Susan Granger’s review of “STATE AND MAIN” (Fine Line Features)
In this part satire, part screwball comedy, writer/director David Mamet explores what happens when a Hollywood movie crew invades the quaint New England town of Waterford, Vermont. The story revolves around an idealistic, insecure and verbally inarticulate playwright (Philip Seymour Hoffman), who’s desperately trying to protect the integrity of his first screenplay, when he sees the narcissistic leading man (Alec Baldwin), who gulps bourbon milkshakes, emerge from an accident at the intersection of State and Main streets with a local teenager (Julia Stiles), the same transgression that got the film crew kicked out of another town in New Hampshire. The director (William H. Macy) and producer (David Paymer) want him to lie, but he’s encouraged to speak the truth by the local bookseller (Rebecca Pidgeon, Mamet’s wife) with whom he’s fallen in love, citing “You Shall Not Bear False Witness” the slogan of the town’s newspaper. Meanwhile, the manipulative leading lady (Sarah Jessica Parker) is having hysterics about doing a topless scene. You don’t have to dig too deep to realize that Mamet’s theme is how, in the quest for purity, so much can be destroyed. The producer, director and actors have plenty in common with the moral ambiguity of Mamet’s usual hustlers, con men and criminals. But so do the conniving citizens of the bucolic town (Charles Durning, Patti LuPone, Clark Gregg), each of whom wants what’s in it for them. The ensemble cast is terrific! On the Granger Movie Gauge of 1 to 10, “State and Main” is a nimble, ironic 9, an energetic, sophisticated farce blessed with goofy characters and Mamet’s witty, vicious, rapid-fire dialogue. “It’s not a lie,” Macy wheedles. “It’s a gift for fiction.” And there’s even a timely jab the absurdity of the electoral process.
