Hollywoodland

The central structural device in Hollywoodland involves the two characters played by Ben Affleck and Aiden Brody. Affleck plays the actor George Reeves, who in the 1950s became famous, briefly, as the lead in the Superman television series. Brody plays private detective Louis Simo. Reeves is dead, an apparent suicide, before Simo becomes interested in him. The lives of these characters are closely intertwined.

Reeves is portrayed as an ambitious but modestly talented actor. He has high aspirations but his career in the 1950s is faltering. He lands a role in From Here to Eternity, but his acting is so wooden that his scene is edited out of the film. When he lands the lead in the Superman television series, he is embarrassed and disdainful of the opportunity, but it does make him famous for three years. When the show is canceled, he tries to start his own production company, but this effort falters. Finally, after a small party in his house, he goes upstairs, a gunshot echoes, and he is found dead, apparently a suicide. His is the narrative of a disappointed life, someone who cannot live with the reality of his own limitations. Paralleled with Reeves is Louis Simo, whose marriage has collapsed and whose seven-year-old son has been so affected by the suicide of his television hero that he develops serious behavior problems. He sets his Superman costume afire on the family sofa. (Later we see Reeves doing the same on his outdoor grill, after the series is cancelled).

Just as Hollywoodland traces the gradual decline of Reeves’ hopes as an actor, so too does it trace Simo’s decline. When Simo is hired by George Reeves' mother to investigate her son’s death, he becomes fascinated with the event. At first he sees his investigation as an opportunity to get publicity. Later he becomes convinced that suicide was not the cause of Reeves’ death—that it was an accidental or intentional murder.

Like any good postmodern movie, Hollywoodland asks questions that it does not answer. It offers several plausible scenarios for Reeves’ death. Told largely from Brody’s point of view, the film switches back and forth from the present time of Brody to the past tense of George Reeves' life, beginning with the investigation of his death. While at first the film seems mainly concerned with Reeves, it increasingly focuses on Brody, his fascination with the actor’s death, his need to prove himself and gain publicity, his difficulty with his faltering family circumstances. His most significant moments in the film come when he stands outside Reeves' house and envisions how the death might have occurred. Finally, armed with the facts of Reeves' faltering career and disappointments, he seems to come to understand how suicide might be a reasonable explanation after all.

Hollywoodland is a faux film noir. It is preoccupied with its own sense of depression, moodiness, gloom, and corruption. Its premise is that in Hollywood only the strong survive, while the weak and ill-equipped are cannibalized, reviled, laughed at, and forgotten. This premise is not exactly novel. But Hollywoodland does a convincing job of exploring it by focusing on the specific characters of Reeves and Simo. Ultimately as a noir the film falters, for it leaves a glimmer of hope at the end for Brody.

A veneer of inauthenticity pervades the film. The setting is done up in what is probably more or less accurate 1950s Hollywood detail. The characters dress and act like people from the 50s. There is constant cigarette smoking—this little flourish, especially in Reeves' character (he smokes excessively) is supposed to mean a lot. But maybe the problem is that the clothes are too new and starched, the hairdos too perfect, the swagger and glamor of the characters too manufactured. Maybe the problem too is that my sense of Hollywood in the 50s comes from years of watching films that show in black and white what this one shows in color.

Affleck is excellent as George Reeves—an affable, hopeful, vacuous soul. Brody never struck me as an actor who could play a depressed, dissipated, sleazy private eye. But his performance as Louis Simo is Hollywoodland ’s darkly glowing heart.