lcliffor@bbncca.ARPA (Laura Frank Clifford) (07/31/84)
Has anyone heard anything about Nicholas Roeg's last film titled "Eureka" starring Gene Hackman, Teresa Russell (Bad Timing), and Rutger Hauer? I ready about this film well over a year ago and have been looking for it every since.
reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (08/02/84)
"Eureka" was supposed to be previewed at UCLA about 9 or 10 monthes ago.
Roeg was to attend, and answer questions (part of an ongoing program at
UCLA to bring filmmakers to campus to talk to students). Without any
explanation, the showing was cancelled. I think that the studio was
unhappy with the film and is sitting on it. Since Roeg has never made
conventional Hollywood films, this makes some sense.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{ihnp4,ucb}!ucla-cs!reiher
"Is the baby smiling, or is it just gas? Which do you want it to be?"reiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (09/30/84)
Nicholas Roeg's "Eureka", starring Gene Hackman, Rutger Hauer, Mickey Rourke,
Theresa Russell, and Joe Pesci, is finally opening, about a year and a half
after it's original opening date. Fox apparently has no confidence at all in
this film, so it's getting minimal publicity and advertising. This means that,
if you want to see it, keep your eyes open and move quickly.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiherreiher@ucla-cs.UUCP (10/10/84)
There are a lot of directors who aren't particularly in-
terested in plot. There are a few directors who don't really
like plot. One or two directors seem to hate plot. Then there's
Nicholas Roeg, who takes it one step further. He has such scorn
for the whole idea of plot that he invariably sets up a strong
story early in his films and then purposefully neglects to finish
it. Roeg refuses to buckle under to the Hollywood principle of
primacy of plot, and his form of rebellion is much more forceful
than never bothering with a story at all, at least in my book.
Roeg rebels again in "Eureka", and the studio meted out it's usu-
al punishment, by recutting the film and delaying it's release.
(I can't understand how he can keep getting studios to finance
his films, but I'm glad they do. You can at least count on Roeg
for something different than the usual stuff.)
Well, plot isn't everything. Roeg has always been much more
interested in atmosphere, characters, and photography. His films
usually reflect these preferences quite clearly. "Walkabout",
"Performance", "The Man Who Fell to Earth", "Don't Look Now", and
"Bad Timing" were all strong in these areas and deficient in
plotting. "Eureka" is, too. But not, unfortunately, strong
enough, or perhaps just too deficient. Roeg sets up a mystery,
offers a potential solution (which all avid filmgoers know must
give way to at least one plot twist), and then fails to resolve
it. He did the same sort of thing in his previous films, but
then he was able to make a virtue of ambiguity, while in "Eureka"
it merely annoys.
"Eureka" is about a man named Jack McCann. We first see him
struggling through the Yukon, one of the last of the goldseekers.
It's 1925, and most of the gold has already been found. The boom
towns are folding and everyone else is beginning to lose faith,
but McCann is still obsessed by the rich gold strike he knows is
waiting for him. Here the film makes a typically Roegian dip
into the mystical. McCann finds a stone which is linked to his
destiny, and then stumbles into a cave that seems to be filled
with liquid gold. Instant riches.
The film jumps ahead twenty years. McCann is now the
richest man in the world. He lives on an island in the Caribbean
which he more or less owns. But is he happy? Need you ask? His
wife is an alcoholic, his business associate is secretly making a
deal with some Mafia types to build a casino on his island,
his beloved daughter has married a man he despises, and he has
parrot droppings on the shoulder of his bathrobe. Now *that's*
misery.
The film's plot twists and turns through any number of con-
volutions, some predictable, some not. Finally, we reach what is
definitely an ending, and we have a reasonable explanation for the
major characters' motives, but Roeg regally declines to answer
what were, for me, the two most interesting plot questions, one
of which set the second half of the story in motion, the other a
mystery which Roeg shrouded in enticing ambiguity, with the im-
plied promise that all would be revealed in the end. These omis-
sions are not accidental. Roeg clearly was never interested in
the first, and tries to convince us that the second really wasn't
important. He fails. Give Roeg points for trying, but ambiguous
endings really flop if they don't work, and this one didn't work
for me, or for a lot of other people, if reviews and the babble
of exiting crowds mean anything. Some of the themes Roeg tries
to address in "Eureka" are pretty clear, but there are others
that never come into focus, particularly an ongoing dalliance
with magic in various forms, so underlying meanings do not save
the subversion of the story.
Whatever else one may say of Roeg's films, they are always
visually stunning, and, again, "Eureka" is true to form. The
discovery of the gold is thrilling, the other Arctic scenes
starkly beautiful, the Caribbean scenes lushly beautiful, the in-
teriors darkly beautiful,...well, you get the idea. Roeg was
originally a cinematographer, and one of the best, and he knows
how to shoot a scene. The screenwriter, Paul Meyersberg, doesn't
deserve any praise for this effort; maybe Roeg forced him into
it, but the script is maddeningly ambiguous and some of the dia-
log is very bad. Stanley Myers' score is excellent.
The cast is also superior. Gene Hackman gives a strong per-
formance as Jack McCann. Hackman's performance is well shaded so
that it provides just enough mystery to keep us guessing at McCann's
motives, and yet so finely tuned that when we discover what makes
McCann tick, we understand what was previously inexplicable.
Theresa Russel, a Roeg favorite, is generally good as Hackman's
daughter, though she has some weak moments in an overextended
courtroom scene that Roeg stages in a surprisingly conventional way
(with the exception of a single shot). Rutger Hauer, as her hus-
band, succeeds in making us see why Hackman hates him and Russel
loves him. Mickey Rourke is underutilized (and oddly cast) as a
Mafia lawyer. Ed Lauter has the note of desperation necessary
for Hackman's associate, but I can't picture anyone trusting
someone so ratty looking in the first place.
Unless you're already a Roeg fan, or don't mind mysteries
where they never tell you whodunnit, you probably won't
like "Eureka". I found it to be a fairly noble failure with some
very interesting elements, but I have a great deal of patience
with unusual films. If fuzziness and uncertainty makes you want
to throw popcorn at the screen, don't go to this one. The film
has been withheld for a year and a half, then cut to avoid an X
rating (there are a couple particularly erotic sex scenes and
some rather gruesome violence), but, even giving Roeg the benefit
of the doubt about the lost material, I think that this film nev-
er worked.
--
Peter Reiher
reiher@ucla-cs.arpa
{...ihnp4,ucbvax,sdcrdcf}!ucla-cs!reiher