FilmBlather.com

People keep telling the beleaguered mystery writer in The Singing Detective to "write something real." He thinks that's codespeak for something with "all solutions and no clues." That's not real at all. He is interested in "all clues, no solutions, because that's the way things are."

The film, based on a novel of the same name and a 1986 BBC miniseries, is clues and solutions, one could say too many solutions. Directed by Keith Gordon, who is probably best known for his lead role in Christine, this Singing Detective is ceaselessly flamboyant and interesting, but also repetitive and obvious with the character insights it provides. Themes are banged into our heads with enough force to make you recoil from the screen, or at least sneer and mentally announce that you "get it, already."

Aside from acting hideously nasty for the vast majority of the movie, Robert Downey, Jr. also gets to wear hideously nasty make-up as Dan Dark, a writer of schlock mysteries who is bedridden with a debilitating -- and very symbolic -- skin condition. Unable to move any of his joints, Dan abuses the nurses and doctors who come to study him, imagines elaborate musical numbers involving same, and occasionally relives his childhood, his successful detective novel, and (I think) a new novel he is writing in his mind.

His wife (Robin Wright Penn) comes to visit. He virulently despises her -- we are not sure exactly why, but we get a great sense of their relationship. The hospital staff react to his hostility by sending him to the resident psychiatrist, a shrewd fellow played by a nearly unrecognizable Mel Gibson. Meanwhile, characters from his past -- most prominently his father (Jeremy Northam) and mother (Carla Gugino) -- reappear in scenes from his novel and in hallucinations of the present.

Your assessment of The Singing Detective will undoubtedly depend on your tolerance for intensely unpleasant protagonists. Just a few weeks ago I ripped into Sylvia for making me spend time with its selfish, self-absorbed, intolerable title character, and today I recommend a film with one that is all those things and more (it's no coincidence, I think, that both of them are writers). But this movie makes Dan Dark watchable and even sympathetic through a mixture of satire, subtle indictment, and Downey Jr.'s remarkable lead performance. He does not leave off at simply being unlikable; we see that he has been wounded, and we wonder why.

The film tells us why -- in fact, it tells us again and again. The character repetition would have been fine by itself; the pointed dialogue or detailed flashbacks would have worked too. But when you put all of them together, you get a script that is almost laughably zealous in getting its point across -- "Sex is betrayal! Sex is betrayal! The guy has issues with his parents! And with sex!" On the other hand, it is enjoyable to watch the movie peel away the layers of Dan Dark's hang-ups and obsessions, even if it does amount to the same point being made numerous times.

I wish, too, that The Singing Detective had been more concrete in establishing its noir elements -- it gets the shadows and incessant darkness right, but the atmosphere of the fantasy sequences could have benefited tremendously from some attention to detail. This is, in a sense, understandable (though not justifiable): it is difficult to cram what was previously a seven-hour miniseries into the comparatively miniscule running time of 106 minutes.

I mentioned that Mel Gibson was "almost unrecognizable" in his role. This was somewhat deceptive on my part. I had no trouble recognizing the actor despite the balding head and unusually large cranium given him by the make-up department, and was later shocked to learn that others in the audience were completely oblivious to his presence. I suspect they were either pretending or not paying attention. In any case, great move by Gibson; his ongoing Passion of Christ fiasco is enough to make one think the man has absolutely no sense of humor.