Closer director master of the mind game

An inability to look at dead bodies killed off Mike Nichols' hopes of training as a psychiatrist 50 years ago, but did nothing to diminish his fascination with marriage, mating and the games people play.

His departure from medical school turned out to be psychiatry's loss but a gain for stage and screen, as Nichols the director probed personal relationships, posing questions rather than answers and in the process becoming one of the most revered film makers of his day.

"I think finding the person for you is the great adventure. I think it is inexhaustibly interesting. It is what life is made of," said Nichols.

His latest movie, Closer, finds the 73-year-old back on familiar territory. It's being likened to Nichols' Carnal Knowledge (1971), both for its sexuality and its bleak view of human relationships.

A film version of the acclaimed 1997 stage play by Britain's Patrick Marber, Closer is the intertwined tale of two men and two women (Jude Law, Clive Owen, Julia Roberts and Natalie Portman) who meet, fall in love, betray each other and ultimately destroy themselves.

Sometimes witty, often raw, and relentlessly ambiguous, it is what Marber calls a love story, albeit one that goes wrong, and what Nichols sees as an ode to "the importance of lying".

"I think that Closer is about the dangers of closeness," Nichols said. "Do you have a right to know what is in the other person's head? In my experience, happiness comes from being together but always maintaining enough separateness." Despite critically acclaimed performances from all four actors, Closer is no crowd-pleaser.

For Nichols, winning over the audience is hardly the point at this stage in a career founded on taking risks and breaking taboos.

"If you are there to please the audience, it is over already. You have got to be telling the story you want to tell and hope that there are enough people who are interested in that story to make it worthwhile," he said. But he rankles slightly at the suggestion that the film's characters are too bad to be true.

"I think the whole idea of likeability is a Hollywood concept. The Macbeths were no sweethearts ... If everybody is adorable, you can't go anywhere.

"I am startled that many people are shocked because, for me, in order to do this work you have to love the characters. They are us. We are them. There are parts of us that are awful. I think we give ourselves a clean report card too easily."

Nichols' report card has been crammed with glowing references since he abandoned psychiatry. ("Looking at cadavers - that's what got me out. I wasn't up to it.") He went on to win his first Tony Award for directing Neil Simon's Barefoot in the Park in 1966.

He made his debut as a film director with the gritty Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf in 1966 and seduced Oscar voters with The Graduate in 1967.

His television production of Tony Kushner's searing Aids epic Angels in America swept the Emmy awards in September and made him one of an elite group who have won at least one of every major show business trophy - film, stage, television and music.

Marber agreed to hand over the Closer film rights only after Nichols expressed interest in directing it.

"He had a passion for the material and he was respectful of the writer," Marber said.

Actors too have respect and affection for Nichols. "[He] brings out of you a sense of confidence, that you're the only person for the job, so you should never question or doubt yourself," Law said.

Nichols said he knew directing was the job for him on the first day of rehearsal for Barefoot in the Park.

"I knew how it should go, right away, and how to communicate to the others how it should go.

"Losing that instinct happens all the time and is what makes directing as exciting as falling in love.

"Every day on a movie and every 10 days on a play I think, 'I'm stuck. This scene sucks. I can't make it work. Unless if I move this over here and she comes in there later ... '

"And then pretty soon it seems possible. "I heave a sigh of relief and think 'Saved once more'."

- REUTERS