Its a story, within a story, within a
story and its not the least bit confusing. The Words starts as a book
of the same name written by Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) who is doing
an author reading. He tells the story of Rory and Dora Jansen, a
happy couple who were going through life as a teacher and a
struggling writer in their Brooklyn apartment picking up with the
success of Rory's book. Rory (Bradley Cooper) finally marries Dora
(Zoe Saldana) and they honeymoon in Paris where after reflecting on
Ernest Hemingway's home they wander into a shop and Dora buys Rory an
old worn leather briefcase. Rory has written this novel called The
Burning Tree, after a thick stack of rejection notices, I didn't even
know there were that many publishing houses, he on the urging of his
father gets a steady job as a mail room clerk at a large publishing
house. Rory literally stumbles upon the manuscript while he is
transferring his papers to the old briefcase. We find him enthralled
by such an amazing book and one night when he can't sleep he feels
compelled to copy the book on his computer word for word. He thinks
nothing of it and goes about his day till his wife Dora finds the
“new” copy and pushes him to send it to publishing houses
completely unaware that he didn't write it. Of course the book, The
Window Tear, becomes a big success.
Rory seems to take it all in stride. As
we are watching the story being narrated, A young grad student come
in to watch the reading enthralled as the rest of the audience for
the tales in this book. Olivia Wilde plays the sexy grad student
looking to score with an bestselling author. Everything is going just
fine for Rory and Dora till we see the moment that Rory is confronted
by the old man in the park a fabulous as always Jeremy Irons, who
after playing along calls him out for stealing the book because its
in fact his. We then get the story of the old man telling what
happened in his live and his war tour in Paris that compelled him to
write this book. We learn of his military service and his wife and
child and the tragedy that forced him to sit and in 2 weeks bang out
that book. The story itself is just as gripping as the first. We are
tossed back to the original reading of the book The Words and
reminded this is just a story. A painful twisting story with mostly
fleshed out characters, (all the women are grossly underdeveloped)
but again he is just reading a novel. He finishes his reading with
the cliffhanger of how Rory was shocked to realize his fact story
might get out.
When Clay is home wining the grad
student she asks how the book ends. He then goes to indulge her with
more of the details which we get to see again but she calls bullshit.
He pushes her to come up with what she thinks would happen. She wants
to know how Rory and Dora are at the end, she doesn't believe his
neat ending. You start to wonder if the book The Words is truly a
fictional book or something more. We are given a real ending about
what happens to Rory and Dora.
This movie was just amazing. I was
drawn in from the beginning and griped all the way till the end. It
was so well laid out and had such heartfelt moments you really are
understanding how the layers of the story go on and on and are
intertwined but never make you lose grip of what's going on. There
are not many movies were I stare at the credits in a wow moment
because I enjoyed every minute.
I give this movie a Full Price. You
care about these people not just Rory and Dora but the soldier and
his wife. I wish it was a book because I would gladly pick this up.
The Word is rated PG-13. Its in
theaters nationwide September 7th.
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