A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III (REVIEW)
A24 Marathon #001
The other day I had a crazy idea: Why not watch every single film distributed/produced by A24 in order of theatrical release date and review them for my Substack? Imagine how I felt when I realized the first movie I’d watch was a critically-panned box-office bomb starring Charlie Sheen (an actor I cannot stand) directed by Roman Coppola (a Coppola not known for directing). I HATED A Glimpse Inside the Mind of Charles Swan III. The film is less than ninety minutes yet it feels like it goes on for an entire day. I kept checking how much of the film was left, and that is something I rarely do.
The film is about a graphic designer (I think? I don’t know, Sheen really just plays himself here) who becomes depressed because his girlfriend breaks up with him… and he also hates her? But he also loves her to bits and needs her with ever fiber of his being? I don’t know. I truly do not know. Ultimately, Charlie Sheen is sad because his girlfriend broke up with him. Womp womp. I also find there’s no reason for this movie to exist… there’s nothing there to the story, nothing for us to chew on… the story is literally just that. The film says absolutely nothing, but when it does say something, it feels like there’s an underlying layer of misogyny that leaves a very bitter taste.
Written and directed by Roman Coppola, it is very clear to me why this 2012 film is the second and last film he ever directed. Roman is not one of the more talented Coppolas, and that’s okay, please just stick to producing! As a longtime frequent collaborator of Wes Anderson, you’d expect Coppola to take notes and come up with something brilliant like Anderson… but nope. The film is very self-indulgent (quite literally just being written around Sheen and how hard it is to be a straight white man… boo hoo) and lacks a cohesive story, leaving absolutely nothing for us to analyze and interpret.
The supporting cast is stacked! Jason Schwartzman, Bill Murray, PATRICIA ARQUETTE, Aubrey Plaza, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, and many others… what about their performances? I sighed. Time is a very precious thing. It’s something I have so little of nowadays. I felt like my time was wasted while watching, and so was the time of all of these actors. The performances by all of these great actors either felt very phoned-in, or they had so little time that I couldn’t even remember why they were in the film. Well… what about the lead? Was Sheen’s performance as the titular character any good? Here’s the thing, I feel like Coppola’s main responsibility was to give us a character worth watching. Charles Swan is a shitty character and Sheen’s performance was so lifeless, I kept groaning every minute or so.
There are some cool shots in this film, but I think that’s all I actually liked. I’m upset that I forced myself to continue watching this film, I genuinely feel like I wasted my time, even though it wasn’t even ninety minutes. I hope the next film in my A24 marathon isn’t a total snoozefest like this trainwreck of a film. As long as it gives me some food for thought. Please.