fwmurnau

This clumsy catastrophe is NOT made from Orson Welles' screenplay for his genius 1942 version, though it uses bits of it. The creators of this remake do everything wrong. The unforgettable prologue and narration are dropped entirely, important scenes are cut to make room for stupid new ones, others are shuffled and rewritten so they no longer make sense, and banal, foolish dialog is added.

Tarkington's story is deeply grounded in a particular time and place: a century ago in the American midwest. Welles, a midwesterner born in 1915, knew the place and the people well. This version's Mexican director, Alfonso Arau, shows so little understanding of his characters and story, you wonder if he's ever met an American.

Arau's choice of an isolated Irish country house to stand in for the Ambersons' urban mansion, located near the downtown of a city based on Tarkington's native Indianapolis, shows how clueless he is. That's like filming HUCKLEBERRY FINN in Vienna, with the Danube as the Mississippi.

Every choice is as wrong as the mansion. There is no sense of place or period. All of the leads are grossly miscast. The speech, the manners, the attitudes, the tone, the bad acting, the cheap suggestions of incest ... nothing in this remake rings true.

For George Minafer, the most American of protagonists, Arau weirdly goes to Ireland again, casting the amateurish Jonathan Rhys Meyers, who overacts like crazy in a phony, inappropriately-contemporary accent. Where Tim Holt was subtle and low-key, Rhys Meyers shouts, leaps about, and twists his pretty lips into sneers and scowls worthy of a circus clown.

Granted, the 1942 cast was perfection. Arau's casting makes you wonder what he was smoking. Madeleine Stowe is nothing like Isabel, but she comes off better than most of the others. Morgan is the bland Bruce Greenwood, whose wrongness reminds one how profoundly sensitive and right Joseph Cotton was in the part. Major Amberson looks and talks like an ex-hippie; and the frail, sexless Wilbur is played by a handsome, hearty actor who has way more sex appeal than Greenwood, which makes nonsense of the love triangle.

In the crucial role of Fanny -- the prim, plain-faced, repressed spinster aunt -- Arau casts (I am not making this up!) the vulgar, sexy Jennifer Tilly. Agnes Moorhead, heartbreakingly memorable in the Welles version, is rolling in her grave.

When Arau tries to get arty, he falls right on his face ... turning George's birth into a 1960s acid trip and adding an absurd scene to the ball sequence, where Morgan waltzes with Isabel in the snow while two butlers try to hold parasols over their heads. This sub-Fellini touch is so idiotic, like much of the movie, it becomes unintentionally funny.

Blunder piles on blunder. Isabel, Fanny, and George all appear to have collagen-injected lips, which sums up director Arau's apparent belief that Indiana in 1900 was exactly like Beverly Hills today. The dancers at the ball do the tango (!) as if the story's set in Buenos Aires. Nothing here seems to be happening in the United States, let alone Indiana.

If you know the novel or Welles' flawless, if studio-mangled, adaptation, you will shake your head in amazement: how could this remake turn such wonderful material into such an embarrassing train wreck for all concerned?

PLEASE don't let this inept, tone-deaf mess be your only acquaintance with THE MAGNIFICENT AMBERSONS. See the brilliantly written and directed, perfectly acted Welles version or read Tarkington's masterful Pulitzer Prize-winning novel.

A prisoner with a spotless record, about to be paroled, encounters a series of misunderstandings, unlucky accidents, and set-backs that jeopardize his freedom and his future with the blonde prison infirmary nurse he's fallen in love with. Sound interesting? IT'S NOT!

This movie is so badly written, it might be used as a textbook example of how not to construct a story. The exposition wanders around, trying to get a story started, and fails miserably.

It's not even clear who the main character is until about 45 minutes in. The script seems to have been written as some kind of protest piece against capital punishment. A worse punishment is trying to sit through this movie to the end.

Wooden dialog, poor acting and direction, and scene after scene in which characters' actions make absolutely no sense. This is almost Ed Wood- bad, but sadly it's not "so bad it's good". It's "so bad it's depressing".

SURAM FORTRESS has a bit more narrative than some of Parajanov's films but, as with the others, I still don't always understand what's going on or why. Still, his very eccentricity, breaking every rule of narrative and filmmaking, inspires me in my own work as a playwright and composer.

His use of striking, associative images -- powerful, even when they don't make literal sense -- recalls the great Tarkovsky, who does something similar in his films, in his own very personal style.

Parajanov, like Bresson -- another director who can fascinate and baffle me at the same time -- does everything differently from the way it's usually done, infuriating viewers expecting believable characters and comprehensible stories. With both directors, the results can be uneven, but at their best, they really inspire, stimulate, and get your creative juices flowing.

Bresson, Tarkovsky, and Parajanov prove you can truly try ANYTHING while following your own artistic vision. But, unlike some overpraised fraudulent directors, they are never pretentiously avant- garde for its own sake, phony, insincere, or "different" just to come across as cool, perverse, or faux-profound.

Parajanov and Bresson's boldly individual styles embolden me to be fresher, more original, and think outside of the box in my own work.