I Hated, Hated, Hated This Movie, page 47
When the Whales Came
(Directed by Clive Rees; starring Paul Scofield, Helen Mirren; 1989)
When the Whales Came is the gloomy story of how the gloomy inhabitants of the gloomiest island in the world save themselves from a gloomy fate that would have forced them to leave their barren and overcast outpost in the stormy sea, and move to the jolly mainland. Like all such movies, it features a crowd of extras who wear old clothes and materialize out of thin air on command, to portray the island’s poor and weather-beaten inhabitants.
I realize I am not getting into the spirit of this movie. I know that as a responsible viewer, it is my responsibility to describe it as an urgent and important fable about the fate of Earth, and I am supposed to cheer because the islanders save some whales and thus avoid a curse that drove everyone off of a nearby island seventy years ago.
God knows I am in favor of the whales. I think we should all stop buying Japanese products until the Japanese stop their single-minded campaign to murder every last whale they can get their hands on. That should not be too great a sacrifice, since if such a boycott were really enforced, it would probably only last two days. But loving the whales and loving this movie are two different enterprises, and to the degree that When the Whales Came makes the fate of the whales seem like a dreary and boring subject, it is like to harm the cause.
The movie takes place on the eve of World War I, on the forbidding and rain-swept island of Bryher, off the southwest coast of England. Here the stubborn inhabitants eke out lives of poverty and hard labor. Not far away across the waters is the island of Samson, which has been deserted for years. In the opening sequence of the film, we find out what drove the people away from Samson. When a school of whales swam ashore, the inhabitants butchered them, bringing down upon their heads a series of disasters, diseases, and wells that ran dry.
Only one man remembers those events on Samson. He was a boy then, and he and his mother were the last to leave the island. Now he is an old man, deaf and reclusive, and he lives in a rude cottage on the edge of the sea. He is known as the Birdman (Paul Scofield). Two local children (Max Rennie and Helen Pearce) become friends with the Birdman, and learn to share his love of living things.
Meanwhile, life goes on. We meet the boy’s parents (David Threlfall and Helen Mirren), and watch as the father goes off to fight the war and is reported missing. Later in the film, the father miraculously returns from the war, alive after all, and only a grouch would point out that the entire story of his going off to, and coming back from, the war is entirely irrelevant to the rest of the story (unless the villagers, by sparing the whales, somehow saved his life—a conclusion so banal I am reluctant to subscribe to it).
One day a rare narwhale beaches itself on the island. The inhabitants immediately plan to kill it for its rare tusk, which is long and spiraled and looks like a unicorn’s. Three local juvenile delinquents meanwhile burn down the Birdman’s cottage, but he disregards the tragedy, murmuring “Nothing else matters now” as he attempts to save the whale from the mob of extras who have appeared from over the nearest dune. The children help the deaf man to communicate the history of the tragic island of Samson—and the unruly crowd, once it has heard his story, immediately does an emotional about-face and pitches in to save the whale, after which they stand on the beach, waving torches to scare away other suicidal narwhales, after which there is a happy ending and a joyous kiss between the boy’s reunited parents.
I have nothing but admiration for people who want to spare the lives of our fellow inhabitants on spaceship Earth, but I wish they would appear in full-witted movies. Turtle Diary, for example, was a wonderful and complex movie about two people who conspired to steal some giant turtles from the zoo and return them to the ocean. When the Whales Came is a simpleminded movie by filmmakers who have conspired to make a predictable and morose parable and bang us over the head with it until it is dead.
Wild Orchid
(Directed by Zalman King; starring Carre Otis, Mickey Rourke, Jacqueline Bisset; 1990)
We engage in a conspiacy of silence about erotic movies. We discuss their plots, their characters, the truthfulness of their worlds. We never discuss whether or not they arouse us—whether we’re turned on. Critics are the worst offenders, occupying some Olympian peak above the field of battle, pretending that the film in question failed to engage their intelligence when what we want to know is whether it engaged their libido.
Wild Orchid is an erotic film, plain and simple. It cannot be read in any other way. There is no other purpose for its existence. Its story is absurd, and even its locale was chosen primarily for its travelogue value; this movie no more needs to take place in Brazil than in Kansas, which the heroine leaves in the opening scene.
And yet none of that is relevant. What is relevant is that I did not find the movie erotic. It tells the story of a virginal young woman (Carre Otis) who is hired as an international lawyer, leaves on the next flight for Rio de Janeiro, and there meets a man and woman (Mickey Rourke and Jacqueline Bisset) locked in a contest of psychological control. By the end of the film Otis will have been mentally savaged and physically ravished by Rourke and others, at first against her will, I guess, although she puts up what only her mother would consider a struggle.
Details in the opening scene almost invite us to snicker. Can we believe that Otis, who looks about eighteen, has graduated from law school, mastered three or four languages, and spent eighteen months with “a major Chicago law firm” before being hired on the spot by a top New York firm that puts her on the next plane to Brazil? Hardly, since in the few scenes where she is required to talk like a lawyer, she speaks like someone who is none too confident she has memorized the words correctly. Can we believe that Bisset is an international negotiator who wants to buy valuable beachfront property from Rourke? That Rourke is a street kid from Philadelphia who bought his first house at sixteen, fixed it up, sold it at a profit, and is now one of the world’s wealthiest men?
Well, we can almost believe it about the Rourke character (what’s hard to accept is that anyone so rich would still be making money by actually doing things—like buying hotels—instead of simply ripping off the less wealthy through cleverness in the financial markets). But what I couldn’t believe was the chemistry between Rourke and Otis, whose passion is supposed to shake the earth but seemed more like an obligation imposed on them by their genitals.
Rourke has had chemistry before. Who can forget his relationship with Kim Basinger in 9 1/2 Weeks? That he doesn’t have it here is largely because Carre Otis, beautiful and appealing as she is, brings little conviction to her role. It is hard for us to believe her character exists—but apparently almost impossible for her.
The screenplay by Patricia Louisianna Knop and Zalman King and the direction by King strain for a psychological complexity that simply isn’t there. Rourke is a man who cannot feel, they tell us, and so he lives through others—by arranging for Otis to have an affair with a strange man, for example. His untouchability has driven Bisset mad, which is why she “sent” Otis to Rourke in the first place—to see if he is incapable of loving all women, or only Bisset. Without the sex, this could be a Henry James novel (if it had been written by Henry James, of course).
I have seen, however, movies even more unbelievable than Wild Orchid which nevertheless stirred me at an erotic level (the original Emmanuelle was one, and 9 1/2 Weeks was another). Apparently the lesson to be learned here is that sexuality itself is not enough, nor is nudity or passion. What is required is at least some notion that the personalities of the characters are really connecting. Unless they find each other sexy, why should we?
Wing Commander
(Directed by Chris Roberts; starring Ginny Holder; 1999)
Jurgen Prochnow, who played the submarine captain in Das Boot, is one of the stars of Wing Commander, and no wonder: This is a sub movie exported to deep space, complete with the obligatory warning about the onboard oxygen running low. “Torpedoes incoming!” a watch officer shouts. “Brace yourself!” It’s 500 years in the future. If the weapons developed by the race of evil Kilrathi only inspire you to “brace yourself,” we might reasonably ask what the Kilrathi have been doing with their time.
Other marine notes: “Hard to port!” is a command at one point. Reasonable at sea, but in space, where a ship is not sailing on a horizontal surface, not so useful. “Quiet! There’s a destroyer!” someone shouts, and then everyone on board holds their breath, as there are subtle sonar pings on the sound track, and we hear the rumble of a giant vessel overhead. Or underhead. Wherever. “In space,” as Alien reminded us, “no one can hear you scream.” There is an excellent reason for that: Vacuums do not conduct sound waves, not even those caused by giant destroyers.
Such logic is of course irrelevant to Wing Commander, a movie based on a video game and looking like one a lot of the time, as dashing pilots fly around blowing up enemy targets. Our side kills about a zillion Kilrathi for every one of our guys that buys it, but when heroes die, of course they die in the order laid down by ancient movie clichés. The moment I saw that one of the pilots was an attractive black woman (Ginny Holder), I knew she’d go down, or up, in flames.
The plot involves war between the humans and the Kilrathi, who have refused all offers of peace and wish only to be targets in the crosshairs of video computer screens. Indeed, according to a Web page, they hope to “destroy the universe,” which seems self-defeating. The Kilrathi are ugly turtleoid creatures with goatees, who talk like voice synthesizers cranked way down, heavy on the bass.
Against them stand the noble earthlings, although the film’s hero, Blair (Freddie Prinze, Jr.) is suspect in some circles because he is a half-breed. Yes, his mother was a Pilgrim. Who were the Pilgrims? Humans who were the original space voyagers, and developed a gene useful for instinctively navigating in “space-time itself.” (Just about all navigation is done in space-time itself, but never mind.) Pilgrims went too far and dared too much, so timid later men resented them—but if you need someone to skip across a Gravity Hole, a Pilgrim is your man.
There are actors on board capable of splendid performances. The commander of the fleet is played by David Warner, who brings utter believability to, alas, banal dialogue. Two of the other officers, played by Tcheky Karyo and Prochnow, are also fine; I’d like to see them in a real navy movie. Prinze shows again an easy grace and instant likability. Matthew Lillard, as a hotshot pilot named Maniac, gets into a daredevil competition with the Holder character, and I enjoyed their energy. And the perfectly named Saffron Burrows has a pleasing presence as the head of the pilot squadron, although having recently seen her in a real movie (Mike Figgis’s The Loss of Sexual Innocence, at Sundance), I assume she took this role to pay the utility bills.
These actors, alas, are at the service of a submoronic script and special effects that look like a video game writ large. Wing Commander arrives at the end of a week that began with the death of the creator of 2001: A Space Odyssey. Close the pod bay door, Hal. And turn off the lights.
Year of the Horse
(Directed by Jim Jarmusch; starring Neil Young, Ralph Molina; 1997)
Year of the Horse plays like This is Spinal Tap made from antimatter. Both films are about aging rockers, but Year of the Horse removes the humor and energy, portraying Neil Young and Crazy Horse as the survivors of a death march. There are times, indeed, when Young, his hair plastered flat against his face with sweat, his eyes haunted beneath a glowering brow, looks like a candidate for a mad slasher role.
The film, directed by Jim Jarmusch, follows a 1996 concert tour and intercuts footage from 1986 and 1976 tours. It’s all shot in muddy earth tones, on grainy Super-8 film, Hi Fi 8 video, and 16mm. If you seek the origin of the grunge look, seek no further: Young, in his floppy plaid shirts and baggy shorts, looks like a shipwrecked lumberjack. His fellow band members, Billy Talbot, Poncho Sampedro, and Ralph Molina, exude vibes that would strike terror into the heart of an unarmed convenience store clerk.
This is not a fly-on-the-wall documentary. Jarmusch’s interviews take place in a laundry room, where the band members and Young’s father sit on a straight chair and meditate on the band’s long and lonely road. Young muses on “the trail of destruction IS’ve left behind me,” and there is solemn mention of departed band members (“Neil once said they were dropping like flies”).
These séances are intercut with concert footage, during which the band typically sings the lyrics through once and then gets mired in endless loops of instrumental repetition that seem positioned somewhere between mantras and autism. The music is shapeless, graceless, and built from rhythm, not melody; it is amusing, given the undisciplined sound, to eavesdrop later as they argue in a van about whether they all were following the same arrangement.
The older footage is not illuminating. One high point, from a visit to Glasgow in 1976, is a meal in a restaurant that is interrupted when the fabric flowers in the centerpiece catch fire. The band members try smothering the flames with napkins and extinguishing them with orange juice, and eventually they join the woman who owns the place in sadly eyeing the ashes.
Later in the film, Jarmusch himself appears on camera, reading to Young from the Old Testament, a book the musician seems unfamiliar with. Jarmusch reads the parts where an angry God tells his people how he will punish them, and Young looks like God’s tribulations are nothing he hasn’t been through more than once.
If there is a theme to the band’s musings, it is astonishment that they have been playing together for so long. They play with other groups, but when they come together, they say, there is a fusion. With touching self-effacement, Young tells Jarmusch, “The band is called ‘Neil Young and Crazy Horse,’ but I know it’s really ‘Crazy Horse.’ My new jacket says ‘Crazy Horse.’ The others say ‘Neil Young and Crazy Horse,’ but mine just says ‘Crazy Horse.’” Yes, but wouldn’t the point come across a little better if theirs just said “Crazy Horse” too?
Index
A
Ace Ventura: Pet Detective, 1
Ace Ventura: When Nature Calls, 2
Alan Smithee Film Burn Hollywood Burn, An, 3
Alien Resurection, 5
Alligator, 8
American Anthem, 9
American Werewolf in Paris, An, 11
And God Created Woman, 12
Anna and the King, 14
Armageddon, 16
Ash Wednesday, 18
Assassins, 20
Assault of the Killer Bimbos, 22
At the Earth’s Core, 24
Awakening, The, 25
B
Babe, The, 27
Baby Geniuses, 29
B.A.P.S., 30
Battle of the Amazons, 32
Beautician and the Beast, 33
Beethoven’s 2nd, 35
Believers, The, 36
Ben, 38
Besieged, 39
Beyond, The, 41
Beyond and Back, 43
Beyond the Door, 44
Beyond the Poseidon Adventure, 45
Bigfoot, 47
Big Hit, The, 49
Birds in Peru, 50
Blue Iguana, The, 52
Blue Velvet, 53
Body of Evidence, 56
Bolero, 57
Breaking the Rules, 58
Brother Sun, Sister Moon, 59
C
Caligula, 62
Camille 2000, 64
Candyman: Farewell to the Flesh, 65
Cannonball Run II, 67
Caveman, 68
Christopher Columbus: The Discovery, 70
Clan of the Cave Bear, The, 72
Clifford, 73
Color of Night, 75
Concorde—Airport ’79, The, 78
Critters II, 79
Cyborg, 81
D
Dancers, 83
Dark, The, 84
Day of the Dead, 85
Dead Man, 87
Dead Poets Society, The, 89
Death Before Dishonor, 91
Death Race 2000, 92
Death Rides a Horse, 93
Deathmaster, The, 94
Deep Rising, 96
Devils, The, 98
Devil’s Rain, The, 99
Diary of Forbidden Dreams, 101
Dice Rules, 102
Dirty Dingus Magee, 104
Doom Generation, The, 105
Dracula A.D. 1972, 107
E
Emmanuelle—the Joys of a Woman, 109
End of Days, 110
Endless Summer II, 112
Erik the Viking, 114
Evening Star, The, 115
Exit to Eden, 117
F
Father’s Day, 120
Firewalker, 122
Food of the Gods, 123
Fools, 125
Forces of Nature, 126
Friday the 13th, Part 2, 128
Friends & Lovers, 129
Frogs for Snakes, 131
Frozen Assets, 132
G
Gator, 134
Ghost and the Darkness, The, 135
God Told Me To, 137
Godzilla, 138
Good Son, The, 140
Good Wife, The, 142
Goodbye, Lover, 143
Guardian, The, 145
Gunmen, 146
Guyana—Cult of the Damned, 147
Gymkata, 149
