Some of my favorite movies are shows I had to be dragged out of the house to see. I was carried away by the vivid characters of The Accidental Tourist, and left the theater feeling as if I knew them personally. Lawrence Kasdan’s picture is among the best of light romances, alongside movies that generate positive feelings about people. As highly accessible examples, Powell & Pressburger’s I Know Where I’m Going! and Wilder & Diamond’s The Apartment come to mind. Charming and funny, Tourist looks at the quiet introverts and sensitive souls that movies normally make fun of. Its drama hooks us from the start.
This is by far Lawrence Kasdan’s best film as writer or director. It’s consistently amusing yet always serious. His superb cast is led by Geena Davis’ wonderful portrait of an odd, warmly caring woman who takes on the job of breaking a good man out of a crippling emotional shell.
The story takes its time introducing its characters. Travel book writer Macon Leary (William Hurt) has descended into non-communicative isolation following the death of his son a year before. His wife Sarah (Kathleen Turner) leaves him, so Macon moves back in with his kindly but eccentric siblings, removing him even further from the need to live like a normally, engaging with strangers. Enter dog trainer Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis), a pushy, captivating oddball who sets her cap for Macon in an instant. Can she communicate with a man who shrinks from all interpersonal involvement, and has forgotten how to express his own feelings?
The Accidental Tourist has comedy, tragedy, kooky people, a slow pace and a dry sense of humor. Its main characters are over thirty. They live quiet lives dealing with their problems and working to make ends meet. They try their best to be fair to each other. Nobody wears a sign reading ‘deserving hero’ or ‘meddling outsider.’ In other words, the emotional relationships in Anne Tyler’s original story acknowledge the mundane complexities of real life. As we begin to understand these people, our reward is a heightened compassion.
Kasdan’s show presents some challenging characters, to say the least. Macon Leary begins as an insensate lump, functioning just well enough to write his travel guides for people that don’t want to travel. Everything about Muriel Pritchett is forward, intrusive, and loud. She’s a true original, making her way with an adventurous spirit and an unusual fashion sense. Her impatience lets us know she needs to find the right person, right now. Viewers that prefer their characterizations broad and simple may become restless; Tourist requires a more inquisitive attitude.
When he’s alone, Macon Leary has serious motivation trouble. Just doing his chores becomes an exercise in will power. Sarah overdoses on Macon’s emotional deadness; neither of them has recovered from the death of their son, a murder victim. She tries living alone, perhaps to see if Macon will snap back to life in her absence. He instead retreats to an earlier life of secure predictability back home. It’s cozy but unhealthy, with one divorced sibling and two unmarried ones, all back together and feeding off one another’s collective eccentricities.
Sister Rose (Amy Wright) is an obsessive who derives pleasure from absurd over-organization; brothers Porter (David Ogden Stiers) and Charles (Ed Begley Jr.) live comatose lives where nothing changes and the most important task is to see that nothing ever does. When they decide the phone is a bother, they stop answering it. Macon’s new girlfriend Muriel and Rose’s new suitor Julian (Bill Pullman) are treated as intruders, unknown factors that might disturb the status quo.
Tourist gives all of these people sensitive personalities. Many would see Macon as rude and boorish, and Rose’s painful honesty would certainly tag her as a social misfit: “You’re just trying to keep me from my last chance at love.” So thank heaven for the romantics that keep trying. Outsiders Muriel Pritchett and Julian must swim against a current of disapproval and rejection. It takes a special sensitivity to reach such insular people, to break through emotional scar tissue and the mixed signals of apathy and distraction.
That The Accidental Tourist can maintain this intimate tone is a storytelling miracle. Tyler, Galati and Kasdan — and especially editrix Carol Littleton — make skillful use of amusing narrative devices. Macon’s adventure-killing travel advice is to avoid anything new or unpredictable, especially other humans. His defensive rules provide a wry counterpoint to ordinary scenes: “Don’t get attached to items you might find during your trip; think of how awkward and inconvenient they may become later on.” Macon’s nervous disorder becomes clear through his Corgi dog, Edward. A direct connection to the lost son, Edward senses Macon’s disharmony and starts biting people.
William Hurt communicates depths of feeling with a minimum of actorly effects. His co-star from Kasdan’s Body Heat Kathleen Turner handles her role with equal sensitivity. Everyone in Tourist is accorded respect as an individual. The standout supporting player may be Amy Wright, with her portrait of a woman that anywhere else would be caricatured as a fussy spinster. Ms. Wright can be seen in highly affecting roles in pictures as diverse as Breaking Away, Wise Blood and Inside Moves. She makes a strong impression in The Deer Hunter with very little screen time.
Geena Davis’s Oscar win is that rare exception when a special performance is justly rewarded. Her Muriel Pritchett starts out as an angular kook, like Shelley Duvall’s Olive Oyl in Popeye. But Muriel has an understanding of unstable personalities, starting with Macon’s dog. She’s undeniably courageous, considering her determination to win over a man who repeatedly rejects her agenda. Muriel’s startling costumes and makeup pop out of Macon’s gray world like a sign of hope in the fog. Muriel is a vulnerable woman with serious problems. She wins over viewers convinced that attractive people are by definition exempt from everyday woes.
The Accidental Tourist pulls us in with its sensitive tone. We watch these faces for hints and clues just as we watch the real people in our lives. Their thoughts and ‘themes’ aren’t telegraphed through grand gestures or clever dialogue. Aiding this process is the sensitive music score by John Williams, which I think is one of his best. Never resorting to coy noodling or cute effects, its vibrating strings set a tone of yearning and need, and let us know that these characters won’t be abandoned.
Critic Robin Wood would surely categorize The Accidental Tourist as a ‘theraputic film’ charting the healing process of an emotionally wounded person. Unlike the prime example Vertigo, Kasdan adds no genre twists or Gothic ironies, just the hope that happiness is possible.
Macon eventually ends up in a foreign country, trapped in a small room and forced to finally sort out the ‘unwanted baggage’ in his life. The therapy works, and Sarah and Muriel will no longer have to idle in suspense. The film celebrates the yearnings of ordinary, isolated people in a way that lifts our spirits. When I saw the show in a crowded theater one could hear a pin drop, and then there was applause.
