Tag: Jan Rubes

Witness (1985, Peter Weir)

Witness has a beautifully directed scene or sequence every five to ten minutes. Just something director Weir is able to particularly nail, sometimes with John Seale’s photography’s help, sometimes with Thom Noble’s editing, then probably least of all, with Maurice Jarre’s score’s help. Jarre’s score is good, very pretty, and occasionally redundant; when it sells a scene, however, it stands out. There are a couple where it’s all on Jarre. There just happen to be a lot more leveraging the photography and editing. Though mostly the Seale photography; Witness is often absolutely, intentionally gorgeous.

Weir directs some of Witness like a Western, which isn’t too much of a stretch since it’s got a Western’s story. Harrison Ford is a city cop who ends up having to hide out with the Amish to protect himself and a defenseless witness (eight year-old Lukas Haas) from the bad guys. Haas and his mom, Kelly McGillis, were traveling through the city and Haas witnessed a murder and Ford needs him to identify the killer.

The film opens with McGillis and Haas at home, in mourning—McGillis’s husband has just died and they’re going to visit family, leaving father-in-law Jan Rubes and prospective (whether McGillis is interested or not) new husband Alexander Godunov waiting for their return. The first half of the first act is Haas experiencing the big city, albeit through the train station, for the first time. Pretty soon it’s going to open up to his experience of the police investigation into the murder; once they get back to Amish Country, however, the film’s going to quickly lose track of Haas.

During the police investigation in the city, there’s a lot of procedural as Ford figures out what’s going on after Haas spots the bad guy and a bit of character backstory revelation. The film handles the exposition dump rather affably, given the violence around it; McGillis and Haas have to spend the night at Patti LuPone’s house—LuPone is Ford’s sister—and the next morning McGillis gives Ford the rundown on what LuPone really thinks.

McGillis and Ford have a standoffish relationship until after they get to the country, when McGillis has to nurse Ford back to health, setting them up on an inevitable romance arc. McGillis is risking everything for it, Ford not so much. Weir handles the romance with more distance than anything else in the film. Remote third person. We rarely get to see McGillis and Ford together, usually only for the most cinematic romantic sequences. The distance works, not just for the classy romance novel cover takes on their constrained love scenes, but also because it means Witness doesn’t have to delve too deep into the character development. There’s a never addressed, bulbous subtext about men controlling women—starting with all the Amish and McGillis, then Ford dictating LuPone’s social life, then Rubes dictating McGillis’s… it goes on and on and on. And Weir does his damndest to avoid it.

Because if the first act is Haas and his experience of life among the English, the second act ought to be McGillis’s, only it’s not. It’s also not Ford’s. He gets to do action hero in the third act—in an exquisite sequence from Weir, Seale, and Noble—but the second act is this roaming narrative about the situation of Ford recuperating in hiding, with Weir’s direction giving the film the structure, not the script.

It’s not a character study, it’s not a melodrama, it’s not a mystery. Committing to any specific genre would make the script’s decencies too obvious. So for the toughest spots, Weir just lets Jarre’s music have it and Jarre makes it work.

There are times when Jarre is more part of the team—the fantastic barn raising sequence, for example—and while they work better overall, it’s still cool to see (and hear) Jarre make the problem of disappearing subplots just not matter.

Ford and McGillis are good. The distanced approach works for them. Haas and Rubes are great. Godunov’s good, even though he’s basically a handsome creep. Josef Sommer, Brent Jennings, and Danny Glover are all good as the city cops. Glover gets the best showcase, Jennings gets the least.

Witness is really good. Weir’s direction is solid throughout, but when it’s better than the norm, it’s very special, which scales to the film itself.

Dead of Winter (1987, Arthur Penn)

Loathe as I am to be glib about a director like Arthur Penn, Dead of Winter comes off like a TNT Original Movie. Penn proves himself–with the exception of maybe one scene and even then it’s awkward because it’s Arthur Penn using Steadicam–almost completely inept at directing a thriller. The script’s hardly anything special and maybe a good deal of the problems come from it, but Penn fails to instill any foreboding into the film. There’s some goofy stuff in the last act (another reason it reminds me of a TV movie is how every single development in the climax is utterly predictable–like a stage play with spotlights on important objects or ideas), but the goofy stuff only hurts it a little; insignificant damage.

The opening scene is bad, poorly handled because of details the viewer isn’t supposed to know yet, but Dead of Winter recovers immediately following. Mary Steenburgen and William Russ make a good couple–though their marital status comes as a bit of a surprise later on–and they help the film find its feet. The scenes with Steenburgen as the working actress (soaps and commercials) are good. So good, I didn’t even notice Canada was standing in for New York (which might be Penn’s greatest achievement with this one). Even Roddy McDowell is good at the beginning. Later–everything with Dead of Winter is later, because of how poorly the script handles the big reveal–the script cuts McDowell’s character loose and he gets progressively hammier.

As the plot developed, I got the feeling Penn was going for a modified haunted house thriller. He doesn’t. He plays the entire thing straight and that approach is why it’s a TV movie. It’s not even a glorified TV movie, given the cast. As good as Jan Rubes is in the film as the villain, his best moments are probably off-screen; the script hints at his deviousness, but never shows it.

I really do want to give away the film’s final plunge into risibility, but it is a surprise and Dead of Winter is–kind of–worth seeing. Watching Penn fail is painful, but it’s an interesting flop.

But the biggest problem with the film is the script and its handling of Steenburgen’s character. The viewer is supposed to believe Mary Steenburgen is a complete fool. Not just a complete fool, but a complete fool of a New Yorker who somehow managed not to end up dead in a trash can during her time there. Steenburgen’s character’s so stupid, she’d have trouble opening doors. But, only when it comes to her dupability. The rest of the time it’s Mary Steenburgen and she’s with it.

The character’s guilelessness throughout the film makes the third act impossible to believe, when Dead of Winter gets around to having that third act all thrillers need to have.

It was clear from the start there was something off with the film, but it maintained a decent mediocrity–combined with Penn’s bewildering direction–until the last twenty-five minutes or so. Then it just got worse and worse.

1/4★

CREDITS

Directed by Arthur Penn; written by Marc Shmuger and Mark Malone; director of photography, Jan Weincke; edited by Rick Shaine; music by Richard Einhorn; production designer, Bill Brodie; produced by John Bloomgarden and Shmuger; released by Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer.

Starring Mary Steenburgen (Katie McGovern), Roddy McDowall (Mr. Murray), Jan Rubes (Dr. Joseph Lewis), William Russ (Rob Sweeney), Ken Pogue (Officer Mullavy), Wayne Robson (Officer Huntley) and Mark Malone (Roland McGovern).

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Class Action (1991, Michael Apted)

With Conrad L. Hall shooting it and James Horner (pre-Titanic and fame) scoring, Class Action is great looking and sounding. Apted’s composition is frequently excellent. But it’s a vehicle for Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio and it, rather unfortunately, eventually just works on that vehicle level. There’s no real surprises, no real content… just running time with good acting, directing and production values and nothing else. Class Action isn’t even an exciting courtroom drama. There are maybe three scenes in court. Most of the movie is Mastrantonio realizing she doesn’t want to be a heartless corporate lawyer and, given how evil her bosses act, it’s not a surprise.

There is one excellent underlying detail to the movie though–with Mastrantonio playing Gene Hackman’s daughter and Larry Fishburne playing his protégé, the film actually takes the time to acknowledge (but not explore, which is realistic but not necessarily the best move in such an anorexic story) their complicated relationship. The scenes with Mastrantonio and Fishburne are her best, mostly because her other relationships are generic. She’s mad at Dad, so those scenes have to play a certain way. The scenes with love interest Colin Friels are troublesome (as is Friels’s one note performance), because it’s unbelievable she’d ever be with him.

As for Hackman… he’s great in the scenes with Mastrantonio. Her worst and his best (she’s good throughout and excellent in parts, just not those). Even though Hall’s lighting is most loving for Mastrantonio (her skin glows), he’s very soft on Hackman too. The other Hackman scenes are somewhat standard Hackman material, but in the scenes with Mastrantonio, he’s exercising some of his other acting muscles.

The supporting cast–besides Jonathan Silverman (his performance in this one is indistinguishable from, say, Weekend at Bernie’s)–is solid, Jan Rubes, Fred Dalton Thompson and Matt Clark being the standouts. And Fishburne, of course.

Class Action is fine, but had it definitely gone either way–legal drama, family drama–it would have been in better shape. But for a movie written by a couple “Growing Pains” writers, it’s pretty good.