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At the
Movies Plus the movie event of the year ... Film Festival
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
You wouldnt have heard about
it at the endlessly self-congratulatory Academy Awards, but many of the
worlds best movies today are being made in Iran. And with the release of
The Color of Paradise add the name of Majid Majidi to those of Abbas
Kiarostami (Through the Olive Trees), Mohsen Makhmalbaf
(Gabbeh) and Jafar Panahi (The White Balloon) as
directors whose work is worth seeking out.
Although Majidis new film centers on the trials of Mohammed,
a blind 8-year-old boy (played by Mohsen Ramezani, a non-actor who is himself
blind), it is a surprisingly affirmative experience. This is due to the
directors ecstatic presentation of the beauty and power of nature; we are
constantly reminded that Mohammed has to rely on a deep sensitivity to the
touch and sound of everything around him while we are enjoying the flowers,
trees and endless sky the camera discloses.
The Color of Paradise is a journey through fields and
forests into mountainous backwoods country where it is as natural to pray at a
roadside shrine as to delight in the chorus of birds. The frequent use of
children in Iranian movies is partly due to official censorship -- scenes of
physical contact between men and women are not permitted -- but we are
compensated by a sequence in which the alert Mohammed, interpreting a
birds cry of alarm, searches the ground for a baby bird that has fallen
from a tree, and painfully climbs up, dangerous inch by inch, before restoring
it to its nest.
The movie opens at a school for the blind in Teheran, where the
boys learn their lessons with the help of well-chosen technical aids. But the
school is closing for the summer, and a wretched Mohammed is left alone
outside, waiting for his father (Hossein Mahjoub) to take him home. The father
would prefer it if his son could be kept at the school during vacation. We
learn later that the widower hopes to remarry, and a blind child would be a
poor addition to the necessary dowry.
At home Mohammed has a joyful reunion with his two sisters and his
deeply pious grandmother (Salime Feizi), carefully examining the latters
face with his fingers. She shows him that the tree he planted is now as tall as
he, and he rejoices in the wind blowing through fields of alfalfa. Mohammed
even goes to the village school with his sisters and impresses everyone with
his ability to read (in Braille). His hard-working father, however, who is
presented with sympathy, takes his son to a blind carpenter; training as an
apprentice would give the boy independence. The grandmother is shocked by his
decision, and though the carpenter receives him in a kindly manner, Mohammed
feels abandoned. There are alternating shots of the grandmother saying her
beads and the boy getting a first lesson in carpentry.
Majidi doesnt really know how to end The Color of
Paradise; the melodramatic climax, though forcefully presented, seems a
violation of its gentle overall tone. By avoiding excessive sentimentality,
however, he has given us a film that is as religious as it is exquisite. You
will not easily forget Mohsen Ramezani, rolling back his eyeballs the better to
listen to his beloved woodpeckers.
Arin Brockovich, in contrast,
is a good example of what Hollywood does well. Built on the star power of Julia
Roberts in the title role, its a feel-good movie in which we root for a
determined young, working-class mother as she takes on a giant utility. Julia
makes the most of her strongest role to date, but Im old-fashioned enough
to worry about your teen-age daughters adopting Erin as a role model. Its
not that Im upset about the skimpy attire she wears to work; I just
dont believe that constant displays of abrasiveness will help their
careers or personal lives.
Not that Erin doesnt have a reason to be desperate. I was
especially sympathetic with her in the opening sequence in which, a single
mother of three with no real employment credentials, she is forced to improvise
non-answers during a humiliating job interview. Immediately afterwards, she is
sideswiped by a careless driver, who turns out to be a wealthy doctor. Her
lawsuit fails, in great part because of losing her temper and the impression
her clothes make in court.
Director Steven Soderbergh shows genuine sympathy for the
desperation in which so many single mothers have to live, and were all
rooting for Erin when she finally wangles a low-paying job with Ed Masry
(Albert Finney), the lawyer who had failed to win her case. Although presenting
itself as based on a true story, the movie soon turns into a rather
predictable fairy tale, with Julia gradually uncovering a deadly form of
chromium that has poisoned the water supply of a Southern California town.
Though the movie doesnt offer the anarchic sense of
liberation of Thelma and Louise, any victimized woman can identify
with it. However, it seems strange that the other working and professional
women are so unpleasant. Co-workers in the law office are mean and unhelpful,
and the woman lawyer whom Masry calls in to help is an unfeeling snob. But even
if it makes no plea for sisterhood, youll find it hard not to like
Erin Brockovich.
Joe Goulds Secret is
more offbeat, describing the complex relationship between New Yorker
writer Joseph Mitchell (Stanley Tucci) and his most celebrated subject, Joe
Gould (Ian Holm), a Harvard graduate and charismatic panhandler who claimed to
be composing a mammoth Oral History of Our Time. The screenplay by
Howard A. Rodman, drawing on the two profiles Mitchell published in The New
Yorker, shows how Gould becomes an overnight celebrity in Greenwich Village
after the first piece is published in 1942, but dies a paupers death at
Pilgrim State Hospital in 1957.
The movie is both poignant and humorous. Suggestive rather than
pretentious, it doesnt answer all the questions it raises regarding
Goulds unstable personality but shows the perfectionist Mitchell becoming
so obsessed with his subject that after a second profile in 1964, he never
published anything more, though he continued to come to his office for the next
32 years. British actor Sir Ian Holm is superb in a complex role; he allows us
to see that Gould is manipulative, bad-tempered, a liar, a drunk, an
exhibitionist, and nevertheless could have captured Mitchells sympathetic
attention. Even though the latter recognizes Goulds grandiosity in
claiming to map the consciousness of the city, and presses him to produce his
manuscript (presumably kept at a poultry farm on Long Island), he remains
fascinated by the possibility of discovering an unrecognized genius.
There are cameo roles for Steve Martin as a publisher who
challenges Gould to let him read his epic, and Susan Sarandon as Alice Neel, a
New York artist who has done an unconventional nude portrait of Gould. But the
movies greatest charm lies in its atmospheric capture of New York in the
40s, with hundreds of photographs of unknown, often down-and-out faces
from the past.
The movie event of the year,
however, is the release by Facets Multimedia of Krzysztof Kieslowskis
Dekalog. Some readers may be familiar with his trilogy,
Blue, White and Red. These 10 one-hour
films, originally made for Polish TV in 1988, were previously shown in the
United States only at film festivals. A collective masterpiece, they are
finally available now for sale or rent in a 5-video set.
Dekalog makes each of the Ten Commandments
surprisingly contemporary. All the films take place in a large Warsaw apartment
complex, and the episodes are linked in suggestive ways. I know from experience
that one can teach a class in ethics using Dekalog, since each
episode prompts heated discussion from students who would not have come if
invited to a series of Polish movies. The material is so intense, however, that
I recommend viewing them one at a time.
Kieslowski, who died in 1996, insisted that we should accept moral
responsibility for our choices, but his films do not have simple heroes or
villains: He knew how complicated these choices are. If you cant get
Dekalog at your video store, contact Facets directly: 1517 West
Fullerton Ave., Chicago IL 60614 (1-800-532-2387).
Joseph Cunneen is NCRs regular movie
reviewer.
National Catholic Reporter, April 28,
2000
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