Film

Rip It Up, Issue 77, 1 December 1983, Page 4

Film

TWILIGHT ZONE: t THE MOVIE Directors: Steven Spielberg, George Miller, etc. The original Twilight Zone was a 1959 television series, in which Rod Serling hosted a collection of various offbeat tales a series in the same genre as The Outer Limits or even The Alfred Hitchcock Hour. Now, riding the wave of television nostalgia, Spielberg and his associates, who include j George ( Mad Max II) Miller, have brought four of these original tales to ; the cinema screen. Of course what worked on the small screen in 1959 doesn't necessarily make the transition to the big screen almost 25 years later. Cinema audiences are a little more sophisticated than the television fans of a quarter-of-a-century ago. Take the rather pat morality tale of the opening sequence, for instance, with the raving surburban bigot being forced;to endure a taste of his own medicine at the hands of the Nazis, Klu Klux Klan | and, finally, irony of ironies, from stoned American soldiers in Vietnam: this seems a little on the simplistic side. On the other hand the opening sequence, in which a casual sing-along while di.ving along a country road is transformed. into a moment of bizarre horror, seems far more in line with the Zeitgeist of the 80s:SpH|

Two contributions stand out. One is Spielberg's wry tale set in an old folk's home, where the residents are all given the chance to be young again, but finally opt for reality. The message that it's better to be young at heart may be trite, but Spielberg's handling of the material is so deft that it maintains a real charm and light humour throughout. Joe Dante's segment deals with the less innocent aspects of childhood: an evil child exercises his power over a small group of people trapped in a decidedly gothic mansion. Richly satiric, with its targets ranging from junk food to television, this is a menacing comic book come to life, put together with a nice sense of sur-

realism and a real visual flair. And there's enough jolts to make your popcorn jump in your lap a few times. EDUCATING RITA Director: Lewis Gilbert When 1 saw Educating Rita on the West End stage in early 1981, it was a sharply-drawn twohander about a working-class girl's confrontation with a cynical, older university lecturer, played by Julie Walters and Mark Kingston, respectively. Willy Russell's screenplay has opened out and modified his original play. To start with, Michael Caine is a good deal younger than Kingston, which brings the story more within' the sphere of a conventional love story. Other characters are introduced. Some, like Maureen Lipman's portrait of Rita's dizzily insecure room-mate Trish, are crisply observed. Many, such. as Caine's colleagues and students, are crude to the point of caricature.

Gilbert is a workmanlike director. His career has had some sensitive films like the 1961 Greengage Summer or Alfie (with Michael Caine) five years later, but there have also been a spate of jingoistic World War Two stiff-upper-lip epics and some latterday James Bond flicks. Educating Rita bounces along quite merrily, although the sentimentality and grudging class-consciousness outwear their welcome at times. There are a few moments which seem to show a really serious and human issue trying to make itself felt: the first is when Rita's mum is stifling her tears at a pub singa-

long, realising how her life has been unfilfilled. The second is Trish's bitter recriminations in the hospital after her attempted suicide. More of this, and Educating Rita would have been a much tougher social document. William Dart STRATA Director: Geoff Steven Only recently Peter Munz defined the dilemma of New Zealand visual arts as that of being either eclectic or parochial. As in painting, so in film, it seems. Yet, whereas it was the small-town "truth" of Steven's earlier Skin Deep that gave the film its charm and character, Strata's deliberate "international anonymity" works against the material's considerable potential.

Strata has the air of an unrealised project. The script is hinting so determinedly at wider issues, that it never homes in on the drama of the situation in hand. The two groups of characters (those around the vulcanologist and the five refugees) never really interact and unconvincingly scripting even manages to get a tentative performance from such an old hand as Nigel Davenport. Local actors fare even worse, and the only character to register with any effect is Ctibor Turba's enigmatic Thomas. Mike Nock's tinklings seem to be yet another misguided attempt to give the film an international gloss, but Leon Narbey's evocative shots of the volcanic terrain are breathtaking. Alas, the landscape is far more eloquent than the characters trapped on it.