Cinema

Rip It Up, Issue 175, 1 February 1992, Page 35

Cinema

FORTHEBOYS Director: Mark Rydell There's an old-fashioned cosiness fo For The Boys, right from the opening scene, when Bette Midler and two women are in the recording studio laying an Andrews sisters’ styling on Hoagy Carmichael’s ‘Billy-a-Dick’. This saga of Dixie Leonard's long career from Sweetheart of the Forces to fiesty octogenarian (well, the grim make-up makes her look at least 80) is an unabashed Midler vehicle. The running time of almost two-and-a-half hours has occasioned some crificism, but it is reasonably sustained. Pursuing Dixie through three wars (from Europe to Vietnam) it : comes up with some trenchant anti-war statement {the Korean and Vietnamese scenes have some , particularly bloody moments). And this ‘All Girl Production’ has some words to put in for women's rights too — mainly through Midler’s sparring with the greasy Eddie Sparks (James Caanat | his sleazoid best). For The Boys is a film of many delicious details: from Midler performing ‘PS, | Love You' during a black-out, illuminated by the soldiers flashlights, to.a glimpse of 50s TV-land (with a delirious coffee commercial fleetingly glimpsed on a monitor). . Sometimes the detail is disturbing, as in the menacing harassment of a mini-skirted go-go girl dancing among the boys in Vietnam. Entertaining as they are, Midler and Caan don't have the film totally to themselves, with names like Norman Fell, Bud Yorkin, Rosemary Murphy and Melissa Manchester on the sidelines. Its a real treat to meet George Segal again, as Dixie’s genial wise-cracking uncle, who becomes a casualty of McCarthyism in the 50s, playing Father Christmas in one of the most acerbic Yuletide scenes on celluloid. We're spared the sugary ballad ‘Dreamfime’ until the final credits (apart from a brief snatch sung to her son early on), but the sentimental moments are often unexpectedly effective. One of the most moving has Midler singing ‘ln My Life’ in shades and fatigues to the soldiers. For The Boys s a film that has special reverberations in the wake of the Gulf conflict — even more so when one realises that many of the extras in the troops scenes were waiting fo be sent to the Middle East. WILLIAM DART JFK Director: Oliver Stone ~ To some, the very premise of Stone’s - new movie will be preposterous, but then Stone has never been afraid to

subject history, from political machinations in Salvador to the heady self-indulgence of late 60s pop, to slick analysis. As the director himself has . suggested, history might possibly be nothing but a bunch of gossip made up by soldiers who passed it around the campfire. The premise for JFK comes from Jim Garrison (Kevin Costner at his most eamest), a New Orleans DA who pursues a small anomaly in the Kennedy assassination evidence until the Warren Commission is virtually demolished, arguing that the late president was the victim of o well-orchesirated conspiracy between the military and those with vested industrial interests. “Initially, Stone commented that he wanted JFK to be like Kurosawa's Rashomon, leaving the audience free to choose its own response to a range of presented interpretations. But Stone’s agit-prop doesn't really allow for such democracy. Dazzling camera work confuses what is original, re-created and fictional, and - : sometimes the dice are perilously loaded (as with the trashy treatment of the gay aspecis of Tommy Lee Jones’ Clay Shaw character).

Best performance in what, for Stone, is a star-studded cast (Donald Sutherland, Sissy Spacek, Gary Oldman); Joe Pesci as David Ferrie, one of Oswald’s suspected acquaintances, and a singularly nasty piece of work. : To look for any answers in JFKis to miss the point, or at least the strength of the film. Stone has pointed out that the 60s are a seminal decade for a post-war generation coming into power in the 90s. JFK is a reminder, and a timely one, to be aware political and historical manipulation — the only problem is getting the balance right between cynicism and the unjaundiced eye. WILLIAM DART