Susan Granger’s “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing” (Sony Pictures Classics)
Four vignettes about New Yorkers whose lives intersect form the crux of this gloomy, slow-paced philosophical contemplation. The strange story begins with a Columbia physics professor (John Turturro) who been mugged and is cheating on his wife (Amy Irving) with a colleague (Barbara Sukowa). Meanwhile, at a neighborhood bar, an embittered insurance company manager (Alan Arkin), who loathes the optimism of one of his claims adjusters (William Wise), downs a drink while a self-righteous assistant district attorney (Matthew McConaughey) celebrates a verdict with colleagues. Abrasive words are exchanged. Then, driving home, the cocky lawyer hits a pedestrian (Clea DuVall), flees in panic and suffers pangs of guilt. The injured woman is a naive house-cleaner who was chasing a wind-blown shirt down the street. Each of the 13 fragments, or conversations, begins with a clichŽ fortune-cookie saying, like “Fortune smiles at some and laughs at others,” “Ignorance is bliss” and “Wisdom comes suddenly.” Writer/director Jill Sprecher (“Clockwatchers”) and co-writer Karen Sprecher indulge in facile pop psychology, exploring anger, despair, penance and redemption, in an existential search for the meaning of happiness. They favor stylized symbolism: a forehead wound on the man with a guilty conscience, a leaky pen in the shirt pocket above the heart of an angry man, a black eye on someone who can’t see clearly. While the naturalistic ensemble acting is convincing, on the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “Thirteen Conversations About One Thing” is, nevertheless, a stilted, depressing 5, mystically indicating that nothing is random or inconsequential when viewed in a larger context.
