Re-visiting The Door in the Floor

Thursday’s New York Times features an eloquent love letter to Jeff Bridges, written by my favorite contemporary film reviewer, Manohla Dargis. Her rhapsodic prose makes me want to lock away my keyboard and retire from this whole wordsmithing gig, but, alas, I must put bread on the table.

Bridges has long been one of my favorite actors–an avuncular leading man whose characters would be a hell of a lot more fun to hang out with than any Clooney-portrayed slickster. And unlike most of his out-of-touch peers, you get the feeling the man himself would be a great guy to (political cliche notwithstanding) have a beer with.

Dargis’s piece did a fine job of capturing those very same qualities that make Bridges such a compelling actor, and her graceful words do him justice better than mine can. Yet in her short career retrospective, she left out my favorite Bridges’ performance: as children’s book writer/illustrator Ted Cole in 2004′s The Door in the Floor. The film–an adaptation of the first third of John Irving’s novel A Widow for One Year–didn’t make much of a splash commercially, and I only learned of it from my much better informed filmmaker friend Joel. But there’s something really special in Bridges’ character that has stayed with me more closely than his other fantastic roles.

In her piece, Dargis quotes the legendary film critic Pauline Kael as saying, “Jeff Bridges is enough to make a picture worth seeing.” This certainly holds true for The Door in the Floor. What could come off as a melodramatic (children have died, parents grieve, beaches are wind-strewn), mediocre film is elevated to must-see status by the complexity of Jeff Bridges’ performance. He’s a man employed to write books less than 100 words in length, yet he hires an aspiring writer as an assistant–ostensibly to type and retype his brief manuscripts, but in actuality to act as his chauffeur since he has a suspended license. He plays squash in a caftan in a converted barn. He’s a fucker and a fighter, but you get the feeling it’s only to conform to the stereotype of the aggressive, masculine artist pioneered by his Hamptons’ predecessor Jackson Pollock. In other words, this is The Dude, if only recreational bowling and pot smoking paid as well as writing blockbuster children’s literature. You get all of the nonchalance and unforced coolness of his classic Lebowski role, in a setting that’s much more relatable to your average viewer.

If you haven’t seen The Door in the Floor, and you’re looking to brush up on your Jeff Bridges’ oeuvre, add it to your Netflix queue for an excellent pre-Oscars primer. Then when he finally gets his long-deserved Academy Award on March 7th, you’ll have even more reason to cheer the Academy’s good sense.