Babylon, USA

Finding amusement in the thin, flat tract of routinized suburbia called Long Island is easy. Finding poetry in that glacial deposit of post-World War 2 optimism just a few miles from Manhattan is where storytellers usually stumble. The less visionary settle for rue or bitter satire. The more clear sighted (like first time feature director Eric Mendelsohn) in his haunting and hopeful "Judy Berlin" sustain a reverence for such dappled things as the fuzzy cry of Long Island Railroad whistles, the hushed moments when streetlights snap of at dawn, and the hum of the vacuum cleaners as black housekeepers tidy the living rooms of their white employers. When I first saw this drama at Sundance a year ago, I liked it. On second viewing, I think I love it. "Judy Berlin" is about fuzzy, hushed, humming moments of possibility experienced by an interrelated assortment of Long Islanders on an early autumn day when an eclipse upsets ordinary routine. It's also more specifically, about a sunny woman and a moony man who cross paths just as magically. In Mendelsohn' astronomy, 30ish Judy herself ("The Soprano's" Edie Falco) represents the Island at its most resilient. Friend to everyone in her hometown, she's a former tough girl and current aspiring actress with a mouthful of braces and no particular talent except for enthusiasm. And on this day she's saying her goodbyes before she tries her luck in Los Angeles. Judy's former high school classmate David Gold (Aaron Harnick) is a walking amalgam of everything arrested, depressed and stultified from that same address - the lost boy who never grow up. An aspiring film-maker, he went to L.A. only to return home, defeated, to his parents. Judy bubbles; David despairs, in Woody Allenish cadences. (Mendelsohn used to work as an assistant to Allen's costumer.) Yin and yang, light and dark, night and day. The film-maker balances the two with gyroscopic poise, while those around them weigh their own options for transformation. Holding the mother together as much as the sweetness of the performances is cinematographer Jeffrey Seckendorf's velvety black and white photography, which lavished the same admiration on knick-knackery in the Gold's living room as it does on trees swaying from the flapping wings of birds feeling the approaching eclipse. But "Judy Berlin's" sustained loveliness and the graciousness with which Mendelsohn acknowledges what's precious and what's paralyzing about the place he comes from - well, that is the film-maker's own gift from the suburbs.

JUDY BERLIN (2000) ** Edie Falco, Barbara Barrie, Bob Dishy, Madeleine Kahn, Aaron Harnick, Julie Kavner, Anne Meara.

The Sundance Film Festival has recently been the equivalent of the farm system in baseball: the pick of the crop for the big leagues. Once again it has managed to make a small, independent film a chance at the 'show' with the winner of the 1999 Best Director Award with new filmmaker Eric Mendelsohn's unique comedy/drama.

Edie Falco (the Emmy winning delight of HBO's juggernaut series 'The Sopranos') stars as the eponymous character as a slightly goofy woman whose desire to move to California to pursue her dream of being a real actress is set in the day in the life of her last day in the dream like visage of Babylon, Long Island, where her current gig is as a historical recreationist (i.e. like going to Colonial Williamsburg to see how the settlers lived).

Also included in the series of vignettes are her mother Sue (the wonderful character actress Barrie, late of tv's 'Suddenly Susan') as an elementary school student who inspires her students to prepare for the day's solar eclipse; Dishy as the school's sad-faced principal; Meara and Kavner (also vets of the comedy pantheon better known for the better half of Ben & Jerry and Marge Simpson, respectively) as the school's secretary and kitchen worker.

The only connecting theme overall is how mundane life can be when one's full potential is either aborted, forecluded or non-existent and equal parts could be argued for Dishy and Kahn's mopey 30 yr.old filmmaker son (Harnick, the real-life son of Barrie) who happens upon Falco and tags along for her last day home, discovering some little known secretive points of interest.

Mendelsohn's shoe-string budgeted production only enhances the simplistic yet well acted piece and provides a dreamy ethereal plane of existence with his economically yet artistically smart use of gorgeous black and white cinematography (kudos to Jeffrey Seckendorf) suggests an endless timepiece. What he lacks in big scale opportunity is compensated for a fine comic timed performance piece.

Sadly this was Kahn's swan song and she gives a nicely layered performance of daffiness mixed with an innate sadness – the best of all clowns by the way in their art – as the housewife to Dishy, who realizes that things aren't so great after all. Her sing-song deliveries are priceless in her dewy-eyed optimism.

What is lacking however is any real one character to root for or hold a more potent interest – more than the sum of its parts – when instead a sprinkling of eccentricities and divine human emotion predominate the film as a whole; not a bad thing at all.

In a film full of wonderful, low-key performances by actors playing lonely, unhappy characters, Madeline Kahn is the standout as a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown. Unlike any other performance she gave in film, Kahn -- known for her comic roles -- turns in a marvelous, dramatic turn that should have netted her a posthomous Academy Award nomination. She is simply brilliant, and she should have been given a lot more dramatic roles in her career. After all, they say that comedy is the hardest thing for an actor to do, and with all the great comic roles she had -- in "Paper Moon," "Blazing Saddles" and "Young Frankenstein," just to name a few -- directors should have known that behind those funny faces was a great actress who could play any role.

This is an overlooked and sadly neglected little gem of a film, primarily because of some wonderful performances, especially the sadly underused Barbara Barrie. The other 3 main players are also wonderful, Bob Dishy, Madeline Kahn, and Bette Henritze. Edie Falco is competent without reaching their high standards. I don't understand the negative comments about the score as it's one of the better one's I've heard in years. Certainly better than anything by minimalist Phillip Glass, which another reviewer compared it to, and light years better than Danny Elfman or any of his other bombastic compatriots could devise. And it was nice to see a film of this nature done in black and white for once...and done so just because black and white can be as beautiful as color (though it's clearly not up to the standards of earlier Hollywood films), not because it's attempting to be some kind of pseudo-noir film.

Remember when art films weren't directed by teenagers for teenagers? Remember when they didn't have anything to do with pop culture. Remember when there was actually something as an adult culture?

Neither do I. But there must be some old people out there who do.

"Independent films", a new genre that has replaced what used to be called "art films", are not worthy of their name. They're, on the whole, hip, mass-marketed screwball comedies, "chick flicks", novelty films, etc. Little other than budget separates an "independent film" from a slick, cynical Hollywood marketing effort. In fact, many independent films are slick, cynical Hollywood marketing efforts.

Seeing Judy Berlin is what it used to be like seeing art films. The very fact that nothing in it is designed to shock or surprise you will shock and surprise you. The very fact that nothing in it was test-screened for maximal emotional manipulation will maximally emotionally manipulate you. The fact that no surprising plot twists were inserted to make you want to go see it again will so surprise you that you will want to see it again.

This is not necessarily an endorsement. But I want to stress that this is a film that will not remind you of any other film. It will not be die hard on an anything. It doesn't count Gilligan's Island and My Favorite Martian among its influences, but Checkhov, Camus and Bergman--the sorts of things you've been taught to think are pretentious and stodgy. It is something new--even dare I say it, experimental. Gasp! Avant garde. It wasn't made to make the most money possible. There will be no toy tie-in available with your happy meal.

Whatever you think of this film, cherish it as a kind of throwback, a one-in-a-million, the last dodo bird yet living.