This feature was posted on October 25 |
From the
sublime to the ridiculous
By
Ervell E. Menezes
HOLLYWOOD continues to shuttle
between the near-sublime and the close-to-ridiculous. For
every near-art film they produce they have to turn out
thrice as many formula action thrillers. Suddenly , after
a lapse of at least three decades, theyve decided
to pull out Zorro from their closet. Now, on one objects
to that. In fact thats the stuff we were brought up
on. Remember Robin Hood and Captain Blood or Scaramouche
and the Three Musketeers. In the late-1940s and 1950s
sword-fencing was meat and drink to Hollywood which
reared stars like Errol Flynn, Stewart Granger, Mel
Ferrer and company.
But the manner in which
theyve created the new Zorro film, The Mask of
Zorro is rather laboured and far too long. The gag of
having two Zorros is clever. Antonio Banderas is the
junior one and surprise, surprise Anthony Hopkins the
senior one. Newcomer Catherine Zeta-Jones is the
ravishingly beautiful damsel in distress. Not knowing
that she has been kidnapped as a child she has been
brought up as the daughter of the villain Stuart Wilson
who is one of the Spanish nobility. That she finally
comes to know her real father Anthony Hopkins is very
Hindi-filmy but once again it is the manner in which the
realisation is projected that makes the film far too
melodramatic.
For this scriptwriters
John Eskow, Ted Elliott and Terry Ressio must take the
rap. And director Martin Campbell does little to minimise
the melodrama. Actually the humour is welcome and so are
some of the medern touches, like the heroine Catherine
Zeta-Jones fencing with the hero Antonio Banderas. Also
the exuberant Spanish dance in which the same two figure.
But the film is unduly stretched out and whatever element
of freshness there might have been has been flogged
beyond repair. May be they should be rationing raw film
stocks so that future films will be briefer.
Quite a different type of
film is One Night Stand which has Wesley Snipes
and Nastassja Kinski in the lead roles. Mike Figgis of Leaving
Las Vegas fame directs the film which is very
cleverly handled. The story is just what the title says
and ad commercial director Max Carlyle (Snipes), on a
visit to New York, meets with scientist Karen (Kinski)
and circumstances (they were mugged, not surprising in
New York) leads to them having sex. Actually, the affair
would have been forgotten had not the two of them had a
chance of running into each other again.
A year later, when Max
visits New York with his wife Mimi (Ming-Na Wen) to see
his friend Charlie (Robert Downey Jr), who is dying of
AIDS, he meets Karen who is the wife of Charlies
conservative brother Vernon (Kyle MacLachlan). The old
spark of love glows again. But it is Mike Figgis
handling of the subject that is so deft. Shuttling
between the agonies of a dying AIDS patient, and Robert
Downey Jr does an excellent job there, and the
cross-currents of what is an illicit love affair, it
leaves the viewer totally confused. Nay, even devastated.
Is it illicit love at the
time of AIDS that Figgis is trying to describe? Does it
mean that life is short, make the most of it? Or is it
that anything is possible syndrome, in love as in war?
The background music is brilliant. Actually Charlie and
Karen go to a concert and after that the same orchestra
music haunts the viewer throughout the film. Figgis
really goes to town on the AIDS subject. It is so scary,
its almost unbelievable. And then the twists and
turns in the lives of the two couples are handled most
sensitively.
Snipes, who I think is one
of the best black actors in Hollywood today, is very
convincing as the man trying his best to avoid a break-up
and he is adequately supported by the vivacious Nastassja
Kinski. She may have gone on in years but can still show
that spark of sexiness which brought her into the
limelight over a decade ago. It is the competence of
these two preformers that virtually overshadows that of
the other two players, Kyle MacLachlan and Ming-Na-Wen.
And as Ive said before Robert Downey Jr is just out
of this world.
It is a film which makes
you think about the transitoriness of life and the
significance of Horace Walpoles words "life is
a comedy to those who think and a tragedy to those who
feel." It is a mixture of depression and celebration
which is what life sometimes is all about. It is good,
unusual, unexpected cinema, not the run-of-the-mill
Hollywood fare which is quite dispensable.
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