‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ or — So Just How Bad is It?

I’ve been a big Brian De Palma fan for years, and when I say big I mean BIG. Sure, his films frequently have undeniable issues and flaws but his energetic flare means I can describe what I love about his movies in one, simple word — ‘STIMULATION’. Besides, I’m a sucker for his crazy style so he can shoot anything he wants as long as I get all that split diopter, snaking Steadicam, elaborate set-piece, split screen goodness. I prefer his work to Coppola, Scorsese and yes, even Spielberg. Hell, I even like his scrappy early stuff!

So it’s always baffled me that the only De Palma film I’d never seen was his most notorious, that legendary super-flop of epic proportions — ‘The Bonfire of the Vanities’ (1990). I’d heard about it, read about it but never actually seen it… until last night, that is, when I decided to finally sit down and watch the bloody thing to see what all the fuss was about.

Aaaaand?

Yeah, it’s a stinker. But it’s also very De Palma, and that’s one of the film’s biggest problems yet also its saving grace.

As an adaptation of Wolfe’s famously dense novel it’s a total failure (I vaguely recall reading the book years ago). We can sense punches being pulled, compromises yielded to and the buckling under to various pressures. The criticisms of the time were correct: the leads are spectacularly miscast (Willis is almost unwatchable); characters are introduced then neglected; scalpel sharp incendiary satire is replaced by a scattershot mean-spiritedness and the “Fuck you all!” ending still lets the white, middle class guy off the hook (this is not the fate of Sherman McCoy we’re witnessing but that of lovable Tom Hanks who must immutably remain lovable Tom Hanks).

It’s got a doozy of an opening shot that screams ‘technical panache’ but Bruce Willis’ accompanying narration is so misjudged, so insipid, so lacking in vital bite it becomes a fatal wound so deep we immediately twig we’re dealing with an injured beast, one we’re watching slowly bleed out before our very eyes.

The treatment of Griffith’s Maria is also a problem, not because she can’t be fair game for savage ridicule but that exposing her shallowness by having her spout clunky malapropisms feels so lazy and cheap it starts making you feel the device must’ve been passé even back in Sheridan’s time.

The film is too short (it should’ve been a miniseries), the sensation of a 600 plus page novel condensed into a two hour movie resulting in an awkward, off-kilter pacing with a forward velocity that reeks of a frantic desperation to get to the finishing line ASAP as opposed to delighting in any screwball pizzazz.

So it’s a disaster? Yes, but one not completely devoid of merit. The film seriously perks up as soon as F. Murray Abraham appears, there’s a very nice scene in a restaurant with mirrored walls that makes you wonder where the hell the camera could feasibly be and De Palma always knows how to build up and pay-off a scene with gusto. The famous second unit shot of Concorde landing is gorgeous, the script has some nice lines tucked away in the tangled dialogue and all those delicious De Palma-isms are fully present. But, again, that’s the rub as we never feel we’re watching Wolfe and constantly aware of the guy who made ‘Body Double’ (1984) and ‘Dressed to Kill’ (1980) instead. No wonder fans of the novel hated it.

I watched ‘Bonfire’ as a double-bill with De Palma’s ‘Carlito’s Way’ (1993) and the effect was interesting and not just because ‘Carlito’ works where ‘Bonfire’ fails (‘Carlito’s material fits the director like a glove and the explicit jump in quality between the two is a palpable shock) but because I wasn’t left feeling as though I’d just seen two movies of vastly differing calibre as expected and more that I’d just watched two De Palma films in a row and had quite a bit of fun in the process. And that’s not a bad way to spend an evening.

Taken as a Wolfe adaptation or a mainstream Hollywood movie ‘Bonfire of the Vanities’ is a mess. In fact, it crashes and burns in a shower of flammable hubris, ironically in much the same way McCoy himself does. Yet viewed as part of De Palma’s filmography or seen in conjunction with his other work it’s definitely not without value and that might just be the best, if not only reasonable, way to watch it because although ‘Bonfire’ has many fatal issues De Palma’s directing isn’t really one of them.