“Croupier” Hits the Jackpot
By Cynthia W. Gentry, © 2000 by Cynthia W. Gentry, published on Dailygossip.com, June 2000.
When it comes to making the best of the dreck in our lives, we writers are a resourceful lot. They’re kind of like the Martha Stewarts of the art world: they let nothing go to waste. Take the reaction of a writer friend of mine when her boyfriend dumped her—after sleeping with her one last time, because, as he told her later, he was “horny”—the week she started graduate school. Did she become hysterical? Sob and rend her hair? Drink herself silly?
Well, yes. But she also used her horrible experience to fuel a whole slew of nonfiction articles, short stories and the better part of a novel. She got straight As that semester, started dating a fabulous man, and lost five pounds to boot. As she said to me one evening, paraphrasing F. Scott Fitzgerald’s good friend Gerald Murphy, “Writing well is the best revenge.”
But like with any revenge, there can be a downside. As the film “Croupier” outlines neatly in classic film noir style, writing can be the ultimate escape—letting you observe human life rather than live it, all in the name of art. So it’s no surprise that “Croupier” was written by Paul Mayersberg, the scribe who penned 1976’s “The Man Who Fell to Earth.” As Mayersberg’s amazing script shows, being a writer can feel somewhat akin to being an alien.
The protagonist and narrator of “Croupier,” Jack Manfred (Clive Owen), is a struggling writer whose agent advises him to put aside his current novel to write one that will actually have a chance of selling—in this case, one about soccer. Jack experiences the typical reaction of an artist asked to create something about which he couldn’t care less: he has immediate writer’s block. But a call from his father gets him both a job in a casino as a croupier—and the subject of his next novel.
Jack’s usually supportive girlfriend Marion (Gina McKee) is less than thrilled. “I wanted to be with a writer,” she cries, exhibiting the romantic notions that significant others often attach to an occupation whose chief characteristics are despair and rejection. But she may also realize that Jack’s new job will only push him farther away from her.
She has good reason. As a possible attempt to protect himself from an untrustworthy father, Jack seems to have set himself from the world of emotions. He tells Marion he loves her, yet as his voiceover tells us, he only “half” means it. Cold and detached, with almost rigid standards of behavior (including a prohibition about gambling that is apparently the result of problems in his past), Jack uses his new job to observe the gamblers—“punters,” as they’re called derogatorily—and gather fodder for a new novel, called “I, Croupier.” Soon, we realize that Jack’s voiceover narration is also the text from this novel.
Yet Jack can’t help but get sucked into—“addicted,” as he calls it, the world of the casino, a world built on illusion. Despite casino rules, he becomes attracted a mysterious South African woman, Jani de Villiers (Alex Kingston from “ER”). He lets down his guard enough to become involved with a casino heist—or does he?
That’s the thing. “Croupier” is a movie about illusion in a world of mirrors. Jack’s illusions of himself as a writer is mirrored in illusions of the gamblers he observes—all are trying to beat the odds stacked against them. But nothing is as it seems. You can’t win, the movie appears to be saying, so you might as well enjoy the ride.
“Croupier” reminds of what a pleasure independent filmmaking can be, and it’s a wonder that it took this movie two years to reach the theaters. I could quibble with the ending, which remained opaque and not quite logical after several days of analysis, but the good news is that there were several days of analysis. Unlike most Hollywood movies these days, “Croupier” keeps you on your toes and makes you think. Like the gamblers in the film, you’ll want to go back for more.