Fools Rush In

The occasion for this rumination is “The Ballad of Jack and Rose,” a self-
conscious attempt at the brass ring from writer-director Rebecca Miller.
Miller devises a situation of almost mythic proportions and fleshes it out
with many fine and insightful scenes. The casting couldn’t be better, either,
with Daniel Day-Lewis as the last original resident of a utopian commune and a
fresh newcomer, Camilla Belle, as his daughter. But Miller directs the film as
if endorsing it, insisting on its importance through frequent and unwelcome
musical interludes, while bluffing past weaknesses in the script. Thus, what
might have been an honest success is transformed, through the filmmaker’s
heavy hand, into a near miss.

There’s no question Miller can write, but after two films — her first
was “Personal Velocity” — there’s no evidence yet that she can direct. A
continuity problem in the first scene of “Ballad” is just the beginning of the
trouble. Her camera placement can be odd. Miller chooses to film the beginning
of a sex scene by shooting a standing couple from overhead with a shaking
camera. The effect is unintentionally comical.

More seriously, Miller has a way of giving every scene equal importance,
so that the movie feels unshaped. If subtlety means communicating a lot with a
little, Miller’s approach is to do the opposite. Despite many two-person
scenes, the father-daughter relationship at the heart of “Ballad” remains
ambiguous, not in the elusive way of real life but in the unsatisfying way of
vague art. Miller punctuates such scenes with useless montages, to the
accompaniment of adamant ’60s music — Bob Dylan, Creedence Clearwater —
that suggests something profound has been expressed, but it never gets
expressed.

This is too bad, because the screenplay that Miller is killing, through a
combination of too much respect and too much neglect, is her own. With someone
else in the driver’s seat — pointing the material, pacing it and shaping it,
while cutting out a few bad scenes and eliminating the self-indulgent
interludes — her screenplay could have been the basis of a fine movie, one
about a strange man and the daughter he has raised to be his life buddy and
disciple.

Day-Lewis, Miller’s real-life husband, plays Jack, a man of strong
opinions who is now suffering from heart disease. Knowing that his days might
be numbered, he is concerned for Rose, who at 16 is too young to be on her own
and is completely unprepared for the world, having been raised in isolation.
Like a king in some skewed fairy tale, Jack hits upon a solution: Instead of
bringing Rose into the world, he will import others into their isolated
kingdom.

The story of “The Ballad of Jack and Rose” is the story of Jack’s
“experiment.” He has his girlfriend (Catherine Keener) and her two
unprepossessing sons move in with them, hoping that the girlfriend will become
like a mother to Rose and that the sons will be like brothers. To say the
least, this doesn’t happen. The film’s structure is episodic — part of the
reason Miller leans heavily on musical montages is to connect hard-to-connect
scenes — but she’s a good enough writer that the episodes hold interest.
Her characters have a way of saying things that are unexpected, revealing and
true. Older brother Rodney (Ryan McDonald), who looks like a chubby head-
banger, turns out to be a witty kid who wants to be a hairdresser. In a
misguided attempt at bonding, he gives his new “sister” Rose the boyish
haircut that ended Nastassja Kinski’s shot at stardom, and from that point on,
lovely Camilla Belle looks a lot like Chris Noth on “Sex and the City.”

Day-Lewis has moments of pure brilliance, as Jack’s nature is revealed to
himself, and the two scenes he shares with Beau Bridges, who plays a land
developer — Jack’s political, temperamental and esthetic opposite — are
memorable: For once, Jack has to contend with an equal. But even to the end
“The Ballad of Jack and Rose” remains a film of scenes, not a cohesive whole.
That’s not a writing problem, but a directing problem.

– Advisory: This film has drug use, strong language and bedroom
cavorting.

E-mail Mick LaSalle at mlasalle@sfchronicle.com.