Auto Focus exhibits a quality that is exceedingly rare in biopics: honesty. The film is a visual delight, hamming up 60s googie chic and 70s earth-tone sleaze with enough dazzle to make a Japanese cinematographer weep with jealousy. Greg Kinnear is too smooth for words; his Bob Crane is a downright mythical archetype that all red-blooded American men aspire to, a veritable half Ward Cleaver/half Unstoppable Sex Machine. You’d think Kinnear was channeling the spirit of J.R. “Bob” Dobbs with his cheerful grin and puzzlement over why people think he’s such a sleazebucket. And that’s the beauty of Auto Focus, a triumphant homage to America’s civil war between sensuality and anti-sex hypocrisy. By denying our sexual beings, we’ve become a nation of sex party bingers or pathetic losers who creep out women, for our American Puritanism cannot visualize sex out of a marriage as anything else.
Auto Focus does not purport to tell the true story of Bob Crane, nor is it some namby pamby morality tale of what happens when you have too much sex. Rather, Crane cuts a supremely sympathetic character, a man who does his damndest to be a good and loving husband and father (which he does … his children adore him), but is just unable to suppress his libido. But our society cannot tolerate a hard charging libido in its one size fits all sexual morality, and the hubris of Crane is that he had the gall and poor judgment to try to beat the odds.
For all its sleaze, Auto Focus is a film about innocence. One great scene involves Crane’s wife discovering his stash of “sleazy magazines” that are “art photography magazines.” Such was the nature of mainstream porn in the 50s. Auto Focus also thankfully avoids being a witless remake of Hogan’s Heroes, but I was still blown away by Kurt Fuller’s dead-on and nuanced Werner Klemperer/Colonel Klink. But the real glue that holds this film together is possibly William Dafoe’s best role yet, which is no small praise coming from me. His wounded, exquisitely creepy, and inexplicably sympathetic John Carpenter is Taxi Driver psychotic. Kinnear and Dafoe’s bizarre man-chemistry goes beyond simple homoerotic yearning; it is nothing less than a laboratory to test the limits of men’s friendship. Their masturbation scene will go down in the annals of all-time great scenes you’ll never see on a compilation of all-time great scenes.
The technology of Auto Focus cannot be ignored, as the medium is the message. One of the best scenes involves Bob Crane showing off a video camera to his family, and you can feel the wonder and dread of a New Age dawning, as the video camera has proven to be as crucial and cataclysmic invention as the automobile and air conditioning. There is a genuine love for old timey electronics here (I wouldn’t be surprised if director Paul Schrader took some cues from The Conversation), and Dafoe pulls out the archaic jargon with aplomb. Hallucinatory scenes follow the merry-go-round that is Bob Crane’s crumbling life, adding an atmosphere of drunken disorientation.
Despite everything, I finished this movie wishing I was Bob Crane…and knowing that any guy who denied the same about himself is a liar. I even felt nostalgic for two eras I never actually experienced. The great music, razor sharp directing, and buttery and nasty performances make this film a winner. I highly recommend Auto Focus for your next cocktail soirée or orgy.
Tags: auto focus, bob crane, greg kinnear, paul schrader, william dafoe