The Salt Lake Tribune from Salt Lake City, Utah • 33

C3 The Salt Lake Tribune CALENDAR Friday January 7 1994 'Shadow lands' a wise illuminating love story I2 Shadow lands A wonderf ull intelligent lore story based on the life of author CS Unit 1 t- I I II ''t 1 16 1k Alt '1 c'''" 1 2 4 A 1 1 1-1 1- i i i ik -e- 1 1 1 i 1 'etc 21 4s 16644 6 r66A4 Or I4 '1 i 1 6 I 4 i 1 4 'la a 4 4 1 'I 4 I 111 7 -Al 1 5P-e'r4e 41 4 if 4 -1 0 I 161 ft litt: IP '6-i '1 Al -4' ''''t ''0 I 1 1 i44 AFN I l' A T- Tt -44 i rI I I 4 11 214 '14 i 1 -4 0'1 Ytiit Lj 1 1 K''' )14 olo I' 004'-': A v-----riv 00-7a 4 Ir 4 1 d- i I i --i t- p- 4 'LI -4 1 L- 1- --4 -lt 000" i 14 o- I 1 f'- "77 11 Zf 1: tt I- '1 -a- 1 I A 0 -4z- :1 4t 4- Ilvli (to t1 0441 y)" I 11- oop l''' I i-- 400- i I i I 11 German industrialist Oskar Schindler (Liam Neeson on platform) welcomes workers to factory asking "Are you trying to be offensive or are you merely stupid" After Joy gets a divorce she and Lewis marry strictly for convenience mind you so she can maintain British citizenship But they soon realize that they truly love each other and that love is tested when Joy is diagnosed with terminal bone cancer Lewis' theories about love and pain are made real as Joy tells him "the pain then is part of the happiness now That's the deal" William Nicholson's screenplay (adapted from his award-winning play) is uniquely literate using themes of theology and scholarship to deepen the love story Attenborough plays it with little overt sentimentality and his depictions of Oxford life are sweetly dotty The acting is delightful Hopkins is wonderfully restrained though not so straitjacketed as his butler in "The Remains of the Day" Winger gives a full-bodied performance that depicts Gresham's pain without sinking into the pathetic Mazzello is touching and Hardwicke (known to TV audiences as the first Watson in the PBS "Sherlock Holmes is charmingly bumbling "Shadowlands" (rated PG for some mature themes) works by showing that love is never simple and the sweetest and strongest love is a marriage of minds 'Schindler's List': Heroism and horror By Sean Means THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE I spent a good part of -Shadow-lands" with my hands clenched waiting in dread for the Richard Attenborough Moment If you've seen "Chaplin" "Cry Freedom" or "A Chorus Line" you know what I mean: the moment where Sir Richard jumps off the deep end of mushy sentimentality taking his movie down with him The startling wonderful thing about "Shadow lands" is that the Richard Attenborough Moment never comes In telling the quiet story of author CS Lewis and his romance with an American poet Attenborough makes the wise decision not to get in the way "Shadow lands" is set in Oxford of the 1950s where cloistered chauvinism is as much a tradition as the regatta Among the dons is Lewis (played by Anthony Hopkins) who lives an orderly life teaching discussing philosophy with his colleagues and sharing a house with his brother Warnie (Edmund Hardwicke) Lewis talks a lot about love God magic and pain His colleagues try picking apart The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe for Christian or Freudian im Schindler's List Steven Spielberg grows up with a heartbreaking examination of the Holocaust Debra Winger Anthony Hopkins star in "Shadow lands" agery but hell have no truck with it On the lecture circuit he talks of the necessity of pain saying that "pain is Gods megaphone to rouse a deaf world" But while Lewis can talk intellectually about such emotions he doesn't really feel them That all changes when he receives a visit from Joy Gresham (Debra Winger) a strong-willed New Yorker who is a big Lewis fan Gresham knows pain firsthand She is fleeing an abusive alcoholic husband with her 9-year-old son (Joseph Mazzello who played Attenborough's grandson in "Jurassic Park-) in tow She endures the indignities of Lewis' sexist colleagues but stifles them by 'The Air Up There' soars and scores as comedy The Air Up There An exuberant basketball story filmed under African skies the Krakow ghetto Schindler puts his plans into action He bribes and carouses with Nazi officers to get a fat Army contract for his pots and pans He gets Jewish investors to trade money for goods (Deutschemarks are worthless in the ghetto) with Schindler using the money to build his factory He hires Jewish workers because they're cheaper than Polish labor and the Jews represented by Itzhak Stern (Ben Kingsley) an accountant Schindler hires to run his factory agree because it will let them barter outside the ghetto The arrangement starts to sour as the Nazis unleash more violence and hatred People are shot dead without provocation The Nazis liquidate the Krakow ghetto rounding up people and shooting those trying to hide They ship thousands of Jews to the Plaszow labor camp where the vile Commandant Goeth (Ralph Fiennes) takes potshots at workers from his balcony Stern talks Schindler into having workers transferred from the camp where they surely will die to his factory And while Schindler at first balks for fear of jeopardizing his wealth he slowly sees the Nazis' escalating evil and that he must do what he can to counteract it With "Schindler's List" Steven Spielberg finally has grown up Unable to sugarcoat history as he --did in "The Color Purple" and "Empire of the Sun" Spielberg stares it down without flinching Spielberg avoids his usual high-gloss style without crane shots or color (except in a few brief and brilliant instances) The movie's black-and-white footage and documentary-like handheld camerawork shot by cinematogra pher Janusz Kaminski add a stark clarity to the re-creations of mass murder and degradation which are as startling as any committed to film (The film is rated for depicting such atrocities) Spielberg and screenwriter Steven Zail Han for Bobby who adapted Thomas Keneally's novelization of Schindler's story put the Nazis under a microscope dissecting the ways the Germans reduced genocide to a numbers game They also use telling details to show the desperate tricks the Jews learned to survive (The movie was filmed in Croatia Germany and Poland including some scenes outside Auschwitz) The international cast is stunning Kingsley as always is the personification of calm humanity Fiennes depicts the commandant as a beer-gutted boor who has streamlined his hatred into banality Embetli Davidtz as the commandant's Jewish maid gives silent testament to the never-ending fear suffered at the Nazis' hands Neeson is handed the toughest role of all and largely pulls it off Looking like a linebacker in a double-breasted suit Neeson fills the physical requirements of the Aryan ideal But under that suave Art Deco surface Neeson encapsulates Schindler's inner paradox a hedonist with a taste for cognac and frauleins who becomes a humanitarian and savior At an unrelenting 3 hours and 16 minutes "Schindler's List" will be an endurance test for some But its images of horror and its message of hope recounting the Talmudic verse "whoever saves one life saves the world entire" should not and will not be forgotten By Sean Means THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Is there a tougher subject for a storyteller than the Holocaust? It defies fictionalization because not even Dante could imagine a hell more ghastly than what the Nazis actually built It cannot be rationalized without doing a disservice to the memory of the 6 1 million who died But the Holocaust is difficult to take as a whole because the mind can't wrap itself around the de: tails without losing track of the overall evil Examining the Ho locaust like staring at the sun can be too intense to take all at once Some recent works on the Holocaust took an oblique look like Agrnieszka Holland's "Europa Europa" or used the marathon approach like Claude Lanzmann's 9-hour documentary "Shoah" Others like Art Spiegelman's Maus books and Martin Amis' Time's Arrow used literary devices that provided distance to let readers take a detached look In "Schindler's List" director Steven Spielberg tells a small 1 Ty within the big story detailing one act of heroism amid despair The result is an achingly powerful film that never loses sight of the Holocaust's horror or its victims' humanity Oskar Schindler makes for an unlikely hero Schindler (played by Liam Neeson) is a Czech entrepreneur a Nazi Party member who is equal parts playboy and huckster There's a war on and Schindler aims to make money out of it As the Nazis crowd Jews into about to retire and he isn't sure Dolan who played for St Joe's '81 championship team before his knee blew out is mature enough to lead the team When Dolan sees a film from St Joseph's Kenya mission he finds his salvation: a 6-foot-10 wonder who looks like the next Dikembe Mutombo But this star Saleh isn't just a good basketball player he's a prince destined to succeed his father as leader of their people the Winabi Father tells Dolan that Saleh can't leave because he must fight off the greedy mining company that wants the Winabi's land The film's climax pits Saleh and his Winabi tribesmen in a basketball game against the mining company's mercenary team with the winner getting the land Of course the game also symbolizes Dolan's spirit quest as he finds a higher purpose than himself Max Apple's script populates the landscape with cliched supporting characters: Saleh's broth er disowned by his father for switching sides: a tough-talking nun with whom Dolan shares sexually charged banter and an avuncular bingo-playing priest But director Paul Glaser Cutting charges this material with bursts of color though he does push the "Miami editing tricks Glaser's efforts are aided by location filming in Kenya and South Africa which lend an air of authenticity to the surroundings that even Disney sugarcoating can't hide Bacon gives a winning performance all Irish charm and twinkling eyes He's matched by newcomer Charles Gitonga Maim as Saleh who portrays an athlete's joy and the seriousness of an heir apparent with equal grace "The Air Up There" (rated PG for profanity and mild violence) could have fallen under the weight of its own cliches But it puts the moves on its audience with such exuberance that it scores By Sean Means THE SALT LAKE TRIBUNE Flush with the unexpected success of "Cool Runnings" Disney (via its Hollywood Pictures nameplate) tries the inspirationalsports-movie route again with "The Air Up There" The two movies have a lot in common: gentle humor a hokey and blandly predictable plot and heroes who happen not to be white But where "Cool Runnings" choked on its own sap "The Air Up There" wins the audience over with charm and vitality Jimmy Dolan (Kevin Bacon) is an assistant basketball coach at St Joseph's a prestigious Catholic college When Dolan lets his ego blow St Joe's chances at recruiting a hot power forward Dolan's coach blows up The coach is raw 2 It SNEAK MN MERV A9 SUNNY ylCt DISIP Jimmy Dolan went to Africa to recruit a new player What he found was a whole new ballgame Cormike COTTONWOOD MALL 5001 Highland 218-4711 KEVIN BAiC0 STARTS TODAY Cormike PIVA 5 4 00 tedwood td 54th 969-6266 Independent Cinemark THE REEL THEATRE SANDY MOVIES 9 8325 West 3500 South 5153878 9539 South lth East 5710601 CHECK THeATne OtRECTORY OR CALE FOR SHOWTPAES SPECIAL ENDAGEMENT440 PASSES OA DISCOUNT COUPONS ACCEPTED 71- mon mew kag 41LVP-114612tgo 3L IL I Century Theotres CENTURY CINEMAS 9 2nd lost I 33rd 4869653 Storship Theatres GATEWAY 6 Bountjul Exit I-15 2924919 Cineplex Odeon TROLLEY SQUARE 5th South I Ith East 5218181 R7131 1101TRIAll't 13111-- krgi 711 ra LE1111 DV DP Rini ICI CO DIM ND El FEN! tor 0--1-nz-11-4 ---1d11: I CI NI 0 I-(334e'rrV Cotmoks Storship Theottes "THIS JUICY ROLLICKING PICTURE IS GRENERIMIYICHI" "The shootout at the OK Corral has a crackling energy and believability" -STEPHEN HOLDEN NEW YORK TIMES "Kurt Russell and Val Kilmer are terrific!" -JEFTEREY LYONS SNEAK PREVIEWSCNBC "GREAT FILM-MAKING A 10 ONE OF 'nig YEAR'S TEN BEST!" 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