Reviews

The only comment on this experimental work from 1949 has it backwards. The film is based on the music, not the other way around. It's a nine minute illustration, Fantasia-like, of a piece which composer Arthur Honegger wrote in 1923.

This from the Wikipedia: "Pacific 231 is an orchestral work by Arthur Honegger, written in 1923. It is one of his most frequently performed works today.

The popular interpretation of the piece is that it depicts a steam locomotive, an interpretation that is supported by the title of the piece. Honegger, however, insisted that he wrote it as an exercise in building momentum while the tempo of the piece slows. He originally titled it Mouvement Symphonique, only giving it the name Pacific 231 after it was finished.

Nonetheless, Honegger was widely known as a train enthusiast, and once notably said: 'I have always loved locomotives passionately. For me they are living creatures and I love them as others love women or horses.'"

By the way, "Pacific 231" is one of Honeggar's most often played pieces and worth a good listen on its own.

Only an 8 because of its length, probably 9 for short films. OK, short film, short comments.

I uttered several "wow's" in reaction to the dialog. If ever a film were straight, this one is. The viewer doesn't have to sit on the edge of his seat waiting for what the character's ought to say -- they say it.

"The Crash" could be favorably compared to the best of Maupassant's writing. The story is succinct and populated with unpretentious characters who make this film into what could be called concentrated story.

Chatterton is flawless and George Brent is so deliberately unassuming we end up liking him even as we condemn his lust for money. In fact, there are no bad guys at all. Actually no good ones, either. Nothing flat here.

Finally, in line with Maupassant's style, see if you don't think another title would be more appropriate -- "The Tip."

These might be the only uncomplimentary words to be written about this well-acted, slickly-produced, lightly-plotted movie. "Lantana" is the kind of movie that by all individual measures is a little gem. But the whole of the movie is less that the sum of its parts. "Lantana" is made to be looked at, not analyzed. It involves a process, not a plot.

The movie's premise seems to be that if you are neurotic enough, everything can happen to you. The director's need to throw a small world of disparate characters into each other's lives becomes ridiculous. In one situation, a cop, LaPaglia, is joined by a stranger in a bar who had just bumped into a woman on the street who railed at him for being agressive toward her. The two men talk, reflect, and bond. Later, the same cop is investigating a murder, of the railing woman, and must question his mistress. He arrives her house, knocks on the door, and when it opens, there stands his fellow bondee, who happens to be his mistress's estranged husband. Funny, right? Not here. Instead of playing the situation for comic effect, this becomes one more mystery of fate. The movie is so full of this intertwining of lives that the whole becomes a puzzle rather than a plot. And, it takes itself way too seriously. But no one in the film can laugh much because each is too neurotic to see humor in anything. Lines are delivered with the weight of suffering and conviction. Nothing in "Lantana" is light.

Another movie which relies heavily on outrageous coincidence for it's story development is "After Hours" about a Manhattan businessman's twilight zone trek through a night of amazingly horrible bad luck. That movie has the plot advantage of a single character's struggle against the odds of his ever seeing dawn again. The night is absurd, sometimes funny, sometimes tragic, but never quite ridiculous. The night in "Lantana", and make no mistake, it is always night even during the day, is unrelenting. The noir metaphor is evident in the characters' pessimism toward redemption and in the several close-up shots of the film's namesake, a flowering, poisonous shrub.

Maybe the director does realize he has been a little heavy-handed because the end of the movie is a series of this-is-what-happened-to-this-person shots. Now this can be seen as a confession that the director and writers could not resolve the story satisfactorily. Or, it might be that, after sitting through two hours of co-neurosis, director Lawrence wanted us to leave the theater with a feel-good notion about dark places. I go with the first idea. What I left the theater with was this: With a few more characters "Lantana" could have been a four hour movie; with a couple less it could have been a good movie.

Director Nicolas Roeg has managed to take a half hour story and extend it for 129 minutes. What you see in "Bad Timing" is a series of contests between two of the most neurotic lovers outside of "Damage" from 1992. The main characters are a professor of psychiatry, appropriately, and a young woman who demands that others allow her to live for the moment. Scene after scene we watch these two attempt to dominate each other. Their sexual couplings make the bed into an arena of emotional endurance. The loser is left crying or pleading and the winner, always unsatisfied, wants still more.

The film, rather than having a plot, is a process. We watch -- my excuse was to wait for a plot -- this sickness for over two hours and find no redemption for the characters nor for us. No reward exists at the end of the shabby rainbow.

As for mechanics, Art Garfunkle, who plays the professor, has the depth and spice of a soda cracker. He attempts to play a passionate playboy, but I can never quite get "The Sounds of Silence" out of my head. Funky and quirky Jeremy Irons, would have been a perfect choice for the part. The talented Harvey Keitel, here a sadly dysfunctional police detective, is wasted with lines dripping psycho-babble as he pleads with the professor during an interrogation. Theresa Russell, who plays the object of the professor's obsession, is given the only good lines in the film. Her role is so well-portrayed that her character occasionally engages our sympathy.

If you are in the mood for some pretentious nonsense, or want to give Art Garfunkel one more chance, check this one out. Otherwise, get neurotic on your own.