Insignificance

Based on a play by Terry Johnson, Nicolas Roeg's Insignificance was released in 1985. It takes a pretty good premise--the intersection of four of the most iconic figures of the 1950s, and reduces it to a series of interminable dialogues.

The four characters are The Actress, based on Marilyn Monroe, of course (played by Theresa Russell), The Professor, based on Albert Einstein (Michael Emil), the Senator, Joe McCarthy (Tony Curtis), and the Ballplayer (Joe DiMaggio, played by Gary Busey).

There have been many dramatizations of famous people meeting, including others with Einstein, such as Steve Martin's play Picasso at the Lapin Agile. Steve Allen used to have a show called Meeting of the Minds where actors would play writers and philosophers from different eras talking around a table, which was pretty interesting. So why doesn't this film work?

Part of the reason is the acting. Curtis is terrific, capturing the sweaty smarm of McCarthy. But the others are problematic. Busey is good, but he is nothing like DiMaggio (I wonder, since DiMaggio was still alive, if they had to make the character unlike him to avoid a lawsuit). Russell is one of many actresses to play Monroe, and she does the breathy voice to the level of parody. Michael Emil, whom I have never heard of, is the worst. He walks around barefoot in a Princeton sweatshirt and a fright wig, but I never believed he was Einstein or even a great thinker.

The plot centers around Curtis trying to get Emil to testify at the House Un-American Activities hearings, but the film is set in New York, while the hearings were in Washington, which is already a problem. Russell goes to visit Einstein because she wants to meet him, and the best scene of the film is when Russell uses toys to demonstrate the theory of relativity. Later, Busey shows up, thinking that Emil is her psychiatrist and she's sleeping with him.

Insignificance just didn't click with me. It doesn't seem to have anything to say about the characters other than to repeat the obvious, except that the Ballplayer comes off as a stupid brute obsessed with how many bubblegum cards he's been on. DiMaggio was a sphinx, impossible for people to figure out, but I doubt he was anything like Busey plays him.

I'm afraid Insignificance is an insignificant Roeg film.