Mark Reviews Movies: THE PUBLIC

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Review by Mark Dujsik | April 4, 2019

There's something to be said for a movie that attempts to tackle a variety of social issues. There's also something to be said for a movie that tries to be generous to a variety of perspectives. There's something to be said about The Public, which puts forth a seemingly earnest effort to do both of those things, although the positive things to say about the movie pretty much end with its intentions.

Writer/director Emilio Estevez's heart is in the right place, as he tells a story about an act of civil disobedience inside a public library. The movie is primarily concerned with raising awareness of homelessness, specifically in Cincinnati, where the story takes places, but also anywhere in the United States—or, at least, any place where the temperature drops below freezing at certain times of the year. That's part of the problem, perhaps, with being too broad in one's goals. Without a clear argument to be made, the specifics of a narrative example easily can be mistaken as the specifics of an argument.

Here, for example, the issue of homelessness only becomes a problem for the characters under a certain set of circumstances, when presented with a particular arrangement of challenges. Unintentionally, then, the movie puts forward the case that homelessness is, indeed, a problem, but it's only one that should be of any real concern in this place, at this time, and when things are arranged in this particular manner.

That's not to say that a movie can't use a specific—and even, as is the case here, fictional—example to illuminate a societal problem that extends far beyond the confines its story. It is, though, to say that this movie is unconvincing in putting its concerns into a bigger picture.

Part of that problem is the expanse of the story's cast. It's an ensemble narrative, but practically, Estevez stars as Stuart Goodson, a librarian at the Cincinnati Public Library. He's a pretty dull, generically nice guy, who spends his days at work and his nights in relative seclusion in his cold and spare apartment.

We never really get a sense of him as a character, since every scene of his before the turning point involves some sort of plot point. His time alone in his apartment is an excuse to give him a love interest in Angela (Taylor Schilling), a fellow resident. For her part, the character exists to let us know that Stuart is a recovering alcoholic, who has stayed sober because of his job, and to look concerned as the later situation becomes potentially dire.

Meanwhile, Stuart, along with the library's manager Anderson (Jeffrey Wright) and a security guard named Ernesto (Jacob Vargas), has been named a lawsuit for kicking out a patron because of complaints about the man's odor. That's the protocol for the building, he argues, and nothing else. Stuart is perfectly accommodating to everyone and anyone who enters the library, regardless of their living situation.

During the day, the library becomes an unofficial shelter for homeless. On one particular night, when the temperatures are especially cold and the actual shelters have filled up, Jackson (Michael Kenneth Williams), one of those homeless patrons, comes up with a plan to barricade himself and others without a shelter in a room in the library. With his job already on the line, Stuart decides to join them and becomes their mouthpiece to the cops and the press.

There is an assortment of characters given a distinct back story and a loud voice in this story. One is Detective Ramstead (Alec Baldwin), whose drug-addicted son has gone missing and who takes over negotiations with the group (You get one guess as to where the son is), and another is Josh Davis (Christian Slater), a county prosecutor with mayoral hopes, who wants a hasty resolution to the protest by whatever means are necessary.

There are others, too, who are less important to the plot and far more important in giving Estevez's screenplay a couple more soapboxes. Jena Malone plays another librarian, who talks activism but is uncertain about practicing it, and Gabrielle Union plays a local news reporter who slowly learns her journalistic priorities.

As one may have noticed, none of these characters is one of the homeless protestors. Jackson is given the most to say, although his character voluntarily gives up his own voice in favor of Stuart's. In a movie filled with so many characters of different minds, it's decidedly odd that The Public places the characters who would seem to matter the most in the background. Such a move isn't enough to make us question the movie's intentions, but it's more than enough to make us doubt the methods.

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