Showbits

Inspiration can come from the most unlikely of sources, as demonstrated by the film The Razor's Edge, based on W. Somerset Maugham's book of the same name. I had never heard of this 1984 movie starring Bill Murray (or the 1946 original with Tyrone Power) until a random conversation with my chiropractor brought it to my attention. It's now proven to be one of the most memorable and substantial films I've seen in some time.

And time is something this film uses creatively. Though it flows (chrono)logically, it is not bound to detailing every day or month of the protagonist's life. In just the first half-hour, Murray is shipped off to World War I, the war ends, and he returns home. In this way, the movie wastes no time establishing the privileged life he abandoned to fight the war, or how his brush with death left him a changed man. Post-war, he eschews both the women who love him, instead seeking out the answer to life on a trek that takes him physically to the slums of Paris and the mountains of Tibet, and spiritually to places he'd never dreamed of — and which the people he left behind cannot fathom.

It took me awhile to warm up to this movie, partly because Murray's trademark dry wit seems to suggest a comedy. But, though there are some fantastically funny moments, that humor is used to make all the more apparent to the viewer the different planes of existence on which Murray and those around him exist. (Think Patch Adams.) Murray is the main character as much as he is the foil for the people around him, including spurned fiancee Catherine Hicks (Seventh Heaven; Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home); would-be uncle-in-law Denholm Elliott (Marcus Brody of Indiana Jones); and commanding officer Brian Doyle-Murray (Phil's handler from Groundhog Day, another Murray film).

Murray's drive and dilemmas echo the sentiments I'd heard earlier that day in an interview with Matt Harding, of "Where the Hell Is Matt?" fame. Midway through the film, as Murray is grappling with knowing he can't go back but not knowing where else to turn, he frustratedly exclaims, "I've got a second chance, and I'm not gonna waste it on a big house, and a new car every year, and a bunch of friends who want a big house and a new car every year!" They're the words of a character with whom I could empathize — at least until the end, where he seemed to respond to some bad news in a very inhuman way. To paraphrase his depressingly stoic conclusion: "I thought there was a reward for trying to live a good life. Nuh uh. There is no payoff — not now." In my (or his) inability to commiserate, I thus empathized with his antagonists, which was itself a bit frightening. It's a rare movie in which the viewer can, on some level, empathize with all the players.

The film's subtle humor, human struggle, fabulous cinematography (such as of the Himalayas), and character development make The Razor's Edge a fantastic tale in the spirit of Siddhartha.

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