Spring Forward is the kind of wonderful movie you have to work like hell to convince anyone to go see. Why? For starters, it’s essentially a two-character drama, about a young ex-con named Paul (Liev Schreiber) who gets a job with the parks department in a small Connecticut town and gradually becomes friends with his superior, Murph (Ned Beatty). Then there’s the fact that it’s told in a series of blackout sketches, rather like Stranger than Paradise except that it’s in color, the camera moves and there’s a lot more cutting. All told, there are perhaps seven or eight long scenes in the movie–seven or eight conversations, really–which means it’s also a little bit like My Dinner with Andre, except it takes place over the span of a year rather than a single evening. I doubt the teenagers who drive the box office in this country will be camping out overnight for tickets.

Yet it works–quietly, modestly and inevitably. And in working, Spring Forward erases the memory of almost every film with which you could conveniently compare it. I strongly urge anyone who prizes acting, conversation and other forms of human interaction to go see it. It’s at once theatrical and cinematic–not cinematic in the "Let’s introduce 16 party guests in a marathon tracking shot and then plunge the camera into the water" sense, but truly cinematic, in that it seems to realize, intuitively, that the two most powerful moviemaking tools are the human face and voice. First-time feature-film writer-director Tom Gilroy pulls off a dandy voiceover-narrated dream sequence and a scary setpiece involving dark woods and an iced-over lake (human voices naturally echo like the voices of actors in a theater, except the panic in their voices is real). But such flourishes are rare. For the most part, Gilroy seems more interested in finding out how much of the story’s quiet emotion he can convey merely by putting two actors against suburban woodlands and starter homes and letting them talk.

There’s a story–Paul growing to trust and love Murph, and by extension society, ultimately absorbing some of the older man’s values and becoming the well-rounded, forward-thinking person he never was before. Yet the story never comes right out and says, "Hello, folks, I’m the story." Spring Forward really only assembles itself as a linear narrative in retrospect, in much the same way that an individual life only assembles itself as a story in retrospect. Significant moments in Paul’s spiritual evolution are signaled not by "and then I realized" statements, but in subtler ways–through reaction shots, surprisingly timed cuts and sometimes very soft sound effects. One sequence has Paul and Murph visiting the house of an attractive single woman named Georgia (Peri Gilpin) to remove some rotted old railroad ties from her backyard. On the way over, Paul tells Murph about a dream (visualized in bleached-out flashbacks) in which he was tempted away from a familiar path through the woods by a mysterious and benevolent dog. The dog eventually led him into a clearing; in Paul’s flashback, this image ends with the faint sound of a wind chime. Later, at Georgia’s house, Georgia and Paul take a liking to each other and flirt while trying to seem like they’re not. She has some puppies she’s trying to give away and she works hard to convince Paul to take one home. You can tell Paul, a loner since leaving prison, is wrestling with the idea of asking her out. From somewhere out back behind the house, we hear the muffled sound of a wind chime.

It’s been said that 90 percent of good filmmaking is casting; it doesn’t diminish Gilroy’s achievements to say that Spring Forward proves that cliche and then some. That Beatty is terrific shouldn’t surprise anybody: he’s been terrific in most of the roles he’s played, even when the films were bad. Beatty has perfected his own distinctive brand of silver-haired, Joe Lunchpail naturalism, and in Spring Forward his acting is about as effortless as you’ll ever see from anyone. Schreiber’s excellence isn’t surprising, either; he’s a reliable young character actor who’s played everybody from a dopey cowpoke bruiser (tv’s Buffalo Girls) to a maybe-maybe-not murderer (Scream) to Orson Welles (RKO 281) to Hamlet, always with conviction.

Something about the two of them together just clicks. Good acting is good listening, and both Schreiber and Beatty listen beautifully. In a sense, neither Paul nor Murph ever stops talking, because when Schreiber is talking and Beatty is listening, or vice versa, Gilroy often cuts to long closeups of the listening man’s face–not the standard, "Really? You don’t say?" reaction shot, but a genuine reaction shot that reveals both apparent and withheld thoughts. As the movie unfolds, we realize, to our pleasant surprise, that we’ve gotten to know each man so well that we can deduce what he’s thinking as he listens.

There’s much worth listening to. Gilroy’s dialogue is realistically rather than theatrically eloquent; it contains profound thoughts that sneak up on the person who uttered the words. Murph, complaining about tv self-help gurus and their moneymaking scams, grouses, "If they really had the secret to inner peace, wouldn’t they give it to you for free?" It’s not all talk; some of the most eloquent moments are wordless. Toward the middle of the film, when Paul and Murph have stopped treating each other as new guy and veteran and begun treating each other like father and son, there’s a fine moment during some yard work when Paul asks Murph if he’s interesting in maybe going to a sweat lodge. Murph is bewildered. "You know," Paul explains, "a place for men to go and relate to other men and their sons, sweat, feel good." Silence as Murph thinks about it, then he gently kicks a soccer ball out of the frame. You don’t need to be told that Murph was silenced by the "and their sons" part of Paul’s sentence; his physical action suggests it. This is good acting and good writing.

Even better is a moment near the end of the film, deep into the friendship, when Paul is standing in back of a house one night, smoking a cigarette. Murph comes outside, casually reaches into Paul’s jacket, removes Paul’s cigarettes and bums one for himself. Paul, without missing a beat, takes out his lighter and lights his friend’s cigarette. The two men stand there smoking, saying everything by not saying anything. If only more movies knew how to do that. If only more people were excited by movies that knew how to do that.

contributed by Marguerite

Unlikely Bonds Bloom in Glowing 'Spring'
Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber bring a gentle, lived-in camaraderie to Tom Gilroy's exploration of friendship.

Tom Gilroy's debut feature, "Spring Forward," is so fully realized and so moving that you wish you could get away with merely saying: "Go see it for yourself."

Every frame attests to the power of simplicity. It affords Ned Beatty the role of a lifetime and an equally fine part for Liev Schreiber, who is swiftly emerging as one of the most accomplished actors of his generation. This modest, intimate film may be one of the last pictures to open in 2000, but it ranks among the year's best, as do Beatty and Schreiber's performances. 

It begins deceptively, without any fanfare, as the camera picks up two men in work clothes riding in a pickup truck to a woodsy area. In time we learn that they are park and recreation department employees in an unnamed, enchantingly beautiful rural community--in reality, it is principally Ridgefield, Conn. 

They pull up to a sizable house in the woods, where they are greeted by a preppy-looking young man of obvious influence: Fredrickson (Campbell Scott). There's a suggestion that his family is in the nursery business; in any event, the young man has a substantial load of fertilizer to donate to the city and needs it moved immediately. But the two workmen he promised would be on hand to help Beatty's Murph and Schreiber's Paul have not shown up. 

Fredrickson presumes that Murph and Paul will proceed with the unappealing task anyway, not even bothering to ask them whether or not they would mind doing so unassisted. Fredrickson's casually condescending tone has ignited a slow burn in Paul from the get-go, and now he explodes at Fredrickson's presumption. 

From here, the movie could go lots of ways. Paul could turn violent, with Murph inadvertently winding up on the run with him--that would be the most predictable. But the steady, even-tempered Murph succeeds in calming Paul down. The younger man, suddenly ashamed of himself, runs off and gives way to sobbing, saying he's got to quit on what is actually his first day on the job. 

Paul is an ex-con, fresh out of prison, where he was sent for robbing a Dunkin' Donuts to get funds he desperately needed to buy a car so he could hold down a job. He is filled with rage over the hard luck that has dogged him all his life but even more is dismayed at himself for failing to manage his anger, as he was taught in prison. Admitting he didn't actually get the help he needed there, he has learned just enough to believe he should feel forever apologetic and impose upon himself rigid rules of behavior. 

Murph has a better idea: that Paul ought to relax a little and try some self-acceptance. It is the birth of a friendship that makes this movie glow. In his 60s, Murph is old enough to have grown up in an era--the years following the Depression and World War II--when the old American tradition of lending a helping hand was intensified in one last gasp before receding in the wake of the postwar boom and all the wrenching socioeconomic changes since. Truly, Paul could have easily taken a hopelessly self-destructive course in his life, had Murph not happened to be there and actually cared what happened to him. 

Murph and Paul learn about each other as they go about their jobs. Both had hard-drinking fathers, but Paul grew up in a poverty-stricken, broken home. Although a high school dropout, Paul is bright, curious and an autodidact with a susceptibility to New Age ideas that he at times carries to amusing lengths. Murph has learned to meet life philosophically, yet both admit to spiritual yearnings. 

On one level, a father-son relationship develops between the men, but it is also a true friendship of equals in which innermost fears and joys are shared in an atmosphere of mutual trust. And as in all good friendships, theirs is not one-sided; indeed, Murph is as surprised as he is grateful for all that he learns from Paul. 

Most significantly, "Spring Forward" is in no way the two-character play it could have been in lesser hands. Gilroy's perspective runs wider and deeper than required just to depict the development of a bond between the two men, as affecting as it is. 

At all times, Gilroy, a seasoned actor, stage director and playwright, exhibits a keen awareness of nature. The film's settings and the outdoor work the characters do lend themselves to this concern, enabling Gilroy and his splendid cinematographer, Terry Stacey, to capture with subtlety the change of the seasons to evoke both the passing of time and the eternal cycle of life. This rich context lifts "Spring Forward" securely above the merely sentimental, delivering the fullest possible emotional impact. 

Beatty and Schreiber become Murph and Paul to the extent that you forget they are actors giving performances. No moves, gestures, nuances or intonations suggest calculation, but rather complete naturalness, and this goes for the other actors in the cast: most important, Peri Gilpin as a likable young woman who gives Paul reason to hope he might not be so lonely in the future, and Catherine Kellner as a profoundly troubled young woman who evokes in Paul a response that reveals how thoroughly he has absorbed Murph's exemplary kindness and concern for others. 

"Spring Forward" leaves one with that rarest of feelings: a heightened awareness of the human capacity for good.

contributed by Marguerite

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