REIGN OVER ME

REIGN OVER ME

Spoiler Alert

The title to this movie is taken from the song “Love, Reign O’er Me”.  It can be found in the Who’s 1973 album Quadrophenia which was written by Peter Townshend and was the group’s second rock opera.  The words in the title are essential to understanding the premise of the song.  Love, a noun, characterizes the emotion as an entity while rain acts as a verb and elicits an image of liquid showering down.  Reign, which is a homophone of rain, is also employed as a verb and means to hold sway over. Therefore, the speaker commands Love to rule over him and relieve his suffering by drenching him in its healing properties.  

The film opens with Graham Nash’s song “Simple Man”.  The title is a ruse because the lyrics depict a complicated scenario where the singer futilely dreams of being granted a second chance with the woman he loved and lost.  Like the Who song, this selection depicts a character that is in agony, but it goes a step further by insinuating that he is somehow to blame for his pain.  In fact, as is true of many Adam Sandler movies, taking note of the musical score is key to grasping the undercurrents that drive the characters’ actions and motivations.  In the case of this movie, the audience should already be asking, so who is this suffering soul and what did he do to deserve damnation?

The story revolves around two dentists, Alan (Don Cheadle) and Charlie (Adam Sandler), who were college roommates but haven’t seen each other since graduation.  Although Alan’s sumptuous office reveals that his practice is successful, he has a personality flaw that causes desperate females to throw themselves at him.  This is a problem not only because intimate relations between doctors and patients are unethical but also because he is a family man with a wife, Janeane (Jada Pinkett Smith), and two daughters.  The receptionist Melanie (Paula Newsome) complains about the many times this has happened, but the film only shows one example.  A strikingly beautiful patient named Donna (Saffron Burrows) comes in for dental work she doesn’t need, attempts to seduce Alan while he’s examining her, and when that fails, tries to steal his jacket on her way out the door.  Alan, who rightfully finds the woman’s behavior outrageous, tells her not to come back; her reaction is to send a letter to his partners accusing him of sexual assault.  Instead of standing behind their colleague, the partners command Alan to take care of it, essentially pimping him out to prevent a lawsuit, and he acquiesces.  Does the same character quirk that attracts Alan’s sex hungry patients also explain his partners’ disloyalty? 

The one person who could possibly answer that question is Charlie, but Alan hasn’t seen him in years.  Then, while driving home from work one evening, Alan’s old friend steps out of a hardware store carrying a gallon of paint.  As Charlie starts his electric scooter, Alan calls to him but gets no response.  Perplexed, he watches Charlie ride out of sight, then heads home.  His first stop is at his parent’s apartment where he drops off groceries while ignoring the string of barbs the two aim at each other.  From there, he heads to his house and tells his family about seeing Charlie.  The only response he gets is from one of his daughters who asks whether that is the man whose wife and children died in the plane crash.  Although there is no squabbling between Alan and his wife like there is between his parents, the home situation feels as if something is off.  Reminiscent of his problems at work, Alan is also taken for granted at home.  The kids expect him to chauffer them around without asking if he minds and his wife plans activities he loathes because he has never told her he doesn’t like them.  The only person he can confide in is Angela (Liv Tyler), a psychiatrist whom he sometimes accosts on the street as she leaves work for the day because he won’t admit that he needs help by going to her office. 

It is no stretch to conclude that loneliness explains why Alan decides to search for Charlie and, when he finds him, invite him for a cup of coffee.  Charlie doesn’t even seem to remember Alan, but he nevertheless agrees and follows his old friend into the café.  When it becomes clear that he is unable to carry on a conversation, however, he invites Alan back to his place.   Since anything is better than being at home working jigsaw puzzles with his wife, Alan agrees.  Charlie’s large apartment is very nice but is surprisingly devoid of furniture.  Rather than having the usual beds, sofas, and coffee tables, all he has are a massive record collection, a big screen TV on which he plays the videogame “Shadows of the Colossus”, and a music room full of instruments.  The kitchen is torn up as if being remodeled, and the things in a second bedroom are covered with sheets.  Rather than enjoying reliving his and Alan’s past, Charlie sits down and begins playing his game; nonplussed, Alan makes his excuses and goes home. 

Soon, the former friends begin to pay unexpected visits to one another, and Alan is so convinced that he and Charlie are becoming close again he divulges information he hasn’t confided to anyone.  Unfortunately, Charlie is not that comfortable with the relationship and certain topics remain taboo.   When Alan brings up Charlie’s family, for example, the man flies into a rage and accuses Alan of working on behalf of ‘someone’ else.  Though he doesn’t say who that someone else is, it is probably his in-laws because he runs away whenever they come around.  Though his temper can be explosive, however, Charlie has people like landlady Adell (Rae Allen) and business agent Sugarman (Mike Binder) who care about and go out of their way for him; on the other hand, mild-mannered Alan whose behavior is always impeccable has no one to defend him except Melanie who does it for pay and Angela who practices compassion for a living.  

One-night Alan accompanies Charlie to a Mel Brooks film marathon and while they are there, he receives a call from his wife telling him his father has died.  When he tells Charlie that he has to go home, instead of empathizing, Charlie just keeps suggesting other things they can do, as if he doesn’t understand what a tragedy it is.  When Alan returns to work after his bereavement period ends, Sugarman comes by the office with a check for a million dollars which is Charlie’s way of apologizing.  Alan flatly refuses it.  Rather than letting the matter drop, however, Charlie buys his friend the album The River by Bruce Springsteen because it contains the song “Drive All Night”.  The lyrics tell the story of a man who did something which caused him to lose his lover.  To get her back he promises to drive all night just to buy her a pair of shoes, reiterating the themes of loss and redemption that are interwoven throughout the film. 

Charlie seems to be getting better but then he stops by the dental office one day and notices Alan’s diplomas hanging on the wall.  After studying them for a moment, he becomes enraged and begins attacking Alan and tearing up the office, while at the same time refusing to leave.   Just then, Donna shows up and Charlie is immediately calmed by her beauty.  She takes Alan aside, not to have sexual relations as he’d feared, but to explain that her inappropriate behavior was a result of the difficult divorce she’d gone through after five years of a bad marriage.  Promising she won’t cause Alan any more problems, she leaves and Charlie, who is hiding in the hall, surreptitiously follows her. 

After that incident Alan is so concerned about Charlie that he goes to see Sugarman for help and they come up with a plan.  Alan takes Charlie to a record store and pretends to run into an old acquaintance named Nigel (John de Lanci), who is actually a psychiatrist.  The three men decide to have lunch, but as soon as they get to the restaurant, Charlie, who has figured out the ploy, insults Nigel, calls Alan a liar for arranging the meeting, and walks out.   Upset that he has lost his only friend, Alan goes home and accuses wife of being jealous of Charlie.  She responds that Alan is the one who is jealous because he covets his friend’s freedom.

 Eventually the two men make up and Alan convinces Charlie to start going to Angela.  Although he agrees, his distrust of her is clear; he refuses to shake her hand and studies the diplomas hanging on her wall with suspicion.  She attempts to get him to confide in her, but he refuses explaining that she is too young to hear the things he has to say.  After several sessions in which Charlie fails to make any progress, Angela suggests that he quit coming, but he continues to show up.  As a final resort, she tells him that, although it doesn’t have to be her, he needs to tell his story to someone in order to get better.  It is hardly a surprise when the someone he chooses turns out to be Alan.

Charlie starts by talking about his children, three little girls that looked like their mother Doreen, a nearly perfect wife who never judged or nagged.  He states that it all began a few days before the tragedy when Doreen took the girls to visit her sister in New Jersey and he didn’t go because he had to work (is this the reason he hates diplomas?).  From there, his wife and daughters would fly out to California for a wedding where Charlie would meet them.  While riding in the taxi on his way to JFK airport on the morning he was leaving town, Charlie heard something on the radio about an attack.  When he got inside the terminal, he was watching newscasts of the twin towers coming down when the television announcer reported that Flight 93 from New Jersey had been hijacked and crashed in a field near Shanksville, Pennsylvania.  That was the plane his family was on.

Alan and Angela both feel that Charlie’s ability to finally discuss the incident is a big step for him.  Tragically, that night the city announces the threat of a terrorist attack, and unable to cope with the possibility of another 9/11, Charlie walks to a liquor store, buys himself a fifth, returns home, and begins to drink it.  The drunker he gets, the more he thinks about his family, and when he cannot drown out his memories with booze, he tries to bury them with sound by turning the television volume up as loud as it will go. His neighbors complain to Adell which gives her an excuse to go to his apartment and check whether he is all right.  Disoriented, he waits until she is gone then grabs a gun that was hidden in the second bedroom and leaves, wandering through the streets behaving oddly.  A pair of cops in a nearby deli watch him and when he pulls the gun on a driver, they rush out screaming for him to drop it.  Rather than listening, Charlie points the weapon at one of the policemen, apparently attempting to commit suicide by cop.  Fortunately, the other officer sneaks up behind him, grabs the gun, and takes him to jail.  His friends bail him out, but the DA demands a psych evaluation because he believes Charlie is dangerous and should be committed for at least a year.

Alan takes Charlie home and learns his friend’s final secret, the reason the kitchen is in a constant state of renovation.  Doreen and the girls had been discussing updating the room before they left for New Jersey and she called Charlie to convey their latest decisions.  He was running late and hurrying to leave for the airport, so the last time Charlie spoke with his wife, he snapped at her.  He never got to apologize or learn what she and the kids had decided, so he keeps changing the kitchen because he doesn’t know how to finish it. 

Charlie’s commitment hearing is held the following Friday and the prosecution contends that his PTSD prevents him from acting responsibly.  Angela tries to challenge the DA and his team, but like Charlie, they accuse her of being too young to understand his situation.  The attendees also include Charlie’s in-laws, Judith and Jonathan Timpleman (Melinda Dillon and Robert Klein) who accuse him of making the loss of their daughter and grandchildren even harder.  As a final blow, the DA shows the gallery picture after picture of Charlie’s family then lays the entire portfolio in front of him to trigger one of his episodes.  Rather than committing Charlie, however, Judge Raines (Donald Sutherland), whose name represents a third homophone in the film, criticizes the DA for intervening in what should be a family matter and gives the Timplemans until Monday to decide how their son-in-law’s case should be resolved. 

Over the weekend, they stop at the apartment, but find it empty with Alan there to greet them.  He points out that rather than helping their son-in-law, they made things harder for on him by letting him cope with the loss of his family alone while they had each other to lean on.  His strategy works and they agree to forget the lawsuit.  Satisfied that all is resolved, he leaves and not surprisingly goes straight to Charlie’s new place to help unpack.  As her way of helping, Angela stops by with Donna who she knows will be good for Charlie because they both suffer from the same affliction, broken hearts.  As for Alan, helping his friend has taught him to stand up for himself which gives him the gumption to put his partners in their places and heal his marriage by being honest with his wife.

I was drawn to this film for a few reasons, but I’ll just mention a few.  The first is the ending. No one understands a happy ending better than Adam Sandler and since I hate to walk out of a movie theater feeling worse than when I walked in, happy endings are a must for me.  The second is the way songs like “Love, Reign O’er Me”, “Simple Man”, and “Drive All Night” depict Charlie’s feelings of guilt and pursuit of a second chance.  For instance, if he had not cut his wife off in that last call, he would know how to finish the kitchen which might somehow change the day’s outcome. The third reason I am attracted to this film is that it focuses on the field in Pennsylvania rather than the twin towers. 

The human brain has great difficulty processing chaos.  Therefore, when 9/11 occurred, the mass media needed to abbreviate an event that spanned 228 miles and happened in three separate locations to something people could grasp.  Because of the many lives lost at the twin towers and the great number of witnesses, it is understandable that New York became the symbol of what happened on that terrible day.  But that narrow focus glossed over the 244 that died in Pennsylvania and D.C. as well as the friends and families that were left behind to mourn them.  To me Alan’s final speech to the Timplemans, which points out that they had each other’s support in their grief while Alan was left to mourn alone, encapsulates this.

Finally, I cannot close this post without discussing the obvious, that like Parry in The Fisher King, Charlie blames himself for a disaster he had no part in causing.  According to the article “What Is Survivor’s Guilt?” written by Jayne Leonard and found online at https://www.medicalnewstoday.com, survivor’s guilt occurs when a person lives through an event that cost others their lives.  Sufferers of this malady come away asking why they were spared or wondering if there was anything they could have done to prevent the tragedy.  Charlie and Parry both blame themselves for  events they had no control over and torture themselves with a form of magical thinking that suggests they could have prevented the tragedies if they’d just done something differently: if Charlie had accompanied his family to New Jersey, if Parry, as Henry, could have stopped the shooter.  Since they cannot go back and relive the events, however, they choose to turn away and pretend their former lives never existed: Henry by changing his name, Charlie by covering his family’s things with sheets.                 

Although I couldn’t find it for free anywhere, this movie can be rented on a number of streaming services for three or four bucks, including Amazon Prime, Vudu, Google Play, and Apple TV.  That’s enough for now.  I have a heavy work schedule coming up, so I’ll be back in three weeks to discuss the third movie in this series, The Razor’s Edge starring Bill Murray.  Until then enjoy a whole bunch of great flicks.