The Listener

Grade: B

Steve Buscemi has directed before, but nothing – as far as I know – quite like The Listener. It’s an out-of-character project for him; a bit like David Lynch directing The Straight Story, Wes Craven directing Music of the Heart, and if you can think of other examples, I’d love to hear them. There’s only one person you see in the movie – Tessa Thompson (Bianca from the Creed series and Valkyrie from many MCU movies). Her character goes by Beth, professionally. She works nights, from home, for what sounds like a suicide or mental health hotline.

For not having any scene partners she can SEE (and I’m very curious if she had the actual actors reading with her, and if not, who?), Thompson brings us a solid character and performance. She is patient, never pressing, and never saying inappropriate things. You would want to get her on the line if you called.

It’s hard to review a film like this, because it’s just a series of calls. What do I do? Should I talk about some individual ones? Though there’s not much of a journey or arc, the slow-burn pacing and momentum is kept up. I liked the girl who called twice. She calls her brain Brian, “because it’s scrambled.” The voice talent is from mostly unknown actors, though Margaret Cho plays one of the callers. I could imagine Buscemi, the director, doing well as at least one of the characters (he’s cast himself before), but he stays behind the camera here.

The Catch 22 of a film like The Listener is it can feel a bit one-note if one person spends the whole time just listening and talking to people on the phone, and that’s all we get. But on the other hand, if it suddenly changed direction and adopted a stalker/slasher subplot, it would feel out of left field. So it’s hard for it to truly win. What it does, that I admired, was sometimes hint that it might veer off into something like that, and then not do so. Beth makes sure her doors are locked a few times, and there’s a great moment where she’s taking a call out on her porch, and there’s…something…in the background. It almost looks like a figure, but is probably just a hanging plant. Buscemi keeps it in the shot like it’s a second character.

I figured the last call of the night/movie would be the “best,” i.e. most bombastic, and most cinematic – but no, it’s on about the same level as the others, all fine. This isn’t a complaint. Building up to some huge, grand statement would have been the predictable route. The memorable lines and bits are evenly distributed throughout, and there’s a message that the reasons to go on outweigh the arguments in favor of the alternative. Due to the sameness that can bog it down, I’m not sure about The Listener’s replay value, but I think people should see it once.

Grade: B