Wonderland James Cox USA 2003
Val Kilmer is a whore. Lisa Kudrow may denounce his character as one in Wonderland but she may as well be describing Kilmer himself. The thin crystalline line that divides movie acting from stardom will leave Kilmer forever stranded on the wrong side despite any number of attempts to breach it, such as films like this one. A film star possesses that certain star quality beyond looks, charm and beyond acting ability. Even beyond a good agent. Movie stars have that ‘something’ which helps define them, and this is often subverted in their later career to great effect (like Meg Ryan’s decision to shed her clothes in ‘In the Cut’ also showing at the 47th London Film Festival). Marilyn Monroe infuriated Laurence Olivier with her ability to overcome hours of shambling disorganisation by delivering that ‘perfect take’, something Olivier’s hours of perfect classical technique couldn’t guarantee during their only collaboration, The Prince and the Showgirl. Fast-forward some years and the question of Brad Pitt’s supremacy over Val Kilmer riles me. Both men seem equally talentless yet Pitt is an affirmed star and Kilmer is not. Kilmer’s latest film Wonderland is in part the solution to this conundrum.
Based around the 8763 Wonderland Avenue, Los Angeles’ quadruple homicide of July 1981, Val Kilmer plays John Holmes, the notorious Porn Star implicated in the murders. Although we are thankfully spared a method acting approach to portraying a man able to eat thanks to his 14 inches of ‘man-love’, Kilmer is the sanitised Hollywood appropriation of Holmes: a man using his body for career advancement. No major criticism for an industry built on image manipulation but the casting is far too close for comfort. Val Kilmer’s portrayal of a himbo gone to seed is so convincingly vacuous that he provides the brittle heart of this hysterically historical anecdote with a film friendly title.
Wonderland is doubly jinxed by the long shadow of Boogie Nights, P. T. Andersons’ Altman opus that shows you exactly how to portray the porn industry in an acceptable way. A surprising commercial and critical success considering the subject matter, Boogie Nights works precisely by reflecting the family values, which social pariahs decry pornography degrades, straight back at the commentators. Wahlberg’s performance in Boogie Nights was good, but as a former model with a glimmer of talent who now spends his time making remakes (three so far) he’s as bland and interchangeable as Kilmer.
Sadistically overly stylish, Wonderland suffers visual fatigue way before even the half way mark. With split screens, retro early eighties title fonts, scenes with the white noise set to eleven and car shots showing Kilmer’s location on a Road Map, Wonderland simply can’t hold it all together. By the time the narrative starts to become remotely convoluted, gone are the occasional bleached scenes and gone are the funky front-page newspaper mock-ups with moving images. Barely are we given time to ruminate on the subliminal flash of ‘mysterious virus kills’ (Holmes later died of AIDS) before the sub-Usual Suspects style ‘which narrative do you trust’ is used to spike our drinks. In this sense Wonderland is almost self-consciously teasing the audience with the convention of a porno-film. Once the spectacle of acts you wouldn’t normally see diminishes you start to notice the soundtrack, the hardboard sets, the acting and your trousers around your legs, your life dribbling away between your palms. And yes, you notice Val Kilmer playing a Porn Star. Wonderland is a professional production, so the supporting cast are excellent as are the production values but when the ‘visual jazz’ ebbs all that remains is a film about a whore, played by Hollywood whore, Val Kilmer.
