Everybody’s Fine…And The Movie Is Quite Good Too

Don’t let the title or Miramax’s misleading and anemic marketing campaign fool you. Everybody’s Fine is a wonderful little movie with a great cast that boasts Robert De Niro’s best dramatic work in several years, maybe since City By The Sea. De Niro brings so much warmth and humanity to his role of recently-widowed 60-something father Frank Goode, it’s pretty amazing to watch. His performance reminds you of why De Niro became a legendary icon. It’s not an intense, in-your-face performance a la Raging Bull or Cape Fear or This Boy’s Life or The Untouchables. It is quiet, restrained work, and De Niro makes you feel Frank’s loneliness like an airborne toxin. You feel it coming off the screen at you.

I was the only person in the theater last night at the midnight showing. I had gotten to the theater six hours before that on an advance screening pass to Armored (competently made and an intriguing setup but nothing special and instantly forgettable). Then I caught A Christmas Carol (my first 3-D movie, really cool), took a nap through the last third of Precious (sue me), then switched off between Michael Jackson and 2012, waiting and waiting for midnight to come so I could see De Niro. Yep, that’s how broke I am right now. I waited through six hours of marginal movies so I could save eleven bucks. But the wait was more than worth it.

I—like most people—grew up watching De Niro and have loved him in a lot of movies over the years. I went to his restaurant in Tribeca six years ago and ate there, even though I already had food poisoning. I took some stacks of matches with the restaurant logo on it and got my picture taken outside the restaurant’s bathroom hall, which was lined with signed De Niro posters. And when he was directing The Good Shepherd in 2006, I went to see him and Matt Damon taping Hardball at George Mason University. I nearly fainted at being in the same room with Robert De Niro. But I will not deny that he has made some marginal movies as of late. Everybody’s Fine is not one of them. Please go see this movie, it clearly needs the money and it’s really a nice holiday release—emotional without being cheesy.

The setup is pretty simple. Frank Goode is trying to adjust to being a widower and living alone. He spends too much time in the garden and too much time at the grocery store wandering around, trying to make a connection with clueless employees. He has three grown children played by Sam Rockwell, Drew Barrymore, and Kate Beckinsale, and a fourth child we never meet. They are all supposed to be flying home to him in the upcoming weekend to visit. But at the last minute, they all cancel on him for reasons that are all too convenient. So Frank, against the advice of his doctor who tells him that his lungs aren’t up to a big trip right now, decides that if they aren’t going to visit him, he is going to go visit them. He packs a small suitcase and hits the bus circuit. His journey will take him all over the country, including New York and Las Vegas.

As Frank rides the bus, he keeps looking out the window at the miles and miles of telephone wire that stretch from pole to pole, across the sky. After engaging with some of his fellow passengers, we learn that Frank’s job was coating the telephone wires and protecting them from the elements. He is very proud of the work he did, even though it caused his current health problems, and he never really had any lofty ambitions to do anything else. All he wanted was “to find someone crazy enough to marry me” and to be a good father. But he wanted more for his kids, he wanted them to take advantage of opportunities, he wanted them to be happy and successful and different. But did he push them too hard?

Throughout the film we see shot after gorgeously composed shot of Frank passing these telephone wires in the sky that he feels connected too. Frank looks wistfully at these wires and they become the visual metaphor for the movie. Here is a guy who spent his life tending to an apparatus that has united and connected people all over the world in transcendent ways, and yet he himself is completely alone and disconnected from all of his children. That is why this trip means so much for him. He is running out of time to reconnect with his family.

About Schmidt had a similar setup, and while it’s an entertaining film, it plays the whole affair broadly and for satire. Everybody’s Fine goes for wistful emotional connection and understated poignancy—a much harder combo—and is the better film for it. You could look at Everybody’s Fine as a series of vignettes, with Frank going from one grown child to another and checking in with them to make sure they are okay. But the narrative is much more than that. All four children are forced to come together by an unexpected event.

Frank’s first stop is to see his son David, who is an artist in New York. He arrives at his apartment complex and presses the buzzer but no one answers. So he waits on the curb. And waits. And waits. A prostitute comes by and asks Frank if he wants to see her legs. He smiles in that way that only De Niro can smile and asks her if she wants to see his. De Niro leaves and comes back but David still doesn’t answer. Finally someone lets him into the building. Frank waits some more and knocks on the door but no one answers, so he slides a letter he wrote for David under the door frame and moves on to his daughter Amy (Kate Beckinsale).

He surprises her and quickly comes to the realization that she lied to him about why she, her husband and Frank’s grandson had to bail out on him. But he doesn’t push it, he just tries to spend time with his grandson. He asks to stay but she makes up another excuse and sends him off. He tells her not to tell Sam Rockwell that he is coming, but she does. And we hear phone conversations between all of the children about what’s going on with David and where he is and how to keep it from Frank. Frank knows that all of his children are lying to him about various things and he wonders why. But the film isn’t a mystery like that, that’s not how it operates. It’s a character study and a portrait of a lonely and decent man trying to make connections and face the truth that his children don’t have the lives he wanted for them and wonder if he pushed them too hard.

Frank is a walking anachronism. People comment on how he still uses a film camera and not digital and how he didn’t know that his suitcase had wheels. We see him happily snapping photographs of his children, something they and the people on the street (trying pass by) with their busy little lives can’t understand. I really connected with Frank as a character, and De Niro’s performance is more than a little heartbreaking. The film takes a decidedly melancholy turn towards the end, but it isn’t a downer by any means. It’s just a lovely film exceptionally acted and well-directed. Those are rare qualities on the American movie scene these days. Everybody’s Fine is a really nice movie and December is the perfect time to go see it. Please do.

For a different Poptimal opinion read Everybody’s Fine, But This Movie Is A Bore by Keshaunta Moton