Contrived corn a ‘weepie’ with audience appeal

Press, 5 August 1985, Page 18

Contrived corn a ‘weepie’ with audience appeal

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hans petrovic

MASK Directed by Peter Bogdanovich Screenplay by Anna Hamilton Phelan By mixing the main ingredients of at least three types of movies, “Mask” (Savoy) has managed to turn itself into what will undoubtedly be this year’s top tearjerker. Making an amalgam of the Disney-like treacle of “Pollyanna," the rough camaraderie of a bikie movie like “The Wild One,” and the beauty-in-the-beast of “The Elephant Man,” would seem a pretty impossible task. Nevertheless, Peter Bogdanovich, who has a deft hand with many basic forms of the American cinema (“The Last Picture Show,” “Paper Moon,”), has made the synthesis remarkably well, giving us a weepie that should appeal to both sexes and all age groups. My main objection to this kind of movie is that it makes no apology for blatantly manipulating the emotions of the audience, which become like putty in the film-maker’s hands.

The director can play the emotions to elicit a . tear as surely as a doctor can tap a knee for a reflexive jerk.

I simply do not like a film-maker having such power over me, but there is no doubt that a big part of the cinema-going public is more than happy to pay for a good cry. The best-picture Oscar winners of recent years have demonstrated that the audience likes its waterworks turned on by the problems of a deserted father (“Kramer vs Kramer”), a troubled teenager (“Ordinary People”), reconciliation tiefore death (“On Golden Pond”), and a young mother’s death by cancer (“Terms of Endearment”). “Mask” also has a sad ending with the death of a teen-age boy, Rocky Dennis, who has been suffering from a rare disease, craniodiaphyseal dysplasia, which causes calcium deposits at an abnormal rate throughout the skull.

The condition, which occurs only once in about 22 million births, is also known as lion’s disease because of the grotesque disfigurement

it causes to the face; and now, at the age of 16, Rocky has a life expectancy of only three to six months. The full tragedy, based on a true story, becomes clear when it is realised that Rocky (Eric Stoltz), although looking subnormal, is highly intelligent, always excelling at school, and of such a sweet disposition that he simply does not deserve to die.

“I look weird, but otherwise I’m real normal,” he tells his new schoolmates. On another occasion, his mother (Cher) says: “Yea, you’re different. You’re more beautiful on the inside than other people.”

Under the circumstances, Rocky seems abnormally normal: he has a great collection of baseball cards, and his heart is set on touring Europe by motorcycle with a friend. By middle-class standards, his home life certainly is not normal. Rocky’s “very modern” mother hangs out with a motorcycle gang, which gives the film the opportunity to show the almost unbelievably nicer side of these characters who, of course, all have a heart of gold, and whose main ambition to be to protect Rocky from the harder knocks of life.

In one typically touching scene, Rocky does not want to go to his school graduation night because he has no good clothes to wear. The bikies, however, have got together, bought him a new suit and hung it in the refrigerator with their beer. At the graduation, Rocky receives diplomas for achievement and academic excellence in mathematics, history, and science, while the bikies and his mother all heartily cheer in the back of the hall.

“If you took the kid's face away, this film could have been made by Disney,” a

friend commented to me at about this stage. He is right; “Mask” is definitely a preplastic surgery “Pollyanna.” While fighting his own recurring headaches and coming to terms with his developing sexuality, young Rocky still finds time to worry about his mother’s drug dependence, promote a friendship with a rowdy bikie (Sam Elliott), and to have a truly sweet affair himself with a blind girl (Laura Dern). This touching friendship comes up with such lines as: “We can’t run away together, but we’ll always be together, even when we can’t be together.” And that just about sums up the film—if you can fall for idiotic lines like that, then you will love “Mask.” The inescapable fact, however, is that this film has been put together so expertly that you cannot help but like it even if you normally consider yourself above such corn. Eric Stoltz handles the difficult role of Rocky in a sensitive, low-key manner, in spite of the handicap of the heavy make-up, which allows him to express his emotions only through voice and movements. Cher (real name, Cherilyn Sarkasian) convincingly reprises her rough role from “Silkwood,” this time as a tough but loving mother; and Sam Elliott (from TV’s “The Yellow Rose”) is fine as the supportive boyfriend. One warning to cinemagoers who prefer to avoid those tedious shorts and advertisements before the main film: “Mask” is incorrectly advertised as “Feature entire programme.” Fully believing this, I was seated at 2 p.m. on Friday to be subjected to a propaganda film about Czechoslovakia which was a good 20-year-old and quite meaningless today, two different advertisements about DB beer, one for Southern Comfort, a couple more for other commodities, and one very short trailer for “Back to the Future.” This continued until interval at 2.22 p.m. I agree with the many moviegoers who have complained to me that they do not pay to be made captive audiences for such a long series of advertisements.