steven@ism70.UUCP (07/11/85)
THE EMERALD FOREST Starring Powers Boothe, Charley Boorman and Meg Foster. Also starring Dira Paes, Rui Polonah and Claudio Moreno. Directed by John Boorman. Written by Rospo Pallenberg. Produced by John Boorman. Photographed by Phillipe Rousselot. Production Designed by Simon Holland. Edited by Ian Crafford. From Embassy Pictures (1985). Powers Boothe plays a civil engineer in Sao Paulo, Brazil, whose six-year old son is kidnapped by tribesmen into the Amazonian jungle. Ten years later, Boothe finds him completely assimilated into the society of the Invisible People tribe. The Invisible People are at war with The Fierce People tribe, and it turns out that it is civilization's encroaching presence (represented in this story by Boothe) which has caused this conflict to surface. In other words, it's an adventure movie presented as a mystic parable of ecology. Well, that's John Boorman's territory all right. Only thing is that Rospo Pallenberg's screenplay has all to do with adventure and little to do with mystic parables of ecology. Boorman has a strong visual sense and much of the movie presents the jungle environment with intoxicating beauty. He makes his point strongly and lets the rest of the picture fall where it may. Boothe gives a rather leaden performance, which is hidden somewhat by the fact that he gives most of his dialogue in subtitled Indian. Boorman handles most of the action well enough, but there's one point in the picture where some badly needed emotional reconciliation fails to materialize. In general, I think it hurts the movie; the ending sort of suffers from having stacked the deck rather strongly against civilization earlier in the picture. It could have been more ambiguous and thus more thought provoking. I think. Two and a half stars out of four.