Steve Coogan did his best Richard Gere impression in The Trip, and it was uncanny. Oren Moverman clearly followed his lead, casting the two as brothers in The Dinner. Stan (Gere, standing out by virtue of his character’s verbosity), a rich congressman and soon-to-be gubernatorial candidate, has an ominous subject to broach with his “psycho” brother, a former history teacher, and the film alternates between staid dinner scenes and the violent misadventures of their sons. The emphasis is on socioeconomic class commentary that also unfolds into a dramatic, suspenseful tale, but the latter is left, for the most part, to unfold in the final act. As a fourth effort from Moverman, The Dinner shows a range of stylistic modes, but, as with the juggling narratives, the shifting focus and tone comes across as a discordant mismatch of confused melodrama that fails to engage.
Moverman’s script lacks real consistency, attempting to tell too much at once and thus losing focus and impetus. On the one hand, there’s the dinner storyline of two brothers begrudgingly coming together, one in an effort to help the other. On the other, is a violent act committed by their sons – uploaded for all to see – that threatens to derail their futures. Stan summoned Paul (Coogan) to this dinner to discuss something important, even foregoing a trip to DC. Paul and his wife Claire (Laura Linney), for their part, loathe Stan and his former aide-turned wife Katelyn (Rebecca Hall). Their meal unfolds in fits and starts, as laboriously drawn out as the multi-course meal. There’s political satire, surely, surrounding Stan’s dealings and future plans, but the reason for the meeting revolves around mental illness, specifically Stan’s upcoming bill proposing that health insurance cover treatment. Paul sees this as an attack against him and the illness he’s struggled with for years.
Paul is unstable, though, as we see in flashbacks to his teaching days where he abandons classrooms mid-lecture and practices lectures to an empty room about how happy people would be if all the assholes were wiped off the face of the earth. And the two brothers, in discussing their mother, reveal the family’s history of mental illness. But these numerous flashbacks bog down the film even further. They’re required for context, but Moverman could do with cutting several. Certainly, what worked in Herman Koch’s novel doesn’t necessarily translate to a cinematic narrative. What remains in the film is self-contradictory, some flashbacks serving to make Paul the most logical-seeming character (aided by the fact that he is given voice over narration), thus setting him up to receive audience sympathy, while others paint him as a dangerous loose cannon.
Even though this aspect of the story is important, the meatier subject matter lies in the actions of Paul’s son, Michael (Charlie Plummer), his cousin, Rick (Seamus Davey-Fitzpatrick), and Stan’s adopted son, Beau (Miles J. Harvey). Their actions in an enclosed ATM where a homeless woman is sleeping – and how their parents react – illustrate the dangerous, insidious nature of classist thought, spurring essential discussion of crime and punishment, especially when privileged white teens such as these so frequently received lax sentences. But, even here, The Dinner fails to make a real impact. It distracts from the social commentary with in-fighting between the boys and between Stan, Claire and Katelyn. Surprisingly, it’s only Stan who believes that admitting guilt and facing the consequences is the appropriate response; the rest refer to the harmless woman – herself a victim of violence – as dangerous and violent. But even in this, The Dinner resorts to contrived pontification, again mostly from Stan, rather than true engagement with the philosophies at hand.
The sobering, minimalist dinner set pieces initially hold their own, but Linney and Hall are given little room to shine. And all the talking becomes garishly ineffectual, even futile, in the face of the second half drama. Moverman turns Koch’s novel into a film that touches on several meaningful topics but inundates itself with flashbacks and trips over a busy narrative structure, never satisfactorily addressing its central messages. Fittingly, The Dinner gives us an almost-murder in the final minutes before immediately ending. The takeaway is just as muddled as the film, making it impossible to side with any character, let alone distinguish the film’s ultimate commentary on poorly correlated characters and events.
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