Chicago Tribune from Chicago, Illinois • 166

Friday A Section 7 Chicago Tribune, Friday. March 17, 1989 I i y. )HMI 'Rooftops' turf A tamo 'West Side Story' i. i 1 1 1 1 "'i r1 1 y' f- 3 "-jj'? tr Sv ur Flick of the Week is "Rooftops," a lame '80s version of "West Side Story." KODert wise, me uscar-winning co-ai- rector of "West Side Story." returns to the pigeon-coop-filled rooftops of New York to focus on young love and friendships being tested on ghetto streets. Featured in the film as a form of entertainment is "combat-dancing, a kung-fu-style kick parade in which the idea is to knock your opponent off the outdoor dance floor without hitting him.

That makes "Rooftoops" sort of a dirty dancing story between men. At the same time, the most entertaining aspect of the picture is the excitement generated by actress Troy Beyer, as Elena Peter O'Toole is desert warfare hero T.E. Lawrence in the 1962 film "Lawrence of Epic 'Lawrence of Arabia' returns in all its irony ith all of its obvious virtues and nagging faults, David Lean's 1962 "Lawrence of Arabia" will always occupy a place in movie history as the first neurotic epic. Never before had so much time and money been spent, not on a "Lawrence of Arabia" Va Directed by David tun; written by Robert Bolt; photo- Braphed by F.A, Young; production designed by John ok; edited by Anno V. Coatee; produced by Sent Spiegel.

A Columbia Plcturee releaeo (1962); opent Marcn 17 et the McCkirg Court Theater. Running tUnw MPAA rating: PO. Violence; adult ettuetkm. THE CAST Lawrence Peter O'Toole Prince Fetial Alec Ouimeee AudoAbuTayi Anthony Oulnn General Allenby Jack Hawkina TurklehBey Joee Ferrer Sherd AH Omar Short! Colonel Brighton Anthony Quayte Mr. Dryden Claude Rama Jeckaon BenUey Arthur Kennedy religious or patriotic pageant, out on the life of one relatively obscure, none-too-stable individual.

Lean's film contains ironic echoes of the established epic genres: His hero (Peter O'Toole), a sensitive, eccentric, hiehlv-educated 1, young British 'IPS- omcer who rose to unite and lead the Arab tribes against the Turkish enemy in World War 1, comes to believe himself a sort of Christ figure, a superhuman hero destined to usher in a new in her romance relationship with Jason Gedrick as the good guy hero. is protector to a bunch of kids on their own, and he uses his knowledge of structural falls in various rooftops to send their opponents crashing to their death or, at the very least, some broken limbs. "Rooftops" is a film you think you know soon after it begins, and you're right It's playing at the Water Tower and outlying theaters. Rated R. F.icks Picks New this week THE ACCIDENTAL TOURIST (Blograph, Watar Towar and outlying).

Watarn Hurt turns in another superior performance in this adaptation of Anna Tyler's best seller about an uptight travel writer whose marriage to Kathleen Turner) Is falling apart after the death of their eon. The film Is a sophisticated mix of oomedy and broken hearts, with Geena Davis playing the key role of a wiggy dog trainer who takes on Hurt as a human client, helping to breathe soma life Into his sagging spirit Director Lawrence Kasdan gives us an insightful portrayal of how so many sad people protect themselves wrth ritualistic behavior. PQ. THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN (Fine Arts). Director Terry Gilliam Bandits," "BraziO is ones again dazzling with his visuals, but his story suffers under the weight of too many special effects.

It's a rousing 18th Century fairy tale about an old man who recounts his adventures In his attempt to defeat the Ottoman empire. He tourneys from the Moon to the center of the Earth, assisted by four powerhouse Mends with amazing strengths. The quartet of helpers is the Aim's main charm. GiHiam, however, Is his own worst enemy as ha tries too hard to delight us, not giving his fHm any room to breathe. PQ.

Ve BABETTE 8 FEAST (outrying). A strangely powerful yet meandering fHm that takes a long Urns to make lis point In lata 19th Century rural Denmark, a mysterious Parisian woman comes to work as housekeeper for two elderly, uptight daughters of the town's clergyman. She keeps her place unj she asks the ladies If she can prepare them a special meal. It turns out that the housekeeper once was a great chef in Paris, and the feast she prepares represents the work of someone working to her fullest powers In stark contrast to the cloistered lives of the older women. By the end, It's a strangely moving film about talents and passions used and not used.

The film won the Oscar this year as Best Foreign Language ffim. hi Danish and French with English subtitles. Q. BEACHES (outtylng). A much too inechanlcal tsaitsrkar about the teats and laugh-hiled friendship between an earthy singer and an uptight rich woman.

Bene Midler and Barbara Hershey star aa the friends, brought together as children the film's best scenes and, later, as women competing for the same man and as friends pushed to the kmlt by personal and professional problems. The story goes for one situation that la guaranteed to produce sympathy. Aside from that wa never accept Midler In her relationship with John Heard. Only her occasional singing redeems an otherwise emotional roller coaster that travels in slow motion. Barbara Hershey Is wasted a boring role.

PQ-13. Vi BILL 4 TED'S EXCELLENT ADVENTURE (rwfjytnpj. An WentJonaJly sophomorio but rarely amusing fantasy, the story Involves a couple of suburban CaUtomia boys (Alexander Winter and Keanu Reeves) who meet up with a time machine and take a trip through history collecting famous people to help them pass their history exam. More time is spent by the boys saying 'exceilenf or "dude" to each other than engaging any of the famous parsons such as Napoleon, Fraud, Billy the Kid or Socrates ki oonvarsa-tton. PQ.

THE 'BURBS (Chestnut Station and ouaytng). Tom Hanks stars In a weak comedy about the terrible goings-on in a suburban home. The script would ike to be a horror tin, a comedy and a commentary on suburban living, but doesn't hH any target PQ. CHANCES ARE (Bumham Ptaza, Watar Tower, Webster Ptaea and outtylng). A dekgrrtfuty breezy, rjd-fashioned entertainment Involving yet another booV-swttch tale.

Cybi Shepherd plays a See Flicks Picks, pg. II entrances and exits, to the tracking of great abstract forces through static space. The added footage contributes substantially to the film's design as a series of successive waves physical, historical, personal rolling in and rolling out In his taste for entrances and exits, Lean is a bit like Lawrence himself, who knows how to attack and how to retreat but doesn't much know what to do with himself between times. If "Lawrence of Arabia" tends to go dead in interior scenes succumbing to the stiff underplaying of Jack Hawkins and Anthony Quayle on the one hand and the hammy overplaying of Alec Guinness and Anthony Quinn on the other it is because Lean, like Lawrence, loses his inspiration when he is away from the landscape. Lean is not interested in conversations among individuals, but in passionate and perverse communions between rational man and the sensual force of nature.

Lean's 40-year filmography, which begins with "In Which We Serve" in 1942 and ends (for the moment) with "A Passage to India" in 1984, reflects a fastidious, even schematic cinema occasionally shaken into life by the sexual paroxysms of "Brief Encounter" (1946), "Summertime" (1955), "Ryan's Daughter" (1970) and, above all, "Lawrence." The much-vaunted "enigma" of Lawrence's character becomes less mysterious and even somewhat trite when the film is placed alongside the recent "Passage to India. Both films are stories of hysterical virgins who, when they are finally and forcibly initiated in sequences that take place in an ominous, unimaginable off-screen space (for Lawrence, at the hands of a sadistic, homosexual Turkish official in a dank prison; for "Passage's" Judy Davis, at the hands of her own imagination in a dank Indian cave), go stark staring mad and turn into funes of destructiveness. The medium may be modern, but the message is strictly Victorian. Success can sometimes be as great a curse to a film as failure, and "Lawrence" suffered extensively from it: Shortly after its initial roadshow release, 20 minutes were cut from its 222-minute running time to accommodate theater owners; in 1970, when the film was reissued, IS more minutes were eliminated. In the meantime, the original 70 mm.

negative had been allowed to deteriorate, and many of the cut sequences and soundtrack elements had been lost The present print and it is an impeccably sharp, stable and deeply saturated one is due to a massive restoration effort led by Robert A. Harris and Jim Painten. "Lawrence of Arabia" is a film that must be seen in 70 because it was so clearly conceived specifically for that now largely vanished format (contemporary 70 mm. films are generally shot on 35 mm. and blown up for release).

Lean's central visual motif that of the tiny human figure all but lost in the overpowering emptiness of the desert landscape is one that achieves its full power and sense only in the pinpoint resolution 70 mm. provides. There are few substantial new scenes in the restored version; instead, if a somewhat shaky memory serves, there are now more extended transitional sequences and additional landscape shots. These are not trivial additions: Lean's distanced, pancaked visual style is perhaps best suited to spectacular era of peace and freedom in the Middle East His undoing comes with the discovery a controversial one at the time that he is subject to the same fleshly desires as any human, with even a few more specialized variations (including masochism, transvestism and exhibitionism). At the same time, "Lawrence" inverts the patriotic homilies of the standard British and American war epic, cynically suggesting that war is not about ideals but the pursuit of colonial power.

Lawrence becomes a tool of the British government, leading his adoring followers not into liberation but simply slavery to a different master. These were not easily digestible ideas for an audience accustomed to epics on the picture-book level of Cecil B. De Mille's "The Ten Com-mandments." And yet "Lawrence of Arabia" went on to become a substantial DODular success, winning seven Academy Awards, including those for 'film and director..