At the
Movies A
big Irish movie and a little Italian one
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
Suddenly there are movies opening that might lure people away from
their chairs in front of the TV set. "Michael Collins" (Warner Brothers
and Geffen Pictures), writer-director Neil Jordan's epic of the last years of
Ireland's charismatic freedom fighter and statesman, is more exciting than
Monday night football.
Even pacifists disturbed by scenes of Collins' IRA comrades, in
their earlier incarnation, executing British intelligence officers and police
spies, will be moved by the brooding climax of the film, in which the
31-year-old commander-in-chief of the new Irish Free State is gunned down by an
unknown young assailant who believed the peace treaty Collins had negotiated
with England the year before was a sellout.
Despite the availability, even in paperback, of Tim Pat Coogan's
biography, Collins is still largely unknown to U.S. audiences. If the movie
becomes a success, it will be largely on the strength of Liam Neeson's bravura
performance as its hero.
Jordan begins with a bang, the British artillery blasting away at
Dublin's General Post Office in 1916. The captured 1916 leaders include not
only Collins but his best friend, Harry Boland (Aidan Quinn), and Eamon de
Valera (Alan Rickman), future president of the republic. The failure of the
Easter Rising taught Collins that head-on attacks on the British were only
suicidal gestures. Henceforth he would concentrate on hit-and-run attacks
against those giving intelligence to the British authorities.
Neeson makes Collins a likable if hotheaded swashbuckler, faithful
throughout to Kitty Kiernan (Julia Roberts), who seems first to prefer Boland
and has little to do in the movie but smile winningly at both. Although Jordan
does not minimize the brutality of the killings Collins ordered or dehumanize
its victims, his concern to reach a mass audience makes too much of Neeson's
debonair ability to escape over rooftops at the last minute -- something more
appropriate for Tyrone Power in "The Mark of Zorro."
It is true that, undisguised, the real Collins pedaled his bicycle
past British soldiers through dangerous Dublin streets, but the movie descends
to shallow romanticism when it places him with Kitty in their hotel, playing
with a rose while the murders he directed were being carried out.
Thomas Flanagan, Irish-American author of The Year of the
French, reminds us that "both Collins and de Valera would have loathed the
terrorism practiced by the current IRA," and Collins was realistically aware
that his "irregulars" could not hold out much longer. But we need to see more
of his change of heart.
The limitations of Jordan's script are signaled by the omission of
the complex treaty negotiations with England that Collins signed, while
recognizing that he had probably also signed his death warrant. Of course, such
deliberations are notoriously hard to dramatize, but some scene of genuine
inner conflict would have made it harder to dismiss the final result as an
adventure movie.
The aesthetic quality of its excitement, however, is notably
enhanced by the work of its cameraman, Chris Menges, who provides complex
images of autumnal Dublin, landscapes and explosions. It also benefits from
Alan Rickman's performance as a prim but steely de Valera. The movie shows him
as deliberately giving Collins the thankless task of negotiating with the
enemy; then "Dev" champions the diehard republican rejection of the treaty,
plunging Ireland into civil war.
Finally, although specialists will argue over historical details
of "Michael Collins," no one who values good movie-making will fault the
liberties Jordan takes with the presentation of Collins' murder at its
conclusion. We see a young man (Jonathan Rhys Myers) with Collins in a bar the
night before, then with a bewildered de Valera and finally, with the camera
looking down from a high hill, coolly expressionless in the conviction of his
cause, an emblem of the fanaticism that is still alive.
"Big Night" (Samuel Goldwyn), in contrast, is a small
movie, apparently about nothing more than the difficulty of two immigrant
brothers making a success of the Paradise, their New York Italian restaurant.
Consistently funny without resorting to pratfalls, its easy charm and
affectionate humor also suggest a serious concern for integrity and brotherly
affection.
The bank is about to foreclose on the Paradise, and younger
brother Secondo (Stanley Tucci, who also shares directing honors with Campbell
Scott and wrote the screenplay with Joseph Tropiano) is understandably
desperate. Business is terrible. It is the late 1950s, and customers complain
that there is no side order of spaghetti and meat balls with their risotto,
which has not yet found U.S. acceptance, which takes more time to prepare and
is also more expensive. However, when he suggests a change in the menu to Primo
(Tony Shalhoub), his more introverted older brother, who is a perfectionist
master chef, the latter pauses, then contemptuously offers to make hot
dogs.
The simple, elegant atmosphere of the Paradise -- and of "Big
Night" -- wittily undermines the old caricature of Italian-Americans as
exuberant tenors belting out "O Sole Mio." This enhances the comic irony
of Secondo, whose desire to be a slick American "operator" is shown in his
entrancement with a new Cadillac and going for help to Pascal (Ian Holm), who
runs a loud, vulgar, successful Italian restaurant nearby. Primo says Pascal
"should be in prison for the food he serves," but Secondo accepts the older
man's counsel that he should invite a celebrity to an elaborate dinner party to
help business. An endorsement from Louis Prima and his band, whom Pascal
promises to call, will make the Paradise's reputation.
There are great visual rewards in watching the disciplined but
dramatic preparation of exquisite food: We get a rich sense of Primo's
otherworldly dedication, and the camera lovingly sweeps the length of the
beautifully prepared long table that is set for the party. Many will be
reminded of "Babette's Feast," especially when Primo announces, "To eat good
food is to be close to God."
In the fine, decade-old Danish film, the puritanism of the
villagers leaves them incapable of fully savoring the banquet. In "Big Night,"
by contrast, the guests are primed for celebration: They dance, embrace and
positively swoon over the food, and the camera gracefully conveys the warmth
and spontaneity of the event.
"Big Night" isn't reaching for the sustained religious
suggestiveness of "Babette's Feast," however; its central comic impulses and
deepest pleasures emerge in the subtle interaction of Tucci and Shalhoub as the
brothers. They make us believe they have been performing together for years,
building up their relationship through a hundred tiny details. As in any such
relationship, it is made up of both long-standing exasperation and underlying
affection.
Fortunately, "Big Night" doesn't ask us to take sides: Secondo's
eagerness for success and Primo's artistic self-absorption are seen as
complementary. The success of the movie is enhanced by its subtle use of
Italian and Italian-American songs as background for a range of very different
emotions. Except for the banquet scene, however, "Big Night" works best in
small exchanges, though it fails to establish some of its secondary characters,
particularly the brothers' girl friends.
Any disposition I might have had to complain about such sketchy
plotting, however, were overcome by the movie's wonderful morning-after scene,
a wordless sharing of a breakfast omelet. This open-ended conclusion
beautifully summarizes the film's understated and very humane comedy, a style
that is an incisive comment on the prevailing vulgarity of both our
entertainment industry and the wider culture.
Joe Cunneen, coeditor of the interreligious quarterly Cross
Currents, still likes spaghetti and meat balls.
National Catholic Reporter, November 8,
1996
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