Time Out of Mind

**Spoiler Alert**

Director: Oren Moverman/Starring: Richard Gere, Ben Vereen, Jena Malone and Kyra Sedgwick

A film like Time Out of Mind, which deals with a homeless man of retirement age wondering the streets after being expelled from a girlfriend's apartment, could easily become an unfocused, monotonous affair if the story and characters had nowhere to go. Director Oren Moverman's film manages to avoid that narrative snare but it feels, nevertheless, like it merely meanders. That isn't necessarily bad, since the film's rhythm should mimic a homeless man's wanderings. But unfortunately its deliberate agenda becomes frustrating rather than bracingly unhurried.

Richard Gere plays George; said homeless man who is forced out of his temporary digs and into the unforgiving city streets by an unsympathetic building manager (Steve Buscemi's cameo); who rouses him from his bathtub slumber. George protests vigorously but to no avail.
Casting perennial heart-throb Richard Gere in such a role shows gumption. Making the audience ignore the fact that he isn't glamorous Gere but a homeless man presents quite a challenge.

Moverman resists exposition: who is this man? Why is he homeless? How did he come to be this way? Instead, he doles out information sparingly.

We see George become prey to what we might see as typical, homeless person behavior; spending money on booze and literally selling the clothes off his back to buy his next bottle or six-pack. As he wanders about, we also see him follow and shadow a young woman (Jena Malone), who tends bar and walks about with her boyfriend. We know immediately the young woman is his daughter--who else would she be? Her appearance in the film poses more questions about George's past.

As George spends his days looking for warm places to sleep, he decides to seek help from homeless service agency; who assign him a shelter. The questions a worker poses about his life, which he mostly refuses to answer, offer us tantalizing tid-bits of personal information.

George learns the price of avoiding the cold is fairly steep. Long lines snake from the shelter, where many like George wait for a bed and the promise of a morning meal. The shelter's rules are firmly enforced, such as mandatory 8 a.m. departures.
George keeps to himself, even when addressed by other shelter inhabitants, including a young man who seems out of place. After several nights, George meets the shelter gadfly; an intensely annoying Africa-American man named Dixon (an almost unrecognizable Ben Vereen), whose non-stop, nonsensical chatter irritates all those around him. Dixon takes to following George all over the city, trying to coax conversation and personal information out of him. George manages to resist Dixon though he can hardly keep him from following. In the course of Dixon's incessant yakking, we learn he was once a jazz pianist for Bill Evans, though the claim is highly suspect. After a sympathetic restaurant owner allows George and Dixon to use his facilities, he offers them food, which they readily accept. Seeing an old piano in the corner, George asks Dixon to play in hopes of catching him in a lie. Dixon sits before the piano, poised to play notes, only to stare silently at the keys.

George finally makes contact with his daughter Maggie, with predictable results. Less than happy to see her father, we learn that he left her to be raised by his mother-in-law; thereby missing her formative years. Maggie brushes him off, but not before giving him money. She also warns him that she may move away.

George returns to the shelter, where he has a dust-up with Dixon, and soon after, he sees his friend's mattress rolled up. The sight of the empty bed saddens him.

Another of George's street adventures involves a homeless woman named Karen (an equally unrecognizable Kyra Sedgwick), who he insists is his wife. After an evening of love-making, George finds himself alone and nearly nude, which draws the attention and the cell-phone photography of two teens.

Hoping to salvage his fractured relationship with Maggie, a pivotal meeting between the two takes place in the bar she tends. After an emotionally-fraught exchange, George leaves the bar. What happens shortly thereafter serves as the film's coda; an ending which resists resolution but allows for optimism.

I guess Moverman's film is supposed to be about a man seeking rapprochement but it's secondary purpose is to give us a sense of the plight of the homeless; how one's identity is closely tied to a place of residence and a social security card, which George pursues with no small effort.

Moverman, who knows his way around searing drama (The Messenger, The Rampart), is no stranger to grit, some of which he brings to his new film. But somehow George's plight and his failures at being a father just didn't elicit a visceral response. His situation is heartbreaking but I wasn't convinced. The problem lay partly in the casting of Richard Gere. Though I have no problem with Gere as an actor (he is quite excellent on occasion), the film can't shake his movie-star presence. Though he is homeless, I found his haircut to be fashionably coiffed. It's a case of miscasting, but kudos to Gere for taking on a challenging role.

What the audience comes away with is an interesting film with its share of fine moments but the sum total is a miss. Moverman would have us believe George is a mystery to explore, but other than expository information that is withheld, there isn't much to discover. Yes, he fouled up fatherhood and he pines for a wife but his predicament doesn't reveal anything about him or his character.

The movie is fine example of ambition overpowering execution. This is hardly a knock, for Moverman is a director who won't settle for mundane subject matter. He may have missed the mark this time, but eventual success is almost a certainty for a director of his talents.