The Ottawa Citizen from Ottawa, Ontario, Canada • 41

The Ottawa Citizen, Friday, January 14, 1994 F3 MOVIE REVIEWS 1 H) Spielberg's genius shines in Schindler's SCHINDLER'S LIST Directed by: Steven Spielberg Screenplay by: Steve Zaillian Starring: Liam Neeson and Ben Kingsley Playing at: Somerset Rated: AA i sr. iff i i it 154 ST HP fW'Y vi PHILADELPHIA: Joe Miller, played by Denzel Washington, represents lawyer Andrew Beckett, played by Tom Hanks linot ionai issues gt strong hearing job, saved hundreds of Jews from the gas chamber, and lived. What he witnessed, while carousing with the same Nazis who were committing random murder as though it were a form of field sport, strains comprehension. Much of the film is graphic. Very.

If Spielberg is ever accused of exploiting the horror and moments of abject terror like the scene in the bathhouse, where naked women and children have been herded to wait for extinction he might reasonably counter by asking his critics how else to portray the Holocaust. Schindler's List is a true story, adapted for the screen by Steven Zaillian from the prize-winning book by Australian writer Thomas Keneally. The setting is mainly Krakow, in Poland, though it moves later to Auschwitz and Czechoslovakia. Schindler's factory makes enamel pots and pans, and, later, bullets and shells. No Damascan blinding light appears to this man and Neeson never even hints at it.

His decision to use Jewish workers from the ghetto, led by the piercing presence of Ben Kingsley, is that they are cheaper and better motivated. The genius of his scheme is that it appeals not to the latent humanist, but to the businessman in the Nazi. Money talks to these murderers, as do the best champagne, caviar, jewelry and available women, and Schindler has them all. It's a matter almost of loaves and fishes, according to the demand. The greediest of them all is the man in whom the Nazi evil is personified, Amon Goeth, the devil of the Krakow ghetto.

Ralph Fiennes' portrayal of Goeth is a skilful blend of basic bully and psychopathic killer. It's chilling, to the core. Neeson 's demeanor is consistent. One can believe him, even at his riskiest moments of blatant defiance, though Spielberg is not above presenting his good-bye to those whose lives he has saved as a ceremony of sainthood. Spielberg's skill as narrator and visualizer lies in his ability not to dwell on the nightmare, and to blend despair with hope even as the tormentors expand their catalogue of cruelty.

Schindler's List is a daunting proposition for a film-maker established as the purveyor of pop one that he tackles with dreadful purpose, as a deeply felt act of faith. 1 i ss from either end of the commercial-legal spectrum. Beckett is the rising corporate hot-shot; Miller the lone-wolf, personal injury shark. Their single common cause is an act of discrimination by Philadelphia's most prestigious legal firm. The firm's defence against accusations of "wrongful termination" is the suddenly perceived incompetence of a young man (Beckett) who once seemed destined for senior partnership.

That his dismissal coincides with the discovery that he has AIDS is the point of Demme's film. For Washington's lawyer the issue eventually but not completely overrides his self declared disdain for homosexuals. For Beckett, it becomes both the instrument of his resentment over hypocrisy, and his reason for striking back at his duplicitous employer. All of this comes together in the state court, both sides arrayed at their benches. The establishment, epitomized by the Mount Rush-more features of Jason Robards, faces the individual.

Tormentor versus victim, bigotry versus enlightenment. Philadelphia is home to a lot of black and white, but not much evidence of the grey in between. Title Studio By Noel Taylor Citizen correspondent By mid-career, Steven Spielberg has made some remarkable films memorable mostly for their immensity at the box office a film-maker for our times. Like the clown who wants to play Hamlet, he has had the occasional urge to get serious (pause for T)ie Color Purple) but such urges don't come along often. Serious doesn't sell many tickets.

But serious is what's remembered after the froth is gone. And serious may make his Holocaust drama Schindler's List the film for which Spielberg is most honored. It is a remarkable film, made without any concessions to the box office. It runs more than three hours, is shot in black and white, and, in its depiction of the greatest evil that one group of people has ever committed on another, is quite uncompromising. Schindler's List is something of an ordeal, this depiction of a nightmare that subjected men, women and children to the cruellest of all tortures the forced separation of parents and children, each to their own horrible death and the grossest humiliation.

That Spielberg has chosen to film it in stark black and white is a measure of the artist. It's appropriate, of course; it's how we remember- the Holocaust from those sickening liberation-day newsreels. But just as Yousuf Karsh uses light and shadow to create a mood, Spielberg reminds us that black and white is its own medium, and not merely the absence of color. There is a single conceit here the coat of a child in pink, seen once in the turmoil of the ghetto and again in a pile of corpses. It's a moving reminder that we have met this child before.

Oskar Schindler, played by the towering presence of Liam Neeson, was that contradiction in terms, a Nazi and a saint the most pragmatic kind of saint, who kept his '5 It A ''jr sion. Philadelphia's most poignant moments and there are many occur outside that court setting, in private moments shared by lawyer Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) and his lawyer, Joe Miller (Denzel Washington). One in particular stays in the mind: a scene in Beckett's apartment where he is playing a tape of Maria Callas for his visitor, the slightly homophobic Miller. The music transports Beckett out of his distress into a torrent of words to describe the ecstasy he feels while the uncomprehending Miller watches, fascinated, a light that approaches understanding seeping into his eyes. The camera clings to this dawning.

One can't help noticing that Demme approaches his subject by means of the unflinching gaze, deep into the eyes, scouring the features for evidence of guilt, or of compassion. The very closeup-ness of Demme's film gives this most personal of topics its intimacy, and provides the audience with its crucial sense of involvement. Hanks and Washington aren't quite the cinematic odd couple that inspires much of what emerges from Hollywood. They're odd, in a contrasting sort of way, but they're even too. They are both lawyers, Washington comes closest.

His opponent, Mary Steenburgen, savoring the deviousness of her role, lets up only once. "I hate this case," she breathes to a colleague after a particularly vicious cross-examination. The family rallies, led by a bravely smiling Joanne Woodward a role model for all others in these wretched circumstances. One can forgive the idealism here. Philadelphia needs all the positivism it can muster.

As for Hanks, his own involvement in this film goes beyond the physical ravages of AIDS. It's a courageous performance, running the gamut of defiance, resentment and, in the end, acceptance. The effect is draining, on Hanks and on his audience. Demme steers clear of the more obvious trappings of homosexuality, to the chagrin of some who wonder why the affection between Hanks and his lover, played by Spanish actor Antonio Banderas. is not more explicit.

Such disapproval misses the point of Philadelphia. Though its emotional centre is AIDS, its subject is the wider one of institutional discrimination and public ignorance. Philadelphia is an important film, treated with feeling. Jan. 8-10 box office $11.5 million $8.6 million $6.4 million $6.4 million $5.2 million $4 million $3.9 million $3.6 million $2.6 million $2.2 million Total earnings 138.3 million $73.5 million $25.7 million $32.7 million $5.2 million $4.2 million $46.4 million $36.6 million $9.9 million $43.4 million Total weeks 7 4 3 3 2 5 4 4 5 a iy It iv i 31 xr taking her foot off the brake and stepping on the accelerator.

She does that with Minter (Raoul Trujillo), a silent and exotic Presence who unlocks Lucy's libido and brings her into a submissive relationship that is part Story of 0 and part Weeks. He also lets her create. As Lucy and Minter test the limits sexually, she is freed artistically. Their room is covered with words, written on the walls and ceiling. There is no writer's block in Paris.

France. Now. though. Paris is over and Lucy is a blocked writer living in Toronto with her publisher husband Michael (Victor Ertmanis). lie's a failed poet, a man destined never to go to Paris, France, or at least not until he starts a very' interesting nervous breakdown involving John Lennon.

This causes a lot of loud music and incomprehensible religious metaphors. Into all this postmodern symbol- in. mm 1. Mrs. Doubtfire 20th Cent.

2. The Pelican Brief Warner Bro, 3. Grumpy Old Men Warner Bro. 4. Tombstone Disney 5.

The Air Up There Disney 6. Shadowlands Savoy 7. Sister Act 2: Back in the Habit Disney 8. Beethoven's 2nd Universal 9. Schindler's List Universal 10.

Wayne's World 2, Paramount PHILADELPHIA Directed by: Jonathan Demme Written by: John Nyswaner Starring: Tom Hanks and Denzel Washington Playing at: World Exchange, Orleans, St. Laurent, Westgate Rated: PG By Noel Taylor Citizen correspondent It's a topic mainstream Hollywood has been perversely timid about understandably perhaps. Any public discussion of AIDS, and certainly any dramatic treatment of it, is fraught with the potential for political gaucheness, personal insensitivity, and for actors, professional stigma. Film-maker Jonathan Demme (most recently responsible for Silence of the Lambs) wades into the niotional minefield with few inhibitions, working on a screenplay by Ron Nyswaner that leads the issue of AIDS into the law courts. As a forum for debate, it's a deliberate move and a dramatically conventional one, its attitudes and its nuances contested in public by men and women trained in logical argument and lacking in compas BASED ON TRUE STORY: Mackenzie Astin plays Will Stoneman, who enters a gruelling dog sled race and faces the biggest challenge of his life Iron Will is on courage IRON WILL Directed by: Charles Haid Starring: Mackenzie Astin and August Schellenberg Playing At: Rideau Centre, Gloucester, Britannia, Kanata, Orleans Rating: PG By Jay Stone Citizen movies writer Iron Will is a different kind of Disney movie, because instead of being about a hockey team that beats the odds or a basketball team that beats the odds or a car racing team that beats the odds, it's about a dog-sled team and its young driver, a team that fights through snow and cold and cheating bad guys and frostbite and 835 kilometres of danger And does it beat the odds? That would be telling.

Let's just say that Iron Will is also a movie in which a 833-km dogsled race is decided by a nose. If it were a horse race, you'd still be holding your tickets, waiting for a photo. That's not to say it isn't a terrific family film. Directed with a clippety-clop pace by Charles Haid (best known as Renko on Hill Stmt Blues). Iron Will is a story about courage, determination, love and what one character calls the gleam of chance and the spark of hope, or something like that.

Kids will love it. The scenery is spectacular although all that snow is a bit redundant for those of us with long driveways A NAZI, A SAINT: Liam Neeson plays Oskar Schindler Last weekend's top 10 films, according to Exhibitor Relations. Estimated North American ticket sales are gathered from Friday through Sunday. Figures are based on actual receipts, and projections where actual figures were not available. Disturbing story lurks beneath irony 1 INK strong and love and Mackenzie Astin is fresh and winning as young Will Stoneman, who in 1917 heads to Winnipeg to take part in a dog-sled race all the way to St.

Paul, Minnesota. He does this to win $10,000 so he can go to college and his widowed mom can keep the farm and does't have to sell the sled dous. Young Will gets lots of good advice from farmhand Ned (played with great dignity by August Schellenberg, who won a Genie for Black Robe), then packs up his grit and goes off to compete against much older and more corrupt men. The movie is based on a true story and the historical details are wonderful, including the old steam locomotives and the old-time reporters who turn Will into a cult figure a kind of snowbound Lindbergh and file their stories by phone from a train car. Will has to fight the cheating Swedish sledder (the character has been changed into a Green-lander for the Swedish version of the film) and the corrupt Irish co-sponsor and a lead dog who doesn't really respect him, and the memories of his dead father, who perished in a dogsled accident.

But they don't call him Iron Will for nothing. The rules of dogsled racing are a little sketchy, so you don't really know why it pays to be first at the end of every day, and there's kind of a gap in logic when it comes to why the bad guy isn't caught sooner than he is. But at the end, the audience cheers. Y. 1 in satire BLACK COMEDY: Leslie Hope, Dan Lett and Peter Outerbridge star as Lucy, William and Sloan in Paris, France gles sexual danger with sexual humor: In one memorable scene, Lucy, dressed in dominatrix leathers and heels, dons boxing gloves, and punches Michael in the mouth.

"I love you," he replies. It's a moment worthy of Mel Brooks at his peak. Writer Tom Walmsley, who adapted his own unfinished novel for the screenplay, has a field day in this eroto-comic Neverland. When Sloan says he isn't gay because he has had sex with more women than men, William tells him, "A cannibal can eat a lot of turnips, but that doesn't make him a vegetarian." Ciccoritti tells his story with style, from the old filmscapes of Paris outside the window to the cold blue lighting that slowly warms up when Sloan arrives on the scene. It's often played for laughs, but for all its campiness.

Paris, France is a bold film, and for all its hokiness. it is a sad one. PARIS, FRANCE Directed by: Gerard Ciccoritti Starring: Leslie Hope, Peter Outerbridge, Victor Ertmanis, Dan Lett and Raoul Trujillo Playing at: ByTowne Cinema, until Jan. 20 Rating: By Jay Stone Citizen movies writer Obsessive and ironical: passionate and juvenile: Paris. France is a black comedy about sex, lies and audiotape.

It is satire with its pants down, an investigation of erotic excess that veers into parody. It is a sexual adventure that hedges its bets, a kind of Second Last Tango In Paris. Not only that, but it's Canadian. It combines scenes of explicit sex and this movie shows almost everything there is to show, including a little something from all the major perversion groups with an aura of comic self awareness. That's a delicate balancing act, and director Gerard Ciccoritti doesn't always make it.

Paris. France is at times a profoundly silly movie with the sensibilities of an inflated film school project. Scenes of erotic beauty alternate with scenes of great pretense. But under the irony it tells a disturbing story' about the outer reaches of sex. and it seems to work just often enough.

"I met the devil in Paris, France," says Lucy (Ix'slie Hope, whose wild abandon and Botticelli sexuality give the movie its drive), who has gone there to write. The devil is Lucy's deep desire for unfettered passion, for what she calls isni-with-a wink walks Sloan (Peter Outerbridge, in a well-shaded performance of sexuality, menace and confusion). Sloan is a Minter type, a poet with a boxer's body. His obsession is with Ed Gein, the American serial killer who inspired movies from Psycho to The Texas Chainsaw Massacre. Gein drank out of his victim's skulls and wore their skins; Sloan does the same in a sexual sense.

He is the imbalance, the stranger in town who opens the locked doors, like the James Spader character in sc.r, lies and videotape. Soon, everybody is entertaining Mr. Sloan. He unleashes desire in Lucy and gets her writing again and in family friend William (Dan Lett), a homosexual who is also drawn to him. This menage a.

quatre always stops before the precipice to make fun of itself. Director Ciccoritti jug.