometimes does, but overall, screenwriter Amy Fox has created authentic-feeling characters that have been realized onscreen in a dramatic and entertaining fashion.
The music of the film is also something that is worth mentioning. Terrio has assembled a very eclectic collection of songs whose sultry and hip grooves would not be out of place at a high fashion cocktail party. The score is also highly effective and fitting of the visuals. It goes for a subtle minimalistic approach, utilizing mainly a melancholy piano theme to underscore the comings-and-goings of the various characters as the days events begin to weigh down on them. I later used those same score tracks as part of the temporary cutting score for my senior thesis short, The Architect (2007).
**SHAMELESS PLUG**:
The film had such an inspiring effect on me when I first saw it, that I utilized its visual style as a springboard of inspiration for my final film at Emerson, The Architect. See for yourself after the jump!
Heights is available on DVD.
