Based upon the terse, existential Paul Auster novel, the film follows the plight of two hapless drifters -- James Nasche (Mandy Patinkin), who is escaping family and responsibilities with an inheritance and a racing red BMW, and Jack Pozzi (James Spader), an oily, down-on-his-luck gambler and world-class manipulator. Pozzi convinces Nasche to shoot the works and put up his remaining $10,000 in a high stakes poker game against two stuffed and basted rich suckers -- reclusive lottery winners Willie Stone (Joel Grey) and Bill Flower (Charles Durning), who live in a lavish, but isolated, country estate and who are using the remains of their lottery fortune to construct their own self-contained world on the grounds of their mansion. Instead of bilking the two millionaires, however, Pozzi and Nasche lose their windfall and find themselves indebted to Stone and Flowers, who compel them to work off their losses by constructing a stone monument on their estate, a chore that results in deception, flight, and, possibly murder.
The then-ethnographic documentary filmmaker Philip Haas made an impressive feature film debut with The Music of Chance, polishing this existential fugue with the penetrating gaze of a documentarian and an austere iciness worthy of Carl Dreyer. But a film that could easily be cast in a bleak, Kafkaesque fog is given a singularly American punch and snap by Haas and cinematographer Bernard Zitzermann. The energy is also fueled by the bracing performances of Grey, Spader, Durning and Patinkin. Where the film falters is in its sparse and cryptic script, which lacks any exploration of character or atmospheric undertone. Director Haas and the actors however, fill in the blanks, contributing a visual grace and quirky tone that overcomes the defective screenplay.
Not only did The Music of Chance offer a future promise of Haas but also the hope that American film circa 1993 may have been rescued from an arthritic death rattle. Sadly, Haas has appeared to vanish in the haze. After Angels and Insects, The Blood Oranges, Up at the Villa, and the tele-film version of The Lathe of Heaven, Haas has been in uncharted waters. Hopefully, the film sharks have not gotten to him, and we can await his return on shore.
