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killiam
Reviews
Finding Forrester (2000)
Serendipity - A shot to the heart in time of need . . . Possible Spoiler
Dear Fellow Film Reviewers: This is a personal response essay to a remarkable film: "Finding Forrester."
Sometimes we writers suffer a battering from outside and within side - without ever being drunk or stoned or swathed in any other forms of depression or 'typical' writer's maladies ascribed to us by our public: Sometimes we simply suffer from life.
We're all just normal. And so are all of the exigencies of life which visit us.
Such it was for me this past few weeks: I finally 'escaped' from the hospital after 5 weeks of pneumonia and other irritants, not the least of which was cancer #6: melanoma [light case, I'm told - just a stage one.] Frankly, it's almost become boring, cancer: I've been dealing with one kind of cancer or another since 1959 when I started with lymphoma; then Hodgkin's (II, III, IVa, IVb); then bladder; then throat - and, intermittently, all three skin types.
I wish I had a secret to reveal you about 'getting well' - Having none, I wish my magnificent body would simply stay well' instead of 'healing' and keeping 'them' so busy at their work. Over the years, I've become a Professional Medical Economic Unit for the medical profession. I keep em working!
My point: About the magnificent work of writer Mark Rich and director Gus Van Sant and the cast of "Finding Forrester" - - -
I am about to begin produce my first original works - three films, a trilogy - which will be shot simultaneously due to the age (12 years old) of one of the main characters. It's a drama, adapted from a fiction novel-trilogy I wrote in 1995-1997.
These past few weeks have taken a lot of my famous 'drive and spirit' away from my withinness. My 'innerself' seems flat. - That which I had always deemed to be boundless: That automatic 'I never give up. Never - Not Ever.' That Innerself now seems to be soft; just a shapeless cloud wafting around wherever, whatever I am. It was almost as if I was trying to wave it away - leave me be.
Two nights ago I 'doubled' up on codeine-sulfate for pain, extra Valium for severe spasms, garbapentin for neurogenic pain (I'm a spastic-paraplegic) and several others goodies' - - - a few hours later, still hoping for relief, I did it all over again.
I 'knew' that I was 'toying' with overload, and, for the first time in my life, it really didn't matter: I just wanted to be pain free, to hell with the rest..
The last I remember, I had restarted "Quigley" for a third time in between Instrument Flying training films . . . (and, I guess I went to sleep.)
I'm a former drunk: sober almost 20 years. I know better than to toy around with analgesics.' Amazingly enough - I had no hangover. I woke up a little while ago, called the operator and learned that it was Saturday, December1, 2001 - 6:30 - - -
"AM or PM?"
"PM . . ."
Hot damn! I got what I wanted: almost two days, pain free. Night time or not, I made my everyday 'morning' instant oatmeal, flicked on the satellite and . . . There was a film in progress . . .
There was that dirty rotten mean' old F. Murray Abraham - "Professor Robert Crawford" - and young Rob Brown - "Jamal Wallace" (a quiet brilliant student) - going at it during a college (literature?) class.
Power versus accuracy with perhaps a little racism thrown in.
Soon, Sean Connery - "William Forrester (the mentor) - enters the film-story and he and Jamal began to bring life's complexities together.
Bingo: and, "I" began to live.
I began to give a damn.
F**k the pain. - - - "I" wanted to finish my work.
`I' wanted to do what this writer (Mark Rich? - who?) (And Van Sant) had done: put `life' onto the screen which transferred seamlessly into me, his audience.
Not a message film'; a `story' - a `life' into which I could enter, take part, take sides; want an outcome, one I know would not happen - or could it?
What talents; what gifts - given just to me - purely through artists and serendipity.
I hadn't a clue about the film beforehand; nothing about its time to play - or anything about it at all. I just flipped on the clicker' and there it was, somewhere after it had started.
Watching `Finding Forrester' I was absorbed, I went inside.
I went inside of the film, lived there, stayed there until ending credits finished and pushed me back out. And I knew I was different for it.
During my visit inside of `their' world, my enerergies began to reassemble, reinvade my life, they 'apologized' for having been outside - claiming there was always a tether upon which for me to pull them back inside. (Yeah, right: that's why I was so despondent and lonely!)
I knew and know now, that as the work of Van Sant and Rich developed in `Finding Forrester' they made me come alive again; and that the excitement of my looking forward to the battles ahead this spring, are a gift of life which comes only from artists giving their all invisibly to each other.
Sometimes the marriage of a director and a writer and uncanny casting can touch our creative selves at what seems to be a most desperate, hopeless time. `Finding Forrester' was that for me.
They touched me with a work so complicated it appears simple - a work done by actors who gave of themselves so completely, so remarkably, so honestly, with such purity and simplicity - that I've had all words which were ever present inside of me before watching `Finding Forrester' vacuumed out of my brain and I am left with just these four words for the writer, director and cast of `Finding Forrester' -
Thank you, very much!
Please, do see this film.
Killiam Tierney - killiam@earthlink.net
Dying Young (1991)
A love story which stays inside of you long after viewing.
A love story, deep and consuming. The characters stay with you, like family.
(I'm not sure what a 'spoiler' might be with a title like 'Dying Young' - so, if you don't wish to know what the movie is about . . . skip this comment!)
I've survived five different cancers since 1959. I've watched many others die from cancer, mostly because I've been treated in Veterans Hospitals since 1961 which had 'open cancer wards' of forty to sixty beds and we see all there is to see in each other's lives. I've seen this movie in real life, mine and many others' lives and families.
You will be utterly absorbed by the consummate, intricate writing of Richard Freidenberg's adaptation of the Marti Leimbach novel and the 'invisible' direction - my finest compliment - done by Joel Schumacher.
Throughout the film you'll be absorbed by the character's lives. How utterly real their pain, how complete their anguish, how deep their fear,how intense their love: both of the cancer victim Victor Geddes (Campbell Scott) and the loved ones - especially the caretaker becoming lover, Hiliary O'Neil (Julia Roberts).
If the Victor Geddes character had AIDS or Parkinson or Alzheimer's Disease? The audience and reviews would be thunderous applause; nines and tens. But: about cancer? The audience is frightened to give acclaim to cancer, the shadow disease.
The predictable audience reaction to a cancer victim story is amazing: Viewers fear contagion! In real life - friends, relatives, loved ones are frightened to death to visit a person with cancer; to 'touch' them?, to breath their air?, to be nearby?. That fear is brought to the theater, to the television and to the VCR. Fear is the Bitch Goddess of Cancer and was ever present in 'Dying Yong'!
I've never seen Julia Roberts (with whom I've been stuck since 'Pretty Woman") 'disappear into a role' as she did portraying the woman in love with a man dying with cancer. (I didn't see it in 'Erin Brockavich', at least not by comparison). Campbell Scott, playing the cancer sick Vic Geddes, is likewise consumed by the character and is invisible as an actor. There is not an actor before the camera throughout the film . . . just people about whom you Give-A-Damn; about people, not actors.
This is an amazing film.
Some might think I am biased because of my having had cancer: Perhaps. But, to see the gut wrenching under current, words which are never said, emotions programmatically withheld, denial and lies issued and ignored even though instantly recognized until there is a no longer any ability to do so was (is) the most profound treatment of catastrophic illness I've ever seen on film. I kept wanting to yell at each character to speak up, shout, get it out, say something!
(I wonder if those who have not had cancer had that same reaction.)
I hope that those who see this film will see the magnificence of its incredible love story (in spite of illness!) and feel its adroit kick in the shin rendered against the 'silence and lies' between those about whom you care when ill. This story is about love, about life, not about death.
If ever an actor deserved to be awarded an Oscar it was Julia Roberts' portrayal of a woman in love with a man dying with cancer in 'Dying Young.'
See this film: It is an incredible love story! You'll feel happy for all the characters, and, yourself.
Killiam Tierney