At the
movies Trials, Masks and the Catskills
By JOSEPH CUNNEEN
The Winslow Boy (Sony
Pictures Classics) seems a most unlikely project for David Mamet; instead of
the abusive exchanges of criminals we hear the mannered upper-class speech of
1910 Britons. The news is as good as it is surprising: Mamets screenplay
brings out the strengths of Terence Rattigans 1946 play, and his
carefully controlled direction makes its isolated moments of revelation all the
more powerful.
The play was based on a famous trial involving a 13-year-old cadet
at the Osborne naval academy accused of stealing a five-shilling postal order.
After the boy was sent home from the academy in disgrace, his father insisted
on carrying the case to the highest legal authority in order to exonerate him.
The financial expense was prohibitive, but the emotional cost to the entire
family was even greater.
The material may have appealed to Mamet because it avoids
conventional courtroom theatrics, and the director successfully imposes an
appropriate style on his distinguished cast. Understatement and ambiguity leave
us responsive to the smallest shadings of emphasis. As the family is introduced
at the outset, we might believe that Arthur Winslow, the stern father (Nigel
Hawthorne), will be incapable of dealing calmly with a son denounced by
authority, or that suffragist daughter Catherine (Rebecca Pidgeon) is too full
of ideas to have deep personal feelings.
When young Ronnie Winslow (Guy Edwards) finally has a one-on-one
interview with his father, however, the latter quickly accepts his sons
claim to innocence and dedicates the family fortune to righting what he
perceives as a profound injustice.
As for Catherine, she conceals her feelings under her intelligence
and wit and abandons a suitor she genuinely cares for when the case becomes
such a challenge to authority that her fiancés father makes
marriage impossible. She becomes even more sympathetic when she recognizes that
she has misjudged Sir Robert Morton (Jeremy Northam), the suave barrister whom
she had first believed took on her brothers case only for the huge
fee.
Mamets disciplined production becomes powerfully involving
without ever trying to prove anything. We are not asked to accept the British
judicial system uncritically and may occasionally wonder whether father and
daughter have adequately weighed the cost of their efforts. Nigel
Hawthornes combination of irony and authority is especially notable; the
entire cast is excellent.
The Winslow Boy profits from the handsome, mostly
interior photography of Benoít Delhomme. The audience is not manipulated
but treated as adults; instead of adolescent postures of passion, the sparring
between Jeremy Northam and Rebecca Pidgeon provides the pleasure of watching
two young people discover the real worth of each other.
Avoiding sensationalism, The Winslow Boy makes you
realize youre in the hands of professionals; all you need do is sit back
and watch closely as they show their craft.
The King of Masks (Samuel
Goldwyn Films) is a Chinese film with an exotic setting (Sichuan in 1930) and a
universal story. Bianlian Wang, its title character (Xu Zhu), is an aging
street performer eager to pass on his sleight-of-hand skills to a male
heir.
Doggie (Zhou Renying), the 8-year-old child he buys at a back
alley black market, responds affectionately to Wangs instinctive kindness
and colorful folk-sayings. Their life on a crude houseboat, which they share
with Turkey, the magicians trained monkey, seems almost idyllic,
especially after Doggie becomes proficient at scratching Wangs back.
Director Tian-Ming Wu has a serious theme to accompany the comedy
of this master-disciple relationship: the indifference and cruelty shown to
Chinese girls. When Wang discovers that Doggie is not a boy, he wants nothing
more to do with her; even after he relents and allows her to remain on the
houseboat, he insists that she is only a servant and must call him Boss
instead of Grandfather.
Didacticism and sentimentality are kept in check by exhibitions of
Wangs ability to switch facial masks and Doggies amazing
acrobatics. (Zhou Renying was, in fact, sent away to join an acrobatic troupe
at the age of 3.) Wangs reputation is established in an early scene in
which a cross-dressing male opera star invites the magician to join his
company, but the storys narrative development sometimes seems arbitrary,
as when the little girl accidentally sets fire to the roof of the
houseboat.
The reason why Wang could pass on his art only to a boy is made
hilariously clear when Doggie suddenly asks him what a male
protégé would have that she lacks. A little tea
spout! the street performer responds, his chauvinist assumptions secure,
even though he finds her delightful.
Events turn melodramatic after Doggie, in a desperate gesture of
affection, finds a kidnapped boy, brings him to the houseboat and disappears.
Wang believes the child is the answer to his prayers at a Buddhist shrine, but
the old man is soon imprisoned for kidnapping and scheduled for execution. His
opera star friend then risks his position by making a strong protest on
Wangs behalf, and at the end Doggie performs a perilous acrobatic feat
that softens the hearts of the authorities.
Although The King of Masks won major awards in China,
its hard to know what impact it may have in a society that still
seriously undervalues girl children.
As a movie, it succeeds not on the basis of its suspense elements,
but because of its appealingly loving images of Wang and Doggie. We are
reminded of our common human loneliness as we share a little time with them on
that houseboat.
Even if you didnt spend
youthful summer vacations at a Jewish camp in the Catskills, there should be a
nostalgic payoff from Walk on the Moon (Miramax). As the title suggests,
its 1969, Woodstock isnt far away and a well-integrated soundtrack
offers songs by Joni Mitchell, Ritchie Havens, Jefferson Airplane, the Grateful
Dead and other favorites of the era.
Tony Goldwyn, directing his first movie, knows how to use specific
reminders of time and place to enliven a conventional story of lower
middle-class family crisis with genuine moments of humor, romance and pathos.
The movie opens with the whole Kantrowitz family piling their gear
into (and atop) their aging car for the trip to their bungalow. The authentic
communal atmosphere of the camp is quickly established -- theres no
privacy, kids are screaming and the voice on the public address system (Julie
Kavner) never lets up.
The problem is that Marty, the father (Liev Schreiber), a
TV-repairman, has to work all week in New York and can only be there weekends.
His wife, Pearl (Diane Lane), is left to wonder if she married too young; is
there nothing to look forward to but cooking, caring for her two children and
games of mahjong? Her desperation is increased when her restless 14-year-old
daughter, Alison (Anna Pacquin), has her first period, prompting the
traditional slap by the mother.
The situation is made to order for the appearance of a handsome
stranger, embodied by a handsome goyish hippie, Walker Jerome (Viggo
Mortensen), an itinerant peddler who charms the elderly Jewish ladies at the
camp into buying blouses. The women (of different generations) with whom I saw
the movie had no difficulty accepting Mortensen as an authentic heartthrob. As
the camp comes together to cheer shadowy images of Americans on the moon, Pearl
and Walker embark on a passionately tender moonwalk of their own.
Grandma phones her son, Marty, that its important to rush
back to the bungalow. Things reach a dangerous turn when Alison, taking her own
tentative steps toward a relationship with a young man at the camp, sees her
mother with Walker at Woodstock. Pamela Grays fine script, which has
dozens of authentic touches, a fine sense of comedy and genuine respect for her
characters, teeters toward melodrama as Marty arrives and learns the truth. The
acting is consistently credible; Tovah Fesldshuh especially stands out as the
grandmother, a role that could easily have become a caricature. Showing
sympathy for both son and her daughter-in-law, her measured appeals help
prevent an irreparable break. Her psychic readings early in the movie make you
think she is a crank, but by the end, her visions suggest a genuine wisdom.
Walk on the Moon softens the realities it deals with:
The hippie is sweeter than most of his 69 counterparts, and Marty is a
model father, especially in his last conversation with his daughter. But
Goldwyn likes his actors and understands the world of his film. You will be
both amused and touched.
Joseph Cunneen is NCRs regular movie
critic.
National Catholic Reporter, May 21,
1999
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