A Million For Each Degree

I watched Six Degrees Of Separation  (1993) for the first time since it was in cinemas.  I think it holds up pretty well, even if the stage version is a more powerful experience.

The movie, and play, are inspired by a real-life con man who pretended to be Sidney Poitier's son.  But that's just the jumping off point for a contemplation of how we experience life.  In a way, I don't like taking real events to create fiction. It only makes clear how fiction cleans up and prettifies things.  In the play, the con man is a spellbinder, a rather glamorous figure who enriches the lives of those who meet him. In real life, he was a cheap crook who later harassed and sued playwright John Guare for creating the play itself.  In the play, he's a tender soul crushed by the harsh realities of the world.  In the real world, he was a jerk who died of AIDS.

But if we can ignore all that, it's a pretty good work of art.  The movie sticks fairly closely to the play (especially the first third), which might be expected since Guare adapted it.  He opens it up so director Fred Schepisi can show us the opulent life of Wasp high society, even throwing in people like Chuck Close and Kitty Carlisle, who might as well be playing themselves.

Will Smith, before he became the biggest star in the world, gets to show off some acting chops as the con man.  His main marks are played by Stockard Channing--who'd starred in the Broadway version--and Donald Sutherland.  Pretending to be a friend of their college-aged kids, and also claiming to have been mugged, Smith gains entrance to their East Side apartment.  He charms them so much they're practically in love, but they soon discover his ruse.  They haven't been hurt, and haven't lost much of value, but they're certainly shaken.  Before long they discover this isn't the first time he's pulled this trick.  Smith identifies with this couple more than the others he's fooled, and later pretends to be Sutherland's son--a con job that doesn't end up so well this time.

We discover that Smith isn't a run-of-the-mill crook, but someone yearning for something deeper that he can't find in real life.  And he succeeds by being exactly what others want him to be.  Channing is moved by him, even after the shock wears off, and they form a bond of a type she doesn't easily find in normal life.  People need connections, hence the title--we're all connected, even if we don't know it.

One of Six Degrees' best devices is how the story is essentially narrated as a series of smart anecdotes releated at various parties and events Channing and Sutherland attend.  They're chopping up their experiences into bite-sized pieces to entertain others.  But Channing realizes Smith is real, not just an amusing figure to dine out on.  Once you turn your life into a story, you can remove yourself, and your emotions, from it.  But she's felt something real and doesn't want to let it go so easily.

Another device (which was, if anything, a bigger deal in the play) doesn't work as well, perhaps because it's such an obvious metaphor.  Sutherland is an art dealer, and his greatest possession is a two-sided Kandinsky, one side showing order, the other chaos.  Just like how Smith introduces chaos into all these ordered lives.  The movie doesn't overplay it, but I almost wonder if it couldn't have been cut completely.

Guare has a talent for comedy, and the movie's quite funny.  There are a few places where he goes overboard (the awful college kids--one played by J.J. Abrams--are funny at first but soon grate), but overall he keeps things moving.  In the published play, he wrote the piece had to move like the wind, and that's how the film is, barely stopping to catch its breath.

One of the great things about the film, and ironically maybe the reason it wasn't a hit (it only grossed around $6 million), is that the screenplay is so literate.  I see no reason movies can't be like plays, and have smart dialogue, but the movie audience (as opposed to critics) often doesn't respond well to it.  Also, you usually see characters wear feelings on their sleeve, but these Fifth Avenue socialites are several degrees removed from their emotions.  If you want to make money, tell stories about characters who are relatable to everyone, not just playgoers in Manhattan.  Yet, the point is these people may express themselves with a bigger vocabulary, and a different accent, but they're not really different from us.