It’s a story within a story within a story. Writer Rory Jansen (Bradley Cooper) struggles to have his novels published; even though his stories are good, no publisher wants to represent a nobody with a slightly better-than-average style. While honeymooning in Paris with his newlywed wife (Zoe Saldana), he comes across an old briefcase in which he discovers a yellowed, post-WWII manuscript that contains the most profound story he has ever read and he sees his entire livelihood within the pages. Virtually everyone who reads the story, which he titles “The Window Tear”, instantly falls in love with it. Though initially unintentional, Rory allows others to assume him as the writer, and suddenly everyone is willing to publish and read the other stories of the next great American writer. One old man (Jeremy Irons), follows Rory around New York after his new-found success, but the reason why is not revealed until about half-way through the movie, though you can guess it. This is the one man in the entire world who knows that Rory is a fraud, but his motives for forcing Rory to listen to his story are not quite clear.
The is the central plot of Lee Sternthal and Brian Klugman’s (the directors of “Tron Legacy” ) new movie “The Words”, but the story of Rory Jansen is actually the plot of a newly-released book called “The Words”, which is being read aloud by its author Clay Hammond (Dennis Quaid). Within the Rory Jansen book, the stolen story comes alive, too, though in snippets at first.
Bradley Cooper (“The Hangover”) really steps up his game here. After portraying a struggling writer before in the disaster “Limitless”, Cooper refined his serious acting to be a more relatable character you can be sympathetic to. The real star, though, is Jeremy Irons (“Die Hard”, “Lion King”), the Old Man in his trench coat feeding birds on the park bench. He manages to blend his character’s sadness, anger, envy, and sneakiness into one emotion. Ben Barnes (“Chronicles of Narnia”) portrays the true writer – and possible protagonist – of “The Window Tear” with some talent. They don’t give him very many lines, but he’s able to act with raw emotion nonetheless and you feel connected to him. Zoe Saldana (“Avatar”, “Colombiana”) plays Jansen’s supportive wife Dora, but she’s mostly just a filler character, same as Olivia Wilde (“Cowboys and Aliens”) who plays a starstruck fan of Hammond’s.
You wonder what is so powerful about the stolen story that feels life-changing to everyone, and though there are glimpses at first, the movie makes you wait until way into the second half until you finally find out the secrets. It manages to do this without dragging the first hour, which was a well executed, as I was engaged through most of the movie. There were parallels drawn between the life of the real writer, whose name is never revealed, and Rory’s “real” life, which were cleverly done.
There were also frequent allusions and references to the works and life of the writer Ernest Hemingway, some subtle and some outright, that literary critics would enjoy. At times it almost seemed like it was actually about Hemingway: Jansen visits a Hemingway museum in Paris, both he and Barnes’ character often read classic Hemingway novels and short stories, and Barnes has the same accident as Hemingway did involving his writings. Most people wouldn’t get the references, so I feel like the movie should have either been more explicit or toned down on the amount.
The end of Rory Jansen’s story is not very specific, but that’s one of the things that I thought really made this movie a good one, that you don’t know what’s real or what’s true but sometimes it doesn’t matter. “The Words” aren’t perfect, I wish there was more attention paid to the strains – or lack thereof – that lying his his way to success should have put on Rory. This is not an action movie, nor is it a chick-flick; it’s simply a sweet, enjoyable, and smart movie for those interested in literature and writing and a morality tale at the same time. In a way, it’s kind of like the “Inception” of books.
4/5 stars
