Cinema

Rip It Up, Issue 176, 1 March 1992, Page 34

Cinema

CAPE FEAR Director: Martin Scorcese The original 1962 Cape Fearwas one of the notorious censorship cases of the 60s and New Zealand audiences were not permitted to see this tale of a psychopathic criminal exacting revenge on a lawyer's wife and teenage daughter. There have been key changes in Scorcese's version. Nick Nolte's lawyer is not as squeaky clean as Gregory Peck's was in the original, which makes some of Robert De Niro's bitterness more justifiable. And De Niro is not the lurching malevolent slob that Robert Mitchum was in 1962, he's a lethal weapon, lean and mean, with tats and drawling fundamentalist self-righteousness. So lean in fact that he's able to suspend himself from the undercarriage of Nolte's car when the family escape to Cape Fear for what turns out to be the final conflict of the film. The camera work and editing skills which have made such films as Taxi Driver, Color of Money and Goodfellas are all here. The final 10 minutes is brilliantly handled, with an almost impressionistic use of water imagery. Scorcese stresses the symbolic in this tale of guilt and obsession, occasionally making a point by freeze-framing in black-and-white negative, a curiously stylized touch. Scorcese has Mitchum, Peck and Martin Balsam (all present in the 1962 version) return in the remake. Mitchum memorably so as the slobbish but sharp sheriff. De Niro is hypnotically menacing, nowhere more so than in his scenes with Juliette Lewis, who plays Nolte's young daughter with a fine line in kittenish pouting. And the nostalgic element isn't limited to the casting. The score is based on Bernard Hermann's original music for the 1962 film, one of the late composer's finest and most atmospheric creations. WILLIAM DART THE END OF THE GOLDEN WEATHER Director: lan Mune The tragedy of The End of the Golden Weather is that it was not filmed 30 years ago, when Bruce Mason himself was taking the piece, as a one-man show, around all the cities, towns and hamlets of New Zealand.

This delicately observed tale, centred on young Geoff's coming to terms with life (or "loss of idealism” as Mason preferred to describe it) was an acute reflection of the New Zealand condition at the end of the 50s. Even ; such Eurocentric fantasies as helpless maidens rescued by dashing knights . were real issues to youngsters at that ’’ time, nurtured as they were on a diet of Classic Comics and Famous Five novellas. From the vantage point of the 90s it runs the danger of seeming like fey nostalgia. The strongest element in the film is the set pieces, which lan Mune handles. with the same flair that distinguished Came A Hot Friday a few years back. The beach scenes have a touch of Blackpool and moments of Fellinian eccentricity; the 'doctoring' scene and the young children performing their play to their parents are magical. Performances are not always as relaxed as they might be, but Stephen Pappas is really moving as the simple Firpo, the classic Outsider; and the brunt of all the attitudes that Mason so despised in our society (his treatment by the others in the race scene is truly appalling). The care taken in Golden Weather shows in the details: Alun Bollinger's crisply evocative camera-work roving over beach cottage icons and Stephen McCurdy's whimsical score, played by some of Auckland's more talented musicians. WILLIAM DART 35 UP Director: Michael Apted These days one associates Michael Apted with Hollywood product such as Coalminer's Daughter and Gorillas in the Mist, but every seven years Apted returns to England to chalk up another sequel to his 1963 BBC documentary 7 Up. This took a cross-section of seven-year-olds from different classes and situations and put them together . for a day, interviewing them about their hopes and fears. " . 35 Up is the fourth sequel and the subjects are noticeably older (especially when the editing takes us through cycles of seven years in almost as many seconds) and life is weighing . them down in some instances. This time around, one man wouldn't appear on film and another only participated in the hope it would.gain publicity for his Bulgarian charity work. Apted has, over quarter of a century, developed a certain relationship with these people. He's not afraid to probe and on a few occasions produces tears (Tony when

remembering his mother's death and Nick, when talking about his deaf brother). Some of his subjects are made of sterner stuff though: one of the "East End" women claims that she only thinks about the inequalities of the class structure once every seven years — when Apted asks her. The saddest case is Neil. The last few instalments in the saga had traced his decline and now we find him living in comparative isolation in the Shetlands. It's a blistering comment on the brutality of Thatcherite Britain but, also, in the warmth and community

acceptance in the Shetlands scene, some reassurance on the survival of humanism.

WILLIAM DART