"Knight Thoughts" -- exclusive web content
James Ponsoldt's feature debut finds Nick Nolte working heartfelt -- though familiar -- material.  Seen above with co-star Trevor
Morgan.
One is the Loneliest Number:
Off the Black
12-15-06 "Knight Thoughts" web exclusive
By Richard Knight, Jr.
Nick Nolte’s voice is moving lower and lower with each subsequent picture.  I don’t know if that’s all related to the actor’s reported
hard living, off screen high jinx or just an effect of aging but to hear the difference in Nolte’s voice the 15 years between 1991’s
The
Prince of Tides
and Off the Black, his latest movie, is akin to hearing the Joni Mitchell of “Court and Spark” and the Joni Mitchell of
“Turbulent Indigo.”  Nolte has reached the depths vocally – he’s down in the Harvey Fierstein range.  But the corrosive qualities have
only added to his authority onscreen.  The actor’s troubled life has melded onscreen with his characters and now he has the voice to
match.  Almost unnoticed, as the voice has grown raspier, the acting has become simpler and even more contained (if that’s
possible).  With a picture like
Off the Black, the combination is mesmerizing.

Writer-director James Ponsoldt’s simple story – a grizzled, alcoholic, friendless baseball referee who reaches out to a mixed up
teenager – the son he has lost – is a familiar one.  We are in that terrible straight male territory where the cumulative effects of
resisting any and all emotional attempts to get in have eaten away at the psyche of the leading character.  This was the same
dilemma Nolte’s character suffered from in the searing
Affliction.  Painful and emotionally wrenching as it is to watch, it’s something
that he does very well on screen – perhaps better than anyone – and Ponsoldt is fortunate to have the actor in the lead of his first
feature.

Ponsoldt’s also greatly aided by the performance of Trevor Morgan as Dave, the lonely teenager who is estranged from his distant
father (Timothy Hutton).  Hutton plays a man lost in a fog who is still grieving for the wife that ran out on he and his kids years
before.  But Dave’s intense desire for a father figure who is present emotionally and physically leads him to Nolte -- and perhaps
salvation.

The movie doesn't veer much beyond the unlikely friendship of the two leads or the story's hook -- Nolte’s character, Ray Cook,
wanting to take Dave with him to his high school reunion and pass him off as his son.  Before, during and after that event, small but
telling scenes reveal how desperately lonely all the characters are.  The human need for connection is always just under the surface
in
Off the Black.  It’s a touching, unsentimental story shot and told with a minimum of fuss – the rare character indie that doesn’t try
to reach too far.  There is also nice support from Sally Kirkland as Nolte’s old flame and Sonia Feigelson as Morgan’s little sister.