The Humbling may allude to how former fictitious movie and stage actor Simon Axler (Al Pacino), on the other side of sixty, witnesses his own fall from grace during a theatrical run of King Lear, and that same sentiment is channeled and seeped into the movie itself; mostly. While Pacino hams it up in his own wide eyed despondence and delusion, the comedy and effort here, directed by Barry Levinson (Rain Man, Good Morning Vietnam) based on the novel from Philip Roth, makes for off-kilter entertainment that’s as manic and varied as Pacino’s persona himself (and audiences will receive or dismiss it based on that alone).
The film begins backstage in the mirror of a make-up counter, which sees Axler penciling in his grayed goatee while losing himself in Shakespeare (“All the world’s a stage…”). The initial sequence sets up what is to be the focus of the movie, what every scene, shot, and performance choice is reaching for- hand outstretched towards the golden ring: the bruising story of a man coming to terms with his life, and how indistinguishable his life may be compared to his life of invent and make-pretend. It goes to the point that actors are apparently the most existentially conflicted with the most soul-torching of personal missions to sort out their life’s meaning through art, which here, has become a worm-hole of self-reflexiveness that sees Axler attempt suicide, enter a self-help program, and begin an affair with a woman (further: lesbian) half his age (Greta Gerwig).
The initial sequence sets up what is to be the focus of the movie, what every scene, shot, and performance choice is reaching for- hand-outstretched towards the golden-ring: the bruising story of a man coming to terms with his life, and how indistinguishable his life may be compared to his life of invent and make-pretend.
The weightiness of such an emotionally taxing plot may sound boorish and clunky, which again, it kind of is. While it can be safely stated that it’s become something of old-hat to see Pacino in a rabid-dog mania in his performances, his indulgence is leveraged in good spirits here. Although the film’s go-to move is seeing a weathered Axler, sitting in some sort of chair (cushioned or otherwise), slumped over in inner-monologue soliloquy, the whole thing is composed with enough free-form composition that it at least never loses you in total abstraction, even when things get weird.
And weird things get. With Axler’s spiral into solitary living in a reclusive mansion, with tele-video sessions with a therapist (Simon Baker), he is soon visited by an old friend–who is not old herself, but rather, a family friend’s daughter, Pegreen, who once fostered a crush for her father’s friend, but is now herself edging forty. Oh, and she’s in a relationship with a woman, but it doesn’t matter, apparently, because she soon enough throws herself on him, and the two begin a relationship that’s depicted as more sincere then creepy. Gerwig is great here, giving her dose of pixie-girl next door sprinkling to the absurdity of it all. Oh, and there’s a sub-plot about a woman that Axler meets, Sybil (Nina Arianda) in self-help that asks Axler to help kill her ex-husband. There are actually a few more sub-plots that fall flat and fast, but oddly enough add to the movie’s frantic headspace.
While many reviews will mention the striking similarities between this and fellow dip-into-surrealism art-as-life story Birdman, it’s to The Humbling‘s credit that it will be remembered for its own take on the subject matter; however out-there it might be.
