Virginia Madsen was in her early teens when mother Elaine sat down the Midwest youngster and her siblings for a chat.
“She said she wanted to leave the corporate world and become a writer full time. She wanted to follow her dream,” recalled Madsen, sitting in the presidential suite of a swank LoDo hotel, recently.
Despite her mother’s caveats, the 13-year-old was game.
Indeed. Madsen was in town, along with filmmakers Michael and Mark Polish, to promote “The Astronaut Farmer.” And in a bit of scheduling kismet, she stars with Jim Carrey in the brooding thriller “The Number 23” also opening today.
The twin brothers’ movie is very much about a parent pursuing dreams and bringing the kids long for the exhilarating, if bumpy, ride.
And, their tale of Texas rancher Charles Farmer, played with gruff appeal and gentle nuance by Billy Bob Thornton, is the smartest kind of family fare. It speaks to parents and children, coddling neither.
On the movie’s poster, star Thornton sits astride a horse, wearing a silvery space suit and helmet. It’s an odd image – one combining the western frontier with the “final frontier,” with Don Quixote thrown in for evocative measure. Odd, that is, until you remember the Polish brothers, makers of “Twin Falls Idaho,” “Jackpot,” and “Northfork,” are good at treating the askew with matter-fact grace.
Of course, Thornton’s knight errant is tilting at something even grander than windmills. A family tragedy pulls him him away from NASA’s astronaut training program and puts him on the family ranch – roping dogies and shoveling his father’s debts. That turn of events, however, does not wrench away his dreams of space. If anything, his father’s death fuels Charlie’s desire to succeed, to rise above his father’s mortal disappointment.
Thankfully, the Polish brothers didn’t write a role that casts Madsen as yet another version of the wifely cheerleader. Audie is equal partner in guiding a family set on possibility.
Even after her vintage role as Maya in Alexander Payne’s “Sideways” (2005), Madsen still gets too many offers to play the understanding wife, “the good listener who gently loves her man,” she called it.
This weekend’s double-bill should remind the powers that be what it was in Madsen’s critically lauded, Oscar nominated performance that blew us sideways. She brings a grounded intelligence to her roles. Her best characters know themselves well enough to challenge when required and provide aid to anguish when needed.
In “The Number 23,” the loved one in trouble is Carrey’s character Walter Sparrow. But Charlie Farmer also struggles to piece together a psychological puzzle. He just goes at it like a pragmatic Texan might. Instead of plunging into noir misery, he heads into the barn and begins building something.
There’s a lot of their Dad, Del, in Charles Farmer, the Polish brothers admitted.
And what became of Madsen’s mom Elaine’s dream? Well, she’s a screenwriter, a published poet and the winner of an Emmy.
Film critic Lisa Kennedy can be reached at 303-954-1567 or lkennedy@denverpost.com; try the Screen Team blog at denverpostbloghouse.com.