December 8, 2000 | At once intriguingly allusive and rigorously precise, in the manner of an exceptionally well-crafted short story, writer-director Tom Gilroy’s Spring Forward is a richly yet subtly detailed character-driven drama. But be forewarned: To fully appreciate its many pleasures, you must give the movie time to work its magic. While seeming to be about nothing in particular, it gradually builds toward a deeply affecting emotional impact by actually being about everything that’s important.
Drawing upon his New York stage experience as director and playwright, Gilroy keeps the focus tight and the situations simple in his feature filmmaking debut. It helps a lot that he has a perfect-pitch ear for unaffectedly colloquial dialogue. But it helps even more that his dialogue is delivered by the right people.
Through the course of seven episodes – most of which unfold in real time – Spring Forward charts the slow but steady growth of friendship and trust between two ordinary guys employed by the Parks and Recreation Department of a small New England town. Supporting characters come and go, but the movie basically is a two-hander for Ned Beatty and Liev Schreiber. They are the lead players in what can only be described as a love story between men who would be deeply embarrassed, if not enraged, to hear their relationship described in such a manner.
On the first day at his new job, Paul (Schreiber), a skittish ex-con, is partnered with Murph (Beatty), a grizzled veteran who’s nearing retirement. The two men have little in common – Paul devours self-help books, Murph prefers hardboiled fiction – and they’re in no hurry to bridge any gaps, generational or otherwise, that might separate them. Right from the start, though, Paul wants to be honest: “Armed robbery,” he announces out of the blue, referring to his recent prison stint. “I wasn’t going to ask that,” Murphy quickly responds. “It’s none of my business.” “Well, actually,” Paul counters, “it is.”
Early in their first day together, they’re drawn closer by their shared contempt for a condescending Mr. Moneybags (Campbell Scott) who can’t understand why the workers aren’t more grateful for his generosity to the city’s parks program. Paul makes a rude comment about the rich fellow’s masculinity, only to be humiliated and sincerely regretful when he’s told that Murph’s adult son is gay. Murph brushes off the offensive remark, but Paul feels compelled to do a kind of penance by describing the desperate crime – an ill-planned heist at a Dunkin’ Donuts – that landed him in prison.
All Paul wants now is a second chance. Fortunately for both men, that’s precisely what Murph is willing to give him.
Spring Forward was filmed sporadically over the course of a year, and the visible changes of season – not to mention the even more obvious variations in the appearances of the leads – augment the overall impression of real life under close scrutiny. On a couple of occasions, a scrap of throwaway dialogue plants the seed for a later pay-off. For the most part, though, Gilroy’s narrative proceeds in a natural and unforced manner, with a randomness more apparent than real. One scene leads seamlessly to the next as Murph and Paul do nothing more or less dramatic than voice opinions, share confidences and – occasionally, amusingly – challenge each other’s philosophies.
At one point, Murph gruffly dismisses the promises of feel-good gurus on TV infomercials: “If they really got the secret to inner peace, wouldn’t they just give it to you?” Much later, just when it looks like Spring Forward will take a fatal leap into melodrama, the movie smoothly rebounds as Paul delights in his ability to verbally defuse a tense situation. “I was winging it there,” he admits. “But it sounded pretty good.” And Murph succinctly sums it all up: “Time goes by, and it seems like a little time. You turn around, and it was a big time.”
Schreiber gives an immensely appealing and shrewdly nuanced portrayal of an impulsive hothead who sets out to attain maturity through sheer force of will. Beatty’s performance is even more impressive, ranking with his career-best turns in Deliverance, Network, Hear My Song and TV’s Homicide. It’s a genuine delight to see that, even after nearly three decades of screen appearances, Beatty still is capable of surprising an audience with the no-sweat, full-bodied skill of his craftsmanship. Spring Forward abounds in such quietly remarkable wonders.
