Six Degrees of Separation (1993)

The problem with films adapted from plays is that they often don’t take advantage of the visual story telling elements that the moving picture can provide. This is exactly the case with Six Degrees. The entire movie feels like watching a theatrical production that happens to have been filmed, instead of a film that happens to be an adaptation of a play. That’s not to say that some elements of this film don’t work, because certain cast members do a great job carrying this movie with dialogue.



The three leads, Donald Sutherland, Will Smith, and Stockard Channing, each turn in a solid performance, most notably the young Fresh Prince. When this movie was made all Will Smith had done were some small supporting roles and three seasons of The Fresh Prince of Bellaire. So seeing him in a role that involves having gay sex would have been quite a shock to the average Fresh Prince fan. In this early role he does give a glimpse at the charm and charisma that he would later use to great effect in movies like: The Pursuit of Happiness, Hitch, and Bad Boys.

Donald Sutherland, the man we followed from Aurora Borealis, plays a distinguished art dealer. He does a good job at pulling of the snooty New York aristocrat. I didn’t enjoy him in this as much as in the last film, but he was still solid and shows some very subtle emotion in a few key scenes.

Stockard Channing is an actress I am not very familiar with, except for her role as Rizzo in Grease, but her role here as wife of Donald Sutherland’s character is really very good. By letting Smith’s character into her life she discovers so much about herself that she never knew existed and transforms into a new person at the end. The transformation takes place during an emotional monologue and probably the film’s best minutes.

The lack of visual storytelling was really hard for me to get past and even the good acting was not enough to help me enjoy this one. Just one to many long stretches of dialogue without much interesting happening on screen.

That’s it for Donald Sutherland for now. Next we follow this films director Fred Schepisi to his 1997 comedy Fierce Creatures that looks like it stars all the British actors in the world. I haven’t been a big British comedy fan in the past so we will see how this one goes.