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Cast

David Thewlis
as Martin Frost

Irène Jacob
as Claire Martin

Michael Imperioli
as Jim Fortunato

Sophie Auster
as Anna James

Paul Auster

Griffin Dunne

Critic Reviews for The Inner Life of Martin Frost

Audience Reviews for The Inner Life of Martin Frost

• Nov 20, 2010

  Martin Frost retreats to his friends' up-state cottage, and as a story comes upon him, he falls for a beautiful, mysterious woman. But when he finishes writing his story, she dies, and she miraculously comes back to life when he burns the only copy of the story. Together they must work out how to trick the hidden "muse gods" so that they can live together. This is the plot of <i>The Inner Life of Martin Frost</i>, and like most of Auster's plots, it sounds simple to the point of banal, magical to the point that it defies suspension of disbelief. But these criticisms underestimate the feeling of an Auster story. His work rises organically out of the characters, seemingly created by the characters instead of their author. And this is the point of the film. Do we create our lives, or are the events that shape us brought upon us? This theme is similar to his novel <i>The Travels in the Scriptorium</i>, which includes cameos by characters in his other books. Likewise, the film explores the relationship between an artist and his art. In <i>Smoke</i> Thomas responds to the story of Bakhtin smoking his book by saying, "No writer would do that." Apparently Martin Frost would. The question is would an artist sacrifice his art for his life? Auster says yes, but his eventual obsession with Claire and when he tries to turn her into art, we wonder if that "yes" is definitive. Not many people on Flixster, including critics, liked this film, but fans of Paul Auster's fiction and existential, allegorical stories will be like pigs in shit.
  Jim H Super Reviewer
• Apr 10, 2008

  Paul Auster is one of my favoritte writers and it's great that he is also doing movies. But this film shows that some stories that work very well on paper just don't work on the screen. Watching the final scene of this movie, I thought to myself, if this was on paper I'd buy it but on screen it just looks ridiculous. In a few scenes he just shows the typewriter, I think he wants to tell "Ok, I thought this would make a good movie but now that I'm shooting it I see that it won't. But I can't quit! If I could just write on the screen.." A writer (David Thwlis) goes to the his friends house in the country after finishing his last novel that took three years to write. He just wants to do nothing. But inspiration comes for a new story and he falls in love with his muse. It's a naive story and it's not that bad but when he writes for movies, I think he should stay away from the fantasy, because he is so good with words but he can't tell everything he thinks through the actors on the screen, so it's better if he writes more realistic stories for the movies, like he did in "Smoke".. EDIT: Ok, I didn't know this movie was based on one of his books. Not the whole book, but it's the movie of a character in "The Book of Illusions". He tells the movie in full details in about 30 pages and it's pretty much the movie I saw and I was right, it works better on paper. In the book only a few people gets to see the movie, I'm sure Paul Auster didn't want it to be the fact for this one too but it did. I am gonna give an extra half star for the beauty of the book but the movie is still bad, sorry Pauly.
  Serdar C Super Reviewer

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