Love, Brotherhood, and Television:
Review of The Million Dollar Hotel (2000)
By Anya Zontova

The Million Dollar Hotel played in U.S. theaters for only a week or so. It didn't get very good critical reviews nor much publicity despite the big names attached to it: story and music by U2's Bono, starring Mel Gibson, directed by Wim Wenders. The reasons? One possible explanation is that it simply went over people's heads. Yet if it "bombed" in a commercial sense, it doesn't mean it did so artistically.

Firstly, this film is not for passive watching where you are led by the hand through the familiar landscape and characters of a mystery movie. Nor are you given musical cues to know how to feel in a particular instance. You have to work off your senses and intellect to perceive it, and to be patient if it takes you in a direction opposite to your wildest guesses. It can even get irritating -- as you are about to blame the movie for having no spine -- or in truth, for lacking, entirely, conventional twists and turns. It throws you off as you are figuring out whether to perceive it as a film of crime or suicide, romance or a freak house, comedy, mockery or living poetry. Like life, this film has it all.

Yet, in a sense, the movie is transparent in foreshadowing its three major themes and their resolution -- coming from its very heartbeat, the lyrics co-written and performed mostly by Bono. In the opening scene, a young man Tom Tom hurls himself from the roof of a dreary flophouse -- "The Million Dollar Hotel," in downtown Los Angeles -- commiting suicide but with a strange joyfulness. The mystery of his joy in this moment becomes the driving question of the film as we then review the last two weeks of his life. But in the moment itself, the Bono's song which accompanies Tom Tom's rush to the brink contains three revealing verses [quoted here in part]:

"I have a lover...
She shows me colors where there's none to see
Give me hope when I can't believe..."

"I have a brother...
I spend my whole time running,
He spends his running after me...
But for the first time I feel loved."

"My father is a rich man...
He said: I have many mansions,
And there are many rooms to see.
But I left by the back door
And I threw away the key."*

Love, brotherhood and father-son relationships so outlined in the song, are treated here entirely unconventionally. And the breakdown of formal conventions simply occurs with a "surprising" shift in accents, or values - when love is more important than mystery solving, and a cop treats his suspect as his brother...

In the world of this movie, the love of a slightly odd boy towards a prostitute, awkward at first, ends up transcending death. And so does the brotherhood binding the colorful resident freaks of the Million Dollar Hotel; though verging on parody, it's rooted in that same longing of the heart, "a Sleeping Beauty" which "dreams to be awakened." And we forget the commentary on the bizarre events and characters are made by a dead "brother" telling us of the best two weeks in his life.

As the movie rolls back in time, we learn of a similar fate, falling from the hotel roof, of Tom Tom's best friend -- who had come "from money and power" yet rejected them to live "with bums and Indians." The son of a Jewish multibillionaire media king whose "people decide truth in 60 countries every morning," the Father who has many mansions, the God of Television, of the reality game which so charms the hotel residents and Tom Tom......until Tom Tom begins to have a life which is "much better than television."

And while you are still trying hard to follow the intrigue, all of a sudden your heart is being cut open... but then is mended together. Broken to be healed. To find a new meaning in death that brings the living together, and love that brings one to death, yet brings out even more love. The death after which "things finally hit you," when you see it all that clearly that "life is perfect... full of magic, beauty and opportunity" but we "only really feel when it's gone." It's not the same as television. "For the first time/I feel..."

Scenes where one character does the talking, the other doing the action at a different place are not here to confuse the audience but to convey the shared experience of living. One distinct voice, of a poet retelling us the story in his songs, is Bono's. He appears in a flash as a silent cameo mixed with the crowd of the Million Dollar Hotel residents. A powerful voice of Tom Tom's innermost self, the voice of his soul, Bono's singing exceeds anything I've ever heard before, reaching straight into your heart. "I come back above/Where there is only love..." his voice is fading, as if calling from above, sensitizing you to the very tips of your fingers. All the while the uplifting images from under the sky of downtown Los Angeles take you up to another dimension.

Mel Gibson, whose "Icon Productions" company co-produced the movie, waived his star fee. His contribution to the film as an unconventional cop, somewhat resonating with his directorial debut, The Man Without a Face, has a unique flavor you should discover on your own. The brilliant casting, starting with Jeremy Davis' finely tuned performance as the blessed fool Tom Tom, is topped by Wim Wenders' ever masterful charting of unknown territories in filmmaking (Wings of Desire, Until the End of the World, The End of Violence.) The artful cinematography and editting are yet another reason for film adepts and students to see this one.

I recommend this movie to anyone who believes film is not just for escapist entertainment but for awaking our senses and stirring our minds. As with a good book, you can embark on a journey through The Million Dollar Hotel-DVD over and over again, as if reading it each time for the first time. And if more of us do that, opening up to the paradoxical nature of life, love and death and a richly layered filmmaking, perhaps it will happen that, like it was said in the movie, "if enough people believe in the same thing, that's a reality."

* See the U2 official site http://www.u2.com/lite - at the top click on "Take Me To "A" for "Album," select "Zooropa, " & then on next frame, click, "The First Time" for the full text of the lyrics.

Check http://www.milliondollarhotel.com for more facts on the film.

Also, there a book on the making of the film, The Heart is a Sleeping Beauty: The Million Dollar Hotel by Wim and Donata Wenders.

If you have any questions or comments about this review, you can contact the reviewer, Anya Zontova, at: http://home.earthlink.net/~annazontova.

Copyright © 2002 Anya Zontova. All Rights Reserved.

[Back to the Top]

BDbiz E-Mail!!

Visit Bludogbiz's
permanent site @
www.bludogbiz. com!!

READ about the latest
legal cases affecting
the web and you by
clicking HERE!

FIND OUT about the
"One Book, One City,"
program discussed in
The Enduring Power of
Books," article in this
issue by clicking HERE!

____________

BLUDOGBIZ wants
to hear from you if
you have any
comments or questions
so please EMAIL US!

GO TO the article, The
Road to Fate &
Miracles
- a Dialogue With the
Executive Producer of
"Keeping the Faith
With Morrie," to read
about how this 30-
minute documentary
got made! or CLICK
HERE!

READ about the Internet
World Spring 2002 &
Streaming Media West
2002 Conferences in this
issue and HEAR the live
webcast of the keynote
address by top industry
leaders by clicking
HERE!



Go back to the
HOME PAGE!