The Words

       

We admire authors; their words are our companions in bed, on the plane, in the park and in our solitary moments. The words take us to the ancient times, to the farthest place on Earth we never visited; to the lives of people like us or so different from us. The words play with our imagination. Deprived of visual means, the words can so delicately describe a scene with such details that we would not notice if we were to see them with our own eyes. Words portray a feeling so subtly that we can trace the most powerful inner emotions just as we can trace the brush strokes on a canvas. 

Although we think highly of our favorite authors, we don't really know what they went through to get to the point where their words get published and reach us. 

"The Words", is a story within a story of two men, both aspiring writers whose fate coincide in a dramatic circumstance. Rory, a young American writer, dreams of having his two novels published. His words are ‘too artistic’, ‘too fine’ to be published as an unknown author. The continuous rejection by publishing houses frustrates him when he suddenly finds a story as old as the yellow papers on which they were typed, in a vintage bag his wife buys him during their honeymoon.

Reading the story affects Rory tremendously to the point that he believes he is nothing compared to the unknown writer of his discovery. He decided to type the story, without changing a word or a single punctuation. When he receives his wife’s awe and praise after she accidentally reads the story, for a moment he believes himself to be the writer of that novel. 

The book gets published, Rory reaches stardom as his dream came through. But not long after, he encounters the truth, the real author who followed him after his fancy book openings, not to defame him but to tell him his life story and his inspiration to write that novel. A man who loved his words so much that he sacrificed the woman who inspired him to write them.

‘The Words’ takes us on the journey of two writers with extreme ambitions. One leaves his wife for the sake of words, the other steals is so desperately fascinated by words that he steals them. 

Although there is a third story containing these two stories, its presence in the movie was completely unnecessary and in my opinion it even marred the riveting story line. The bogus and tawdry gestures of Olivia Wilde and her ostentatious act and dialogue with Dennis Quaid not only didn’t relate to a Columbia University grad student but also gave a cheesy taste to the movie end. However the masterly play by Jeremy Irons as well as Bradley Cooper save the movie and one can ignore that downside.

‘The Words’ by Brian Klugman was in the world competition in Montreal World Film Festival, with the presence of Klugman and the crew at Cinema Imperial on August 29th.