“Heights” is the story of a crucial day in the lives of a half-dozen people. They are connected by relation, passion and profession and are on a collision course with their own identities. The film stars Elizabeth Banks as Isabel, a young, aware photographer struggling to make it in the competitive world of art photography. Glen Close plays her mother, Diana, an aging stage star who teaches young actors more than just elocution while slowly losing her husband to a younger woman. As she is losing her husband, she is also losing her grip on reality. Her younger co-stars are in much the same boat, except they never had a grip on reality to begin with.
James Marsden plays Jonathan, an up and coming lawyer working in an uptown high rise. Jonathan is engaged to be married to Isabel soon. He is Jewish, she gentile, and he seems to be handling that well. But something is bothering him about the union. Isabel has a great opportunity for a job, but if she takes it she has to travel now, 10,000 miles. The wedding won’t wait, the job won’t wait, Jonathan has a terrible secret and Diana is shrieking Shakespeare and gasping for air amidst stage smoke. There are others involved as well, but you will have to see the movie, and take notes, to keep them all straight.
Shot entirely on location in New York City, “Heights” puts the microscope to personal roles and responsibilities across a broad range of urban lifestyles. Diana is watching her life slip away in spite of her desperate clinging to the trappings of stage stardom. She is not quite to the Norma Desmond stage yet, but her director is starting to speak philosophically, so it is only a matter of time.
Her daughter is starting out in the arts as a professional photographer. Like all of the young characters in this film she is an intellectual, professionally trained. But she sees others around her in much more honest terms than she sees herself. Her camera is her filter for the world. She is to be married to Jonathon only a few, short weeks from the day of the film.
Jonathon is a picture-perfect husband for Isabel. Working as a young, successful New York lawyer, he has it all: a beautiful, smart and artistic fiancée and a stage star for a future in-law. In New York City, this called a set-up--the mayor himself hardly has it so good. Hubby-to-be has clever and upwardly mobile friends and a strong religious faith. But he also has a secret that denies him intimacy, even with his betrothed.
Jesse Bradford plays Alec, a young actor auditioning for part in Diana’s Shakespearean stage production. He knows his elocution and Diana wants to increase his vocabulary. But Alec is distant. Life is a role for him, just as life is a play for Diana and a photograph for Isabel. In the night club where Alec waits tables, sexual partners perform on scaffolds at the cavernous end of the club. Patrons view them through binoculars. The latest thing, perhaps, but more so the symbol of the players in the film. Each sees life from a distance and through a distorted lens. Seeing inside themselves is what they do least of all.
Fellow New Yorkers will get a few laughs from the city scenes. Whether it’s Isabel taking pictures of a well dressed, homeless mother and child in a clean subway car in the middle of the night, or Jonathan hailing a cab by yelling “cab!” (is the hack going to hear him a block away in the din of Times Square?). One always suspects that some money was paid somewhere for getting the Big Apple in the limelight. The movie would have showcased the young talent better in an anonymous urban setting.
Glenn Close is a star who teaches her neophytes on stage and off, but the young actors and actresses will move past her as the young always pass the old. If “Heights” is a bit slick, and Close a bit too good, the real stars of the show carry the day. If the film lacks the edge and soul of Tarantino and Jarmusch, it compensates with the energy and acuity of Banks, Marsden and Bradford.
You can access media from the film in our database and view premiere photos on this page.
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