Poker Face

Russell Crowe tells us a particular story, made of friendship, love And respect not only for the values ​​described, but for life in general. Pokerfacedespite the objective defects of the film which, as we know, had a particular gestation, crushed by the 2020 pandemicmanages to involve and excite the viewer who could be misled by the name of the film, branding it as a game story and nothing beyond, while those who see it will discover a story with strong and impressionistic colors, like a painting by Paul Cézanne.

Life is played out in one fell swoop…

Jake Foley (Russell Crowe) is a little boy who enjoys playing poker with lifelong friends, who are Michael (Liam Hemsworth), Andrew Johnson (RZA), Paul (Steve Bastoni) and Sam Levine (Daniel MacPherson). Growing up come the 90s and theadvent of the internet allowed those reckless boys to become “poker gods” by first programming sites for the gamethen later turning your own algorithm into a relentless programcapable of calculating the next moves not only of people but also of any states in the world: it follows that Jake became a very powerful man, rich beyond imagination while some of his friends remained by his side, others took different paths.

Jake finds himself on the threshold of his 57 years with a inoperable pancreatic cancer and has to come to terms with his mortality, but before leaving his remains in this mortal realm, of which he is an absolute master, he decides to reunite the old gang and play “face up”: his plan involves a game of pokerTexas’ Hold’em the winner takes it allbut between alcohol, lords and a poison that loosens the tongue, the purpose of the Lord of Poker is to reveal the truth to his friends and get the truth he deserves in return (or who already knows…). Initially, as mentioned in the preface, the film can be misleading, making us imagine that it is the usual story about poker and impossible hands where a character will make improbable scores followed by damned fictitious twists (if you have in mind 007 Casino Royale you understood the type of vulgar and unthinkable game fruit only and exclusively of the cinema). In Russell Crowe’s Poker Face the game is about the parts, the faces and what a smile hides.

…The rest is waiting

The writer has trod the tables for a considerable part of his life: poker is an exact paraphrase of human life, made up of right and wrong choices, of schemes to apply and of actions that we undertake for ourselves which, however, indiscriminately affect those around us, whether we want it or not (Newton describes this event in one of his Laws). The green table, which is reflected in the images of the Australian sea, full of green reflections, which we then find in the green of Jake’s eyes (lent to him by an extraordinary Russell Crowe) and which is finally taken up by the green of the Australian $100 banknotes it is a constant in the film, a color that unites everyone in some way, here we find another allegory for life.

Poker Face forces us to reflect on the control we have over our livesof the our choices and, as happens when we are at the mercy of that green sea, that green table, or slaves of that green money that passes through our handsin reality we have the illusion of control and everyone plays with “the cards they have been dealt”, lying when we don’t like them and feeling like champions when they win, but while we play, surf or pay a bill, the ineluctability escapes us of events, i.e. that sooner or later the game will end, the wave will reach the shore, we will settle the last bill and the last tear will come down from the embankment of those eyes, we will fall asleep and nothing will be of us.

Our choices will remain, right or wrong, it will no longer be our problem. The friends and the traces we have, willy-nilly, left inside them will remain. There will remain the loves to which, even if we didn’t want to, we wronged something and it would be good to be able to apologize before the end. This is how Jake spent his last months: rich, powerful and sick, but not so much for the disease that keeps him in check, as suffering from his legacy, for how he will make his loved ones and his family feel in the din of a silence that will carry with it.

Humanly extraordinary

Poker Face is a pale spring morning still stuck to the cold of winterit is a moment of reflection in which the dealer (the one who deals the cards at the poker table) lays out the whole deck in front of you, and those cards are your life, made up not only of numbers but of figures (your friends ” J”), lovers (the Queens “Q”) and of people who have been close to you more than the others (the Kings “K”) and finally there is You, the Ace who dominates the game, but who does not understand reality sometimes it is the game itself that dominates the game of life.

Poker Face is a raw film, certainly not free from defects but loaded with messages, spiritual allegories and brushstrokes of colors, sounds and emotionsjust like that painting we were talking about a few lines ago, impressionistic like Cezanne, Monet or Manet who capture one by one an ephemeral image of what they see and turn it into poetry.

Poker Face has a lot to say and, although there are some smudges just like in the paintings of the artists we have mentioned, the space interpolated by the errors perhaps makes the good there even more vivid. A clear applause must be made to Russell Crowe’s vibrant and sometimes cheeky performanceundoubtedly enriched and completed by the most warm and penetrating voice of a Luke Ward at the apex of his performance.