The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 41

The Sunday Age AC33A 5 6 June 1993 P7 P7 Tim Finn's new harmony Velvet Underground's return RTUAL REALITY VI FROM THE GODS Whimsy and fantasy are the Steven Spielberg trademarks. But now he's tackling the Holocaust. Zoe Heller reports. Steady a ha goes: Making one of his many timely entrances during the first night of the Piaybox -production of Patrick White' 'Big Toy', CarHIo Qantner had one of those moments everv actor dreads he slipped. No, he didn't hit the deck.

As Ritchie Bosanquet, he came down the steps into his bedroom to encounter his wife Mag (Julia Nlhlll) and her bigger toy, Terry Legge (Geoff Paine). It was the bottom step that provided the problem. There was a quick stumble, a beatifully timed "oops" and a fierce stare at the step. The audience giggled but the aftors, as is their wont, didn't miss a beat. Rhythm stamp: First it was Elvis now the US Postal Service is branching out to give plenty of other pioneers of popular music a crack on the front of America's envelopes.

On 16 June the agency will release the series Legends of American Music: Rock RollRhythm Blues, featuring 29 cent tributes to Bill Haley, Otis Redding, Buddy Holly, Clyde McPhatter, Ritchie Valen, Dinah Washington and Elvlt Presley (who rejoins the team after his solo outing in January, with his last name added to the stamp). Furthermore, the ever so shrewd service is going to rake in more bucks by issuing a special 20-cut CD featuring selected hits by those in the Legends collection. The disc has three Presley songs, including a what could be deemed a potential public-service announcement in 'Return to Sender', though it's arguably McPhatter's 'Money Honey' that may be closer to the mark. Apparently this is the start of what is planned as a series embracing jazz, blues, pop music, musical theatre (an 'Oklahomal' stamp is already out, and next month will bring 'Porgy and Be', 'My Fair Lady' and 'Show Boat') and country (a Hank Williams stamp is due this month, followed in September by the Carter Family, Patsy Clin and Bob Wills). Tough time: Perhaps that should read nail-biting times for that venerable old publication, 'The New Yorker'.

Now under the aegis of Tina Brown, erstwhile editor of 'Vanity Fair', a libel case brought by the subject of a two-part series in the mag was up in the air last week as the jury found for the plaintiff but was unable to decide on the amount of damages to award. The action was brought by a psychoanalyst, Jeffrey Masson, who the court decided had been defamed by a 1983 Janet Malcolm article that portrayed him as a narcissistic He will be using local splashes of color throughout the film but only, he Insists, to make dramatic points. "We're not going to use color just to change things, or because It's prettier. Black and white is also appropriate because I don't want, accidentally or subconsciously, to beautify events." There is room for doubt here. Surely, In today's film language, color Is the realistic medium and black and white the romantic aesthetic? Kamlnski describes the style he has adopted for this film, as "a mixture of German Expressionism and Italian Doesn't Spielberg run the risk of transmuting war-time Poland into a poetic landscape of light and shade? "No," Spielberg says.

"Black and white is more grainy and gritty. It doesn't distract the eye so much." All of this has, he concedes, been hard for the guys at MCA-Uni-versal to swallow. Only Sid Scheinberg, the president of MCA-Universal, whose suggestion it was to make the movie in the first place, thought black and white was a reasonable idea. "Everybody else had a problem with it," Spielberg says. "Nobody at the studio really wanted me to make the movie at all.

One studio executive who shall remain nameless said, 'Why don't we just make a donation to the Holocaust Museum would that make you I blew up when I heard that. "Then it was: 'Look, we've got a SUS-23 million budget' which is actually a low budget for me but they said: 'We have this $US23 million budget and how do we make that back if you go and do it in black and white? Given the subject matter, few enough people are going to come and see It Acknowledging the commercial risk that 'Schindler's List' represents, Spielberg is "rewarding" MCA-Universal by not taking a salary for his direction and by giving up "first dollar the standard deal whereby the director receives his percentage of profits the moment the box office starts taking money. "I would consider a salary blood money. I feel more comfortable knowing that I'm not motivated by material IT HAS taken Spielberg more than a decade to get 'Schindler's List' into production. His ambition was first conceived shortly after opened in American cinemas in 1982.

Most of the intervening 10 years have been spent trying to come up with a satisfactory screenplay. The first writer to attempt a script was Thomas Keneally himself. Spielberg wasn't happy with the results. "It's very hard for a novelist to adapt his own novel," he says. The next candidate was Kurt Luedtke, a former journalist who wrote the screenplays for 'Absence of Malice' and 'Out of Africa'.

Luedtke tolled over 'Schindler's List' for four years and by the end had only managed to come up with a first draft of the first act "I almost forgot aboutthe whole thing In the meantime," Spielberg says. "Luedtke couldn't find a way to shake the book down womaniser and an academic flake. Masson claimed SUS7.5 million, accusing the author of concocting four quotes, the most notorious of which had the aggrieved party saying he was viewed as "an 'St If nN 1 I I' a Aw i intellectual gigolo by ms colleagues. FILM OF THE WEEK 'Delusion' (1990): The feature debut for Belgian-bom American independent Carl Colpaert is an intriguing road thriller with a sardonic sense of humor. George (Jim Metzler is heading across the desert to Reno, the spoils of some "creative invoicing" concealed in the trunk of his car.

En route, he picks up a sinister male with a touch of the Warren Oates about him (Kyle Secor and his enigmatic female companion (Jennifer Rubin). Reverberating suggestively with references to other kinds of road movies (including 'Psycho', 'Pari, Tex', 'The Good, The Bad And The Ugly' and 'The Paenger'), 'Delusion' is a minor gem whose pleasures are to be found in the unexpected detours that lead its travellers away from the security of the main highway. Screening at the Nova. STEVEN SPIELBERG was having trouble with the SS when we arrived on set, somewhere on the outskirts of Krakow. "Officers," he said, adjusting bis baseball cap In a gesture of suppressed frustration.

"Please remember this Is a crime you're witnessing, OK?" It was an uncommonly hot day for a Polish spring and the 'Schindler's List' production crew was crammed into the muggy manager's office in an enamelware factory. The job of the SS was to provide reaction shots when Liam Neeson, Spielberg's male lead, pecked a little Jewish girl on both cheeks and then gave a young Jewish woman a languorous kiss on the mouth. Spielberg was looking for disgust and outrage, but the SS had managed only mild and slightly gormless surprise. The translator translated Spielberg's reminder and the SS nodded obediently. "OK, let's go," be said.

The crew sprang to their positions. "And officers," Spielberg added, taking a sip of herbal tea, "let's keep it real." He smiled at the SS in a kindly way. "Would you keep it real for me please?" Spielberg's career hasn't presented him with many opportunities for grappling with the problem of evil. There have been plenty of colorful baddies In his movies, but until now, the most realistically sadistic character he has ever had to direct was probably the killer truck in 'Duel'. With a few exceptions like 'The Color Purple', Spielberg's world has been fantasy UFOs, ETs, monster sharks, little boys who never grow up.

As a film-maker, he is best known and most commonly praised for his evocations of the tribulations and romance of childhood. Now he has decided to make a film about the Holocaust. As departures go, this could not be more major. The JUS23 million (SA33 million) MCA-Univeral production of 'Schindler's List' has been shooting in Krakow since February. Based on Thomas Keneally's 1982 Booker-prize-winning novel, 'Schindler's Ark', it tells the true story of a German industrialist and Nazi party member, Oskar Schindler, who arrived in Poland in 1939 anxious to reap the profits of war and ended up saving more than 1000 Polish Jews from the concentration camps principally by employing them as unpaid labor In his enamelware factory.

The film stars Liam Neeson as Schindler, Ben Kingsley as Itzhak Stern, a Jewish accountant who assisted Schindler in bis mission, and Ralph Fiennes as Amon Goeth, the SS Commandant at the Plasow concentration camp in Krakow. The shooting has gone well so far and the production is three days ahead of schedule, a fact that Spielberg attributes to "the passionate urgency" everyone feels about the project and, more particularly, the efficiency of his Polish crew. with him on his polish sojourn, he has brought a family entourage that Includes his wife, his wife's friend, his four-year-old adopted son, his teenage step-daughter, her three friends, a tutor for the girls, and two cooks. To accommodate this little army, he has taken over a small hotel just outside Krakow and had it completely refurbished. And a satellite dish has been installed, so that when Spielberg Is not night shooting, he can spend his evenings doing special-effects edits on his forthcoming dinosaur adventure, 'Jurassic Park.

At weekends, Spielberg files to Paris, to dub 'Jurassic Park'. And in his rare free moments, he watches American television programs sent over on VHS from his Los Angeles office. In the factory office, the struggle with the SS went on. "CUT!" Spielberg yelled and everyone went limp. "Why," Spielberg asked, pointing at one of the officers in the foreground, "are you looking into the lens?" The man shrugged and muttered an excuse In Polish.

"I don't care," Spielberg said. "Just don't look In the lens." A gofer arrived with another cup of herbal tea. The man with the smoke machine reappeared to repair thinning patches In the cigarette fog. Spielberg took the tea and turned, only a little wearily, back to his actors. "Real, all right? remember to make It real." THE publicity notes for 'Schindler's List' make the usual boasts about the production's extravagant pursuit of verisimilitude.

With its 100 speaking parts and 18,000 individual costumes, most of which, according to costume designer, Anna Bledrzycka Sheppard, are 1940s originals. A complete replica of the Plasow camp Including Its roadway made of desecrated Jewish tombstones has been built In a disused quarry. And for the film's -epilogue, surviving members of the real Schlndierud group are being flown from around the world to take part in a "symbolic" sequence with their film counterparts, at Schindler's grave In Jerusalem. Spielberg's original Intention was to film In German and Polish with subtitles but he reverted to English because he didn't know the languages well enough to direct In them and he thought people wouldn't sit through subtitles. He has at least partly made up for the disappointment by getting his way on the question of the cinematography.

Despite the best efforts of the studio executives, 'Schindler's List' Is being shot In black and white. "We have decided," Janusz Kamlnski, Spielberg's director of photography, says, "to go very real. We're not trying to be beautiful. If people come out and say: 'What a beautiful movie', It would be failure." Working In black and white Is clearly personal triumph for Spielberg. But It isn't automatically clear how It will contribute to the authenticity of the film.

"It's entirely appropriate," he explains, "because I've only experienced the Holocaust through other people's testimonies tod through archival footage which Is, of course, all In black and white." VIDEO OF THE WEEK 'Bull Durham' (1988): An Oedipal triangle looms large in Ron Shelton'a ribald and thoroughly entertaining romantic comedy about baseball, sex and the American way of life, but nobody seems especially troubled by its' implications. Kevin Costner is Crash, a veteran catcher wise in the ways of the world, and Suan Sarandon is Annie, a true believer in "the church of baseball" who donates her sexuality to the cause of America's favorite pastime. They've both seen it all and learned from it, and so they're ideal surrogate parents for Tim Robbins' rookie pitcher, a young man described as having "a million dollar arm and a five cent head" and whose sex life, like his pitching, is "all over the Nazi party member who saved more than Auschwitz. Its ostensible reasons were that the film crew would bring chaos and an atmosphere Inappropriate to the site. Henryk Halkowskl, president of the Jewish Cultural Association in Krakow, recalls that when the 'War and Remembrance' TV production filmed in the camp, they stuck up signs say ing: "Extra lavatories in the But it wasn't just the idea of a movie that upset people.

It was the idea of a Spielberg movie. Spielberg ended up filming only outside the Blrkenau gatehouse. Halkowskl is blunt "Nobody wants a Hollywood Holocaust." Is this prejudice? Can we really be certain of what Spielberg's portrayal of the Holocaust will be like? Some clues were provided in a recent interview when he described how, as a three-year-old, he watched his grandmother teach English to Holocaust survivors. One old man used to teach him figures, using the tattooed number on his forearm. "He would show me a three and a two and a five and a seven.

Then he said: 'I'm going to show you a magic He said, 'Here's a six. Then he moved his forearm up, dnd then he said: 'Now it's a Y)U can Imagine exactly how he would film this: the little boy at grandma's long table, his eyes growing big and round with incredulity; the raspy chuckle of the twinkly old man; the motes drifting dreamily down through the honey glow of the lamp light It isn't anything Spielberg can help this tendency to reduce experience to magical, golden moments. It's the way he sees things. But it's easy to imagine ivw, ifucii ohlu'vu iu uiv avmiHjicr story, ii might produce painfully glib results. Spielberg, aware of these concerns, is anxious to assert his tough-mindedness.

His portrayal of Schindler would, he Insisted, be thoughtful, unshrinking and rather more sceptical than Thomas Keneally's. "The book is based on the testimony of witnesses who were saved by him and obviously, from their point of view, he was a saint In the movie, his character will be more complicated than that. For Schindler, I think there! was a balance between saving lives and, maintaining his profit margin until very late In the war. This movie isn't about 4 Mint. It's about a Nazi manufacturer.

It asks how a person like that could have dons' what he did. "You know, I'm attempting to be tlonate In this picture," he said. "But because my name's on It sentimentality ww always be an Issue. "SenUmentallty," he said. Thatl ytat-too." He began to toy with his bsseejfp, "lit like the media have tattooed sewttsMrJ-tallty on my forearm, and new, I cmI net rid of It" Oskar Schindler: the German Industrialist and 1O0O Polish Jews is played by Liam Neeson.

rolled up his sleeve to show his tattoo. "No," Nlusla said, "for me the memory is always fresh." When shooting restarted, I asked Nlusla If she had any doubts about a Hollywood portrayal of the Schindler story. She paused. "Yes and no," the friend translated. "At first I thought It would be just another big American film.

But I have watched him on the set his knowledge of the subject is great Naturally, the fact he is Jewish makes a difference. Another director might not be so emotionally involved." Spielberg is inclined to agree. His emotional Involvement has never been greater, he says. "This is the first movie I've made for my mother and the people of her generation. With this movie, I'm doing a service to my Jewishness for the first time.

I was raised in Arizona, in a gentile environment. I didn't have any Jewish friends. I was an outsider and as a result, I wasn't proud of my 'Jewish heritage I was ashamed. I never imagined I'd get to the point where I regarded my Jewishness as an asset." Spielberg's rediscovery of his Jewishness began when he started working In Hollywood and friends would Invite him round to their houses for Seder, the ritual feast at Passover. "It wat well, not exactly a traditional rebirth, a more traditional, Jewish, Hollywood rebirth." Later, when he started a family, he realised he wanted to bring up his children In the Jewish faith.

And now he Is making a film that pays hit duet to the root! that he Ignored for so long. "I'm paying them from my heart, not just my conscience. I mean, I really, really wanted to do this movie." He denies 'Schindler's List' is his big bid for artistic credibility. "Naah, 'Duel', they were filled with artistic credibility. I've enjoyed plenty of credibility already until everybody got sick of me In the US He laughs.

"But no, this Isn't an art-house movie. "This It the first movie with a message I've ever attempted. It't a very simple message that something like this should never happen again. But It't one that't very close to my heart." Of course, It't precisely testimony like this that get the people at MCA-Universal chewing their fingers. Of all Hollywood genres, the "labor of love" or "pet project" Is probably the most feared and reviled.

And the studio executives aren't the only doubters. There are plenty of others who worry about Spielberg's weakness for gloopy sentiment. Can he, they ask, resist turning the Holocaust into a misty, water-colored memoif? This concern was part of what was at work when the World Jewish Congress ratted objectloet to Spielberg filming Inside i Jfi v. partner, Kate Capsnaw. In this beautiful." the history of the 20th Century had suddenly contracted and turned in on Itself.

This elegant woman who had been driven from Krakow's Jewish ghetto by the SS, who had staved off hunger pains In Auschwitz by smoking cigarettes made of onion skins and newspaper was now, half a century later, standing calmly amid a group of unshaven grips In leather Jackets and baseball caps, watching her experiences reconstructed by a world-famous director. Naturally, she cried. "She says the memory of what they are acting here is fresh like three days ago," her friend translated for her. At the end of the take, Spielberg came over. "Did she cry?" he asked, with slightly gruesome eagerness.

"Nlusla," he said, "the little girl who's playing you would love to meet you." The girl was duly brought across. Nlusla looked embarrassed, confused, moved. For a fleeting moment the encounter rose above the flxed-up, kitschy quality of the occasion. Later, Spielberg and one of his producers, Branko Lustlg, also an Auschwitz survivor, fell Into a disjointed conversation with Nlusla and her friend. Spielberg wanted to know about the flames that Issued from the crematorium chimneys.

"Ask her how high the ft me were," he said. "About 18 feet would she say?" Nlusla teemed to think that wat about right "Hey, tell her we did that Ken yesterday," Spielberg said, "with the stuff she told us about people swallowing their jewels In bread when they leave the ghetto." "Do you ever feel like It didn't happen?" Branko asked. "Sometimes when I'm skiing la the mountains, I think I mutt have read about It. And then I look at my number." Ha THEATRE OF THE WEEK 'Mother Courage and Her Children': A new translation for the Anthill Theatre production of at the Gasworks brings Bertoit Brecht Into an Australian idiom for the first time. As a modem political drama, it is described as "an epic tale of a mother's desperate struggle to bring her family and her canteen wagon unscathed through one of the longest and bloodiest wars In world history." Featuring the familiar Anthill ensemble, including director Jean-Piarra Mignon, it runs until 27 June.

CD OF THE WEEK Celebrated for many years by the country music fraternity (and others) as a great songwriter, Guy Clark's recordings have been too few. Those who remember early albums such as the classic 'Old No. 1 will rejoice that the American Explorer series has once more given us a chance to enjoy Clark's laconic approach, wry humor and delightfully crafted songs. "I got these lines in my face trying to straighten out the wrinkles in my life," sings Clark with a characteristically whimsical and world-weary approach that often hides keen observations about life and relationships. Clark's eye twinkles on 'PieatM's Mandolin' (a song indicative of the songwriter's ever-present wit) and elsewhere he amply demonstrates his abilty to raise a tear as well as 8 chuckle Superbly played by an outstanding crew of musicians, and boasting guests such as Rodney "Crowell and Emmylou Hani, the only fault with 'Boats To Build' is that its 10 songs clocking In at a meagre 32 minutes merely whet the appetite for more.

BOOK OF THE WEEK Swift meets 'Animal Farm' in 'Dogs' (Angus and Robertson), Robin Wallaee-Crabbe't sprightly satire set on the fictitious island of Terra Futura, where Homo Sapiens hold brutal sway over the (highly Intelligent) dog population. The dogs put up with a lot, including random violence and exploitation but. when It come to the Parliament passing Beautiful people: Steven Spielberg with movie, he says: "We're not trying to be without the movie becoming nine-hours long. I think he also had worries about his own German, gentile extraction." (Obstructive gentile guilt has also been a feature of shooting. Some of the big, blond Germans who play heinous Nazis agonised about having to act aggressively towards the Jewish characters.

Spielberg had to coax them Into hitting the Jews with the appropriate ferocity.) After Luedtke had admitted4efeat, Spielberg approached the playwright Tom Stop-pard about having a go but Stoppard was otherwise engaged and It was Steve Zall-Han, author of the screenplay for 'Awakenings', who eventually provided a viable script. The long wait may have frustrated Spielberg but there la a tense In which even the delays have contributed to an aura of grand earnestness surrounding the 'Schindler's List' project Already, Luedtke's four-year struggle to produce 30 pages has become part of the film's romantic legend a badge of its epic seriousness, just as surely as Spielberg's disavowal of financial interest. The occasional appearance of real Schindleruden on the set functions In much the same way. The day I was at the enamelware factory, a SchindferMs called Nlusla HorowlU came to visit As a 10-year-old, the was tent from Plasow to Auschwits and lived there for two months before being called up to work In Schindler's factory, where the stayed for the rest of the war. Nlusla was the little girl whom Schladlar had kitted la front of the Nazis, la the teen that Spielberg was now filming.

It was odd standing next to Nlusla at If legislation to reduce the dog population by 75 par, ha Aflimitlft fAhftl.