Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

I have gained new respect for Will Smith, as an actor, after this movie. Not that I didn't have much before… As much as I adore his personality among other talents, I really didn't expect him to pull off this role with such ease. Considering the difficulty.Paul is one of our main characters, who suddenly appears at a rich couple's home (who are art dealers). He's stabbed after a mugging and dressed in fine clothing, he claims to be the couple's son and daughter's friend from Harvard. After going through detailed knowledge about their children, he woos the dealers and their business guest with his charm, knowledge, and deep insight into the world (at this point Will Smith delivers some great monologue). Later the plot ensues and you find out the Paul is not who he claims to be… and the mystery unravels through dinner conversation and anecdote.This movie is based on a play, and through the movie you can clearly see the strength of the dialog carries the story as well as the actors who deliver them. I love the movie for its depth in simplicity. How it uses conversation to draw you in rather than the typical action. It uses conversation to reveal the action and mystery that you so desire.My favorite character in the movie is Ouisa Kittredge played by Stockard Channing. She's the main character who is closest to Paul and grows after this experience with Paul.Do not be mistaken, this movie is NOT about a bunch of rich snobs coming to their way after being exposed to a black boy with promise and potential but no means. No, there is perhaps 5% of that in this movie, and there is no strong pretenses with this film. It goes deeper than just a sympathetic rich white lady, much deeper indeed.This film may not be for everyone, but it is for those who love good dialogs and monologues and for those who love plays ( or at least don't mind them).(the kid's were stupid and pointless one dimensional characters, but that's my only qualm).

I guess we can see the genius of Will Smith right from the start. This is a film about a chameleon who is able to create for himself identities suited to an intriguing game he is playing. He really wants to be loved, but has become so deeply entrenched in his charade that he soon isn't sure what he wants. He is a master of subterfuge with a smile and a wink. He claims to be the son of someone who is relatively reclusive and unapproachable. This gives him the opportunity to invade people's lives; but for what? It's his "victims" that grow because of him. He is searching for a family but needs so many assurances. He chooses the super-rich, which makes his job much harder. The performances by Donald Sutherland, Stockard Channing, and Smith, himself are quite incredible. I began by absolutely hating these people. They are so smug and pretentious that they make one gag. And that's why their redemption due to this invader is so poignant. They grow to love this young man in their own ways, despite the fact that he appears dangerous (is he; I don't know). Of course, the six degrees is the theory that we are all related in some way if we go back six generations. The thing asked is, how can we then be so different. A real surprise.

The fact that the actual title comes from, as Channing's Ouisa informs us at some point, everybody being six persons - friends, acquaintances, lovers - away from celebrity, that is someone famous, is like an intended, over-prepared, pointless irony: it rather reads like six degrees of preparation, or six degrees away from greatness.The film has no consistent pace, is merely a play transfered - and not worked through - to celluloid, and a mediocre, portentous one, for that matter.Where it should have been an ensemble effort, it gets muddled mid-way by a flash back on how Smith's Paul was "discovered": a slight variation on the Pygmalion myth/paradigm, but weighed down by Smith's sudden moodiness, too much and too suddenly of a "man", especially for a gay, polished character. This lacks subtlety, and subtlety along with gusto is what the film was most in need. If this was intended in tune with other quasi-farcical moments, it was a ghastly error.An improbable phone-call between Ouisa and Paul muddles whatever premise and goes on forever. That much for dramatic economy.Yet Channing and Sutherland shine through, and Channing gives a tour-de-force in a nutshell during her final, small monologue, which may well be the film's moment. Afterwards smacking with a stupid closure (slapping a tree's leaves the way she did the moment of creation between God and Adam at the Sistine Chapel) of a ho-hum symbolic-and-so-manhattanite-released conclusion.This sounds worse than it is, and maybe it is, going from extreme, supposed subtlety, some good, very good lines, to cardboard situations and skimmed if not skipped direction. Watch it for its good moments and since the word imagination garlands the film with some of its best lines, imagine the film it could have been.

This film is nothing but an interminable sequence of flashbacks where a middle-to-older age couple tell and retell the story of how they were duped by a young man into believing he was Sidney Poitier's son.I saw it because the combination of Donald Sutherland and Will Smith seemed great, but it must be the worst film of both of these two great actors.In the end, this movie is nothing but a very pretentious psychodrama about how a very pretentious couple of not very successful art dealers came into contact with a boy of lower social class and ended loving him. There are many far better films than this one in that theme. There is even a line where one of the characters is compared to Henry Higgins that will give a tip to those who want to look for an alternative.