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While there’s no denying that coincidence
and chance are integral parts of everyday life, films about
the mysterious power of fate often feel not only contrived
but downright false—random events become a narrative shortcut
that exposes the filmmakers’ inability to cohesively intertwine
seemingly disparate plot threads. Certainly, Jill Sprecher’s
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing falls into this
category, a hodgepodge of seemingly unrelated vignettes about
New Yorkers who, for some reason or another, are either searching
for, basking in, or mourning the loss of, happiness.
Written with her sister, Karen Sprecher,
the film is a muddled, repetitive jumble of accidental encounters
and karmic retribution that is so smitten with its own cleverness—look
at how wonderfully unpredictable and magical the world can
be, it screams at the audience—that it altogether sidesteps
reality. Totally unrelated characters come into contact with
one another, frequently altering the course of the other’s
life, but the strands that bind them are too tenuous, too
artificial, to seem like the work of some greater power. On
the contrary, Sprecher’s cloying directorial hand is painfully
obvious as the real force guiding these wayward souls.
Thirteen Conversations About One Thing
introduces us to a number of seemingly diverse stories (each
replete with its own cute title card), including a cocky lawyer
who accidentally commits a crime; a worn-down office manager
who loathes his overly chipper co-worker; an angelic maid
who sees only the good in the world; a math professor stuck
in a life of routine; and a woman who discovers her husband
is having an affair. What connects these tales is, of course,
the idea of fate—whether there’s a master plan to life that
we’re unable to see (but can nonetheless intimately feel),
and how seemingly inconsequential events and actions may,
unbeknownst to us, profoundly alter our destinies.
Fortune, it seems, has brought these tortured
souls together because they all share a dream of happiness
that has proved elusive. Thus, the lawyer seems on top of
the world, only to learn how quickly success (and tranquillity)
can vanish, while the office manager comes to understand how
devoid of joy his life is, and struggles to redeem the past
mistakes he’s made. The maid discovers that a simple gesture
of kindness can alter the course of one’s life, just as the
professor struggles to understand the source of his dissatisfaction.
Unfortunately, Sprecher is entirely incapable
of subtly weaving these stories together, choosing to hammer
home her points with all the finesse of a bulldozer. If it’s
not the obvious title cards spelling out the filmmaker’s intentions,
it’s the characters themselves, who constantly ruminate about
fate, love, loss, and happiness with all the wisdom and insight
of a Hallmark card. Every conversation and incident is imbued
with such grand importance and otherworldly significance that
the film quickly loses its ability to do the one thing a film
about fate must be capable of—surprising the audience.
A film this precious has little use for great
performances—it’s too busy telling us what we need to know
to worry about actors elucidating those things through performance—but
it nonetheless gets one from the inestimable Alan Arkin
as the jealous office manager determined to quell his co-worker’s
unending mirth. With a voice that exudes a lifetime of disappointment
and droopy eyes that can barely find a compelling reason to
stay open, Arkin brings a world-weariness to his role that
that bestows a bittersweet poignancy on his search for redemption.
If only the rest of the cast was as lucky.
From McConaughey’s arrogant lawyer to Turturro’s
restless mathematician, the cast does its damnedest to augment
its performances with a sense of divine import, underlining
each emotional revelation as an “important moment.” Unfortunately,
there’s nothing of real importance or interest being discussed
in Thirteen Conversations About One Thing, a film so
mired in trite aphorisms that it completely forgets to show
us the truly magical possibilities the world affords us.
— Nicholas Schager
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