A Movie Nearly Every Night: The Razor's Edge

The Razor's Edge (1984)
Dir: John Byrum
Starring: Bill Murray, Theresa Russell, Catherine Hicks, Denholm Elliot, James Keach

The lama wants you to go to a hut in the mountains and don't come back until the music swells

Our local Blockbuster closed its doors a few weeks ago and I made some lovely cheap purchases, including my own copy of In the Loop, a guilty-pleasure copy of Reality Bites, and this little gem that was sitting on one of the back shelves. When The Razor's Edge came out in 1984 I was one of those people who really wanted to like it, but couldn't get passed Bill Murray's slumped shoulders and pouty bottom lip. He was too modern. Too goofy. I didn't buy him having spiritual awakenings in the snow and being an object of love for Isabel and Sophie.

But times have changed and so has Bill Murray. He's more accepted now as a serious actor. Since 1984 I've also read the book and seen the 1946 Tyrone Power version, and revisiting this edition now ... well, I get it and I like it.

I wouldn't say that this is better than the Tyrone Power version, which includes Maugham as a character and Clifton Webb as poor elitist Uncle Elliot ("There'll be none of this damned equality in heaven"), but it has a lot going for it, and, in comparing the two Larry Darrell's, I'm going to have to side with Murray's version.

"You haven't read the Upanishads?"

There's something about the way he listens to people in this movie that gets to the heart of the character. Sure, he's got a dopey, child's face, but it's a listening child's face. He plays Larry as someone who has read a lot of books and knows some stuff, but is not above admitting that he doesn't really know anything at all.

Isabel and all the books Larry's "skimmed"

After his spiritual awakening in the Himalayas he can cure Gray of his headaches and look like he knows what it's all about -- and he carries himself in this higher, spiritual way that tells everyone around him that he knows what it's all about, but then Sophie dies and the shoulders slump again and he's back to the beginning when he's open and confused. He still doesn't know anything at all.

Tyrone Power shared more personal experience with the character and knew his surface, but I think Bill Murray understood the unfulfilled and drifting soul a little better.

What is particularly nice is the inclusion of the war in this version. Maybe it was just an excuse to give Brian Doyle-Murray a job, but thank God for it because he's really great. You know how in Flashdance Alex "borrows" from the policeman, the ballerina and the ice skater to create her routine? No, really. I'm using that as an analogy, because this version of the story gives Larry supporting people to form his philosophy. Doyle-Murray's Piedmont is a dark, pragmatic character that gives Larry a base point to start from. Piedmont is reality, Isabel, Gray and Elliot are fantasy, the lama is philosophy and Larry is where they meet. Without Piedmont, we wouldn't understand where Larry was starting from and how he ends up where he does.

The Harvard ambulance gets hit and Piedmont eulogizes drivers Brian Ryan and Doug Van Allen:
"They were liars. I don't know about you, but I hate liars ... They will not be missed."

If only there there was a way to merge the two versions. I would include the war and maybe keep Maugham in some parts of the story. I would take Gene Tierney over Catherine O'Hara for Isabel, but James Keach over John Payne for Gray.

Normally not this interesting, James Keach makes for a lovely, sad Gray.

And, sure, usually I hate Theresa Russell. Her acting is flat and uninteresting -- although, okay, I admit it, I haven't seen Insignificance and I've heard that's not so bad, but Black Widow? Why did I pay money to see that in the theater? I just don't know. But I definitely take her Sophie over Anne Baxter.

Sensitive, maternal Sophie -- the poet who loves Bob and likes Larry

and sad, pushed-to-the-edge Sophie, who loves Larry and has guilt over Bob and the baby

She really conveys the rise and fall of the character. I believe Sophie's rejection of life once it all goes to hell, her attraction to redemption through Larry, and her inability to hold onto hope in crisis. Isabel was probably right. She'd drag Larry down eventually. What the hell did she do to deserve redemption? She sits next to the teapot and the booze and she's going to reach for the bottle, you know it, but you also know why. The life is completely sucked out of her.

I think it's deserving that Larry gets to confront Isabel with Sophie's death in this version. Sure, righteous Maugham likes the attention, and in the book he accuses Isabel of murder and how she will never understand Larry, blah blah blah and that is all kind of fun, but in this version Larry gets to bring it around to what is really troubling him about Sophie's death.

He tells Isabel that he believed that Sophie was his pay-off and realizes when she's dead that there are no pay-offs. She replies with "Will I ever see you again?" and he laughs. "Isabel, you just don't get it."

"It doesn't matter."

You can go to the Himalayas, read The Upanishads, work in a fish market instead of Wall Street, cure your friend's migraine, save your friends from death only to see them succumb to it anyway, and, in the end, really, it just doesn't matter.

Amen, brother Larry.