Leaves of Grass

Initially, I was distracted by the dual-roles that Edward Norton plays in this movie: identical twins, Bill Kincaid, the university professor, and Brady Kincaid, the drug-dealer. Nancy Meyers was able to pull it off in The Parent trap (1998), but that was a film made on a big budget. Leaves of Grass is a deep movie, a labor of love, which lost big at the box office. We should look beyond the technicalities for the message. Because this existential dilemma Tim Blake Nelson might know a little something about.

Bill, the philosophical twin, opens the film with the assertion: "The balance needed for a happy life is illusory, and as soon as, in our gorgeously flawed human way, we think that we've attained it, we're pretending divinity and we're going to crash." Cynical much? He's taken out to dinner with the dean of Harvard who offers him the opportunity of a life-time, his own institute within the school. Is a crash destined?

The title Leaves of Grass, comes from a compilation of poems written by Walt Whitman, werein Whitman celebrates the 'self.' He says his poetry is best read outdoors where the reader can sit and appreciate the simple act of being. Well, who is Bill? As an identical twin, he's spent his whole life trying to figure it out, finally leaving his hometown of Oklahoma and cutting ties with his dysfunctional family for the intellectual world of academia. One day, out of the blue, he finds out his brother has been murder and has to go back to the place he's tried so hard to forget. When he goes back to Oklahoma he finds his estranged bumpkin brother is in fact alive and well. But why the deceit?

His brother actually owes a drug lord (Richard Dreyfuss) $200,000 for hydroponics equipment. Using Bill as a decoy, his brother wants to square things with this drug dealer. The plan unravels. On top of that, Bill's dream-job is put in jeopardy. But thanks to some help from a catfish-wrangling poet, played by Keri Russell, Bill is able to find some hope. She teaches him that it is only when you lose control that answers have room to surface. That is, you better find happiness in this moment because you can't control what happens in the next.

Stars: 4/5