Susan Granger’s review of “JOE GOULD’S SECRET” (USA Films)
Actor/director/producer Stanley Tucci (“Big Night,” “The Impostors”) specializes in gentle, cerebral, low-budget films about male friendships and their consequences. This true story by Howard Rodman celebrates the relationship between bohemian Joe Gould, who had a gift of gab, and courtly Joseph Mitchell, who wrote his story in “The New Yorker.” Tucci plays the North Carolina-born Mitchell who specialized in literary portraits of the denizens of New York City in the 1940s, while Ian Holm is disheveled, cantankerous Joe Gould, a homeless Harvard graduate sometimes known as Professor Seagull for his penchant for reciting poetry in seagull cawing. Gould was also the author of “The Oral History of the World,” which he would offer up in return for $2 contributions to “The Joe Gould Fund,” since a man needs whiskey, beer, and cigarettes if he’s going to talk all night. Mitchell made the demented panhandler, a tormented soul, into a Greenwich Village celebrity. Mitchell was a gifted listener and his wife, played by Hope Davis, was a noted photographer. Stanley Tucci composes scenes in the style of the great street photographers of old New York, but this film is not cinematic in scope, relying, instead, on long, talky scenes as opposed to quick cuts. And the titular secret is part of the enigmatic character study, not a mystery. Stanley Tucci delivers a droll, deliberately understated performance, while Ian Holm, not inappropriately, chews the scenery, drawing attention by table-top proclamations like: “In the winter I’m a Buddhist; in the summer, I’m a nudist.” Susan Sarandon and Steve Martin do distracting cameos. On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Joe Gould’s Secret” is a rambling, poignant, bittersweet 7, aimed at sedate art house audiences.
