What is this about

What is this movie about? Usually when I watch one I have a pretty good idea but “Six Degrees of Separation” feels strangely disconnected from reality. Based on the popular play of the same name, I guess it offers a pretty engaging mystery but what good is that when every character feels a function of the plot rather than true.


Much of the first party of the movie takes place in the luxurious Fifth Ave apartment of art dealers Flan (Donald Sutherland) and Ouisa (Stockard Channing) Kittredge. These snooty people sell off other people’s artwork for large amounts in order to keep themselves among the highest class of society, and have the pretentiousness to prove it.


One night while a friend (Ian McKellan) is visiting from South Africa and a bit deal for a Cezanne is about to go down, all three are interrupted by a boy named Paul (Will Smith). He’s been stabbed in Central Park, and believing him a friend of one of their children, they come to his aid. Paul claims he goes to Harvard, is familiar with the work of the artist Kandinsky, and oh, also says he is the son of acting legend Sidney Poitier.


The Kittredges can’t get enough of the kid, even allowing him to cook them a marvelous dinner. His stories about dad (he’s directing a film version of “Cats”, something far funnier now that that film actually was made) and his analysis of “Catcher in the Rye” and the absence of imagination in society anymore wow the three adults, and his brilliant showing seems to be the tipping point for the very big art sale going down.


But there is something odd about Paul. We see him rehearsing in the opening moments, reciting line by line the life of his dad, plus his filmography. What’s more the Kittredges learn from friends that they, too, have had run-ins with a kid and that the kid is also telling stories about them, one of which is that Flan is his estranged white dad.


Now Paul hasn’t stolen anything from these people, yet he managed a perfect ruse to get into their posh Manhattan lofts. Why? Does he want to humiliate the rich? Is this all part of some bigger score he hasn’t gotten to yet? Is he manifesting his imagination, trying to make a better life for himself? He remains fairly vague on his plans.


It’s an interesting role for Will Smith, though. You can basically say it’s one of the early roles where he’s really going for something, using his graciousness and charisma but adding a heaping helping of refinement, too. Everything about him says he’s not trying to scare the rich white people, but taking on the character becomes a much more daring accomplishment than we first realize.


But if Paul is trying so hard to get in with these rich people, then why does he usually do the stupidest thing to get ejected from their lives almost immediately afterward? And if he is trying to take something from them, why does it seem he only leaves with only a couple dollars they give him?


It’s also downright baffling when one of the Kittredges still thinks of Paul almost as a friend, maybe a son, even. First, it’s so hard to even believe there is any truth in him. Second, he’s done some pretty heinous things at this point. And third, and most importantly, they still have no idea who Paul even really is.


The one scene that does feel truthful is one where they’re children berate them for their own gullibility. It’s a scene that’s well-deserved, these people are so arrogant, so dumbfounded by their run-in with the emblem of celebrity distinguishment, and so stuck up their own high class asses that they’re kids are basically enraged by their poseur parents to the point that even being around them is pathetic.


In the end this movie is too much and not enough. It’s too hard to figure out the characters; they’re mostly phonies, but why? The talk of imagination, society and racism, events meaning something, how we’re all more connected than we realize..and I haven’t even gotten to all the things Paul may or may not represent. This story is buried in ideas. What’s the point of it though?