Opening Scenes Preview:
As LOOKING GLASS opens we see the opening titles intermixed with scenes of a less than late-model pickup truck, laden with personal belongings, making its way down a two-lane highway in the middle of wide open, scrubby desert. Ray and Maggie, played by Nicholas Cage and Robin Tunney, are obviously on their way somewhere to "start over". This is conveyed by close-up images of their strained expressions, a small collection of "traveling cross-country" sequences (stopping to pee, daytime driving, nighttime driving) and half-transparent flashback images letting us know they have suffered the tragedy of the accidental death of their toddler child.
They eventually arrive at their destination, The Motorway Motel. But Ray and Maggie are not here to stay as guests; they're to be the new owners and operators. Strangely, the motel office is dark as Ray bangs on the door. Then he notices an envelope on the ground, and in it he finds the key to the door of the office. Apparently, the previous owner, Ben, has just turned out the lights, locked up, carelessly put the key in an envelope, and left. Exploring their new living quarters they find a sloppy, terse note, "She's all yours", which apparently covers everything since it appears that even all of Ben's personal belongings are still here. There's even a bit of dirty clothes lying around.
Ray unloads the pickup truck and does a quick survey of The Motorway Motel. It's one of those little strip motels, rather nondescript, but the rooms appear to be neat and tidy. Like all such high-quality establishments, everything is either screwed or nailed down. Even a very crooked picture is solidly secured to the wall. Crookedly.
Ray receives an odd call from Ben, who appears to be a very weatherbeaten old man. But the call is rushed and peculiar, full of obviously insincere encouragement from Ben to Ray about running their new motel. Wherever Ben is, he's clearly apprehensive about something, rushes the call, and leaves.
The next morning, the motel "cleaning crew", a primarily Spanish speaking woman and her nephew, arrive and proceed to go about their business, falling just short of ignoring Ray completely in the process. They're here to do their thing, not to be friends. The Kafkaesque sensation increases.
Ray and Maggie settle into their first day and start to do the never-ending collection of chores that constitute the daily routine of running a cheap motel. Fixing plumbing, hanging pictures, getting the pool ready for guests. When they can, Ray and Maggie try to inject a little fun with each other while doing their work. Ray finds a door labeled, "PRIVATE KEEP OUT PUMP ROOM" which, oddly enough, is not merely locked. It's secured with a chain and padlock, to which Ray does not seem to have a key.
Ray goes to the store and picks up a few supplies, one of which is a bolt cutter for that room. Breaking in, Ray finds it's not just a pump room. There's actually several spaces within, mostly filled with a lot of junkie stuff one needs to run a low rent motel.
Ray returns to his maintenance and notices that Maggie has checked in their first guest, who Ray sees closing her room curtains while half naked. Later that evening, their second guest arrives, a rather peculiar truck driver, Tommy, who insists on room 10 amongst his other collection of odd behaviors. There's a lot of pregnant pauses in the conversation between Ray and Tommy.
The next day, Ray goes to the downstairs part of the "pump room" to retrieve some caulking he saw there, and notices a large framed opening in the basement wall that's been covered over by some junk cloth and a few fiberboard panels. Removing the blockage, he finds a large crawlspace. Going into it, he follows a walkway to a ladder that leads to a hidy space, a secret room on the other side of a one-way mirror that permits spying on the occupants of room 10.
As it turns out, room 10 is special in a lot of ways.
Review:
LOOKING GLASS is a well-made movie with at least a handful of reputable actors which, as seems to happen so often in the movies I review, makes me lament how difficult it must be to achieve storylines with a degree of quality commensurate with the rest of the technical aspects of a movie. Skillful moviemakers can accomplish good music, good cinematography, satisfactory acting and etc. almost at will like turning a crank. Coming up with a story that's worth making into a movie appears to be a much more difficult problem.
In order to achieve its sense of "mystery", LOOKING GLASS relies upon tedious trickery in the apparent hope you won't notice the utter lack of a finished plot line.
To confuse you into thinking that there is a "mystery unfolding", most of the dialogue is deliberately stilted. This reads to your mind as if something is going on whether or not it actually is. No one ever seems to really communicate with anyone else, and what conversations occur are deliberately stilted and uncomfortable. Most of the unusual feeling one gets about the movie stems from how oddly the conversations play out, just going across your tongue wrong like desalinated water. Every single character is an "odd duck", invariably acting peculiar and subtly hostile. Conversations are sprinkled with periods of silence as the characters stare at each other without speaking. We are instinctively tuned to be uncomfortable in the presence of conversations that are awkward or make no sense. Collectively, this is just verbal spackle to cover up for the fact that what you have here is a movie with no reason for being.
Here's a couple of examples:
Review the conversation that Ray has with Ben in the desert. No information is actually conveyed from Ben to Ray. There is even Ben using a Geiger counter on Ray that makes no sense whatsoever and has nothing to do with anything. Ben reveals no secrets or insights to Ray that illuminates anything. It's content-less gibberish.
Review the fight scene between Howard and Ray. Howard makes a comment about finally understanding how "Ben knew" what Howard had done but there is no other indication in the movie that Howard had any reason to think that Ben knew anything. But if we don't just SAY that, then we won't have any reason for Howard's behavior.
And at the end of the movie, with a dead Sheriff in one of their hotel rooms with bullet wounds that have to look more like an execution than anything else, Ray and Maggie just... drive away. Yep... That'll work. Certainly makes as much sense as anything else in LOOKING GLASS.
As many others have commented upon it, so must I: while perhaps not the greatest actor in the world, it somehow feels surprising to find Nicholas Cage in such a picture. I've come across two potential explanations why Cage would be involved in such a movie. Cage himself says that always working is a life choice of his and that when not keeping busy he has a tendency toward self-destruction. Others have commented that he may have as much as a $14 million debt he has to work off with the IRS and movies such as this is just what that looks like.
Whatever the case, I hope he gets that debt paid off soon. For our sake as well as his.
