The Age from Melbourne, Victoria, Australia • Page 15

THURSDAY 10 FEBRUARY 1994 THE AOE 1S Films Spielberg weaves a spell as he dumps Hollywood for Holocaust 1-11 I ii ii tR New releases STEVEN SPIELBERG, so often praised and dismissed as a lightweight with an almost infallible instinct for what the public wants, has really done it this time. He has made a great and serious film, 'Schindler's List', that any director should be proud to have his name on. No film could do complete justice to the holocaust, but Spielberg epic of horror and nobility goes a long way towards achieving the impossible. Over the film's 185 minutes, the control exercised by Spielberg and his team rarely wavers, and, when it does so, it prompts a quibble rather than a major complaint. One of the dangers in making a feature film (as opposed to a documentary) about the Holocaust is that the subject will be trivialised, glamorised or sanitised.

That has happened several times in the past 40 years. There is also the question of whether the Holocaust can be used to do what good films are supposed to do entertain. 'Schindler's List' is entertaining, because Spielberg has had the good sense to appreciate that it is, after all, about a tremendous and terrifying adventure, about the greatest clash of all between good and evil. And that is the film's justification, the reason for "exploiting" the Holocaust, of running the risk of committing the grossest breach of cinematic taste. between himself and hfs material.

He allows it to "speak" for itself, and because he is using pictures as well as words, his degree of detachment does not have the seeming callousness that mars the book. As just about everyone has noted, the film is harrowing, but there is no feeling that Spielberg is pumping up the emotional level. Janusz Kaminski's black-and-white photography free of such indulgences as odd angles and tricksy lighting immediately signal's Spielberg's plain approach. At one point, during the German sweep through the Cracow ghetto, a spot of red moves among the grey images. To describe it further would be to suggest it is a gimmick, when it works as a device to make a point about Schindler: he is rescuing hundreds of individuals, not a bunch of anonymous people.

The film never gets lost, as the novel occasionally does, in the details of how Schindler (Liam Neeson) protects and saves Jews by bribing the Nazi bureaucracy to let him use them as privileged labor in his Polish and Czech factories. We just accept that his elaborate scams, devised with the help of a deviously smart Jewish accountant, Stern (Ben Kingsley), work. Schindler's relationships with Stern matic structure, although some scenes are lifted straight from page to screen. Sometimes the film expands what is scarcely more than hinted at in the book. Yet, although I suspect that the film, for reasons of condensation and coherence, adheres less rigorously than Keneally to known events, I can see no reason to doubt its essential truthfulness, Spielberg was clearly qualified in some ways to direct 'Schindler's List'.

He proved he could handle action, and not just on the wildly comic level of the Indiana Jones trilogy. His 'Empire of the Sun' was, like 'Schindler's list', an exciting account of an unusual individual's experience amid the mass horror of war. But Spielberg also has a record of mistaking schmaltz for sentimentality, of indulging in cartoon mysticism ('ET' and 'Close Encounters') and of misunderstanding or betraying his source material (The Color Purple' and 'Hook'). Keneally's semi-documentary novel, originally called 'Schindler's Ark', seemed more likely to encourage Spielberg to wallow in his weaknesses than to display his strengths. For one thing, wouldn't he be baffled by its curious tone, so dispassionate at times that it verges on a macabre irony? Spielberg, working with Steven Zail-lian's excellent script, has found his own wav of keeping a distance Liam Neeson, centre, as Oskar Schindler so outrageous that a novelist could not have invented him.

NEIL JILLETT Schindler's List Russell Spielberg's masterpiece is an informative, spell-binding reminder of events whose enormity, in all their ghastly detail, must never be forgotten. The general story of the Holocaust is told through Oskar Schindler, a Czech-born German businessman and confidence trickster, a member of the Nazi Party who saved many hundreds of Jews from becoming victims of Hitler's Final Solution during World War II. The film's source is a novel whose author, Thomas Keneally, wrote that he had "attempted to avoid all fiction since fiction would debase the record, and to distinguish between reality and the myths which are likely to attach themselves to a man of Os-kar's The film uses the book mainly for information and shapes its own dra He is believable because he is too outrageous to have been born in the imagination of a novelist or a filmmaker. Neeson creates a mixture of saint and sinner, dandy and buccaneer, a thick-skinned rascal capable of great tenderness. The actor's control falters towards the end, mainly because he is let down by the script and the director.

The closing scenes, on the last day of the war, are the only part of the film that struck me as being tainted by Hollywood values, of being closer to romantic invention than to the truth. and Goeth (Ralph Fiennes), the Austrian commandant of a labor camp, are the main personal elements in the story. Other characters are cast very much in supporting roles, although many of them make forceful appearances in dramatised incidents from the novel a bungled execution, a birthday party, a secret wedding, and so on. Spielberg, fascinated by Goeth's evil and irrationality, encourages Fiennes to give a startling portrayal of a sadistic madman who is at his most terrifying when he appears to be completely in control of himself. But the amount of attention given to Goeth is exces sive; the performance Is too entertaining in its complex ghastliness, and it does blunt the point that the Nazi killing machine was largely directed and staffed by men and women who in ordinary times were ordinary people.

Schindler, too, was possibly a fairly ordinary man who found himself behaving extraordinarily. One of the curiously satisfying things about the film is that, along with Spielberg, Keneally and the Jews he saved, we are left with no idea why Schindler, a woman-iser and hedonist, a con-man ever ready to make a quick, dishonest zloty, became one of the century's most astonishing heroes. Bonds of brotherhood fray a little TEAK GARDEN FURNITURE CO. Mac Kino 12th FEB 10am-6pm 13th FEB lOam-Gpm Mac may be the salt of the earth, but he is unlikely to be the flavor of any month. His wife, Alice (Turturro's wife, Katherine Borowitz), is the only person prepared to put up with him.

At times Turturro's script is so elliptical that it is hard to tell what the characters are doing or how the story is proceeding. Amid generally good acting, Turturro's performance drifts into mannerisms, though it is always interesting as a study of unattractive integrity. And this film about a family threatened by internal and external pressures something we can all understand has some light relief in the form of cross-cultural comedy involving Oona (Ellen Barkin), a Jewish model, Polowski (Olek Krupa), a crooked Polish building contractor, and Nat (John Amos), a black workmate of the brothers. JOHN TURTURRO, who established his reputation as an actor by doing (in 'Miller's Crossing' and 'Barton Fink') a great line in sweaty nervousness, proves with 'Mac' that he has considerable skill as a writer and even more as a director. 'Mac', set during the New York suburban housing boom after World War II, was inspired by Turturro's father, a first-generation Italian-American builder.

The characterisation of the rigidly principled Mac (played by Turturro) gives the film an almost daring quality. He is unlikeable and, on the face of it, not complex enough to be interesting. He is not the sort of character who seems to have much chance of holding our attention as the centre of a two-hour feature. Turturro does not succeed completely in achieving the COFFEELAMPPATIO TABLES FROM $50 seemingly impossible, but he goes a long way in the right direction. 'Mac', dour in appearance and pace, is intermittently fascinating as a study of a man who is not so much proud as infuriatingly arrogant, whose code, in life and work, is: "There are two ways of doing anything.

The right way and my way. And they are the same." Mac forms a small building company in partnership with his' two younger brothers, Vico (Michael Badalucco) and Bruno (Carl Capotorto). The film is largely an account of how fraternal love, though strong, is badly frayed as a bond that will hold this business and the family together. Violent satire, without punch Emotion to the end that's 'Life' My Life Cardiff Bench I Siffl Lutyens 9' Seat 350 Jj III $43 IciH Chair VT Chairs trom iKplilf? "1 99 Mnl ion PI rll Armchair Lll Chippendale 195 Cardiff Chair 1 50 T'' Tff Arm 150 Hit 250 Cambridge 1 3m20K rSO SKST- UFLr? PH: 808 0264 True Romance The show all Australia is talking about Tonight 8.30pm OH Village THERE are feel-good movies and feel-sad movies. 'My Life' is both not surprisingly, since it is written and directed by Bruce Joel Rubin, who wrote the morbidly romantic 'Ghost'.

This time his theme is that if you are an American in your early 30s, dying is a beautiful experience that can be enjoyably shared by the whole family. Bob (Michael Keaton) is a Los Angeles public relations man who has terminal cancer and hopes he can hang on for the birth of his first child. He wallows in self-pity, self-congratulation and self-hate, makes an autobiographical video so that his child will know all about him, flirts with Eastern mystical medicine, and tries to make peace with his parents, Russian immigrants whose working-class ways embarrass him. Meanwhile, Bob's wife, Gail (Nicole Kidman, who becomes more photogenic with every reel), weeps cautiously and says "I love you" a lot in a husky mid-Pacific whisper. Amid the pervasive mawkish-ness there are a few genuinely emotional scenes (well, I must admit to a 30-second lump in the throat and a furtive tear).

But there is little indication that a young person's slow death from cancer is painful, messy and tragic. Still, if you enjoy a nice, easy cry, 'My Life' is probably perfect entertainment. Village (R) QUENTIN TARANTINO, a 29-year-old American, made a. controversial debut as a writer-director last year with the exceptionally violent and sometimes spellbinding 'Reservoir Dogs'. Now comes 'True Romance', written by Tarantino before 'Reservoir Dogs' and directed by Tony Scott, the unimaginatively gung-ho Englishman whose credits include 'Top Gun' and 'Days of Thunder'.

'True Romance' is open only just to being described as a black comedy, an attempt at a serious statement about drugs and guns or a satire about Hollywood corruption. It is more clearly a fairly routine exercise in biff-bang-bash. The main characters are Clarence (Christian Slater), who devotes himself to reading comics, worshipping Elvis Presley and watching kung fu movies, and Alabama (Patricia Arquette), a bird-brained semi-amateur prostitute. Clarence kills a few gangsters in Detroit; then he and Alabama steal a suitcase filled with cocaine and take it to Hollywood, where they hope to sell it to a film producer (Saul Rubinek doing what is possibly supposed to be a send-up of Oliver Stone). Scott and Tarantino apparently want us to regard young Clarence and Alabama as a pair of attractive, if slightly shopsoiled, innocents whose well-developed criminal impulses are evidence SjC files THE A plain language guide to understanding and interpreting the enormous amount of information available today in the financial pages of newspapers.

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Fairfax Bookshops Jones St, Sydney (02) 282 2114 285 George St, Sydney (02) 282 6624 Cnr Church 8c George Sts, Parramatta (02) 689 4122 22 Bolton St, Newcastle (049) 29 3696 441 St Kilda Rd, Melbourne (03) 829 9999 235 Edward St. 4th floor Rov.es Arcade, Brisbane (07) 221 6266 Send to: Financial Review Books PO Box N542 Grosvcnor Place, Sydney NSW 2000 Phone: (02) 241-5385 or (008) 25-1949 (toll free call) Please send copy(ies) of Understanding Finance with Thi Australian Financial Review 9 $17.95 (plus $2 Enclosed is my cheque for $. made payable to John Fairfax Group Pry Ltd, or Visa Mastercard please charge my: Bankcard Kasetfl on fact Series Premiere Tonight 9.30pm 'Farewell My Concubine' (Rivoli): This co-winner (with 'The Piano') of the top prize at Cannes last year is handsome enough to be enjoyed for its good looks alone. Director Chen Kaige engrossingly combines epic sweep (tumultuous Chinese history between 1925 and 1977) with a very odd version of the eternal triangle (two male opera stars one a drag artist and homosexual, the other a regular Beijing guy and the woman who makes their professional and personal lives very complicated). 'Belle Epoque' (Kino): This beguiling Spanish romantic comedy cleverly blends a male fantasy with a mockery of feminist politics.

Part of its charm is its inventive seduction scenes. 'The Age of Innocence' (Hoyts): Set in high society New York in the 1870s, this is the big surprise of 1993; an elegant, Jane Austen-ish tale of love and from New Zealand is one of 1993's funniest and most handsome comedies. Its influences seem to range from Charles Dickens and Barbara Cartland to Jean Genet and Graeme Murphy. 'Like Water for Chocolate' (Kino and elsewhere): Cookery notes, nostalgia, magic realism and revolutionary history enable this blithe Mexican period piece to turn romantic and Greek tragedy into roughly the same thing. 'The Snapper' (Nova): Earthy Irish comedy about an inconvenient pregnancy.

Its characters and humor (drawn from Roddy Doyle's novel) greatly compensate for its dull telemovie appearance. 'Much Ado About Nothing' (Russell, Rivoli): Kenneth Bran-agh, as director, treats Shakespeare with respect and compe-tence rather than wit and imagination. THE BEST disappointment, directed and co-written by Martin Scorsese, who is faithful to his subtly ironic source, Edith Wharton's novel. The result is a handsome and absorbing film; not a great film, but certainly a very good one. Another extraordinary performance by Daniel Day-Lewis.

"The Wedding Banquet' (Kino and elsewhere): Romantic comedy about a homosexual New York couple (a Chinese and a Caucasian) whose life becomes complicated when circumstances dictate that one of them should find a bride. Some wild scenes, but the general tone is fairly quiet and warmed by an affection for its characters. 'Desperate Remedies' (Kino and Lumlere): Shot in a waterfront shed, this high-camp, farcical mid-Victorian melodrama Card No Signature Expiry Date MrMrsMsMiss Company Address i Phone- Postcode THE AUSTRALIAN FINANCIAL REVIEW A.C.N.003 357 72O.