The Public (2019)

**/****
starring Alec Baldwin, Emilio Estevez, Jena Malone, Taylor Schilling
written and directed by Emilio Estevez

by Alice Stoehr "They're on the wrong side of the law for all the right reasons," runs the tagline for Wisdom (1986), Emilio Estevez's directorial debut. The star of Repo Man and The Breakfast Club was in his mid-twenties when he cast himself opposite then-fiancée Demi Moore, the two of them playing Robin Hood figures on a crime spree. In the decades since, he's had a patchy career as a filmmaker, garnering few awards and little acclaim for one passion project after another. Reviewing the period drama Bobby in 2006, critic A.O. Scott wrote that Estevez "sets himself a large and honorable task. It is important to appreciate this in spite of his movie's evident shortcomings." The same applies to The Public, in which Estevez stars as Stuart Goodson, a Cincinnati librarian fretting over the ethics of his job. One winter night, his branch's homeless clientele stages a sit-in over the city's lack of shelters, and as the police and press get involved, the library becomes a political battleground. Estevez's ambitions are transparent: This is a Capraesque fable for our troubled times, with Stuart as its Mr. Smith or Longfellow Deeds. Most of the film takes place over a matter of hours in a single location, and each figure in the stand-off symbolizes a different ideological perspective. Some sample dialogue: "The public library is the last bastion of true democracy that we have in this country." Lest the viewer get confused.

The first third of the film introduces its ensemble. There's Myra (Jena Malone), the coworker who lectures Stuart about his carbon footprint; Jackson (Michael K. Williams), who leads the protest clad in an old sport coat and earflap hat; and Stuart's flirtatious neighbour, Angela (Taylor Schilling). One subplot deals with a hostage negotiator played by Alec Baldwin scouring the streets for his son. Another has Christian Slater sneering nonstop as the long shot "law and order" candidate for mayor. The Public, as you've probably inferred, is not short on subplots. They all collide at the library, where Stuart--barricaded behind bookshelves with the rest of the protesters--becomes an unlikely spokesman, parleying by phone with the authorities outside. He orders pizza, grants interviews, and tells off Slater's tin-pot fascist. It's a feel-good Dog Day Afternoon: fewer guns, more testimonials to the benefits of reading. No one in this overqualified cast has a challenging role to play. Baldwin and Slater, both contemporaries of Estevez, turn in some stern line readings as good cop and bad cop. "How's this gonna end, Goodson?" barks Baldwin in his sandpaper voice. Malone and Schilling, both born the year Repo Man came out, are the women who initially doubt the hero before he wins them over with his unforeseen resolve. They hang around outside the library, bundled up against the cold as they bicker with Gabrielle Union's vain TV reporter. The best performance in the film comes from Williams, who's hoarse and ragged, impish yet melancholy, much more than the part requires. Estevez sidelines him as the film progresses while centring his own character's arc.

Although his passion as a filmmaker is tangible, Estevez's work on screen is ruinously self-conscious. Everything down to a momentary stammer while reciting from The Grapes of Wrath feels affected for the sake of sentiment. As a director, he's haphazard; he and Spanish cinematographer Juan Miguel Azpiroz, with whom he worked on The Way (2010), make heavy use of the fluorescent lighting in Cincinnati's actual downtown library. So the film looks drab, when not downright unpleasant. Over-the-shoulder shots are especially crude, with the blurry actor in the foreground typically obscuring half the frame. Composition is not a priority here. This is, instead, a film of themes: books are good, poverty is bad, and the one can help alleviate the other. Every idea's overt, whether through broad allusions to "fake news" and police violence or fanciful plotting whereby good intentions win the day. But lines like "Books helped me get sober" aren't half as powerful as a stray announcement that's faintly audible early on over the library's PA system: "A training course on how to administer Narcan will be taking place this Saturday." That grain of real-life detail hinting at the prospect of opioid overdose stands in sharp contrast to the film around it. Though actor, writer, and director Emilio Estevez might again be "on the wrong side of the law for all the right reasons," right reasons alone don't make for good art.