A remake of 1943’s A Guy Named Joe, but just as much a variation on 1946’s A Matter of Life and Death, Always marks Steven Spielberg’s attempt to bring classic-cinema panache to a modern, mystical romance. Here the pilot who crosses over into the afterlife is not a military man, but a firefighter. Pete Sandich (Richard Dreyfuss) defends the forests of the American West from above, while romancing air-traffic controller Dorinda Durston (Holly Hunter) from below. That is, until a disaster in the skies sends Pete to the other side, where an angelic Audrey Hepburn assigns him to be the spiritual guide for a younger pilot (Brad Johnson) who falls for Dorinda. The success of Always depends on us falling head over heels for the Pete-Dorinda relationship in the movie’s first third, which never quite happens. Part of the problem is the hokey, screwball-adjacent banter (comedy veteran and “Odd Couple” creator Jerry Belson is credited with the adapted screenplay), but it’s also Dreyfuss. Hunter has the spark to pull this stuff off—you can easily picture her working in the ’40s—but Dreyfuss is too fussy, too controlled, too in his own head. (And I say this as someone who thinks he’s absolutely crucial to his two other collaborations with Spielberg: Jaws and Close Encounters of the Third Kind.) Together, Dreyfuss and Hunter are a clash in styles and eras. Still, this is Spielberg, so Always offers plenty of visual solace, from the opening shot of a plane bearing down on a pair of unsuspecting fisherman to Dorinda’s face in the morning light as Pete agrees to take one more flight, the window behind her burning with the rising sun. In some ways this is as metaphysical as something like Close Encounters, it’s just lacking the tonal control of Spielberg at his best.
(8/25/2022)
