Steve Buscemi is better known as an actor than director, and yet there is an intriguing throughline in his work behind the camera. Starting with his debut Trees Lounge, Buscemi has made films about people with a profound sense of alienation. He characters are losers and prisoners, and even when he made a film about a celebrity – the 2007 film Interview – his instinct is to find sympathy for people who guard their feelings to a fault. The Listener, Buscemi’s latest as a director, continues in that spirit. Only one character appears on screen for the entire film (unless you want to count her dog), which is a big ask for any actor, although the writing and performance are sharp enough that the material is always engaging. There is sometimes an impulse to make the material too topical, an approach that can be too try-hard, although the conceit is ultimately shrewd about the difficulties in an honest search for human connection.
In the middle of the night or early in the morning, hours before dawn, a young woman named Beth (Tessa Thompson) stirs from bed. She goes through her routine, except instead of leaving for work, she grabs an earpiece and logs into an anonymous helpline. The line is not explicitly for callers who have suicidal thoughts, and yet that is a distinct possibility for all the people who call it, then connect with Beth. There is not really an arc to the film. Some calls are helpful, others are disturbing, and the vast majority of them do not go anywhere productive. Through Buscemi’s direction and Thompson’s performance, we get a sense of the patience and frustration that comes with the gig. There are moments where Beth is on the verge of a breakthrough with someone, only to have the conversation end abruptly. She has no choice but to collect herself, and connect with someone else. There is also an addictive quality to this random collection of troubled people: we are always curious about who might be next.
Buscemi assembled an impressive list of actors to play the various callers. We only hear their voices, and they create a sense of character with limited tools at their disposal. Some of the memorable callers include Michael (Logan Marshall-Green), an ex-con struggling with life on the outside, and a homeless woman (Alia Shawkat) who fears her boyfriend wants to become her pimp. Indeed, screenwriter Alessandro Camon practically goes through a checklist of how mental health and broader social issues might cross paths. In a memorably painful scene, one character is a virulent misogynist, and Beth nearly breaks through his defenses, at least until he would rather offend her than risk any real vulnerability.
There are many, many members to Beth’s “lonely hearts club,” to borrow a phrase used by one character, and everyone has a story. The only constant is Beth, whose empathy is vast but finite, and Thompson finds genuine character development through facial tics, or how her voice sharpens. It is a tough role, not just because Buscemi does not adorn the film with any tight editing or theatrics, and here Thompson demonstrates subtlety and depth that is not always demanded from her. We do learn some details from Beth’s past, since she confides in some callers, just not too much. The script handles her backstory organically, not as a cheat, because it understands that reciprocation is a key component of all active listening.
If The Listener has an episodic structure – it is almost like a stage play, or a string of monologues – then some scenes connect more than others. That is both a weakness and a strength: when you’re bored or even roll your eyes at one of Beth’s callers, you will not have to wait long for another. Still, anyone who sees this film will probably remember the showstopper call, a lengthy conversation with Beth and Laura (Rebecca Hall), an unemployed professor. Hall is known for her brittle, intelligent characters, and here she portrays a disturbed woman who talks about suicide with a frankness that is disturbing and direct. Laura insists she speaks only in hypotheticals, and yet Beth reads between the lines: we get the sense this is an intellectual debate between two smart, weary people, and that someone’s life is in the balance.
Hall is so good as Laura, a woman who argues that suicide is rational, that she might be more convincing than the script intended. That is not to say The Listener is pro-suicide, just that its quest for realism leads to a forcefulness that can be alarming. Beth has the wherewithal not to talk Laura down. Instead, Buscemi pushes in on Beth’s face, suggesting tension and suspense, while Beth sounds even keeled and keeps the conversation going. The call could have gone any number of ways, not just dramatically, and yet the film avoids anything too shocking or saccharine. More than that, it actually earns its final notes of weary optimism. What Buscemi, Camon and Thompson accomplish is a true high-wire act, one that is satisfying on dramatic terms before it serves as a comfort for anyone who might be struggling like the characters in the film. Like Laura’s initial skepticism of Beth, The Listener understands it must establish a sense of credibility first.
Photo courtesy of Vertical
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