This Must be the Place

The reception for Paolo Sorrentino’s new movie, This Must be the Place, has for the most part been pretty lukewarm. Many critics have deemed it too bizarre, too offbeat, too quirksome. Certainly, the way the film is trickling into “select” cinemas suggests that its distributors also consider it unworthy for mass consumption. Whilst I completely understand the reasons that many are holding this film at arm’s length, I also completely disagree.

I should be honest, I’m a huge fan of Sorrentino’s work. Il Divo has, since its release in 2008, had a firm mooring in my generally fluctuating “Top Five”. Now, however, I’d go so far as to say that it may not even be my favourite Sorrentino film. This Must be the Place is that good.

Like all of Sorrentino’s films, it’s a beautiful, perfectly-crafted, astonishingly-shot visual and aural treat. Penn plays retired-goth-rockstar, Cheyenne, who lives a strange, almost-purgatorial life in Dublin with his wife, Jane (Frances McDormand – delivering a lovely, warm, and warming performance). Receiving a call from New York, Cheyenne learns that his estranged father is dying ‘of old age’. I won’t go into greater specifics because this really is a film that is so much more than a description of its parts. Suffice to say, Cheyenne goes on a road-trip to find the Nazi guard who tormented his father during the Holocaust, allowing Sorrentino to perform a full-on, Wenders-esque roadtrip movie to match the best.

Penn puts in a performance that blows full-force into the face of all who think that he takes himself a little too... seriously. Some (Chris Tookey) have considered Penn’s turn a train-wreck, a disastrously misjudged, incomprehensible mess. Again, I understand but I disagree. In my opinion, it’s a classic.

At home in Dublin, Cheyenne frequently visits a mother grieving her absentee son. So too, he feels guilty over the suicides of two teenagers – apparently caused by music he made solely for the money. Before beginning his quest, Cheyenne meets with Mordecai Midler, a ‘legend’, a professional Nazi-hunter. Midler asks Cheyenne, ‘do you know about the Holocaust?’ Cheyenne replies, ‘in a general sort of way’. Midler asks Cheyenne, ‘did you know your father?’ Cheyenne replies, ‘in a general sort of way’.

Some have considered the blending of Penn’s affected peculiarity with the Holocaust a step too far. And again, I disagree. I must, however, qualify: I do not really believe that This Must be the Place is about the Holocaust. It is about grief – and the balancing of it. Sorrentino’s genius is in juxtaposing the singular, specific losses of those in Dublin and those whom Cheyenne meets on the road, with the far larger yet less “personal” loss of life that most people today associate with the Holocaust. Cheyenne only knows the Holocaust in broad terms. So too, the professional, Midler, makes vengeful yet strangely unfocussed rants over his desire to reclaim the lost gold-teeth of deceased Jews. Sorrentino is not belittling those who suffered, he is questioning whether one may ever truly comprehend a tragedy of that magnitude, and whether one grief may be considered to be worth more than another.

It is obvious that every sane person rightly despises and laments the Holocaust, but can those who have never experienced it really claim grief and the desire for revenge? Cheyenne admits that his desire to find his father’s tormentor is born out of boredom, whilst Midler’s general rage over the crime done to ‘us’ contrasts uncomfortably with the smaller, quiet sorrow felt by a grieving mother in Dublin. What are we to make of a son, missing for no explicit reason, when compared to the loss of so many? These questions are raised but, like any great artist, Sorrentino recognizes that they can only be left unanswered.

I don’t want to spoil anything so I won’t reveal further complications to these questions but, late in the film, Cheyenne says: ‘something’s not right here. I don’t know what it is, but something’s just not right’. I won’t go deeper than simply to say that this is a phrase used by Cheyenne on a number of occasions, all of what we would consider “varying” importance. The significance of this final usage – with regards to the film’s questions – cannot be overestimated.

I’m making it sound like This Must be the Place is not much fun. It is. It’s maybe the funniest film I’ve seen this year. It just also happens to be very moving, very important, and very, very worth your time. It is a masterpiece.