pamsfriend

Sometime between 1979 and today, filmmakers have lost the ability to tell a suspenseful story, to flesh out characters, so that today we see more style than substance, more gore and mayhem than plot development.

The Day of the Jackal, Marathon Man, Eye of the Needle, The Boys From Brazil and others will be labeled boring by many here because they must wait for something to happen. A typical example from Odessa is the reunion scene. Voight infiltrates the meeting of old German soldiers, make that old devoted Nazis, gathering in a beer hall. He snaps a photo of the speaker, shouting what sounds like the words of the pre-war Deutschland uber Alles. One man comes and begins his eviction from the hall. In the next scene we see him nursing his wounds, which are far more serious than the pushes we see. Tell me that today we would not witness a brutal beating punch by punch, kick by kick.

Films then used violence to advance the plot, such as the "Is it safe?" interrogation in Marathon Man. Seventies films are no shorter than today's masterpieces, but so much more intricate plot is compressed into their time frame.

Three Days of the Jackal is a perfect telling of a Forsyth book; we never become involved with the characters but watch in fascination. Here we follow Miller (Voight) giving us a horse in the race. I have reservations about the final confrontation with Schell and Miller's motivations but I have none about the story in general.

Only in the score does Odessa fall short; the music sounds almost if it was added as an afterthought and does nothing to enhance moods or foreshadow scenes. Worse, the score seems the beginning of a pattern that continues to this day where in some scenes the music is the main character. Only the bier-hall singing of the old Nazis sounds appropriate.

I rated the film 8 of 10.

A walk in the park, a fine romance, a Indy Jones and the Last Crusade. Come on, a combination of Russell Banks and Paul Shrader, the author who explores a school bus accident and the writer/director from Taxi Driver, or The Comfort of Strangers. Did you really expect a happy ending? The film is a dark side vision of Richard Russo's Nobody's Fool, which Paul Newman and Robert Benton turned into a tale of redemption on screen in that same part of the world. No redemption here. As Wade's brother's final voice-over lets you know that Wade is still out there, reliving his father's life, you are relieved to be permitted to leave this claustrophobic world.

Painful scene after painful scene are piled on each other, none more so than the painful rejection of Wade by his little girl. Children go through periods where their parents are embarrassments to them, but in this case, it is more of a fear than a shame of Wade that makes her want to be in her mother's arms.

This is a great film of uncompromising realism. It is a modern Jude The Obscure, but at least you were allowed to see Jude when he had hope and some happiness, and at the end he simply wore himself out. At the end of Affliction, all that you know is that Wade is out there in the world, his angers banked.

The film works because of Nolte's performance. Coburn has an easier job, but he carries it off. The sub-plots mean little, but show us Wade/Nolte in a field of action, and demonstrate that it is not only his personal life that is a mess.

Odd that Banks' The Sweet Hereafter locale was moved from upstate New York to British Columbia, and this film of bare rock, flinty New Hampshire was made in Canada also.

Hollywoodland is really a tale of the redemption of Louis Simo. The death of George Reeves is the Maguffin that takes our eye off the main story. Simo could have been investigating the auto accident that took James Dean's life, or he could have been transplanted to an earlier or later age, but his finding himself is the main tale of this film.

When we meet him, he is sort of the Sammy Glick of PI's, an almost obnoxious man who knows how to get his name and cases in the papers and knows all the tricks, though little good it does him since he has no idea what is really going on. With his sloppy clothes and his two day beard, it is hard to imagine anyone hiring him. He almost croaks when he realizes he has to put on a sports coat to meet Reeves' mother.

He has this cocky self-confidence and the chutzpah to carry off his role as the rebel detective, but like Jake Gittes, in the end he realizes he is in over his head and that all his play-acting has only resulted in a husband killing the wife he suspects of philandering, and to no definite answer in the death of Reeves.

In the last scene, he is dressed in a suit and tie, sitting outside the house of his estranged wife and child. ostensibly waiting to resume a regular job being the child's father. The fool of a woman looks like she is going to take him back. His days of detection, of being a cut-rate Sam Spade are over.

Brody is interesting in the role. He is like Nicholson but without the edge in his voice. Often his lines are blurred, purposely, so that close attention must be paid. Brody/Simo is acting at being a private dick.

The actor in the film, Affleck as Reeves, never stops acting whether in public or private life. His insecurities are only revealed to Diane Lane, or Jeffrey deMunn, his agent, who gives a wonderful turn to the role. Bob Hoskins comes straight out of his Harold Shand in Long Good Friday. Any minute you expect him to descend to Shandian rage.

The film draws you in, so that by the end you accept the lack of resolution as to the fate of Reeves.