Jeremiah-8

Adultery in and of itself does not necessarily make good drama. Sometimes, it can make good farce, I suppose, but as far as drama is concerned, the best way to handle a love triangle is to tell the story backwards. Neil Jordan's adaptation of The End of the Affair does, in some sense, attempt to tell the story sideways, and is occasionally interesting as a question of, `Where am I now – in their idyllic past or the grim future?'

The opening credits of the film are quite reassuring. Neil Jordan has always been a superb craftsman, and very often a strong storyteller.

For the first ten minutes, I thought I was in for a treat. The camera drifts over the belongings of the protagonist, Bendix (Ralph Fiennes) and then settles in on him typing his novel. `This is a diary of hate,' he begins, and I smiled, knowing that he was going to be the laconic, smart but silly everyman akin to Joseph Cotton in `The Third Man', the Graham Greene protagonist, tough yet brittle, with a wise acre mouth but deep wells of insecurity underneath.

Fiennes and Moore flirt at a party, and talk about the characters in the book he is going to write. This seems to be the most interesting part of their relationship – the attraction stage. Once they get into the affair, which is steamy and highly charged sexually, I promptly lost interest in the movie.

See, there's really not much interest in watching people who are having an affair on film. Perhaps the Graham Greene novel handled this in a poetic way (and the dialogue sounds very much like prose), but onscreen it plays itself out as a somewhat predictable romance which comes to its end. See, it turns into a love triangle between Fiennes, Moore and – well – the Holy Ghost. An incident which caused The End of the Affair brought about Moore's complex relationship with God.

This leads to the movie's major problem, which is that I never felt the "Presence of God" in this film as a character. `Breaking the Waves' had me convinced that God was a guiding force in Beth's life, and was always there. In this film, the miracles feel like plot points.

Perhaps God is underdeveloped as a character because Moore (though excellent) is really given a somewhat limited role. She remains in the background, in a way – a mystery. Fiennes and Rea come through clearer as three dimensional characters. We are never really given insight into what Moore feels – she's always being observed by someone else, be it Fiennes, the private detective he hires, or Jordan's camera. She seems to be a product of the Male Gaze. (Emily Watson was, too, but that was part of the point in `Breaking the Waves' and never flinched from the disturbing aspects of that.)

I spent a good deal of time squirming in my seat, fairly bored by the romance and the ramifications of this affair. However, there was a subplot which really worked. Ian Hart plays the befuddled and lovable detective who is trailing Moore, who strikes up a friendship with Fiennes. He's very by the books, but not a particularly good judge of character.He's smart enough to get it done though, and to realize that his son (who follows him everywhere in training) will be an even better detective than he is.

First of all, the father and son (a little kid) detective team is simply adorable and comic – a welcome change from the heaviness of the rest of the story. The little kid gets our sympathy not for being a cute tyke but because he's a clever sot and a likable joe, like his old man. He has a huge purple birthmark on his face which he's sensitive about, but otherwise seems happy-go-lucky. He becomes perhaps the best, most moving thing about the movie, even though he disappears from most of the second half.

Interesting that the subplot manages to have more heart and soul than the central story, and even more winning is that this is where the movie finds its real miracle.

Woody Allen's film has two things going for it: (1) The jazz guitar score is beautiful, and the scenes where protagonist Emmett Ray is onstage with his band are appropriately charming, fun and had my foot-a-tappin'. Allen loves jazz, and this entire movie exudes the charm of our idyllic '20s and '30s. (2) The film has the enormous benefit of starring Sean Penn, who somehow manages to be a scoundrel, an egomaniacal jerk and an insufferable lout while at the same time being spirited, likable and even charming in an odd sort of way.

Those are two pretty big factors in a character driven film about a jazz musician. Penn works wonders onstage, having mastered the extensive fingerings for the jazz guitar. It's a class act - a daunting job for an actor which he pulls off seamlessly.

Emmett Ray is a womanizing b***ard, and he goes through many ladies throughout the course of the film. Sometimes, this got old (Uma Thurman's one joke ingenue is an insufferably long sequence, but has a good joke at the end.) The critically acclaimed Samantha Morton is tolerable as the mute who loves him, her mannered performance reminiscent of Harpo Marx. Sometimes, it's a little too cutesy - I mean, how many times can you cut to her character eating a ton of food? But she makes a good foil for Penn, her silence forcing him to ramble on hilariously. (After sex he takes out his guitar and asks, "What's your favorite song? snicker Wait, look who I'm askin'!")

Allen also manages to pack in some good comedy, such as Penn taking all his dates to the local dump where he shoots at rats. (When one dame gets on his nerves, he tosses a dead rat casually into her lap.) Or the time he decides to make his stage entrance riding in a big yellow moon. There are so many "Emmett Ray" stories that one of them gets repeated three times. Hilarity ensues.

So I laughed a lot, which is more than I can say for most of Allen's output in the '90s. It's also his most consistent film in years. Sadly, this is the type of project Woody would have knocked off in the old days. Now, it's his finest hour.

Hiyao Miyazaki brings his poetic sensibility to `Princess Mononoke,' the latest from Studio Ghibi. The film is an ecological fable about the conflict between man and nature, but offers no solutions or preachy messages like most animated films. In addition, it doesn't provide the usual scapegoats or easy targets we are used to. The genius of the film lies not only in its pure cinematic excellence (each image is stunning in its beauty and detail), but its willingness to provide clear and understandable motivation for the consumers/exploiters.

Lady Eboshi (voiced elegantly by Minnie Driver) runs Iron Town, a mining village which is reaping its raw material from the Great Forest, taking it by force against the will of the Animal Gods, who battle to regain control over their habitat. Traditionally, Lady Eboshi would be an unrepentant villain who needs to be taught a lesson: destroy the environment and we destroy ourselves. Easy to say, right? Try telling that to the women who work the factory, who were once prostitutes before the lady took them in to work, or the lepers, whom no one but she would hire. Suddenly, the issue becomes clouded. And we understand that technology is both a friend and an enemy. Where would we be without industrial progress? (Miyazaki himself has understood in other films the wonder and glory of these advances, having a fascination for flying mechanisms which runs through his entire body of work.)

However, industrial progress comes with a price, and the film unflinchingly portrays Lady Eboshi's cavalier destruction of the forests and disregard for the lives of the Animal Gods who live there. The Boar Tribe is almost entirely wiped out. The Ape Tribe is afraid to plant new trees for fear of the fiery man made catapults. The Wolf Goddess is dying from a poisoned bullet, grimly accepting her fate.

San (Princess Mononoke, voiced by Clare Danes) is one of the key defenders of the forest, raised by the Wolf Goddess to despise all humans. The iron bullets are transforming the Gods into vicious Demons, wrecking everything in their path, and the damage is going beyond the Forest and Iron Town, into remote villages throughout Japan. The film's protagonist, Ashitaka (voiced by Billy Crudup) comes from such a village, attacked by a mad Demon Boar and leaving him with a poisoned wound which will slowly infect his entire body and corrupt him. Ashitaka rides into town and attempts to bring both sides together in a compromise.

As you can see, the mythos heavy plot requires you to keep up, but the film is consistently entertaining. It features epic battle scenes which rival those of the master, Akira Kurosawa (an admirer of Miyazaki's work), and an understanding of how animals behave which is believable throughout (in body language, gesture and, seemingly, in thoughts.) The adaptation by Neil Gaiman is remarkably vivid, unlike most translations, which seem to lose something special from the source. The voice characterizations range from excellent (Driver, Crudup, Gillian Anderson as the quietly ferocious Wolf God) to questionable (Clare Daines is a bit too cutesy as San, and Billy Bob Thornton is at first seemingly a strange choice as Jiro, a sneaky monk, but neither of them are too distracting. Billy Bob actually grew on me.)

`Princess Mononoke' was one of the finest films I've seen this year.