Evening Standard from London, Greater London, England • 25

V- MEW STANDARD THURSDAY MARCH 12 J'J T-J -ff H-irt 1 1 WRITER-DIRECTOR Richard Wooiley's brothers and Sisters (Cert AA 96 mins Cineeenta Leicester 1CA Cinema) mrsde on an £89000 public ant from the British Film Institute at last brings a breath of human lire Into the i oicen ideologically oppressive recent movies Mind yon It's still a matter of class and polities even though the two brothers who represent opposing A positions in both are linked by the murder of a prostitute in Ripperland and we're led to expect a whodnnit 8ISSEY RFACEK right: Casualty straight from Rolling Stone So with a denouement in the radical commune rather than the Christie library We are deceived but not disappointed For Woolley uses the spliced footage of the murder as a sort of social bonding in two penetrating studies of the men's attitude to women and society David (Sam Dale) Is a left-wing social worker living communally with apparent sexual equality James (Rovert East) his brother an Army major conscious of class and caste and sexual inequality and anxious to preserve all three k8 tod of 110 'eta up for by numbers the interiors rich ifflvfah sort of plotting Robert Morley lev has the best that's not polluted by the flashier pressures that the pop world ana its music eventually exert when he asks for child" of the New York Jewish family Wohl put the film together with the assent and totally unsentimental complicity of the family It is harrowing of course -but the relationships are so his hardrup client's cheque book and tears it in two with terrifying relish In a gesture of economic excommunication Presented with this screen- Truths the producers should WHEN TIMES are bad the movie industry knows the way rob a bank The caper Plot in which some vulnerable goH-bearfag tastitution is knocked off by a sane of well observed that the 50-year ve lost no time in copying experience of Uvmcr together know- to eases us into intimate In so synchronised professionals is usually lootoroof doxh After all that's how one tries the Met Office forecast-so reliable for cricket matches -if a sudden storm meant you were over your head in a flash flood? And would you stage a break-in flkn without first knowing how the hell your heroes got out of the corner they'd plotted themselves Into? you would then Loophole is your film but not mine Its enduag isn't a surprise but a total cop-out In which director John Quested and writer Jonathan Hales throw their sodden but insoluble climax contemptuously back at the cinema audience-and say "Work out for yourselves folks' Short of providing a' solution like "With one mightly splash our hero was free 7' can offer no due to the mystery of why the movie was ever begun before the script was satisfactorily finished It's good to see Finney back on the screen sad to think one of England most talented actors has to go in for this sr-ch Ml ng ledge of the way love has overcome disability and humour tempered physical hardship and emotional distress -The nicest things of afl is that PhiUy and nis mother eventually saw this" movie screened at the New York Fihn Festival-Hand both loved it shed tears at seeing father Comes the recession though and suddenly -no one is making any money inside or out "Save you thought of selling your place asks bank manager Robert Morley brightly finding the silver lining to Sheen overdraft at a spot of lunch in the club Finding this xojdeglstible Sheen turns to the other 0 Albert Finney lures him into designing the break-in plan to one of London's biggest safe-box depositories Alter navigating the sewers It's Just the work of a Saturday night and Sunday morn-ling before the gang that Includes Colin Blakeley 'Jonathan Pryce antl Alfred Lynch can liquidate the filthy rich But wait let's take this back to the drawing board Would 'you embark on a burglary that depends on the eo used to false alarms of not sending to know for whom the bell tolls this time? Would you rely on ive Though the parts are stereotypes the two actors breath Individual life into them and give the film speclfie troth rather than simply a truth to type I imagine Mr Woolfcy's sympathies He with the radical youth: but proof of how these things dont always follow the plan (and thank goodness they dont) Is the way that the mate chauvinist pig actually eomes over as a more honest and Indeed likeable member of society- never mind the regiment East's performance Is on perfect pitcn Carolyn Pickles (as the prostitute and her sister) and Elizabeth Brnnett (as the -major's lady) also turn social roles into flesh and blood humanity again and were probably helped BEST BOY (Cert 104 mins Academy) Is one of the kindest and most moving "home'' movies I have ever watched That said what else can I say about Ira Wool's production that wont discourage you from sharing the compassionate experience it conveys? -v For it's about Ira's cousin PhlHy a man of 62 with the mental age of his father who dies during the picture and his mother who grows frailer before our eyes and has to come to terms with the fact that shell soon not be able to look after the handicapped lor the tone when to nil the cinema box-office too But this time the British makers of Loophole (Cert A 105 mins selected cinemas) have neglected a basic rule of the game Never plot yourself into something from which you cant escape Martin Sheen is a dull but honest young architect whose purpose bunt Thames side house shelters a paznpered lifestyle and Susannah York as a wife with colour-euppfe-ment plans to open a Fulnam Road boutique and decorate faces life alone "set he sts ire tn- 1 ts lec cb ting brighter daily" we're told with out has mother who's now dead -v- A movie' like this heals the memory of all the exploitive bruises laid on it by films made without heart -or soul to AMERICAN ARTIST Desiams diAUd ot Sate id lU ra lAlflfflTJflM IWV1 wandered in his art across whatever continents and centuries he chose A portrait from Renaissance Florence was regarded as neither more or less accessible than an up to date fan-ciagazine photo of Lauren Bacell Both had an equal right to be reclaimed and preserved in boxes where scientific diagrams of solar systems somehow became as romantic and mysterious as Taglioni's jewel casket filled with glistening cubes of artificial submerged presence: cracks of carefully simulated decay zigzag down the back of a wooden box hinting that the effects of time cannot be staved off indefinitely The bcix can be a prison as well as a refuge and when Hans Namuth photographed CkjrneU 1969 he (fid look oddly like --anv unwilling captive in his own home By then his mother and brother had both been dead for some years- Slumped on a chair several sizes too small for him end surrounded by boxes bags and shelves -filled with material Tmnwi OM is 9 -ftv a Is a Wonder waiting to be used the ageing trapped arose seems almost Inside this daust FGohoblc room With a resigned expression he stares at the floor and leans his head against a book called "The Bestiary" as if to draw a parallel between bis solitary confinement and the fate of animals In cages It Is a forlorn steht emphasising how prodigious an effort Cornell must have made in order to escape from "the grips of panic" and fashion an art fified for the most part with unforgettable serenity and delight Cornell had a sculptor's aptitude for handling his materials with instinctive sympathy and he brought out the wonder inherent even in the most mundane of scavenged objects It is exhilarating to watch him performing such potent and 1 evocative feats with nothing except the waste-matter of history at his disposal Most of the boxes are high-spirited works and they leave-the spectator invigorated by the sustained balletic prowess of Cornell's imagination Fart of their extraordinary aura depends on the undertow of melancholy which runs through his art Most of the time it is only felt as a JOSEPH CORNELL Is at the Whlteehanel Art GaDery until April 12 SOLACE In a The Caliph sf Baghad ltM rrrt If" ii- in 1 i iff II i v- I' 'v.