Quality: 3 stars (out of four)
Director: Nik Fackler
Stars: Martin Landau, Ellen Burstyn, Mark Scott, Elizabeth Banks
Rating: Unrated
Running time: 1 hour, 30 minutes
“Lovely, Still” really is lovely.
In fact, Omaha has never looked better on the big screen than it does in Omaha director-screenwriter Nik Fackler's first feature-length movie, a Christmastime love story about an older couple that stars Oscar winners Ellen Burstyn and Martin Landau.
Fackler, 25, has said he wrote the movie in his teens, while in the idealistic throes of first love himself. He tried to imagine what first love might be like for an older gent.
Landau is that gent, Robert Malone, a grocery sacker who lives alone and has fallen into a set routine. But one day, when he comes home from work, his routine is upset. The front door is open, and a woman named Mary (Burstyn) is inside.
Just checking, she explains to a flustered Robert, to see if he's all right, since the door was open. Mary just moved in across the street with daughter Alex (Elizabeth Banks).
Vivacious Mary asks Robert out on a date. He hesitantly accepts, and soon spending time with Mary is what Robert gets up thinking about and goes to sleep thinking about. He gets dating advice from the grocery store manager, Mike (Adam Scott). The agony and ecstasy (and fear) of dating play across his craggy face and even haunt his dreams.
This sentimental movie, with gentle bits of humor, has a plot twist (think “The Sixth Sense,” only not creepy). Mum's the word on the twist, except to say it plays out quite effectively.
But here's what's not a secret: Burstyn and Landau are amazingly gifted actors, and they fill these seemingly straightforward roles with emotional subtlety and on-screen charisma that make Fackler's sweet, pure tale a pleasure to watch unfold — or to see a second time when the story comes clear.
It's more fun, of course, if you're from Omaha and know Fackler's background as a music video director.
Robert and Mary cap their first dinner date with an Old Market carriage ride. There they are holding hands in a 1920s brick Tudor house on 54th Street as carolers sing “O Holy Night” with snow drifting down. “Ave Maria” plays as they sled down the big hill in Memorial Park.
“It's so beautiful,” Mary gushes at one point. “If only we'd just slow down enough to really see it.”
Robert sees only Mary. “When I saw you, everything fit. It was like breathing,” he says.
Fackler has made a more-than-respectable first film, all about finding love and hanging on to it.
Contact the writer:
444-1269, bob.fischbach@owh.com
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