Film Reviews

Friday, May 10, 1996

"Dead Man"

Written and Directed by Jim Jarmusch

Starring Johnny Depp and Gary Farmer

Jim Jarmusch steps up once again as one of today’s most daring,
imaginative directors with "Dead Man," a black and white,
metaphorical Western starring Johnny Depp. Jarmusch proves that the
unique stories he created in "Stranger Than Paradise," "Mystery
Train" and "Night On Earth" are still brewing in his skewed
mind.

In "Dead Man," set in the late 19th century, an uptight
Cleveland accountant named William Blake (Depp) boards a train
heading West. Blake enters into a world both foreign and
frightening to him. For the first time, the sheltered man is
confronted with violence and death. And after committing his own
act of slaughter, Blake is removed from the safety of his past, and
he slowly loses the awareness of who he is.

Blake regains this awareness with the help of a fellow exile
named Nobody, played by Gary Farmer. Nobody is a Native American
who has been shut out not only from white society, but from his own
tribe. The duo wander across the land as Blake runs from the law
for the murder of a beautiful woman (Gabriel Byrne) and her
lover.

Farmer and Depp give impressive performances, but the real
acting highlights come from the many cameos in "Dead Man." Crispin
Glover takes over the screen as a soot-covered train fireman; Iggy
Pop jumps in as a crazy frontiersman who thinks he’s a woman; and
Robert Mitchum is a rough, cruel businessman who wants Blake
killed. These surprises elevate the film and emphasize the
director’s ability to turn reality inside out.

Jarmusch, who also wrote the screenplay, tackles many issues in
"Dead Man." He loosely based William Blake on the poet of the same
name, and infuses the character with the same qualities of
visionary mysticism and social exile that Blake was known for. But
this is not a film about a dead poet. It is about a man’s journey
towards enlightenment, and consequently away from physical life.
Jarmusch conveys these themes on screen with exceptional skill, but
at times his ability to keep the audience’s attention slips. He
favors repetitive shots and meandering dialogue, which can subtract
from the depth of the story. It takes patience, and a few trips to
the theater, to watch and understand a Jarmusch film ­ but
"Dead Man" is definitely worth the time.

Dina Gachman, Grade: A

"Cold Comfort Farm"

Screenplay by Malcolm Bradbury

Directed by John Schlesinger

Starring Kate Beckinsale, Joanna Lumley and Sir Ian McKellan

On paper, the idea of "Cold Comfort Farm" isn’t terribly
gripping. For starters, it’s a literary parody, not typically a
huge draw for filmgoers. Secondly, it’s a parody of a sub-genre
most people aren’t familiar with, namely the rural soul-searching
tale by the likes of D.H. Lawrence and Sheila Kaye-Smith.

But the truth is that "Cold Comfort Farm" is far more
entertaining than its pedigree lets on. The cast of this film,
based on the 1932 novel by Stella Gibbons, all let loose with their
characters, playing broadly but never quite over-the-top.

Kate Beckinsale plays the story’s modern and level-headed
protagonist Flora Poste. Recently orphaned, Flora decides to spend
the rest of her pre-adult years in Sussex at Cold Comfort Farm,
home of her cousins the Starkadders. Flora has designs on being a
writer, but is saving her first novel for when she is middle-aged
("I would like to write a novel as good as ‘Persuasion,’ but with a
modern setting of course," she proclaims). Her goal in the meantime
is to gather life experience to later use in her work; and life
with the Starkadders, she thinks, will give her all the gristle her
creative mills need. Much like a Modernist Brit version of the
Addams family, the Starkadders lead a comically dreary existence
and have accepted Cold Comfort Farm as their home for now and for
always.

The minute free-spirited Flora sets foot on Cold Comfort Farm,
the gloom-and-doom of the Starkadder farm starts to evaporate like
dew in springtime.

As the cool and sophisticated Flora Poste, Kate Beckinsale
shines in the role. Managing to transform everything and everyone
around her without feeling bossy, overbearing or irritating,
Beckinsale is quite formidable and surely at the beginning of a big
career. Also on hand is "AbFab’s" ever-delightful Joanna Lumley as
Flora’s friend Mrs. Smiling, Sir Ian Mckellan as fire-and-brimstone
preacher Amos Starkadder and Rufus Sewell as oversexed Starkadder
scion Seth.

Surely this film isn’t everyone’s comic cup of tea, but if you
like your laughs subtle, and/or have a weakness for things English,
then "Cold Comfort Farm" (and its inimitably British brand of
humor) is a place well worth visiting.

Brandon Wilson, Grade: B+

"Of Love and Shadows"

Screenplay by Donald Freed

Directed by Betty Kaplan

Starring Antonio Banderas, Jennifer Connelly and Stefania
Sandrelli

The screen adaptation of Allende’s "The House of the Spirits"
was almost unanimously reviled by critics and yielded little box
office profits. Novelist Isabel Allende has made a name for herself
with her fictionalized accounts of the struggles of brother and
sister Chileans; South America’s skinniest country spent most of
the ’70s and ’80s under the heel of an oppressive dictatorship, and
this is the backdrop for many of Allende’s yarns. Unfortunately,
these beloved stories have found the transition to the silver
screen a most difficult maneuver to manage.

Destined to follow in its predecessors’ footsteps, "Of Love and
Shadows" is the newest Allende adaptation to make its way to the
screen. Featuring one of the poorest directorial turns in recent
history, "Of Love and Shadows" is a mess of a movie which must be
reserved a spot at the top of any year-end list where such
categories as worst editing, worst performances and most egregious
use of the zoom lens are included.

This is a film so bad it can take a love scene between its
leads, Antonio Banderas and Jennifer Connelly (arguably two of
Hollywood’s most beautiful), and make it almost unwatchably bad.
Their moment of passion is successful at arousing chuckles, and
little else.

Connelly plays Irene Beltran, a beautiful bourgeois belle from
one of Chile’s leading families. She works at a fashion magazine,
is engaged to her Aryan looking army captain cousin, and is
generally doing quite well despite the fact that she’s living under
a fascist regime.

Enter Francisco Leal (Banderas), who meets Irene when he comes
to her magazine in hopes of securing a photographer’s gig. The
minute Irene lays eyes on this sexy stranger, she knows there is
more to him than meets the eye. After she is convinced he isn’t on
any of the government’s subversives list, Irene hires him.

Their first assignment together involves covering the story of a
village woman in the country said to have psychic abilities. The
military shows up as well, leading to a confrontation between the
soldiers and the supernatural. It would’ve taken a director of
nearly supernatural skill to pull off this melding of magic realism
and political realism, and the scene fails quite loudly.

Banderas manages for a time to provide some of the film’s few
pleasures, such as hearing him hiss "Fascists!" with all the
sex-charged contempt he can muster. But such treats are few and far
between.

Connelly (who sports a curly "Latin" mane in the film’s first
half, which then inexplicably goes straight) is far from the worst
part of the film, but her limitation of range prevents her from
being truly believable in any of the scene’s more emotionally
charged moments. Bernardo Bertolucci veteran Stefania Sandrelli is
also on hand, making an embarrassing appearance as Irene’s
breathlessly beleaguered mother.

The overbearing background score, overused voice-over and
atrocious editing (scenes don’t end, they just abruptly stop) all
create a truly unrewarding experience.

Brandon Wilson, Grade: F

Antonio Banderas stars in Betty Kaplan’s "Of Love and
Shadows."