Hawai

From choice of cast to quality of production, this powerful story depicts human beings, of radically different cultures, in all our weakness and all of our soaring nobility. We truly must accept the good with the bad.

Even if you hate aspects of history, it doesn't matter. This motion picture is great theater. Humanity is put on display by gifted actors under gifted direction. The script strikes home because it is so spare and poetic.

It is a pity that of the cast members, Jocelyn LaGarde, who is the perfect alii nui--Queen of the Hawaiians--gets such a skimpy bio. Under her name, all we get is that she'd been six feet in height. What a natural actress! What an open smile! What powerful yet benign reality!

Julie Andrews and Max von Sydow stay deep in their characters. The tragedy of cultures' colliding never ends. On a personal level, we get that eternal conflict again, between the classically female value of compassion and the male value of standards--you know...you must earn your father's love.

What is special must be preserved. Nationhood must live. There is much grist for thought in this sweeping drama.

James A. Michener's mammoth novel, "Hawaii," is the subject of this suitably mammoth film, one with a lot to recommend it. Julie Andrews proves that she can handle a dramatic role as well or better than musical roles. Her Jerusha Bromley Hale captures our sympathy the minute she comes on screen and sustains it for the rest of the film. Likewise, Jocelyn LaGarde, a real-life Tahitian princess with no previous acting experience, gives an equally good performance as Alii Nui Ruth Malama Konakoa, for which she was justifiably nominated for an Oscar. There are also good supporting performances from Carroll O'Connor and Gene Hackman, both just a few years away from stardom when this picture was made. Russell Harlan's cameras capture the islands at their most beautiful, and Elmer Bernstein's haunting, evocative score is one of his best.

The one fatal flaw in all this is the actor playing the central male character, Reverend Abner Hale. While Max von Sydow was always good in the great Ingmar Bergman films ("The Seventh Seal"), in most of his English-language films, with the sole exception of "The Exorcist," he always came off as something of a well-dressed stiff. It's an image he upholds here. Perhaps it's the fact that he's working in a language not his own, perhaps it's just the hopeless nature of the lines he's saddled with, but his is an Abner Hale who could transform the staunchest Christian into a Druid. He, quite simply, generates no sympathy. Plus, as many of the best clergymen seem to know, you can win more converts by stressing the kind, loving qualities of Jesus than by belching out fire and brimstone. It seems to me that, for Andrews's character, choosing between this mannered stiff and Richard Harris's vigorous sea captain shouldn't have been much of a choice at all.

But this shouldn't drive you away from "Hawaii." For all the good points I mentioned, it's definitely worth seeing at least once.

Bumpy, overlong drama does have magnetic sequences that stay with you. New England reverend (Max von Sydow, who never elicits our interest or compassion) sails to the Hawaiian islands with his wife in 1820 to introduce the natives to Christianity. Soapy plot taken from James A. Michener's book tries to cram too many years into 170 minutes of screen-time. The task of adapting the mammoth bestseller was probably a bad idea right from the start, and the picture is certainly a botch, but I did enjoy Julie Andrews as von Sydow's wife and the early scenes have atmosphere and tension. But Max von Sydow is a real problem: he's so overly-pious he's pathetic, which is probably not the effect hoped for. Look fast for real-life Hawaiian resident Bette Midler on the Eastern ship as it arrives to the island. **1/2 from ****

After seeing the movie on cable a few months ago, I decided to read the book.

The movie is only about one-fifth of the whole book. Too bad. The movie leaves a lot of unresolved plot threads which are resolved later in the book. Subplots which seem inconsequential turn out to have major implications to the plot of the novel. Minor characters from the movie become more important as the story progresses. For example, Gene Hackman's Dr. John Whipple and Richard Harris' Raefer Hoxworth have only a few scenes in Hawaii, but their characters are perhaps the two most important characters in the book. Whipple and Hoxworth are the ones who challenge the authority of the missionaries and, in a sense, are the true foils to Abner Hale. They also are the ones who go into business.

As a result, the movie, standing by itself, tends to introduce characters and subplots with no relevancy to the main Abner-Jerusha-Malama-Keolo story line. Perhaps a sequel was planned? In short, Hawaii would have worked better as a mini-series.

********************* How the Novel Ends:

Abner Hale's son, Micah, who was last seen getting a boat to the mainland to attend Yale University, becomes a minister like his father. The sea captain, Raefer Hoxworth, marries Noelini, the daughter of the Alii Nui. Micah then meets and falls in love with Raefer's and Noelini's daughter. They get married. Abner Hale scorns Micha; claiming the Micah has gone "whoring with the heathens." Micah quits the ministry and becomes a partner in Raefer Hoxworth's shipping company - now called Hoxworth and Hale.

John Whipple and Retire Janders (the captain of the ship that brought the missionaries to Hawaii) are partners in Janders & Whipple. Initially a trading company, general store, and ship chandler, they start acquiring land and growing sugar. J&W eventually becomes a plantation company and needs cheap labor to work their fields. John Whipple imports Chinese workers.

A generation after the movie ends, the descendants of Hale, Whipple, Janders, Hewlett (the man who was kicked out of the church for marrying a Hawaiian woman) and the Hoxworth are the commercial, social, and political elite of Hawaii. Micah Hale leads the movement to have the United States annex Hawaii and serves as the first governor of the Territory of Hawaii.

The descendants of these families continue to build their businsses and develop the islands. In an ironic twist, the families, refusing to marry Hawaiians or Chinese, intermarry. Eventually cousins marry cousins - the very practices Abner Hale condemned from his puplit. You eventually get characters named: Whipple Hoxworth; Hoxworth Hale; Hewlett Janders; Bromley Hoxworth.

Finally, at the end of the novel the rich, post-WW II descendants of the missionaries talk about their "distinguished ancestors." Their descriptions and interpretation of events, differs from what it portrayed in the earlier chapters.

"Hawaii," based on about one-third of the Michener novel, is one of those big, old-fashioned epics, full of wistful vistas, compelling performances, and casts of thousands.

Julie Andrews' acting abilities shine as bright as the tropical sun in this story of a New England woman who accompanies her stodgy husband to the islands on a mission to convert the heathens. Andrews' buoyant on-screen persona is held in check here (as it is in the overly criticized "Darling Lili"), making her Jerusha a quiet heroine. Her childbirth scene is effective for the visceral reaction it creates, and she's got one whopping good speech toward the end, where she finally gives her stick-in-the-mud hubby what-for.

Von Sydow, who would work with Andrews again later in "Duet for One," is all bluster and bellowing, condemning just about everyone he comes in contact with. I find the performance rather one-note; however, the opening scenes in which Hale tries to woo the lovely Jerusha are sweetly awkward.

Richard Harris shows up as a long-lost sea captain in one of moviedom's most impossible coincidences. Harris is all fire and passion, exactly the kind of third-party that a juicy love triangle needs.

George Roy Hill's direction keeps things moving at a brisk pace, despite the lengthy running time. He had a gorgeous palette to paint with, and he takes full advantage. The sea trek--complete with storms--suffers from some very obvious blue-screening, but Hill manages to build an appropriate sense of excitement.

I'm also going to carp with costumer Dorothy Jeakins. Andrews costumes are lovely (but consider what Jeakins had to work with), but Von Sydow goes running throughout the movie with his stove-pipe hat cemented onto his head. Works okay for the New England settings, but once the cast hits the beach, he ends up looking like some kind of absurd Dr. Doolittle (Hugh Lofting's, creation, not Eddie Murphy's).

Jeakins also makes a very brief appearance (her role was trimmed mightily) as Hale's mother.

While on the subject of the supporting players, LaGarde had no acting experience whatsoever (and, hence, drove the production schedule and budget way off base), but she's utterly charming. She more than earned her Oscar nomination.

Funny to see a pre-Archie Carroll O'Connor in the New England sequences. Also watch for Heather Menzies as one of Jerusha's younger sisters. Two years earlier, she had played Louisa von Trapp to Andrews' Maria. Gene Hackman's here, too, as a put-upon doctor.

One last note: If you're going to seek out this treasure, please, please, please opt for the widescreen version. The rocking of the boat sickened many of the passengers on their way to paradise, and likewise, the pan-and-scan version will sicken viewers of this terrific epic.