![[Image]](bluline2.gif){kind=small}
movie reviews by Douglas Eby
~ ~ ~
titles:
The Altruists
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life
Clockwatchers
Dark City
FairyTale: A True Story
Gattaca
The Horse Whisperer
Jane Eyre
Ponette
The Proposition
The Whole Wide World
One of the most basic premises of an interest in new consciousness is the question of whether or not we are capable of change. In "The Altruists" a group of people who practice compassion in action, and the people in prison that they work with, demonstrate that true inner change does happen. In an interview she did for Online Noetic Network (edited by Joel Metzger, ONNJoel@wisdomtalk.org), Marianne Williamson commented: "In the most enlightened society, there would be no prisons because there would be no crime. Obviously, we have a long way to go before that is true. But one of the ways we can commit to the path towards that reality is to shift our consciousness around prisons in particular and in criminal justice in general. Particularly, what is at issue is our worldview: either you believe in the ultimate reality of guilt or you believe in the ultimate reality of God's grace. Faith in God's grace means faith in people's capacity to change, and thus to be rehabilitated. We can't believe in a redeemed America if we don't believe in redemption."
Personal as well as social redemption are themes of this new documentary about the work of Bo and Sita Lozoff, Mimi Sylbert and Kathy Snead, all winners of the Temple Award for Creative Altruism. Bo mentions a crucial change in his attitude when he and his wife were living in an ashram, waking up very early each day, wearing white clothes, not allowed much social activity, and working in the fields all day for no pay. He met his sister's husband, a prisoner, who had a very similar lifestyle, and who expressed wanting to do a number of things that the Lozoffs had voluntarily given up. Out of their meetings came the idea for a prison ashram, a project initially funded privately by Ram Dass, which grew into an official entity in 1973. Out of his growth through this form of service, Lozoff wrote books including "We're All Doing Time" which are sent free to the many prisoners and others requesting them. This and other projects mentioned in the film exemplify the kind of applied spirituality that so many leaders are calling for in order to effect real change in the world.
The Altruists. The Hartley Film Foundation, unrated. Cos Cob, CT. 203-869-1818; website: http://www.hartleyvideos.org
In a "Message from the Author" in an edition of "Atlas Shrugged" Ayn Rand wrote: "it is ideas which create or destroy a world, a culture or a man... the rejection of reason by the neo-mystics of our age is responsible for the present state of the world... only a philosophy of reason can lead to an intellectual Renaissance." This Oscar-nominated documentary presents a history of her richly complex and widely influential intellect, using a tapestry of material, from vintage Movietone news clips, hundreds of still photos of the writer and the many contexts and people of her life, and numerous interviews by Mike Wallace, Phil Donahue and others with Rand, plus comments by various people who knew her or have appreciated her work. As Alice Rosenbaum (later taking the name Ayn Rand as an actress), she was born and raised in Russia, moving to the U.S. at about age 16. She died in 1982 in her New York City apartment.
At 2 1/2 hours, the film is filled with detail that illuminates not only her growth as a novelist and philosopher, but many of the social and cultural events of recent history. Inspired at age 9 by a heroic male character in an adventure story, she would later say this period of her life formed the ground of her worldview, and her passion to formulate and express the philosophy later called Objectivism. Every book by Ayn Rand published in her lifetime, most notably "Atlas Shrugged" and "The Fountainhead" is still in print. With an early interest in the power of films, Rand was inspired to go to Hollywood to get work , and there are are a number of interesting anecdotes in the documentary about her life as a screenwriter, and how many filmmakers were excited by her work. Barbara Stanwyck, for example, broke a studio contract after hearing the executives had failed to get her cast in the Patricia Neal role in the 1949 film "The Fountainhead". Another notable figure in contemporary culture, Nathaniel Branden, renowned for his writings and work as a psychologist in the area of self-esteem, was associated for Rand both professionally and personally for over two decades, although the film does not reveal much about that relationship. But it is easy to understand their mutual attraction and admiration. One of the keynotes of her philosophy, and her novels, is the celebration of the individual, and a call to honor the highest vision for yourself, to fully realize your talents regardless of difficult circumstance. It is a message that many of us can embrace.
Ayn Rand: A Sense of Life. Strand Releasing, 1998, unrated. Written, produced, and directed by Michael Paxton. Narrated by Sharon Gless.
Further information from The Ayn Rand Institute at 310-306-9232. website: http://www.aynrand.org
For most of us, more than half our waking hours are spent in relation to some kind of job. In "Clockwatchers" that job is temp clerical work, and features the office lives of four young women who find themselves caught up in the often bizarre politics and sensibilities of "Global Credit", a corporation whose managers are more concerned with making sure the desks are kept occupied with the "correct" number of workers than with any attention to actual humans. While played out mostly as a comedy, the story also manages to bring up some issues like workplace stress, erosion of self-esteem wrought by mindless regulation, the lack of security and its moral consequences such as prejudice, and how a corporate climate can affect consciousness and on many levels. But all that makes it sound more serious than it is. With its witty dialogue, delivered by very talented actors, "Clockwatchers" is a satisfying comic relief for any of us who've endured temping. The main four characters are played by Toni Collette, Parker Posey, Lisa Kudrow and Alanna Ubach with great style. The leering mailboy, the woman supervisor of the temps, the distracted executives, and other denizens of the company compound all add their own quirky personalities to the mix. The pseudo dictator office supply manager is a nice touch. He's shocked when one of the women wants another pencil, even though he gave her one just yesterday.
Clockwatchers. Bmg Independents. Rated PG-13 for brief language. Directed by Jill Sprecher, written by Jill Sprecher and Karen Sprecher.
A number of disciplines are continuing to explore the impact of consciousness on the nature of reality. Constructivism as theorized by philosophers and psychologists such as Gregory Bateson, Humberto Maturana and others, says that knowledge is a construct or mental elaboration on the basis of our experience. Research in quantum mechanics on the "experimenter effect" and studies in alternative medicine are reinforcing the concept of mental or cognitive impacts on physical reality. Buddhism and Hinduism include the concepts of reality having an ephemeral nature, that the world is continually in flux, coming into existence and passing away, and that the fixed self is an illusion.
In this new film by writer/director Alex Proyas ("The Crow") these ideas are explored in powerful images and a story involving the nature of memory and identity. John Murdoch (played by Rufus Sewell), wakes up in a strange hotel room, not knowing how he got there or who he is. He soon realizes a police investigator (William Hurt) is after him as a suspect for several possible murders, and he runs into a woman (Jennifer Connelly) who claims to be his wife, plus a strange doctor (Kiefer Sutherland) who says he will help him understand what is going on. It becomes revealed that the entire city is in effect a laboratory constructed by a group of aliens called The Strangers, who need to understand how humans function in order to survive themselves. "Dark City"'s evocative sets created a cityscape always in twilight, with a lot of 40's urban flavor, but also 19th Century and 21st Century elements mixed in to create a unique setting of no definable period. The Strangers continually reshape the city psychokinetically, and inject new memories and identities into the inhabitants while they are made temporarily unconscious. Murdoch is somehow immune to their control, and his search for answers can be taken on one level as a psychological thriller story, but can also be appreciated as a metaphor of self-discovery and opposition to forces that erode personal identity.
Director Proyas has commented that "science fiction has always a genre for ideas that can alter your perspective on things." With "Dark City" he succeeds in transporting you into a unique world of imagery and ideas.
Dark City, 1998. New Line Cinema. R for nudity, adult situations and violence. Directed by Alex Proyas. Produced by Andrew Mason and Alex Proyas. Written by Alex Proyas, Lem Dobbs and David S. Goyer. Jennifer Connelly, William Hurt, Richard O'Brien, Ian Richardson, Rufus Sewel, Kiefer Sutherland.
In his book "The Re-Enchantment of Everyday Life" Thomas Moore declares that a child "lives in an enchanted world that is always alive and in dialogue." As children, many have an ability to see more life in the world, and to experience connections, creatures and conversations that seem to get lost as we mature and supposedly "learn better." Perhaps one of the reasons for the resurgence of interest in angels is a need to rekindle those perspectives, and to believe in beings other than human sharing the Earth with us. Stories of fairy-folk existed for centuries from many parts of the world. In the rural England of 1917, two young girls, Elsie Wright and Frances Griffiths, made photographs of the fairies they claimed lived in their garden. "Fairy Tale..." is a film of great charm that celebrates that historical event. Their pictures inspired international attention and the fervent interest of many, including, with opposing views, devout spiritualist Sir Arthur Conan Doyle (played by Peter O' Toole), and escape artist Harry Houdini (Harvey Keitel). With its masterful use of effects, the film creates very believable fairies, and invites us to participate with Elsie's war-wearied parents and other adults in the pleasure of belief, and in a sense of the wonder of life as enchantment.
FairyTale: A True Story. Paramount, rated PG.
The title of this thoughtfully provoking film refers to a genetic sequence that exists in every human being, as the writer and director Andrew Niccol points out: "Guanine, adenine, thymine and cytosine. The future society in the film has adopted that sequence as their city's name, as sort of their tribute to genetics. And it's the name of a corporation, and I guess you could say, a state of mind." Niccol brought a number of disciplines into his screenplay, from eugenics to forensic science to social engineering. He notes that with all the media coverage, at least some interest in these areas is hard to avoid. But the story is more than a science-driven narrative about a cold future dystopia, an imaginary place where people lead dehumanized and often fearful lives; it's a variation on the struggle of the human spirit against opposition.
The core idea is that genetic engineering will allow parents to preselect not only gender of their child, and protection against genetically based diseases, but a range of physically and socially desirable traits such as intelligence, stature and a long lifespan. Although there is undeniable potential value in genetic manipulation, for example in preventing or lessening inheritable diseases, the story raises intriguing bioethical issues about crossing the line from health support to socially mandated enhancement. As the director comments: "Crooked teeth: is that a genetic defect? Is premature balding? Where do you stop?"
Wanting to fulfill his dream of becoming a deep-space navigator by joining the elite astronauts of Gattaca Corporation, Vincent (Ethan Hawke) must disguise his "invalid" genetic heritage: he was born of an old-fashioned mating, not"perfected" in a laboratory. But with everyone's DNA tested daily to assure their identity, it takes a major and complex subterfuge for him to pass as someone else, someone acceptably perfect. He is helped by Irene (Uma Thurman), a "valid" artificially conceived to be as perfect as possible. But with a slight heart defect, she is emotionally resigned, sure about what she can't do in this perfection-centered society. One of the more interesting and compelling ideas of the film is that this cultural ethic comes not from some kind of master-race fanaticism, but could be an extrapolation of our obsessions with covergirl flawlessness and fitness at any emotional cost, and an extension of that good old Calvinistic theology of what human characteristics "qualify" us for heaven ("Puritan Influence on New Age / New Thought" by Stephan Hoeller, New Perspectives, March/April, 1996).
Beyond simply a location, the panoramic grandeur of Montana becomes a life-altering space in this story of "horse whisperer" Tom Booker (Robert Redford) and his impact on the lives of Annie Graves (Kristin Scott Thomas) and her young daughter Grace (Scarlett Johansson). When Grace and her beloved horse Pilgrim are both grievously injured in a riding accident, Annie decides to take the three of them from their New York home to visit Booker in Montana. Though she can't logically justify it to her husband, she knows she must make the journey, and it is a meaningful shift in her willingness to stop trying to control the life she has known as a successful magazine editor. Part of what director and star Redford has done with the film is to allow the unfolding of story in a way that encourages mindfulness about time and the events that make up our lives, and how much our thinking is outside the present. As Redford comments in production notes, his Tom Booker is based on people who have "a state of being... a way to be with horses that sends a message of understanding and compassion." In his book "The Evolving Self", psychologist Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi writes of the state of consciousness called "flow" that happens "when we are actively involved in a difficult enterprise, in a task that stretches our physical or mental abilities... the kinds of experience that focus our whole being in a harmonious rush of energy." In working to heal both Pilgrim and Grace of emotional and physical scars, Booker is seen as a person capable of pacing his life and focusing his awareness to be in that kind of flow. Redford is clearly inspired about presenting this story, and portrays Booker as a kind of quiet hero, and a man Annie comes to love. Johansson, age 12 when she made the film, makes Grace a girl of remarkable depth and nuance, a reminder of how much we are formed by our passages in life.
The Horse Whisperer. Touchstone Pictures, PG-13.
Its emotions and situations are universal and enduring; its core themes of the struggle to find love and identity are always richly meaningful, and the new version of Charlotte Brontë's "Jane Eyre" delivers much of the wealth of her layered story. Directed by Franco Zeffirelli, the new film, unlike previous versions, includes the important prologue to the main story, which is so meaningful in setting up Jane's disposition and character: her early life being evicted from her aunt's home and sent to a school for girls, in order to be "kept humble and made useful." In her novel, which has never been out of print since its 1847 publication, Brontë draws from her own life experience, including her attendance at a school run with cruel discipline, and writes from the viewpoint of Jane. She describes Jane's reaction to her aunt's mistreatment of her: a "passion of resentment fomented now within me... I had been trodden on severely, and must turn." Though only ten years old, she confront her aunt bluntly and forthrightly - which is one of the excuses for why she is being sent away: "You think I have no feelings, and that I can do without one bit of love or kindness; but I cannot live so: and you have no pity." Being so strong and candid, Jane realizes an elation that will serve her well: "Shaking from head to foot, thrilled with ungovernable excitement.. my soul began to expand, to exult, with the strangest sense of freedom, of triumph, I ever felt. It seemed as if an invisible bond had burst, and that I had struggled out into unhoped-for liberty."
The oppressive quality of Lowood School, to which young Jane (played by Academy Award winner Anna Paquin) is sent, endures in various modern institutions. The juvenile justice system, with facilities such as the benign-sounding Southern Oaks Girls School, a high-security girls' prison in Wisconsin, incarcerates many young women for crimes ranging from murder to assault to petty theft. But, according to recent studies, most girls in the 10 to 18 year-old range are brought into the system for "status" offenses: transgressions peculiar to their age and, often, their gender: such behavior as running away from home and "sexual licentiousness" - meaning "disregard for rules."
In a poignant example of the cruelty of Lowood to its young women residents, the headmaster - who can be seen as a figure representing patriarchal oppression - calls for the cutting of a girl's long curly hair, claiming it represents "natural sinfulness." Jane, rather than let her new friend suffer alone, stands defiantly alongside, declaring she too will have her hair shorn. It is one of a number of wrenching scenes in the film, but also one in which Jane's spirit becomes further strengthened.
The novel was written in an era when women had few options and were severely constricted in expression. Literature was considered an impossible occupation for a woman, which is perhaps why Brontë wrote under a pseudonym: Currer Bell. In a preface to the second edition, she thanks her publisher and "certain generous critics who have encouraged me as only large-hearted and high-minded men know how to encourage a struggling stranger" and goes on to state some of the moral and spiritual grounding of the novel, also indicating that the characters may be functioning symbolically as well as concretely: "Conventionality is not morality. Self-righteousness is not religion. To attack the first is not to assail the last... appearance should not be mistaken for truth; narrow human doctrines, that only tend to elate and magnify a few, should not be substituted for the world-redeeming creed of Christ." Brontë wrote that she considered her passionate novels very different than the work of her near-contemporary Jane Austen: "Her business is not half so much with the human heart as with the human eyes, mouth, hands and feet."
Thornfield Hall, to which an adult Jane goes as governess, is magnificently realized in the film as a massive rambling jumble of an estate. The domain of most of the story, it also works as a rich metaphor of the emotional and psychological realms which are the real story. At least part of Jane's complex relationship with Edward Rochester, who employs her as governess, was probably based in Charlotte's attractions to a teacher of hers, about whom she wrote in diaries she kept secret throughout her life. As played by a believably brooding William Hurt, Edward makes at least one reference that implies Thornfield has a symbolic dimension, as a place of the psyche; seeing Jane's drawings, he at first questions if she has simply copied the rich images, but being assured they came out of her own imagination, he asks "Has it other furniture of the same kind?"
Edward's home also houses a shadow side he has tried to keep hidden for fifteen years: his wife, described by Brontë as a "mysterious lunatic", a woman who constantly threatens disruption and destruction of others and herself. She is a secret which so binds his soul he speaks to Jane of being constricted to a hard India Rubber ball, and wonders if he can ever be "transformed back to flesh and blood." This dark figure of the unconscious, the Shadow, is played with a compelling restraint by Maria Schneider, who gained some notoriety for "Last Tango in Paris" in 1973.
To portray Jane as an adult, who more and more realizes her powers of intellect and self-respect, and her capacities to love and transform, Zeffirelli cast French Academy Award winner Charlotte Gainsbourg, and has commented: "I was hoping someone would bring me that girl I was in love with as a young man, and here she was." Her complex authenticity brings to life a portrait of an extraordinary woman, passionate, intelligent and fiercely independent and principled.
Just out of a hospital after a car accident, compulsively sucking her thumb sticking out of a cast, 4-year-old Ponette is told by her father that "Mommy is dead. Do you know what that means?" Ponette answers with assurance, "Yes. She is flying with her magic mirror." It's just one example of the poignancy this unusual French film offers. Appearing in most every scene, Victoire Thivisol as Ponette is heartbreakingly sympathetic as a child in anguish, but at the same time a remarkable voice of wonder and curiosity. The camera almost never leaves Ponette's angelically beautiful and questing face. She keeps asking probing questions of her father, her teachers and schoolmates, and the film feels so close to her, it's like eavesdropping. We get to observe in a way that is rare for any film how children must see the world, and other people, and how our intellects and experiences build personalities, beliefs, even entire religions.
When told stories about Jesus and resurrection, Ponette asks reasonably "If Jesus gets to rise from the dead, why can't my mother?" Her grieving is a constant motif, and when told, "You shouldn't be so sad", Ponette replies with the kind of wise simplicity she's often graced with, "Yes, I should." There are some scenes where Ponette's dialogue seems too mature, too edited and planned for a child, especially a 4-year-old, but most of the time it works, thanks in no small part to the amazing Thivisol. Her performance won the best actress award at the 1996 Venice Film Festival.
When she prays "God Almighty, you know my mommy is dead because she is with you. I want to talk to my mommy" you can remember praying as a child with that kind of innocence, that view of reality and assurance that there was Someone to hear you. Though mostly serious in tone, parts of it are lighthearted. For example, fellow preschooler Carla secretly kisses a candy and then tricks poor Mathias into eating it, which causes all of his friends to chant, "Mathias loves Carla, Mathias loves Carla." Mathias, of course, is completely embarrassed.
Directed by Jacques Doillon, he also wrote the film, first composing only a synopsis and then spending the next six months interviewing hundreds of four- and five-year-olds, asking them their thoughts on a wide variety of subjects, including death. From their words and actions he prepared the script. He found Thivisol, then age three-and-a-half, in a preschool in Lyon. One of the film's pleasures is that it raises so many of the profound and enduring spiritual questions of life and meaning that still challenge even world-class philosophers, and that we never tire of asking at any age. But seen here through the eyes and mind of a child, these questions have a renewed vitality.
According to psychologist and science writer Daniel Goleman (author of "Emotional Intelligence"), children today are more vulnerable than ever to powerful feelings, experiencing an "emotional malaise." Despite the privileges conferred by wealth and position, the characters of "The Proposition" all are caught by feelings they can't control, and in the process learn more about their humanity. Set in the Boston of 1935, the immensely wealthy Arthur Barret (William Hurt), realizing he is sterile and can't give his novelist wife Eleanor (Madeleine Stowe) the child they so much want, hires young law student Roger (Neil Patrick Harris) to impregnate his wife. Still a controversial topic, surrogacy then was even more a violation of social propriety, a transgression that adds deep levels of shame to the emotional storm that results when Arthur realizes his arrogant sense of control has bounds, and the law student, vulnerably naive, becomes passionately enamored with Eleanor. Into this cauldron comes Michael (Kenneth Branagh), a priest to whom Eleanor turns for solace, but who finds his own passions stirred by Eleanor's extraordinary intellect and beauty. With lesser actors, this could easily be a frothy soap opera, especially as described above. But thanks to the talents of the cast, writer Rick Ramage, and director Lesli Linka Glatter, it is a richly gratifying story of how we can and cannot control our lives and passions, and how profoundly we can engage and influence each other, for good or ill.
The Proposition. Polygram, rated R.
One of the quotes attributed to Mozart is "Neither a lofty degree of intelligence nor imagination nor both together go to the making of genius. Love, love, love, that is the soul of genius." In her insightful book ("One Who Walked Alone: Robert E. Howard the Final Years") teacher Novalyne Price Ellis detailed her brief, passionate and difficult relationship in a small Texas town in the '30s with the author of "Conan the Barbarian", "Red Sonja" and other tales. Portrayed in the film with rich complexity and finesse by Renee Zellweger, Ellis finds her love for the eccentric young author Howard (Vincent D'Onofrio) both challenged and inspired by his macho posturing and reluctance, or inability, to separate his vivid imagination from the realities of their lives. Howard is seen as both a conflicted and childlike man, and a creator of popular pulp magazine stories -- an artist probably close in spirit to many filmmakers today. D'Onofrio plays Howard with exuberance as a reclusive social misfit who finds in Ellis a woman, and a love, to help him overcome his insecurities, and someone strong enough to stand up to his often unthinking sexism and unbalanced masculine energy. Their delight in each other, and in learning to appreciate their separate talents is rewarding.
The Whole Wide World. Sony Pictures Classics, rated PG.
index pages: Talent Development Resources articles || résumé of Douglas Eby