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At the
Movies
Battlegrounds
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
Those who work hard all week and are
looking for a movie escape won’t get much help from recent openings. Ralph
Fiennes, who lent his distinguished presence to a pre-Christmas cinematic
marshmallow named “Maid in Manhattan,” gives a hauntingly memorable
performance as a schizophrenic in David Cronenberg’s Spider, a
just-opened, far superior film, but many would prefer not to be tormented on
their night out.
The movie, based on the 1990 novel by Patrick McGrath (who also
wrote the screenplay) centers on Dennis Cleg, recently discharged after a long
period in a British mental institution. Arriving on a train from London, a long
stream of passengers walk past the camera before he finally emerges, looking
terrified and feverish. For the next 97 minutes, we live with his phantoms.
Dennis has been assigned to a halfway house close to where he
lived as a boy, in a neighborhood dominated by a giant gas tank. His new home
is under the steely control of Mrs. Wilkinson (Lynn Redgrave). When she turns
on the faucet for his bath, rusty brown water begins to fill the tub. The next
shot shows him curled up in the tub, confused and defensive.
Dennis wears four shirts at once, collects string in the street,
which he weaves into odd little webs, and records indecipherable impressions in
an old notebook he keeps under a rug. Since there is little to do at the drab
group home except become frustrated by jigsaw puzzles, he spends more and more
of his time reliving the scenes of his childhood, observing his choleric
plumber father (Gabriel Byrne), his mother (Miranda Richardson) , who called
him “Spider,” and his younger self (Bradley Hall). There is no
voice-over; Fiennes manages to create a character from the inside, muttering
only a few unintelligible sentences, furtively rolling one cigarette after
another. The actor manages to involve us in his nightmare world without ever
looking anyone in the eye.
Cronenberg has elicited impressive performances from the whole
cast and is to be praised for not relying on special effects. Though Howard
Shore’s tortured score is sometimes intrusive, the audience is not
subjected to gratuitous shocks. McGrath’s novel is presented as
Spider’s journal; in the movie we gradually become aware that the memories
the protagonist is offering may be hallucinations. Sent to the pub to fetch his
father, the young Spider can’t help but become aware of the local
prostitutes sitting at a separate table, their laughter made more sinister
because of amplification. The boy becomes convinced that one of them, the
platinum-haired Yvonne (also played by Miranda Richardson), is having an affair
with his father.
One would need to see the movie a second time to decide whether
some events happened inside or outside the protagonist’s consciousness.
“Spider” is far more poetic than the drug-store Freudianism usually
served up by Hollywood, and the image of the young boy quietly constructing
cat’s cradles in his mother’s kitchen sticks in the mind, even though
many will prefer to seek out softer vehicles of entertainment.
City of God offers no relief,
presenting a riveting review of several decades in a Rio de Janeiro housing
project as it deteriorates into a deadly battleground for younger and younger
street gangs. Director Fernando Meirelles, working from a successful novel by
Paulo Lins, who grew up in the project, keeps the action going at such speed
that it’s hard to retain more than the general outlines of the story. One
moment Cesar Charlone’s hand-held photography shows us standard urban
poverty with young boys playing soccer on the street, but soon the deadly
combination of easily available guns and harder drugs have created the perfect
elements for all-out gang war.
Rocket (Alexandre Rodrigues), the film’s narrator, weaves
together stories about his boyhood friends, who begin as small-time thieves.
Rocket explains that it was merely his ineptitude, along with a passion for
photography, that kept him from following a life of crime. A second section
follows Li’l Ze (Leandro Firmino da Hora), ready to murder in his effort
to control the local drug trade, and his good-natured lieutenant, Bene
(Philippe Haagensen). The most spectacular and de-pressing sequence is the
farewell party Bene arranges to mark his retirement from crime. Amid wild music
and strobe lights, it deteriorates into violence.
The final section of the movie shows Li’l Ze being challenged
by an even younger gang, the Runts, some no more than 9 or 10. This occasions
the movie’s most powerful scene in which Li’l Ze, after capturing one
kid, asks him to choose: Does he want to be shot in the hand or the foot? The
child reverts to tears, and we are suddenly aware of how superficial the
narrator’s casual, half-humorous tone has been. Rocket’s escape from
a life in the project is made possible by his sensational photograph of
Li’l Ze and his crew, published without Ze’s permission in a local
paper. It is a little hard to believe that he would escape retribution from the
gang for this, but apparently his killer friends are happy to see themselves on
the front page.
“City of God” employed over 2,000 nonprofessional
actors, but by itself this only creates a superficial authenticity. Although
Meirelles wasn’t trying to make an exploitation film, he violates the
sense of outrage his subject calls for by never slowing down, never really
allowing us to see its young criminals as human beings. A certain cynicism may
well be justified -- Rocket’s photographs showing police collusion with
drug criminals go unpublished -- but the movie would have produced a more
lasting impact if its director had made a real effort to uncover a middle level
between shock and sentimentality.
Joseph Cunneen, NCR’s regular movie reviewer, may
be reached via e-mail: Scunn24219@aol.com
National Catholic Reporter, March 21,
2003
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