Film

Rip It Up, Issue 204, 1 August 1994, Page 43

Film

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AND THE BAND PLAYED ON Director: Roger Spottiswoode

Here’s a project that seemed to have all the right credentials, taken from Randy Shilts’ awardwinning book which catalogued, determinedly and depressingly, the political apathy and homophobia in the early years of the AIDs epidemic. Thrown between two companies (NBC took out an option in 1986 when the book appeared, and HBO took it up in 1989), the project lost Joel Schumacher (Falling Down) and Richard Pearce (The Long Walk Home) before they started filming; and Britisher, Roger Spottiswoode, whose name is on the finished movie, was far from happy with its outcome. HBO have shown a remarkable lack of faith in the marvellous material the book offered them. Not trusting in the powerful drama laid out by Shilts, they were determined to litter the movie with star cameos (the silliest are Phil Collins as an agro bathhouse owner, Anjelica Huston as a nurse, caught for a few lines during ward duty and Richard Gere as a successful Broadway choreographer, given to making new-agey observations and gazing soulfully into the middle-distance). It’s only Lily Tomlin, lan McKellen and particularly Robert Alda as the ghoulish Gallo, who have roles they can really do something with. Shilts’ original book was a documentary, and the movie suffers inestimably from having a plot thrust upon it, with all the melodrama entailed. Lab scenes have a stilted formality worthy of the Greer Garson Madam Curie, and generally speaking, the fabricated drama pales beside the immediacy of the many newsreel clips introduced during the film. Watching an uncomfortable Nancy Reagan at a press conference is far more rewarding and provocative than bearing with Matthew Modine’s earnest character.

The music soundtrack lives up to the film’s title — the whole movie is drenched with muzak in the worst tele tradition. And for a parting ‘moment of significance’, the film ends with clips of celebrated AIDs victims and activists, while Elton John croons ‘The Last Song’. There hasn’t been grimmer piece of musical irony since Rock Hudson recorded ‘Love’s Been Good To Me’ in the early 70s. WILLIAM DART

MAVERICK Director: Richard Donner

Somewhere, deep in the soul of Maverick, there may well have been a film of some charm, but what has eventuated is yet another example of a neat little tale totally swamped by budget and excess. It starts promisingly - Vilmos Zsigmond’s camera explores the symmetry of a card table, while Randy Newman offers insinuating ragtime on the soundtrack - but, as the film progresses, it becomes painfully obviously that a cynically devised formula just isn’t working. William Goldman’s script, snappy though it is, doesn’t really gel. The main trio of Mel Gibson, Jody Foster and James Garner seems uncomfortable. Often Gibson appears to be in a film of his own, delivering wisecracks in the style of a standup comic, and other players dutifully take their cue from him.

It’s a film that can’t resist nudges - everyone from Carlene Carter to Doug McClure and Robert Fuller is on the sidelines of the action, and, reminding us that director Donner is probably working on Lethal Weapon #4, Danny Glover makes a brief appearance as a bankrobber. Perhaps a nudge at Dances with Wolves may have been intended, but Graham Greene’s crudely written role as one cynical Native American is cringemaking.

The word that comes to mind with Maverick is ‘waste’. A waste of 127 minutes to tell a tale that the original TV series (in which Garner was the Gibson character) could have related with more style in 45) and a tragic waste of two new Randy Newman songs. One surfaces briefly during the film, the other is heard in its entirety after the credits ... so hang in there folks . . . WILLIAM DART

DAZED AND CONFUSED Director: Richard Linklater

In 1976 I was teaching teenagers in Pakuranga — had I been ‘somewhere in Middle America’, with Aerosmith tickets one of the priorities of the summer, then I could have been one of the chalkpushers in Dazed and Confused. Richard Linklater’a previous feature, Slacker, was one of the sleepers of last year. It was a rambling quirky delight, with a plot that developed in a method closer to cell division than conventional narrative. But it worked.

Dazed and Confused is less innovative, less hip; more aware that it's taking a stand to be an American Graffiti for the 90s. It’s less self-con-sciously epic than George Lucas’s paen to the 60s, but is there anything deeper than mere nostalgia going on here? The young players are uniformly fine, offering some impressive ensemble work. There are a few embarrassing moments - the strident soul-search-ing on a deserted football field and the blatantly symbolic Moon Tower - and some darker ones. The hazing scenes, in particular, I found really uncomfortable — although none is as hideous as the broom-handle incident that Phil Donahue so avidly recreated on his talk-show a few years back. Here’s a film that just must have an attendant soundtrack CD lurking somewhere. The music’s a mixed bag, too. Some of it is just hideous 70s grunge even some tracks, like Alice Cooper's ‘No More Mister Nice Guy', are used rather wittily in the film. Others, like the Dr John track are, I suspect, more a reflection of the taste of Linklater than his characters. WILLIAM DART

THE SECRET GARDEN Director: Agnieszka Holland

Dazed and Confused?

Agnieszka Holland made her mark with Europa Europa, a haunting glimpse of Nazi oppression told with humour and the gentlest of irony, through the eyes of a young Jewish boy forced to pretend to be Aryan. Her filming of the popular Frances Hodgson Burnett novel deals with a young girl (the superbly sullen Kate Maberly) orphaned during an earthquake in India and repatriated to the gloomy English moors to live with an introvert uncle, his sickly son and a dragon of a housekeeper (the truly daunting Maggie Smith). The material is slight and obvious. Our feisty heroine discovers the ‘secret garden’ of her late aunt and demands a total recovery from her sickly cousin, who moves within minutes from being semi-paralysed to seemingly stricken with St Vitus Dance; even the uncle learns to love life again and, miracle and miracles, gruff Maggie becomes human. And when all is right with the world, Linda Ronstadt croons ‘Winter Light’ over the closing titles (‘Hope whispers/And I will follow/Till you love me, too’) and we all trek from the cinema, hankies to our eyes. It’s the sheer sentimentality of The Secret Garden that thwarts it, despite of or maybe heightened by Roger Deakins’s rapturous camerawork. Yet his Edwardian chocolate-box India really disturbs, with those compelling images of the young

girl being dressed by her Indian maid, and playing in the sand in full Edwardian garb. We’re told in the press blurb that The Secret Garden is a ‘backlash against technology’, yet Holland indulges in crude time- lapse photography to literalize the imagery of her tale (if that’s not ‘technology’ what is?). I suspect that The Secret Garden is not really intended for children caught in the grips of Nintendo fever, but rather for the whimsical older audience who want to renew their acquaintance with a favourite childhood fantasy, or simply wish to revel in Maggie Smith’s droll campery. WILLIAM DART

This isn’t the recent remake starring Daryl Hannah but the 1958 original, so from the moment the large hand gingerly wobbles across the screen, we pretty much know the score. Night shots filmed in broad daylight using filters, appalling continuity and police deputies delivering lines like “Oh no! A thirty foot giant" during the course of their work. Stylistically, however, this is a beautiful thang — a real showpiece of 1950’s style. No expense spared in this department. The plot contains elements as diverse as greed, adultery, revenge and a bizarre collection of paperweights and diamonds courtesy of the interstellar invaders. You would certainly have to be a schlock completist to want to buy a copy but would be well rewarded by hiring a copy for these long winter evenings. DOMINIC BLAAZER I think most people will be more than familiar with this ground-breaking series, first made in 1965, from either their first or second childhoods, so for the uninitiated, stand by. A futuristic adaptation of Swiss Family Robinson set on a strange planet somewhere, which rather resembles the back lot at CBS television studios. Funny that. Each episode contains yet another do-or-die encounter for our intrepid refugees who are strangely unable to return to earth. Apart from the elder Robinson daughter’s costumes, the undoubted star is the evil Dr. Smith, a whining camp stowaway who somehow managed to bring his robot along too. So, assisted by Debbie the monkey (!) who is played by a real monkey with stick-on ears, the metallic moron and in volume II Kurt Russell, they all bicker constantly, all day, every day. And no, I'm sorry, but the will they/won’t they nonromance between mechanic Don and daughter Judy remains an enigma. DOMINIC BLAAZER