Ruby Sparks

 

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

 

In Stranger Than Fiction (analyzed on this blog) the main character really existed but was channeled by an author who controlled his actions. In The Words, (also discussed here) the author also had difficulty separating fact from fiction, so completely connected to his characters that he didn’t know how to become attached to others. We have a similar situation in Ruby Sparks (2012), but beyond that point, this film explores male and female relationships, the male tendency to objectify women, but even more so, how complicated human beings are.

 

The first image is of a young woman that is blurry as if not clearly defined who then comes closer and talks to the person looking at her, or in this case the audience since the camera is placed from the observer's viewpoint. It is a dream, and the dreamer is Calvin Weir-Fields (Paul Dano). He is a writer and the image suggests how writers’ stories start as vague ideas. The title of the film is written in the sky as if taken out of thin air, which is what happens to the title character. Calvin stares at the blank page in his typewriter, the daunting task of all writers. The phone rings and he lunges for it like a lifeline to give him a reason not to face his task.

 

He goes to the gym with his brother, Harry (Chris Messina), who questions him about whether Calvin is ever going out on a date again and have sex. Calvin says the only reason girls are interested in meeting him is because he wrote a book they liked, and are not interested in him as a person. In a way he is not real to them and “they’re interested in some idea of me.” He is only associated with a work of fiction, just like his characters. Ironically he will view Ruby the same way others see him. His brother is all about physically working out to be better looking to attract women. He leans toward being concerned about the physical aspects of a relationship. When Calvin says he had a dream about a woman, the first thing Harry asks is what did she look like. Calvin says it was nice because the woman “just talked” to him. Harry says his brother doesn’t “even get laid” in his dreams, which he finds “sad.” Here, Harry represents the perennially superficial male who never exited adolescence, the kind that thinks the sole purpose in life is to have sexual conquests.

 

Calvin visits his psychiatrist, Dr. Rosenthal (Elliott Gould), and they discuss his writer’s block. Calvin wants to blame his problem on something outside of himself, even on his dog, Scotty, for making him walk him so much. Calvin is in a state of arrested development, and wants to cling onto a toy puppy that Rosenthal has in his office especially for him. Calvin has been leading a solitary life and Rosenthal reminds him that getting Scotty was supposed to help him meet people, break away from his isolation and world of make-believe. Rosenthal gives him a writing assignment that consists of saying how someone can like Scotty despite any of his shortcomings. In this way, Calvin can write something without literary merit for his shrink, which will at least get him back into practicing his craft. Also, the task shows how he, Calvin, can be liked, just like Scotty, despite a lack of social graces. 

 

Calvin is at a sold-out literary event where he is to be interviewed by another writer, Langdon Tharp (Steve Coogan). Tharp notes in his introduction that amazingly Calvin’s book was at the top of the bestseller list when he was only nineteen years old, which shows Calvin has a sort of innate talent. But, huge success at an age where there is insufficient maturity to deal with fame can be overwhelming, and may have contributed to Calvin’s social withdrawal. Ten years have passed since his novel was published, and he has only written short stories since then. He still seems immature as he dresses in a teenager’s at-home clothes. The interview itself is not shown but Calvin’s response is. As he walks through the audience he is questioned about what is the true meaning of a color in his story, as if he is supposed to explain his work. One man asks if it’s “weird that you used to be so successful?” The implication is that Calvin is a has-been at the young age of twenty-nine, with a lifetime of failure ahead of him. He has to wash his face off in the men’s room as if to cleanse himself of this negative experience.

 

He tells his agent, Cyrus Modi (Aasif Mandvi), that he wasn’t prepared for this interview and would have dressed up for it. Cyrus reminds him he hasn’t checked his messages, so much has Calvin withdrawn from contact with others. Langdon, at the reception afterwards, attaches himself like a parasite to Calvin’s achievement, taking credit for guiding the young author toward success since, he says, raw talent isn’t enough to excel. Calvin has to endure the onslaught of a large gathering and the propositions from women who, as he told his brother, seek Calvin to get close to his fame, not him. Langdon tells a few members of the audience that if you produce a great work early, the readers “love you, then they throw you away.” Fans are like hungry followers who want to feed off of the famous person’s notoriety, and are not satisfied with one book, but want to know what he is currently working on in anticipation of what they can devour next. The drunk and burned out Langdon, claiming he didn’t do any cocaine, at least not that night, tells Calvin it’s tougher when you start out on top to rise to those heights again. He says J. D. Salinger had it right by just disappearing after his success. Calvin seems to be going that route, although at the same time he wants to write more. 

 

When he gets home, Calvin throws his novel to the floor like he unburdened himself of an oppressive object weighing him down to his past. He didn’t get home in time to walk Scotty, who urinated all over his bed, which seems to fit how lousy Calvin feels about his life at the moment. Sleeping on his couch, sort of like a visitor in his own place, he again dreams of his idealized woman, who is Ruby Sparks (Zoe Kazan, who is also the screenwriter, and granddaughter of famed director Elia Kazan). Her first name suggests a beautiful, precious jewel. It could refer to Dorothy’s slippers in The Wizard of Oz, which is a fantasy story, as is Ruby’s. Her last name might point to the electricity that will develop between them, or romantic fireworks going off. In any event, the name is exciting. 

 

Her features are well-defined now, as she becomes more real to Calvin, and she sits next to him near a tree. She is an artist, creative like him, and sketches Scotty. She never heard of F. Scott Fitzgerald, after whom he named his dog. He informs her that Fitzgerald was one of the great novelists. She says it’s “disrespectful” to name a dog after a great writer. She theorizes that he named his “dog after him to cut him down to size,” which shows that Calvin is envious of Fitzgerald’s literary standing. She advises she is okay to “kill your idols.” Her statement suggests that worshipping others is intimidating and makes one feel inferior and inhibits actualizing one’s talents. Even though the male dog Scotty “pees like a lady” and is afraid of others, she says she likes “him just the way he is,” which fits in with Rosenthal’s writing assignment. 

 

Calvin starts writing his story based on the dream he had. He tells Rosenthal how the psychiatrist’s suggestion was “genius” about not putting pressure on him by saying he wasn’t looking for a good piece out of him. It is wise advice for all writers who just need to get started on a work. Now, Calvin is inspired and says, “All I want to do is write.” But this “fiction” has a great deal of him in it, since the main character is a writer named Calvin. He says he almost didn’t show up for his session because he didn’t want to leave “her.” He even says, “it’s almost like I’m writing to spend time with her.” He is becoming infatuated with someone he created, as if she is separate from himself, like the way a person produces an offspring. He says he is falling in love with her but is upset because she is a product of his imagination and, therefore, not real. He has trepidations about getting involved with someone because he had a girlfriend named Lila, who he says, “treated me so badly,” by leaving him after his father passed away. He says Lila was a “heartless slut,” which points to some sexist attitudes that Calvin harbors. An actual woman hurt him, so maybe in his mind the virtual one will treat him better. The emphasis here is on Calvin and his needs as opposed to those of another.

 

He starts to make up a biography, a backstory, for Ruby, which is what writers are told to do when creating their characters. As he talks about her, his words turn into cinematic images, so she becomes more real for us, too. She is twenty-six years old, compatible with Calvin’s age. She is a bit notorious because she had an affair with one of her teachers. She always is on the side of the “underdog,” which means she would support Calvin if he has failures. His favorite aspect of her is that “She’s complicated.” So, he, like most writers, wants to produce a “rounded” as opposed to a “flat” character. She’s made mistakes with men. He says she’s looking for “something new,” which we can assume would be Calvin, both the real and fictitious writer.

 

Susie (Toni Trucks), Harry’s wife, is with their baby at Calvin’s place doing some cleaning when the two brothers return to the house. The first sign that there is something strange occurring is when Calvin is perplexed to find a woman’s razor in his medicine cabinet. Harry finds a bra on the couch and notes that Calvin has not been telling them that his brother has been having sex. There are panties in a drawer and Calvin makes up a story (which is what he does) and says his dog is dragging the underwear in from other houses' trash. 

 

Harry’s input into the story Calvin has been writing is that women read love stories and they would not like a tale about “quirky, messy women whose problems make them endearing” because they “are not real.” Harry says women are different “up close,” (as opposed to in a book), and says even Susie can be “mean” for no reason. Harry reminds Calvin that writers are supposed to write what they know, and Calvin hasn’t had enough experience with women to know them. Calvin has retreated from reality and wants to live in his world of idealized fiction. 

 

But Calvin persists in his story even though his brother says he has written about a “girl” not a “person.” Which means Calvin is producing a fantasy version of a woman not grounded in the real world. Nevertheless, Calvin continues his story about Ruby, which we see dramatized. She says she dated a guy who told her she had a good sense of humor because she laughed at his jokes. That attitude points to how men’s lives revolve around their ego and want women to affirm the man’s perception of self-worth. He says that she was searching in the wrong place and Calvin is the man she has been really looking for, which allows him to stress his value. In his story Ruby dives into the swimming pool and he follows. Their unrestricted movements suggest that his invention has allowed him, at least internally, to become liberated from his self-imposed emotional quarantine. She says she is messy, and he says he loves her “mess,” but that chaos is still under his control since he is the master in charge of the fictitious scenario. It is like he is performing a controlled experiment.

 

However, what follows is a cliched idealized version of a love story when he says that as soon as he saw her he thought she was the most beautiful woman in the world, the emphasis on physical attributes being the default position of most men. She says when she first saw him she thought, “I’m going to love him forever and ever and ever.” Her words sound like what women want in old-fashioned fairy tales, and also show the male desire for adoration from the female interest in a story. 

 Calvin is supposed to meet Cyrus to show him what he has written so far, but he is late because he fell asleep at the desk typing. He has to walk Scotty first, but then he hears a female voice saying she’ll take care of the dog. The fantasy part of the movie, suggested by the feminine items appearing, now becomes full blown. We get a Twilight Zone feel as Ruby now actually exists in the kitchen saying she missed him in bed the prior night but hopes his working on the story was productive. Calvin, of course, is mind-slammed by what is happening. He starts to think he’s not an inspired writer, but is just “batshit” crazy not being able to separate himself from his creations. When she touches him and he feels it he realizes that he is experiencing more than an auditory and visual hallucination, He runs off in fear trying to convince himself, “It’s not real. It’s not real.” He hopes he was dreaming, but she is still there. 

 

Calvin calls his psychiatrist, leaving a message saying he is having an emergency (I’ll say!). Ruby is making him breakfast and when he asks if the underwear he found is hers, she asks who else’s, and then becomes jealous, wondering if he is “seeing anyone else.” His response of, “I’m not seeing anyone other than you,” is funny because not only is he not involved with another woman, he isn’t even “seeing” a real woman, only a fictitious one. He hides under his desk and whispers in a call to Harry that he needs help because he fears he is losing his mind. His world contrasts with that of Harry, who is in a business meeting, far removed from the far-flung events happening in Calvin’s house of magic. Harry says call a friend and meet with that person away from his hallucination. Calvin has become so isolated from others that he calls someone from high school who barely knows who he is. He finds the number of the woman, Mabel (Alia Shawkat), who offered it to him at the literary event, which shows how desperate he is to make a connection to someone in the real world.

 

Calvin tries to sneak out of the house but Ruby confronts him. She pleads to go with him, and his dream girl now feels suffocating in her attention to him. The cautionary advice of, “be careful what you wish for because it may come true,” comes to mind here, because one may not fully understand the ramifications of that wish. Ruby goes with him, but he tells her to window-shop until he returns with his meeting with a “friend.” The woman, like others Calvin mentioned, doesn’t relate to him other than seeing how she could have influenced his starting to write again after the literary event. She is a literary groupie, feeling like a celebrity herself if she sleeps with one. In a sense Calvin’s wanting to create a person makes sense because the people he meets in real life are not genuine in dealing with someone when fame is involved.

 

The shocker is that when Ruby comes by, Mabel sees her, too, and converses with the young woman. At first Calvin thinks Harry is playing a practical joke on him, but he quickly realizes he has actually conjured up a way to have someone from his imagination cross over into the real world. This fact blurs the difference between what is real and what is an illusion. Her anger at him going on a “date” makes her angry, which is believable. When he grasps how amazing it is that she is really there, they kiss and what follows is the “honeymoon” part of what Harry said is the temporary early stage of a real relationship. In this way, the movie is dealing with what actual couples experience, but through an exaggerated construct. They have fun together, going to a zombie film festival (a fantasy movie, which fits what we are seeing). They then go to other places, such as an arcade and a dance club, all places that get Calvin out among people for a change. But these locations are all escapist venues, where people go to escape reality. In a way, Calvin has exchanged one imaginary world for another.

 

Calvin meets with his brother and tells him Ruby is real, and that the “situation is crazy,” but he is not. Harry insists that his brother should see Dr. Rosenthal because it is “impossible” that he is having sex with a make-believe character. (Of course we know Harry is right, but we suspend our disbelief and imagine that the “impossible” can be real since that is what watching a movie entails. We believe the fictitious is real). Calvin takes doubting Harry to his house but tells him Ruby doesn’t know she emerged out of his writing and wants his brother to keep that aspect a secret. Ruby is there and confirms that she is a painter from Dayton, just like in Calvin’s story. She is cooking dinner, and Calvin says she is a terrific cook (another aspect that men traditionally want in their women). 

 

Harry runs through all of the logical explanations, including that maybe the girl is an actress Calvin hired, or is she an opportunist who was able to read Calvin’s manuscript. Calvin says he didn’t hire anyone, and Harry is the only one who read his work. Calvin’s explanation is that love is magical, and just as Susie is Harry’s “dream girl,” that is who Ruby is for him, only she literally came out of a dream. 

 

Harry finds out that Calvin hasn’t written any more of the story. He suggests an experiment, which is to write more about Ruby, and if Calvin’s claims are true, then writing something more will change Ruby. He types that she speaks fluent French, and immediately Ruby begins talking in the foreign language. Calvin took care of her backstory by saying her parents died when she was young and she traveled around a great deal so there is nothing to tie her to a specific past. After dinner, Harry wants to tell everyone what his brother has done. But Calvin, like most writers, is protective of his creation. He doesn’t want Harry to tell anyone because he wants to keep his “girlfriend” to himself and not subject her to being looked upon as a “freak.” Harry is funny when he says if Calvin marries Ruby wouldn’t it be “like incest” or “mindcest.” Calvin says he loves her and not to ruin things for him, which refers to his disastrous past romantic life due to his inability to have a meaningful relationship with real women. Harry, acting like the typical immature male, says Calvin can “tweak” Ruby, making her breasts larger and her legs longer, and having her perform oral sex anytime Calvin wanted. Harry also says he wished he could remove his wife’s annoying habits so easily. But, these are all the elements that make people individuals. He says, about Calvin’s ability to make Ruby do whatever he wishes, “for men everywhere, tell me you’re not gonna let that go to waste.” Harry’s take is to objectify a woman to the point that she will have no freedom of choice or uniqueness. At this point Calvin vows not to write anything about Ruby again so that he will not be manipulating her any further.

 

Months have passed and when Calvin’s mother calls he puts off her meeting Ruby again. She wants Calvin and Ruby to come to a birthday party for his brother. It is ironic when his mom, Gertrude (Annette Bening), says she started to believe Ruby “doesn’t exist.” Certainly, as we know, not in the usual sense. But even this prefabricated human starts to exhibit traits of personal preference. She would like to meet the rest of Calvin’s family. She wants to earn some of her own money working at a coffee shop, even though Calvin has promised to play the old-fashioned male role of providing for her while she works on her art. On this night, because she isn’t feeling fulfilled as an individual, she says she is tired and doesn’t want to have sex. 

 

So, he decides at this time that it’s okay to see the family at Big Sur, giving into Ruby’s wish instead of his own. (In the background on their ride it is funny that the song “The Game of Love” plays which reflects this very different form of romantic participation involving the couple. But also it is sung in French, referring back to how Calvin gave Ruby her bilingual abilities). Calvin’s mother greets them at the large estate where she lives with her husband, Mort (Antonio Banderas). Mort has had an impact on Gertrude’s diving into New Age ideas about growing all medicinal plants, and they have an indoor-outdoor style of living which is quite different, with no doors on the rooms. Calvin tells Ruby that his mother used to wear polo shirts and cook meat when she was with his father. He feels that she has been brainwashed by Mort. Is Calvin's mother a version of Ruby because she has been formed by the wants of the man in her life? Or, is Gertrude really happy and Calvin is just feeling guilty about how he has the power to control Ruby?

 

Calvin, not able to have his creation, Ruby, for himself, is again withdrawn, literally physically, from his family members, since he sits alone in a tree house structure reading Langdon’s new book. He remains immersed in fiction while the others dive into the pool. He wants Ruby to come up to be with him, above the realm of real people. Mort is entertaining at dinner and they all laugh and enjoy themselves except for the loner Calvin, who does not wish to validate Mort’s ways, and appears not to want to join in with others outside his own world.

 

Back home, Ruby has the opposite disposition than that of Calvin, because she sings about love while she cooks. The withdrawn Calvin feels annoyed and asks her to be quiet because he is reading, escaping again into fiction. She becomes sad and says that despite Mort and Gertrude trying to engage him in the joy experienced by the others, he just read by himself most of the weekend. She comments that he has no friends, and his statement that he only needs her prompts her to say that it puts a great deal of pressure on her to try to make him happy. Her observation shows he doesn't have the maturity to be generous in a relationship. She admits to being sad, suggests that maybe she should start taking art classes, and spend one night a week at her own apartment. It’s as if he gave birth to a child who is growing into her own person.

 

Ruby is thrilled by her art class and says she thinks she will learn a great deal from it. His selfishness is evident because he can’t share in her happiness and says his night away from her was terrible, and this “experiment” of hers isn’t working for him. She is the one now feeling emotionally smothered, and says there must be “space” in a relationship, “otherwise, it’s like we’re the same person.” The film suggests that is what would happen not only between people in a romantic situation, but also in any relationship. In this case, Calvin wanted someone to fit his specifications, so in a sense, he did wish for a woman who was like him. 

 

Ruby expands her independence by calling Calvin one evening and saying she went to a bar with others after her class. This fact spoils Calvin’s plans to cook dinner for them. She says that it might be a late night, so now she is expanding the number of days she will not sleep at his place. There are shots of Calvin alone in bed or with his dog. His disappointment is obvious as his territorial control over Ruby is eroding. 

 To counter that loss of power, he goes back on his promise not to write about Ruby anymore. He types that she is miserable without him, and he immediately gets a call from her where she pleads that she wants to come home. They are in bed and now she is so dependent on him she will not even let him get up to go to the bathroom. They eat cereal out of the same bowl and read the newspaper together while she holds his hand. But even though they are practically attached at the hip, she says, while sobbing, “I miss you right now.” She feels compelled to go with him even to answer the phone. He is now getting a dose of his own possessiveness. The movie seems to be commenting on how men don’t know how to be with women, since they want female adoration but also want space. Calvin can’t find the right state of mind to temper his selfishness with emotional generosity. They watch a film and there is a line uttered by Humphrey Bogart where he says, “No man walks alone by choice.” But before Ruby, Calvin seemed to have chosen that way of living, while contradictorily yearning for companionship. 

 

To counter her unhappiness due to his inability to cater to her all of the time, he writes that she will now be full of joy. So, then she is overly cheerful and loud as she constantly bubbles over about every single moment, no matter its significance, and is unrealistically optimistic no matter what happens. Calvin talks with Harry about his inability to strike a good balance. Calvin wants him to be what makes her happy without him making her happy. Isn’t that what most of us want, to find fulfillment by contributing to another’s joy by virtue of who we are, not by what we exact? Harry confesses that Susie once left him but came back. The precariousness of relationships is stressed as he says he can lose her at “any moment.” If that is true about our connections to others, the movie suggests that we have to not take for granted those we love.

 

Calvin tries to make Ruby her own person, typing that she can be sad or happy, however she felt like being. But, that is not enough. She sits around just watching TV and arguing about not wanting to go out. She complains about abruptly shifting from being psychologically up to being down, as if she is bipolar, because his defining her in his writing has been too narrow. The film implies that it is extremely difficult to have a character in a story approximate the intricacies of the personality of a real person. A writer may play God, creating characters for the author’s own purposes, but he or she can’t reproduce what an independent human being is truly like. Ruby complains that she does not have “an internal compass” to direct her because Calvin doesn’t have the ability to create one in her. She says maybe she needs to talk to someone like he did. When he mentions Dr. Rosenthal, she says maybe he should go see him. But, he says they were talking about her. Her warning about becoming the same person is coming true. She is now like he is, being urged by someone else that she has to get out and be social.

 At Langford’s party, documentary filmmakers pitch doing a film based on Calvin’s book, and they boast about making it look completely real. But even a documentary, through content selection, edits, and the fact of intruding on a situation alters the reality of what is being filmed. Calvin runs into his ex-girlfriend, Lila (Deborah Ann Woll) who he vilified earlier. She says she finished her novel and Langford is helping to get it published. When he says he is with a painter now, she says that is less threatening. Did he not get along with Lila because he could not handle a companion he did not feel superior to? Even now, she says he can’t be happy or supportive of any success she has. When they were together, she says that he reluctantly helped her with her writing career. She says he had “an image of who I was. And anything that I did that contradicted it, you just ignored.” So, the way he is acting with Ruby is nothing new for him. He blames her for leaving him right after his father died, but she accuses him of not letting her in emotionally, and that the only one he wanted “to be in a relationship with was you.” We again have Calvin’s narcissism noted.

 

Langdon meets Ruby and asks what she does, and her response is “nothing,” because she is not a complete person, generated from the mind of someone who doesn’t understand what that constitutes. He starts to come onto her. He invites her into his pool and she starts to get in with just her underwear on. Calvin gets territorial and whisks her out of there and when they get home demands an explanation for her actions. He becomes abusive as he grabs her arm, hurting her. He only cares about how she embarrassed him because his agent, Cyrus, and Lila were at the party, and not that he dragged her to Langford's place and left her alone. She argues that he has rules that she doesn’t know about until she breaks them. He tells her his rules, which are based on sexism and jealousy. She is angry and says that she is not his child (even though he birthed her and thinks he can discipline her like one) and he can’t control her to fit his whims. But he threatens that he can make her do whatever he wants.

 

She tells him she is leaving and they will talk later. But when she tries to go it’s as if she runs into an invisible barrier and can’t leave. He hands her what he has just written and the pages of the book he has already worked on. She is upset that he is invading her privacy by writing about her. He says no, he isn’t writing about her, “I wrote you.” He admits that he invented her. She thinks he is mentally ill until he makes her speak French, snap her fingers, sing, act like a barking dog, and call him over and over again “a genius.” The film has turned into a horror story where someone becomes an omnipotent being who unmercilessly wields his power to humiliate a subject. The fact that here it is a man completely defiling a woman makes the story an indictment against gender abuse. If that theme isn’t clear, we then have Calvin pounding out his words as if beating upon Ruby, who collapses to the floor. 

 

When he stops typing, he approaches her but she runs off in fear. He finally realizes what a monster he has been and types that she will be released from the past when she leaves the house, would no longer be “Calvin’s creation,” and that now “she was free.” He leaves the manuscript for her to read and leaves a note that tells her to read the last page. He says that he loves her, but most writers love their characters, no matter how badly they treat them. When he awakes Ruby is gone.

 

Calvin plays golf with Harry and says nothing helps getting over his broken heart. He says he can’t write, but Harry says Calvin should tell his story. Calvin says people will think he’s crazy, but Harry says, rightfully, they will “think it’s fiction.” Which is what it is because that’s what novels are and, you know, we’re watching a movie that is made up. He does write a book entitled Girlfriend, and in it he apologizes to Ruby. He has left out all identifying information about her to keep her free of him. He confesses that he couldn’t see “her” (to whom he dedicates the book) when she was there, but sees her everywhere now that she’s not around. His words echo those of Joni Mitchell’s song which reminds us that we don’t appreciate what we have until it’s gone. At a book reading, Calvin says that “falling in love is an act of magic,” and “so is writing” to explain why he has written his tale. He quotes a comment about J. D. Salinger’s Catcher in the Rye that says how writing brings human beings to life “out of ink, paper and the imagination.” Calvin, again referencing Salinger, says the woman he wrote about passed through him, inspiring him, and he was lucky enough to “catch her.”

 

Calvin is walking his dog in the park, and Scotty gets away from him. He calls Scotty’s name and runs into Ruby, who, based on what he wrote, no longer remembers her past with him. She says it’s curious that she is reading a book that has a dog named “Scotty” in it. Of course, it is his novel, and she realizes that he looks familiar because his picture is at the back. She feels badly because she mentioned before she knew he was the writer that a friend thought the story was pretentious. She then asks if they could “start over.” Hopefully the man who wrote about his own history has learned not to repeat it.

The next film is Cold Mountain.

The Words

SPOILER ALERT! The plot will be discussed.

The Words (2012) is a story within a story within another story. It focuses on what is real and what is imaginative, and how this line can blur when an author creates characters that are so real they become more important than actual people in the writer’s life. It also deals with the talent to create a truly inspired work of art, and someone who would appropriate the work of another to make up for a lack of that unique ability. 

Writer Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid) is doing a reading of his recently released novel, The Words. The question as the story unfolds is whose words are they? Hammond is telling us about a tale within the movie in which Hammond is a character. The film dramatizes the narration as Hammond says that there is an Old Man (Jeremy Irons, terrific in this role) watching in the rain as Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper, in a fine but not well known performance) and his wife, Dora (Zoe Saldana) exit a building in New York City. It appears to the Old Man that the couple was able to avoid the water drops, implying they were blessed by fate. At his dreary apartment, the Old Man looks decrepit, using a cane, and his medicine cabinet is filled with medications. In contrast the Jansens look picture perfect in their fine clothes as they ride in a limousine to a ceremony awarding Rory a prestigious writing award. 

Rory starts his acceptance speech by making an interesting statement, saying, “I simply tried to set down the truth as I imagined it.” Fiction’s connection to facts can be remote, as in fantasy stories. It is more aligned to them when dealing with tales that approach reality. But, even there, it is “imagined.” By insightfully portraying what people experience and feel, and how they behave, the author can demonstrate the “truth” about human existence. Rory says he hopes he can come up with something for his next book, an ironic statement, we later discover. There are cuts to the Old Man as he scans Rory’s novel, which implies that there is a connection between him and Rory’s story.

There is a cut back to Hammond who shifts the narrative to five years earlier so as to provide a backstory. The early part of Rory’s life as a writer is like those of others trying to be successful. Rory and Dora moved to Brooklyn after college. He starts out like most novelists, creating a story, doing the revising, and submitting his manuscript. But, in the meantime, he and Dora have little money. Rory approaches his father (J. K. Simmons) for some funds, and we discover it isn’t the first time he has gone to his dad for help. Rory doesn’t want to ask for cash since, like most people, he wants to make it on his own. He reminds his father that two years ago there was a decision to give the writing career a chance. His dad, like other parents in a similar situation, tells him the writing should now be a “hobby,” and he should work at something that brings in a steady income. His father gives in and writes him a check, but tells him it’s the last one. He tells Rory that part of being a man is to accept one’s “limitations.” That is a tough reality to accept because most young people have dreams that they want to live up to. But when is it okay to accept that not all hopes become real, with the possibility that prematurely failing to apply oneself means giving up too early? 

Hammond relates how Rory received nothing but negative responses to the submissions of his novel, or worst of all, “silence.” This last form is the worst kind of rejection because it implies that a writer’s work didn’t even warrant a comment. Rory gets a low-level job delivering mail and packages at a large publishing company in order to foster literary connections. He sort of half-jokingly tells a fellow worker, also an aspiring writer, that he writes “angry young men” fiction, which most likely mirrors his frustration at not getting published. 

Dora wonders one evening if Rory is going to write that night. He isn’t feeling like it, and so he may be accepting those “limitations.” Hammond says, “without even knowing it they had settled into their lives.” The operative word here is “settled,” which means no longer trying to strive for something more fulfilling. The couple marries and honeymoons in Paris. They stop to take a picture of a plaque which notes that Ernest Hemingway stayed at that spot. Being where one of the world's most famous writers lived brings with it awe and also envy on the part of another author. They stop at an antique store where Rory discovers an old soft leather briefcase. Dora loves it and buys it for him, and it eventually changes his life.

Rory continues to write, but there is disappointment on his face as he sits in front of his laptop. He has been at the publishing house job long enough that he is instructing trainees. He is overjoyed, as any hopeful author would be, when a literary agent, Timothy Epstein (Ron Rifkin), sets up a meeting with him and tells Rory that his book is very accomplished, and that he sees “so much truth” in his writing. But Epstein says the work is “interior,” subtle, and is a work of art, which, ironically, makes it too literary to be marketable coming from an unknown writer. It is the book business Catch-22 (which of course is the title of a famous book), that one can’t get published if the author isn’t already published. 

The movie itself comments on the writing process by showing us the difference between a successful story and one that isn’t. Up to this point, except for the mysterious Old Man, which keeps us invested, Rory’s story is not noteworthy, certainly not one that we would recommend reading. But that changes with what happens next. Rory finds a manuscript in the old briefcase that Dora bought him, which he reads. (IMDb notes that the first page is from Hemingway’s A Moveable Feast. Hemingway’s ghost haunts this film). Hammond narrates that Rory could not stop thinking about what he found, and that “he had been confronted by everything he had ever aspired to be, and the reality of what he would never become.” Despite the fact that Epstein praised his work, Rory is humbled by encountering a level of achievement that he knows he can’t reach. And he is infuriated by finding out, as he says to Dora, “I’m not who I thought I was.” He has the love and devotion for writing, but not the talent (which is a similar theme in the play and movie, Amadeus). It is crushing to believe that he is not the great writer he thought he was, and he has no other aspiration, so he feels lost. Dora, understandably, is hurt by his words since she thought their love in the nonfiction world was the cornerstone of their lives (which, of course is also not real, because Hammond made it up, who was also created by the co-screenwriters and co-directors, Brian Klugman and Lee Sternthal. Many layers here). 

Rory escapes his limitations by copying the found novel in an attempt to channel the revered anonymous writer through his typing. Hammond says Rory just wanted “the words to pass through his fingers, through his mind.” He even keeps the spelling mistakes. He places his thumbprint over the one on the original manuscript’s page, as if trying to be part of the tale’s uniqueness. Dora comes across his retyping on the laptop and believes her husband wrote the story. She is overwhelmed and tells him he is everything that he wanted to be. She says the new words show that he “stopped hiding. They're fuller, they’re truer, they’re more honest.” Rory’s own work was artistic, but an empty vessel, devoid of the emotional depth that, according to Dora, he shows in life. But Rory is not happy choosing a happy, though circumscribed life, over what a piece of accomplished fiction can bring him. Rory starts out by trying to clear up the misunderstanding, but after seeing how moved and adoring Dora is, he finds that he can’t disappoint her. Rory knows he can’t receive recognition for his own writing, so he decides to go for half of the dream by being the recipient of the praise of another’s work. His copying of the novel turns into replicating just the fame of a successful author. He submits the novel, called The Window Tears, about “A young man’s journey through love and loss in 1940’s Paris.” The book becomes a number one best-selling novel and garners critical acclaim. (It is interesting that the number two book on the best-seller list is entitled Buried Lies, an obvious echo of what is happening in the movie). He could have been honest and accepted his “limitations” honorably, but as Hammond says, “Rory Jansen had made his choice,” to become a fraud. The backstory concludes and Hammond says, “And then he met the Old Man.” Quite a teaser, as the author announces the end of part one. 

There is a break in the reading and we are now in the primary part of the story which deals with Hammond. While signing books, a beautiful young woman, Daniella (Olivia Wilde), approaches the author and obviously knows things about him, such as his favorite wine. He invites her to spend some private time with him during the intermission. She shows that she knows a great deal more about Hammond, including food preferences, and music and TV show favorites. She also knows that he is separated from his wife, but he still wears his wedding ring, probably because he has been married for quite a while, and clings to that past reality. Daniella sounds like a groupie, but she reveals that she obtained her backstage pass from her college professor, and she herself is an aspiring writer, having won the same literary award as did Hammond when he was younger. Is she similar to Rory in Hammond’s novel, a writer who hopes to be great at some point, admiring the work of another storyteller?

When the break is over and Hammond returns to the stage, the center of attention, which is where Rory hoped to be and found his way there under false pretenses. The Old Man rides the bus that Rory takes to New York City’s Central Park, and sits near him on a park bench. Rory is reading a book and the Old Man says he met the author, who they both agree should have been better appreciated, which is probably what Rory feels about his own writing. When Rory wonders out loud, “What happened?” to the author, the Old Man says, “life,” which also fits what happened to this stranger. He knows who Rory is as he pulls out a newspaper article that is about winning the writing award. The Old Man asks him how it feels to be so well known. Rory says it’s good to have one’s work recognized, but the irony is that it isn’t his. The Old Man says with a hint of sarcasm that God looked down on Rory and said there is a writer. Rory says that he wrote two other books that wouldn’t have been published if it hadn’t been for The Window Tears, which helped him get over that Catch-22 glitch that guarantees that nothing breeds success like success. The Old Man says that he read Rory’s book and felt like he was right there, tasting the wine, sitting in the cafe, making love to the girl, hearing the child crying, and longing for his distant home. After the man praises his writing, Rory feels a bit uneasy with this enthusiastic man, possibly out of guilt. He says he has to leave, and the Old Man asks Rory to sign his copy of the book. Rory doesn’t have a pen and the Old Man comments, “a writer without a pen,” which has the subtext that he is an author without the words.

The Old Man says he has “a story.” He says that if he told it to Rory and he wrote it he might be able to give the Old Man some credit. Rory’s response is, “Well that wouldn’t be fair, would it?” But that is exactly what Rory has done, and he starts to leave since The Old Man is cutting close to the bone now. The Old Man then drops the bomb which shows he is the writer of Rory’s novel when he says his story is “about a man who wrote a book then lost it, and the pissant kid who found it.” Rory sits down next to him.

The Old Man now is the narrator as we get to the third story of the film (so Hammond is narrating what another narrator is saying). He says there was a Young Man, a soldier (Ben Barnes), in Paris in 1944 who hadn’t seen action in WWII. The young man worked to rebuild sewer pipes after the German occupation, stressing how lowly his life was literally and figuratively. But he was happy doing these details with fellow soldiers. He became best friends with a scholarly fellow who lent him books that opened his mind up and planted the desire to be a writer. He then meets Celia (Nora Arnezeder). They only knew each other's word for “Yes,” which the Old Man says made it “the perfect relationship.” Here the Old Man suggests that when it comes to love, words, essential for a story, can become a problem when one chooses them over real people, as we shall see. The verbal communication between the two comes later as they rejoice in their time together. The Young Man was then discharged from the army and went back to his American home, working at a market. Back there, “nothing had changed,” but he had. His old life felt “small” after seeing other parts of the world, meeting Celia, and acquiring the desire to write. 

So, he started to write but he was not successful (like Rory?). He left America and went back to Paris and Celia. He started to be a journalist for one of the many publications hiring ex-patriots and the Old Man says it was “a good place to learn.” Perhaps writing about real people gave the Young Man the training to connect to others on a genuine level, which Rory’s writing does not achieve. (Here we have another reference to Hemingway and how he was a journalist in France, and also the time Rory saw Hemingway’s house in Paris). Even some of the shots of how the Young Man kisses Celia mirror Rory’s actions with Dora and both couples married after moving in together. Unlike Rory, the Young Man and his wife had a child, which adds more experience to his story as their two paths diverge.

When the Old Man hesitates, Rory wants him to continue, drawn into the story as he was by the Old Man’s novel, as we are drawn into Hammond’s book, and the story of the film as a whole. He says that the baby cried all the time, and they found out “my daughter” was hopelessly ill. So we now know what we suspected, that this story is what really happened to the Old Man. The grief from the death of the baby damages their marriage as Celia becomes numb and distant. She leaves to stay at her mother’s home. With another allusion to Hemingway, the Young Man reaches for his copy of The Sun Also Rises. It is Hemingway’s first novel which he wrote after quitting his journalism job, taking time alone, away from his family, in order to put all his effort into his fiction. 

The Young Man at first starts to toss stuff in his apartment in anger and despair. But on the back of Celia’s farewell note he starts to type his own work of fiction. His use of the other side of the piece of paper symbolically shows how he turns a negative into a positive, using his writing as a way to purge his pain and turn death into a creative birth. We even see the ink thumbprint that Rory noticed on the found manuscript page. The Old Man says words flowed out of the Young Man (himself) and, “The words became form, the form became whole,” and he completed the novel in only two weeks. After performing this healing process of the imagination, the Young Man slept and then went to be with his wife and gave her his book. But, she wasn’t ready to reunite and sent him back to Paris. She put the pages in the briefcase (the one Dora bought) and a little later decided to return to Paris and “start life over.” But she left the book on the train, which removes the possibility of beginning again for the Young Man, who felt the book “saved him.” The implication here is that he has lost a second child that he helped to bring into the world. 

He becomes angry with Celia and searches for the lost work (which is another connection to Hemingway, since his wife lost a collection of the author’s stories). The young man eventually left to go home, as Celia did when they lost their child. But, the Old Man says, he couldn’t write anymore because, “he was never able to set down one word that looked right to him.” The suggestion here is that he had written his book when there was a flood of emotion that channeled all of his feelings into the words on his typewriter, and after that, the inspiration receded. As the Old Man says, maybe he didn’t want to go “that deep again,” into the depths of that tormented ocean. He eventually found a sort of “peace.” But, just like a storyteller, he adds that’s when his tale became even more interesting. He says the Young Man was now the Old Man, himself, and he read Rory’s novel and knew that it was his words in the book. He says that he wanted Rory to know the story behind the story and maybe he now has the makings of another book (which is the one Hammond is telling), but the Old Man’s statement is sarcastic, implying Rory may steal from him again to write about the first theft of “the words.” 

The Old Man walks away and Hammond ends his reading at this point to draw the audience into buying his book (and the filmmakers hook us as we want to know what comes next). It also allows the movie to further develop Hammond’s character. Hammond sees Daniella waiting by herself, smiling, and the writer, who seduces others with his work, is also being seduced. He takes her to his elegant apartment, but he hasn’t unpacked since becoming separated from his wife. He is adrift, like the characters in his book. (Daniella picks up a baseball off of Hammond’s desk that Babe Ruth supposedly hit for a home run. IMDb notes that a similar ball is pictured on Rory’s desk. Has Hammond just used an object he owns as a prop in his story or does this coincidence suggest that maybe Hammond also stole another’s work earlier in his career and his current novel is a sort of confession?). He wonders why Daniella wants to be something “silly” like a writer, and says words “ruin everything,” which suggest how harmful they can be when they become more important than real life. He echoes what he says in his book about the perfect relationship being devoid of them. Yet his living uses words, so he is a living contradiction, revealing an almost self-loathing. She doesn’t have the patience to read the book and wants Hammond to tell her how the book ends.

He continues the narration to his one-person audience. Rory gets drunk so he can tell Dora that he didn’t write the book. He wants to know why she loves him because he is afraid that she really committed to him when she thought it was his story. He wants her to admit that she knew all along he couldn’t be that good a writer in order to assure himself that the book isn’t why she is still there with him. But she loved him before the novel and her pain and anger derives from his dishonesty. 

He even confesses his plagiarism to his publisher, Joseph Cutler (Zeljko Ivanek), and says he wants to take his name off of the book. The furious Cutler says a public admission will destroy Rory and him. He proposes a cover-up by saying Rory can pay the Old Man whatever he wants to ease his conscience, and assures him that writers have committed this crime before. Rory initially dismisses that notion, implying that just because someone does something wrong it doesn’t justify another to do the same. When he asks if the subsequent book that Cutler published, that was his own, is as good as the Old Man’s, Cutler’s silence tells Rory what he already knows about his limited talent. 

Rory discovers the Old Man working at a plant nursery, where things still live, as opposed to what happened to his child and his writing. Rory says he wants to make things right by removing his name from the book and give the Old Man the royalties. But the Old Man is angry about what Rory did in the first place, taking a part of his life, the “joy and the pain that gave birth to those words,” for Rory’s own benefit. The Old Man will not allow Rory a way to dispel his guilt. But, he is still a writer at heart, and feels compelled to tell Rory, an eager listener, like us all, that part of the story that is not in the book. He says he saw his wife one more time, and there is a scene which shows him as the Young Man on a train that stops at a station. A man, holding a child, approaches and kisses Celia, and the Young Man realizes that she has been able to move on, unlike him, and start a new family, a new life. Their eyes meet and they tentatively wave to each other as he pulls away from her forever. The Old Man says she looked happy which gave him pain, but also some relief since he discovered that he hadn’t permanently hurt Celia. He says that allowed him to not keep looking back. Rory feels the Old Man would have had a better life if he continued to write. But the Old Man responds with something that is significant to the theme of the movie. He says, “my tragedy was that I loved words more than I loved the woman who inspired me to write them.” Rory has made a similar choice, as have many artists who chose their creations over those important people that were in their lives. Maybe the art connects with others, maybe even changes them. But, the sacrifices can be awful. The Old Man tells Rory that everyone makes choices, but they, like Rory, have to live with the consequences. Before he goes, Rory tells the man, “I do love your book,” which personally acknowledges the Old Man’s ownership and talent with no selfish attempts to lessen Rory’s guilt. Hammond concludes by telling Daniella that Rory continued living his lie, and the Old Man died a couple of weeks after Rory visited him. There is a shot of Rory dropping the original manuscript into the Old Man’s open grave. Hammond says, “It was as if by locking off the secret of one man’s life forever, he had unveiled another much deeper and darker secret within himself.” The implication is that Rory enjoyed his success that was not earned, and lived with the more awful truth that he was the kind of person who allowed himself to benefit from such a deception.

Hammond says there is no moral attached to his story, and that someone can make a terrible mistake in life, and even live well afterwards. Daniella says that is “bullshit,” because everyone must deal with guilt. We then get images of Rory and Dora, but they are not from anything written, and seem to spring from Hammond’s mind. Daniella wants to know what Hammond really believes would happen if the circumstances in the story actually occurred in real life. Here is where reality and imagination begin to blur. Hammond angrily says she has manipulated herself into being with him and getting him to talk. After all, she, too, has a selfish agenda as she wants to further her career. He turns the question back onto Daniella, and wants to know how she thinks it would play out if the story was genuine. 

She gets her jacket to leave and says about Rory, “He’s fucked,” because even though he may continue to write, “he’ll never, ever believe it. He’s robbed himself of the chance to find out” if he will ever really be accepted on his own merits since he already achieved fame under false circumstances. She also suggests that “maybe his marriage falls apart because for him and his wife to look at one another is for them to look at the truth” about the lie they are living. Rory might, in public, be able to “wear that mask of confidence and sophistication, but back when he’s alone late at night, he can’t sleep, because when he closes his eyes he still sees the face of that old man.” Hammond encourages her as she speaks, as if mentoring her writing, and then contributes the possibility that, “maybe he sees his own face, and the old man is just a story he made up.” Hammond is now talking about himself. He has written his book because he has the same struggle as the Young Man and Rory. He continues by saying, “At some point, you have to choose between life and fiction. The two are very close, but they never actually touch.” 

 Hammond tries to have that real “touch” by kissing Daniella passionately, but, despite what he just said, Hammond pulls back as an image of Dora holding Rory’s face in her hands appears. Hammond moves away and says Daniella should leave. She understands and says that Hammond “never let her go.” He conjured up Dora, and he can’t give up that fantasy of her, since he created in fiction what he can’t have in life. He couldn’t write an unhappy ending for Dora and Rory because he is living through his fiction and thus he would also experience a sad finish. She throws his words back at him, asking what does he want, “life or fiction?” We then get flashbacks of romantic moments between Rory and Dora, and we know that the writer chooses the words. 

The next film is Laura.