Reviews

There are dozens of excellent reviews written about this film that to add another one filled with gushing praise would be redundant, albeit accurate. But what I would like to comment upon is a kind of nasty, mocking cult that has grown up around this classic film.

I was just a teenager when this film was released, and even though back then we were avid rock & roll fans and certainly were keenly aware of how terrible it was to be thought of as "square" (we worked as much at being "cool" as we did at anything else), our peers didn't point and laugh if we ventured to say that we thought TSOM was a spectacular film. There was not the almost insidious maligning of TSOM as a joke, as a totally uncool, corny film as had developed some years later. The need to mock TSOM as sport was at a peak I would say, however unscientifically, around the late 70s, early 80s. Recently it seems to have abated somewhat since those peak years, but remnants of it still doggedly persists, even to this day. It's irrational, it's peer-driven and it's sophomoric.

My take on it, again, wholly unscientific, is that after the Watergate era, anything that had a happy ending was suspect. People wanted hard reality; the musical genre itself was totally out of favor. A format in which the characters burst into song was a suspension of disbelief that audiences could no longer sustain. Musicals, unless they were WOODSTOCK or LADIES AND GENTELMEN THE ROLLING STONES, were disdained by the young. THE SOUND OF MUSIC, MY FAIR LADY, THE UNSINKABLE MOLLY BROWN were a dying breed. I surmise that because THE SOUND OF MUSIC was *so* incredibly popular, it turned out to be the biggest target. The undeniable fact it had certifiably "cute" moments was a major detriment. We had become much to jaded to respond to it with anything but cynicism. Yet anyone who actually watches this film sans this prejudice, will easily see that there are dark undertones that grow louder as the film progresses. The Nazi threat is real and it isn't exactly the stuff that cute fluff is made of.

We are lucky enough to be running a new print of this title next week in our outdoor venue in Prospect Park, Brooklyn NY (Celebrate Brooklyn), and so tonight we began running the coming attraction for it. Wouldn't you know it, some of our staff, all in their early twenties (and most of whom I guarantee have never seen this film on a real movie screen), were making derogatory comments about the "The Puke of Music" as one smartass called it. Then much to the embarrassment and chagrin of these MTV generation upstarts and despite that lingering cult that says to be cool you need to loudly mock the Robert Wise triumph, an audience of 3500 who watched the coming attraction broke into spontaneous, thunderous applause as the "Climb Every Mountain" chorus crescendo ended the trailer.

So go ahead, all you oh-so-cool hiphop-sters, mock away -- but deep down, you and I both know that your protests are nothing but a great sham, and like 99.99% of the rest of the entire civilized world, you *love* THE SOUND OF MUSIC. Come out of the closet....we'll all welcome you with open arms.

I think most every critique I've heard pro and con about THE PASSION so far has been colored by ideological glasses. The Jewish contingent hated it because they perceived it as portraying the Jews in a bad light. I understand that, but I can find lots of titles that portray different groups not to their liking. My criticism -- the real objection to how the Jews were portrayed -- was that they were nothing but caricatures, the result of a terrible script and worse directing.

This is the worst failing that can be leveled at any screenplay and any director, and it impugns the integrity of the film more than political overtones. This is the same criticism leveled at the portrayal of the Roman soldiers -- they are nothing caricatures. Can it be that not a single Roman had ANY trace of compassion or humanity? How stereotyped is that? And how totally unbelievable. If anything, the Italians should be even more insulted than the Jews about the portrayal of their country men.

But then comes the gratuitous, unrelenting violence....it is abhorrent. I got it Mr. Gibson -- Christ was scourged. I got it in the first 3 min of the scourging; I got it after the next 15 minutes. To prolong those torture scenes was about the most viscous, unnecessary violence I have ever seen on a movie screen. I would have thought there would have been an outcry from every corner of the political and religious spectrum about that -- from the Jews, from the Christians and the especially from the Churches since all that violence was nothing more than using the suffering of Christ, whether you think he is the Lord or just a poor guy caught up in the politics of the day, he was a human being and to trade on that suffering to make a movie sensational, debases all of us. But I guess gratuitous violence is tolerable, even perfectly acceptable if it is enlisted to prove some religious ideology.

The film teaches us nothing. Not about the man, not about his divinity, not about the underlying historical context in which he was sacrificed -- absolutely nothing. I think it is a loathsome film and I am ashamed that so-called religious people overlooked all that is wrong with it and praised it just because, whether consciously or unconsciously, they could use it as a kind of weapon against another religious group. It is despicable mix feeding on violence and religious sensibilities to make a buck....it is so crass that even Hollywood, much to its credit, turned it down. But I guess where there is a buck to be made, SOMEONE will grab it to make more, no matter how sleazy the project. The fact that it was made independently of Hollywood doesn't absolve it of its glaring, disgusting faults.

This is what happens when an actor is handed a video camera and convinces himself that he has the talent to make a full-length feature as his first "project" out of the starting gate, rather than honing his directorial skills on smaller, lesser efforts first.

CHELSEA WALLS is a meandering, unfocused film that has all the ear-markings of a self-indulgent, pretentious, look-at-me-world-I'm-directing film school assignment. Scenes go on excruciatingly long, saying nothing and begging for an editor, and worse, not even creating a mood for any substantial ideas to build on. It seems that the ONLY rational idea that comes out of this hodge-podge of ill-defined, self-pitying and pitiful characters is no more than that old, hackneyed cliché that somehow if you are a drunk, an addict or a looser -- or better yet, all of the above, then any gibberish issuing forth from your mouth or your pen MUST be high art.

Of course this is nonsense. But it seems that the director has incorporated that misnomer as his own film-making style -- evidently he feels that all he has to do is aim a camera and shoot without benefit of script, or even a vague notion of what should happen from point A to point B, without adequate lighting or even a simple focus puller, and that will somehow the resultant murky, low contrast, dark (in many scenes, barely visible) and mostly out-of-focus images will rise to "Film Festival Winner" quality. This too is film student's cliché and it is dead wrong. Hopefully by the senior year they have either learned how wrong this is, or they have flunked out. I am afraid, Mr. Hawke is about to flunk out.

If you think it is fun to sit and watch Kris Kristofferson play a falling down, drooling, nearly incoherent drunk, then by all means, knock yourself out. If you think you will be entertained by an endless string of poorly lit scenes in which the characters are barely visible while they spout nonsense lines, supposedly odes to the famous artists who once populated that hotel like Bob Dylan -- however, Dylan they certainly are not, then by all means, hunker down because CHELSEA WALLS is peppered with this kind of aimless, pointless dialogue; it's the "poetic meat" of the film, or so Ethan Hawke keeps telling the hosts on the string of talk shows he's visited in the last week to promote this unpleasant, oh-so-serious trash (even Andy Warhol's TRASH had sense enough to laugh at itself).

The film's director keeps bragging that it only cost him $100,000 to make. It looks it. It feels it. Now there certainly have been plenty of films out of Hollywood that cost hundreds of millions and nevertheless wound up being nothing but garbage, but at least in those they had enough money to pay for key and fill lights so you could at least see the garbage that was going on.

If this is what video-to-film is going to engender -- all those actors who think they can be directors because they can cough up enough money to direct a vanity "movie," then please, in the spirit of truth-in-advertising, let it be clearly stated on the marquee before we plunk down our $10.50 -- "This film was made with a video camera for less money than most productions spend on sandwiches for the crew -- enter at your own risk."

For nearly the first hour, not more than a few pages of dialogue are spoken. Yet the camera is able to tell a complicated narrative as well as evoke powerful emotions with nothing but pure visuals. The scenes that establish the emotional relationship between the 10 year old protagonist and his equestrian soul-mate not only move the story along, but provide us with some of the most stunning visuals I have ever seen on film. It recalls the powerful visuals of films like 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY and NANOOK OF THE NORTH.

Then there is the mind-boggling riding stunts, if they are stunts that leaves one staring in wonder at what the young actor is doing right before our eyes. As far as I could tell, and it was the consensus of everyone who saw this film with me, there were no trick shots and no stunt doubles. The camera is too close and it is obvious that what we are seeing is real. Without giving much more than that away (because these sequences really need to unfold before you with no foreknowledge), it is enough to say that the first half of the film could stand alone as a complete work. Coupled with Carmine Coppola's exquisite score that matches every subtle turn of feeling with every scene, the picture is a joy to behold. A sequence with choreographed movement underwater is nothing short of an incredible ballet. How this film did not wind up on every one of those silly "top 100 films of all time" lists, I cannot fathom. How it did not win a multitude of Academy Awards is a mystery. Caleb Deschanel's cinematography is simply breathtaking.

The second half is no less a pleasure, but as the studios are wont to dictate, a story in the age of MTV and LETHAL WEAPON 16 cannot remain subtle and esoteric -- it can't be simply about the powerful bond between friends, boy and horse, man and boy....trust between creatures beyond words and definitions. So there is conflict, action and a race; the tension that makes for exciting storytelling, yet the rich emotional texture that is achieved even without these more mundane fixtures still dominate the work. And I must add, those more spiritual qualities surprisingly are not diminished by the action sequences but remain the dominant elements of the film's power-of-the-whole. And where there is dialogue, much to director Ballard's credit, it is kept sparse, it's not strained but is quite believable. Even Mikey Rooney, who could have been any director's worst nightmare, turns out a touching performance.

This is a film that marries every element perfectly -- from the music to the photography to the precision editing to an improbable performance from such a young actor. The loudest kudos must go to the young Kelly Reno who turns out a performance that rivets you from the first scene to the last with its power and simplicity.

This is not just a good film -- this is a masterpiece; it's what cinema is all about. And of course the only way to see it is in a theatre on a large theatre screen, NOT on a 19in TV set. Even DVD is more like a xerox copy compared to the definition that a 35mm print provides. If there is an art cinema near you, go to the director and plead with him/her to book this gem. Bring your kids or your nieces and nephews -- the younger generation needs to see what real film-making is all about. And powerful statements about trust and friendship and personal strength wouldn't hurt them either.