marycadney Reviews

Africa and Britain: A Forgotten History: Freedom (2018 TV Movie)

A Modern Phenomenon

[9/10 · 21 August 2019]

Viewers who consider "black immigration" into Britain to be modern phenomenon are in for a surprise. One of the brigades of Roman soldiers who guarded an early Roman fort in southern England about 225 A.D. was from Morocco. A group of black families who currently live near the ruins of the fort attended a ceremony in which a plaque was presented to the town's mayor, memorializing its early black inhabitants. Similar plaques were presented by historian David Olusoga (University of Manchester professor) in the various places where there was and continues to be a black presence in Britain. Olusoga explores the removal to London of American slaves who helped the British in the American Revolutionary War. He also visits Sierra Leone where some of those re-located themselves from London's urbanity, and describes how Britain policy changed from viewing slaves as a commodity to viewing slavery as a moral evil, long before America did. Olusoga also reviews how three Botswana chieftains visited Queen Victoria, and put a stop to a trans-African British railroad. In general, this BBC production demonstrates that it is not only possible to be British and black at the same time, but there's long tradition of doing so. It was prepared in response to the modern phenomenon of anti-immigrant sentiment in Britain, which began after the First World War and was encouraged by observing the racial segregation of and by Americans stationed there before and during the Second World War. "Forgotten History" is a powerful excursion into stories of a neglected past.

The Other Side of the Wind (2018)

The Cat, the Rooster and the Devil Woman.

[27 November 2018]

This movie moves like an old cat in front of a mirror. The mirror is dreaming him. but he can see only himself, as the image in the mirror. That is to say, stories tell us, we don't tell them. We pretend to tell them, in order to give substance to our lives. Like the director, the actors, the critics, the production assistants, we -- the viewers -- are the rooster who believes he has made the sun rise, with his crowing.

This is the simple message Orson Welles leaves us, in his final movie.

It is a movie about a movie, and likewise there is a message within the message. The secret message is embodied by Ms. Oja Kodar painted as a "redskin." In these parts -- Oklahoma, formerly Indian Territory), the devil is still a native woman, sitting in a cave somewhere, silently plotting to steal all your stuff and humiliate you. Even in enlightened California, the Eagles painted such a figure with the song "Witchy Woman" (she'll rock you in the nighttime until your skin turns red). It's built into the American dream (circle the wagons! they've gone off the reservation!) as a nightmare, as it was for Orson Welles. and his alter-ego, film director Jake Hannaford. In the second movie -- the "film within a film -- Hannaford is stripped of his masculine power and divinity by Ms. Kodar's portrayal -- she is credited only as "The Actress" in the (first) movie, but in the movie Hannaford makes she is "Pochahontas."

This (second, "Pocahontas") movie is shown at a drive-in theatre, but at its conclusion "the actress" is the only person (other than you and me) left in the audience, in a car like the one in which she ended Hannaford's divinity. She, as the sole survivor in the theatre, is the final scene in the (first) movie. You can build a life without a god if you want, but you cannot build one without a devil.

Tri muzi ve snehu (1936)

funny in a gentle sort of way

[7/10 · 13 February 2017]

Three men of different ages meet and socialize at a ski resort. Each is a misfit of some kind -- a physician with no money, a very wealthy man who has no privacy because his name is always recognized and strangers ask for money, a man who's lost the love of his life and sees no future. The snow, beautiful and eternal, provide a landscape of loss in which these three wander until each rediscovers his best self in the others.

This 1936 movie was made in Czechoslovakia. By this time the author of the book upon which it is based, Eric Kaestner, had become suspect in his native Germany. Kaestner later became famous in the U.S. because of the movie "The Parent Trap" which was based on his story, "Die Doppelte Lottchen," and because his "Emil und die Detective" was acknowledged as generating a sub-genre of child detective stories here, in both print and film. Kaestner was interrogated several times by Nazi authorities, 1936-1945, and his books were publicly denounced as being "antagonistic to the German spirit." He was never imprisoned, only marginalized as a creative artist. He was likewise spurned by politicians during the Adenauer regime, from 1949 into the 1960s. Adenauer may have still been miffed by Kaestner's well-known dismissal of the integrity of the Weimar Republic, in which he (Adenauer) served: "A democratically-elected government funded by capitalist cash boxes, and defended by an army composed of displaced aristocrats commanding the unemployable and outcast."

The three men in the story, and film, embody the unemployable and outcast. Despite their sense of persecution they do not submit to isolation with good grace -- each demonstrates a capacity for creativity. Their relationship is based on good humor and keen observation of their surroundings. The characters speak in Czech, but German subtitles were added in some markets.

Holy Man: The USA vs Douglas White (2011)

makes you stronger

[22 August 2012]

This is movie about two broad subjects: the ongoing, systematic injustice shown in formal settings toward indigenous people, and the temptation to engage in victimization. The treatment of Mr. White is an example of the injustice. The testimony of those family members who originally (and falsely) testified against him, but now recant that testimony, illustrates the second: de Debbil (the government) made me do it, I'm not responsible, I was only a child, and afraid. Connecting these two horrible subjects, in real life, is the havoc that generations of injustice and self-hatred, have wreaked on the families of native people. Although not for the faint of heart, some of the film is uplifting -- particularly what Mr. Arvol Looking Horse has to say. For viewers and readers unfamiliar with the history of indigenous people it may come as a happy surprise that our genuine leaders do not encourage resentment, but instead remind us to be aware of real history, to understand that what hasn't killed us will make us stronger. They prompt us to realize that you don't have to deny who you are in order to succeed in the new civilized world, and that in this life the main obligations are to protect the weak, to respect the earth and her people, and to find something or someone to enjoy each day. This is at the heart of the traditional spiritual teaching of such men as Mr. White and Mr. Looking Horse. Christianity may be the foundation of civilization, but the traditional spirituality does not prevent us from succeeding in the new civilized world, and keeps us from its downside. Mr. White died in prison, last year, but we don't have to. To Mr. White's grandsons, who now recant their childhood testimony, I have sympathy and hope this tragedy will strengthen them. We are all children, we are all afraid, but -- I shake my little pebble-filled turtle shell, young men -- it is better to "act out" or raise hell than to give in to bullies. Teach your children.

Death in Granada (1996)

two questions

[14 August 2010]

This movie is about more than the murder of Federico Garcia Lorca. It shows the contrast between the artistic authority of anyone like Lorca and the power of the so-called authoritarian governments, such as the one formed by the Fascist party in Spain, 1936-1976. If you are creative in music, dance, theatre or art then you are the natural enemy of the power-hungry, who create nothing, and are compelled to disguise their inadequacies with culture they steal from you and those like you. They covet your authority, and what you make, in order to present themselves to the world as "authoritarian" and "cultured." But they are only impotent thugs. Too many Americans are sympathetic to such motivations and procedures, and find this movie confusing. These are the same uninquisitive folk who never notice that Spain was not involved in World War II -- Hitler occupied every country in northern Africa, Scandinavia and Europe, except for Spain. Why not? The Allies, relentlessly speaking out against the horrors of fascism, never said a mumbling word about Spain. Why not? I especially liked the movie because of Andy Garcia's portrayal of Lorca. His Lorca is intelligent, vigorous, creative, comfortable, confident and responsible.

Breath Made Visible: Anna Halprin (2009)

breathe to live, not live to breathe

[9/10 · 22 May 2010]

The dancing of Anna Halprin, now in her eighties, is the subject of this film. She still dances. Formerly (before the onset of infirmities and several bouts with cancer) she, as a modern dancer, "lived to dance." Now, she tells us, she dances to live. That is the theme of this remarkable movie. What is dance, what is poetry, what is music, what is art, what is theatre? They are, Halprin asserts, inseparable from the breath we issue and draw in. We, especially if we are creative persons, need realize the simple truth of "we breathe to live, we don't live to breathe." To believe, as too many creative persons do, that (instead) we live to create poems, artwork, music and so forth, is to diminish ourselves without real humility and to glorify ourselves without real confidence.

I especially enjoyed Halprin's discussion of "reverence for the aged body." She does not mean reverence as making symbolic gestures of submission. She means reverence such as knowing that the land we live on is not just real estate or that the sea is more than a highway. This knowledge, and reverence, is often neglected or ignored. The attraction of the mature female form, illustrated by Anna Halprin's graceful authority in this film, need no longer be an unspeakable subject, and is essential to what can make us human.

Hair, Let the Sun Shine In (2007 TV Movie)

museum piece

[1 March 2010]

This film never comes together. It contains some very interesting parts but they remain fragmented because the producers treat the performances -- with one exception -- in the original "Hair" stagings only as fodder for publicity, and certainly not as the beginning of careers for individual artists. The exception is Diane Keaton. The narrator reminds us that she left the role of Sheila, and became famous and successful as an actress. Although some of the interviewees in this brief film also became successful after their "Hair" performances, neither that success nor their artistic development is given any notice. A glaring omission concerns Jennifer Warnes. There are several scenes from the original "Hair" in which Jennifer's presence is central, but she is never identified and no mention is made of her subsequent commercial success as a singer and songwriter ..... in the 1970s, 1980s, 1990s and during this last decade, let alone any mention of her development as an artist. The new participants in a "Hair" revival were shown only briefly, and their performances seemed to be imitations of the original. The film's narration indicates that "Hair" changed theatre in America, but by its construction this film treats it only as a museum piece.

Blindness (2008)

not credited

[5 April 2009]

This movie is based on a novel by Jose Saramago, who won a Nobel Prize for Literature over a dozen years ago. However, Senor Saramago's scenario (in which a dozen blind dimbulbs are lost in the darkness of their own ignorance) is not new to literature -- Maurice Maeterlinck's play, "The Blind" (also called "The Sightless"), is a well-known predecessor in this regard. Maeterlinck won a Nobel Prize for Literature in 1911, primarily for a series of horrifying puppet plays ..... but is primarily known to American movie-goers for his light-hearted "Blue Bird of Happiness," a children's story made into a movie with Shirley Temple in 1940, in an attempt to compete with "The Wizard of Oz." But Senor Saramago not only borrowed from Maeterlinck, he also incorporates essential elements of Bertolt Brecht's play "Mother Courage and Her Children" (1940). In the movie, "The Blind," no credit is given to Maeterlinck or Brecht.

Appaloosa (2008)

a package of horse poop

[3/10 · 14 February 2009]

Robert Knott's screenplay does not do justice to Robert Parker's book, and this film is like a Department of Tourism film -- 70 mm, golden light on antique objects, with local celebrities reciting platitudes. After some interesting characterizations in the early part of the film by Ed Harris and Viggo Mortenson, the film begins to disintegrate into the distinctly unrelated sections, and all characterizations become flatter than a flitter. Lance Hendrickson, Timothy Spall, Jeremy Irons and others do good imitations of uninspired actors. Harris directed this film. He did a remarkably good job with "Riders of the Purple Sage" a few years ago, but Robert Parker is not Zane Grey. Like Knott, Harris's thespian skills were developed in Oklahoma, but they flatter themselves if they think this historical connections applies to westerns set in New Mexico Territory, let alone to Parker's revisionist craftsmanship. What really put the bow on this package of horse poop was the appearance of Oklahoma actor Rex Linn, whose chief talent is as a pitchman for car dealers and local banks.

The History Boys (2006)

self-indulgence

[18 February 2008]

The patina of Alan Bennett's clever dialog soon wore off this polished piece of didactic self-indulgence, revealing only the arrogance and confusion of entitled British twits ..... and Bennett himself. Bennett's last hurrah as a creative person was "The Madness of King George," fourteen years ago when he was sixty years old. Since then, he has supplied the voices for cartoon characters and appeared in memorial videos. I don't know when he wrote the play which became this movie, "The History Boys," but it is a disappointing assembly of out-of-context monologues, sarcastic anecdotes, sophomoric references to modern history and homosexual humor.

The Round and Round (2002)

bronzed baby shoe

[1/10 · 17 January 2008]

This is the worst movie ever made. Oklahoma actors Gailard Sartain, Rex Linn and Mr. Brimley, who have shown themselves capable of fine performances, just took the money and ran, in this deal. The writer/producer must've wanted to make a movie before he died, had a lot of money and figured that's all it would take. Wrong. The actors are not without fault, however. Sartain, for example, has made only one other movie in the last seven years ("Elizabethtown"). Maybe he can't get work anymore. Brimley's day is past as a character actor, and Rex Linn -- despite a few good performances being coaxed from him by excellent directors -- is essentially an ad agency spokesman. The story about cockfighting in Oklahoma is contrived, and no longer (six years later) of real local interest. Even though it's supposed to be a comedy, this movie is heavy handed, like a bronzed baby shoe hanging from the rear view mirror. Val Lewton could make fine movies with a budget a fraction of this one's, and Ed Wood's poor-boy movies could be interesting in a desperate sort of way. This one, "The Round and Round," has no redeeming qualities I can find, but it's the pretentiousness of the production that makes it the worst movie ever made.

Silkwood (1983)

what you have done for others

[13 February 2007]

I saw "Silkwood" again recently, and it seemed to make sense of the past 25 years of my life -- I finally understood why I began doing what I do.

When I was sixteen years old I broke both legs, and was out of school for two months. But twice a week my father, who worked nights as a security guard at the Kerr-McGee office building, took me downtown to the federal courthouse in Oklahoma City, to watch the proceedings of the Silkwood v. Kerr-McGee trial during morning sessions. He insisted I go, he said, "So you'll learn something." I learned a lot about people then, and about the law, and the experience certainly took my mind off my own physical discomfort.

Mr. Paul, an excellent corporate lawyer, represented Kerr-McGee, which leased the operation of the plutonium plant in Crescent, Oklahoma, about thirty miles north of here. Mr. Spence represented the children of Karen Silkwood. Mr. Paul and his six associates seemed to change their suits every day. Perhaps they didn't want to see like the "great gray wall" -- which was the stereotype of corporate lawyers. But the net effect of seven men striving to seem individual was that of a great plumed serpent preparing to devour any small creature in its path. Mr. Spence, on the other hand, wore the same buckskin fringed coat each day. Each day he would place his Stetson on his table. He and the hat sat in splendid silence while the Kerr-McGee attorneys conferred and whispered.

Both men counted on the sentiments of a working-class jury. Mr. Paul figured people would recognize the contribution made to the community by Kerr-McGee, a locally owned business with world-wide influence, which provided many jobs to people here. Mr. Spence counted on them harboring deep suspicions, after having been treated like throw-away people for so many years by other employers of the same size as Kerr-McGee. My father was such a person. He worked for Kerr-McGee, but he distrusted corporate politics, and rightly figured they'd let him go right before he qualified for a pension. Later, that's exactly what happened.

Mr. Spence has sued the corporation for 2 million dollars. But the jury awarded him, and Karen Silkwood's children, five times that much. Later, thanks to an excellent foundation laid by Mr. Paul, Kerr-McGee was able to get the conviction overturned, then eventually settled for a payment of 1 million dollars to the grown children. Of course, Mr. Spence took about half of that, and after taxes, I suppose each of the three children had about enough to get a college education, or to buy a new truck and have a down payment on a house.

That's what happened to me. My father died not longer after being let go by Kerr-McGee. There was enough insurance money to pay for my college education. Then my mother died. For many years the social atmosphere in the Kerr-McGee offices, where one of my friends worked as a draftsman, prevented anyone from ever saying anything good about Karen Silkwood. I will not repeat was generally said about her, or her social life, her motivations or her politics.

I never met her, but I did see and hear the people who were for Karen Silkwood, and those who were against her, at the trial. It was clear to me that whatever else she may have been, she was a courageous person. By the time the movie was released, I was a junior in college, and suddenly changed my major to drama. After graduation, I found work with a film production company which filmed herds of cattle -- "Video Auction" was its name. Then I went to California, where I taught drama, or worked as a stage manager, for twenty years.

Watching "Silkwood" last week, for the first time in 24 years, reminded me of what the trial, and later the movie, showed me -- the part of you that lasts is what you have done for others. The lawyers will take everything else.

The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada (2005)

high atop Mount Ivy League

[5/10 · 1 April 2006]

As in Faulkner's book "As I Lay Dying" a dead body is transported over difficult terrain. There the comparison stops, for there is no revenge in Faulkner's book. There's plenty of it in Tommie Lee Jones movie, "The Three Burials of Melquiades Estrada." Viewers expecting the charm, dry humor and stoic philosophy that have become trademarks of Jones' performances will be disappointed.

The desolate beauty of the Rio Grande borderland shown by Jones' camera serves as an echo of the bravery once necessary for survival in that country, and of the quiet joyousness which lifted grim survival to a higher level. Not content to imply, however, Jones shows us(in brutal detail) the population's lack of humanity, and only that. His movie becomes a political polemic instead of a work of art.

A glimmer of humanity is provided by Canadian Barry Pepper ("Enemy of the State," "Saving Private Ryan," "*61," "The Snow Walker"). By his unsettling performance he again shows what can happen to an all-American when he loses his sense of humor. Otherwise, the characters seem to cardboard cutouts ....... or beautifully painted corpses.

Although raised in rough Southwestern terrain, Jones attended a private prep school and then Yale University. He never returned to the sagebrush except in the movies. Now, from his lofty position high atop Mount Ivy League Jones looks down on the little people of the borderland, and doesn't like what he sees. Faulkner showed us seriously flawed Southern hillbillies in "As I Lay Dying" but it was clear that he loved them. Showing love: As a director, Jones ain't up to the job.

Mormor, Hitler och jag (2001)

a quick sketch of desolation

[5 September 2005]

WARNING: THIS IS A "SPOILER" REVIEW

This Swedish artist who is the subject of this 17-minute cinematic memoir has an objective disposition, but he sometimes needs to get in touch with his memories, dreams and reflections. In order to do this, he first recreates some custom from childhood. This film follows him after such a recreation, as his thoughts begin to unfold and spiral outward, for a while. This film is thus a didactic exposition, an instructive display of psychological technique.

After cooking a dish that his deceased grandmother often prepared for him during his childhood, the artist begins to speak of her and the objects she kept in her house, her movements around town (Stockholm), and her personal goodness. The stunning surprise comes when he displays her copies of the elegant coffee-table magazine, Art in Germany, which was published from 1938 until 1945. It was edited by Albert Speer, the architect, and devoted to showing the best art and architecture in Nazi Germany. Grandmother was a Nazi.

Roman Polanski once observed that the old couple who took him in during the War -- not knowing he was Jewish, and despising all Jews even though they had never knowingly met one -- were good to him, and pleasant people. This he juxtaposed against his father, an intelligent man with an egalitarian outlook, who was unpleasant and unbearable in close quarters. This artist offers the same surreal juxtaposition, but instead of a epic drama he uses a quickly sketched Magic Marker drawing to show the spiritual desolation left by the Hitler years.

Man on Fire (2004)

In the midst of life we are in death

[8 March 2005]

This is a movie about faith, misplaced then rediscovered. The people you trust can betray you, the cause to which you are loyal can prove to be an illusion, but faith will get you through betrayal and illusion. Faith is more than trust and loyalty.

At one point in this movie, the hero Creasy exchanges gunfire with some criminals (kidnappers) in a church, interrupting a man's prayer. Creasy excuses the interruption, saying to the man that the guys had done evil things. The man asks him, "Isn't that between them and God?" Creasy responds, "Yes, it is, but my job is to arrange the meeting." This is not a flippant, smug or condescending response. It is genuine and heartfelt. The man seems perplexed by it, however, and even Creasy seems surprised by his own answer ..... as it suddenly dawns on him that he has no choice but to do what he is doing, that the purpose of his mission is greater than any personal meaning or political ideal, that whether he lives or dies during this mission is not a matter for consideration. He is at peace, as he wars against guys who do evil things.

Mary Cadney Oklahoma City

Gaudi Afternoon (2001)

the prodigal child

[20 August 2004]

Judy Davis plays a woman who left home at age 18 and never returned. Without parental help she became a linguistic scholar, and now lives in Barcelona where she translates Spanish books into English for her employer, an American publisher. To be cultured and independent had been her youthful dream, and she now lives near the beautiful Gaudi cathedral. But she still has resentful thoughts of her mother's lack of culture.

This translator lives in a small apartment. She has one friend in Barcelona, the Spanish woman who is her landlady. The Americans the translator encounters in Barcelona are nothing like her. They are charming, wealthy, amoral and self-indulgent. They each try to use her, each in a different way, to injure the others. One plays on her diligence, another on her loneliness, one on her suspiciousness, another on her pride. But she survives their manipulations, and even emerges with a new sense of herself. She finally decides that these people, who at first glance seem to be everything she in her youth had wanted to be, are not really cultured after all, and they are cruel. The translator decides, at age 36, to return to America in order to pay her uncultured-but-good-hearted mother a visit.

The Hairdresser's Husband (1990)

dying for love

[11 January 2003]

This movie made me feel righteous, and young again, as if I were in high school. It made me remember how much fun romantic love and theatre were when I first encountered them there. But then I remembered being warned by teachers about how love and theatre should be serious undertakings, because they were essentially dangerous. Even in my literature class, sexual morality was emphasized. Whenever a heroine was involved in passionate sex, two things seemed to happen. First, her lover left her. Second, she killed herself. Tolstoi's Anna Karenina, Flaubert's Madame Emma Bovary, Shakespeare's Juliet and Zola's Therese Racquin all killed themselves. But perhaps because of my stagecrew teacher, on the other hand, who joked a lot -- and was fond of Wagnerian music (don't ask me why) -- I was familiar with Brunhilde, who also killed herself. Her reason was religious, though. The other ladies couldn't bear living in social disgrace, but Brunhilde wanted Odin (her spiritual father) and the people who worshipped him to know that dying in love was as honorable as dying in battle. Patrice Leconte uses Brunhilde as a dramatic model in this movie, "The Hairdresser's Husband." Like the supernaturally powerful warrior Brunhilde, Leconte's hairdresser (Mathilde) wields a knife. "The point was sharp and true, a fearsome cutting blade," Wagner said. Mathilde kills herself differently than Wagner's Brunhilde did, but the meaning is the same. Mathilda throws herself into a surging river from a bridge, but surely this is meant to be symbolic because there is a bridge in France called "Brunhilde's bridge." Moralists will be completely confused by this movie, and selfish people will resent it. I loved it, and hope you do too.

Mary Cadney, Oklahoma City

La fille sur le pont (1999)

effective portrayals by Auteuil and Paradis

[10 January 2003]

The plot in this film, like most of director Leconte's films, is more of a situation than a storyline. The events and environment are shown in black and white; I suspect to minimalize their inherent sensationalism, and allow the viewer to focus on the characters, so surprisingly and effectively portrayed by Daniel Auteuil and Vanessa Paradis. Gradually intrigued by them, I finally cared for them, then understood them enough to let them go their own way.

Mary Cadney, Oklahoma City

Monsieur Hire (1989)

a tribute to baltic writers

[8 January 2003]

This cult film is director Leconte's tribute to both Norwegian writer Kurt Hamsun and Germany's Thomas Mann. Both told stories with minimalistic plots and nondescript settings against which amazing characterizations were revealed. Leconte's characterization of Hire is accomplished chiefly by camera angle and by passionate, brief statements made in a cold and byzantine context. Hire is a formal and precise man surrounded by sloppy busybodies. The object of Hire's devotion is a stupid girl -- any girl living on the second floor of an apartment building immediately opposite a another, five-story apartment building who leaves her bedroom window completely open night and day is either an exhibitionist, effectively inviting peeping-toms, or stupidly oblivious to her immediate surroundings. Leconte makes it clear to us that although the girl is uninhibited she does have some personal modesty, so we know she is not an exhibitionist. Her stupidity is proven by the ending of the film. We are left with Monsier Hire's devotion, which, bereft of its proper object, is, as phrased by Leconte, bloody useless.

Mary Cadney, Oklahoma City

Widow of St. Pierre (2000)

freedom is stronger than sex or death

[7 January 2003]

The story is about a group of people waiting for a guillotine to arrive, but when understood in historical context it is about life after the guillotine. That is to say, by a series of layered conflicts the director Patrice Leconte shows us how the modern French attitude toward freedom developed, beginning about 1849. Originally, it was a mere idea which the administrators of "the Reign of Terror" thought could be imposed by chopping off the heads of aristocrats, and which the post-Napoleonic monarchists thought could be elimnated from popular memory by chopping off the heads of oridinary people. But the reality of freedom, shown by Leconte to be as much a part of the romantic relationship of the Captain (the luminous Daniel Auteuil) and "Mrs. Captain" (Juliette Binoche) as their erotic attraction to each other, is something beyond the power of the guillotine to prevent or create. Juxtaposed against the moral ambiguity of the situations in the story are the film's primary colors. The colors are lovely. All but two scenes are softened by a dominating hue of either golden, inside light, or the red of Mrs. Captain's dresses, the doors of her husband's prisons, the under-vests of the officials or the glowing skin of the local ladies and children, or the blue of the frozen ocean and its fish, sometimes assisted by the soldier's uniforms. Therefore, the unambiguous forces in the story are shown in gray. There are two dark gray/light gray scenes; one with Mrs. Captain standing by a window, the other being a view from the ocean of the town as the ship approaches with its deadly cargo, the guillotine. Michel Duchaussoy's performance as the essential Bourbon colonial is stunning. Emir Kusturica, the notorious Yugoslavian rebel, distinguishes both himself and his role by the obedience which characterizes his portrayal of Neel. Condemned for the senseless slaughter of a man who gave him a job, Neel must himself be slaughtered before we can understand the origins of France's modern devotion to freedom. The role of Mrs. Captain -- "Captaine La" -- foreshadows that of "Mary Gray" in Albert White Eagle's play-turned-movie, "Chairs." The sets are perfect; one doesn't notice them until the film is over.

Mary Cadney, Oklahoma City

Zero Effect (1998)

so old it's new

[1 October 2002]

The delightfully off-center characters and the twisting storyline of "Zero Effect" are so enchanting that only two minutes before the movie ended did I realize why there was such an undertow of familiarity to it -- it's a re-make of the first Sherlock Holmes short story, "A Scandal in Bohemia." As Daryl Zero reflected aloud about the young woman he'd fallen for it dawned on me that these were the exact words Holmes used to describe Irene Adler. Bill Pullman's performance is, to me, the best of his career. His portrayal is the only modernized Holmes that is realistic; Nicole Williamson's in "The Seven Percent Solution" was tedious, Michael Caine's in "Without A Clue" was hilarious but without substance. Making Pullman's Daryl Zero seem almost normal is the surreal juxtapositon of Ben Stiller's zestful nebbish against Ryan O'Neal's cold-blooded reptile. Kim Dickens' provides a timeless version of Irene Adler -- sturdy, pleasant, forthright, and ordinary in the way that people with whom geniuses fall in love are ordinary. The writing is a rare example of how the spirit of a character can be re-embodied in modern times without reference to its original socio-cultural milieu (no small task). Kasdan's Zero is intense but he does not smoke a pipe or wear a deer-stalker's cap nor does he occasionally use cocaine; his Watson is indistinguishable from the moral cllimate of his time but without reference to Victorian values. The direction is appropriately simple and tight. Too bad it did poorly at the box office, but "Zero Effect" will no doubt quickly become a "cult classic."

Mary Cadney Oklahoma City