tgd@bonnie.UUCP (Tom Dennehy) (07/18/84)
I thought you'd
never ask dept.
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Question: If the trial of the three Australians was to
appease the Germans for the alleged murder of the
missionairy, why was that the charge which was
dropped?
Guess: All involved had an alibi for their whereabouts
at the time the missionairy was shot. There were
no witnesses, so the charge could not be proven.
What was more important was the coverup of the
verbal order to shoot Boer prisoners. Someone
had to take the fall; why not three Aussies?
After all, they were not regular British army.
This way, the there are executions to appease the
Germans, the trial does not look like a sham
because not all the charges are proven and not
all the accused are shot, and the British save
face.
ON TO OTHER THINGS
John Huston's UNDER THE VOLCANO is a movie filled with
capital letters. First of all, the novel by Malcolm Lowry
is an Important Book. Ask anyone. I'll confess to having
read it only a few months ago after hearing they were going
to finally film The Movie. Second, it's being screened in
Manhattan at the kind of theater where people sit quietly
before the movie starts reading other Important Books.
Finally, advance word has Albert Finney giving an Oscar
Winning Performance.
Balderdash.
UTV concerns a day in the life of Geoffrey Fermin, aka
The Consul, a retired British Consul in Quernavaca, Mexico
(no spelling flames, please) deep in the throes of
alchoholism. On this day, his estranged wife Yvonne and his
half-brother Hugh have joined him and together they will
reveal the Dreadful Secret they carry around with them. We
know what the DS is from the moment Hugh and Yvonne meet so
when it is revealed it doesn't amount to a whole hell. No
matter. The stifling atmosphere of despair Lowry takes such
great pain (literally) to create has been vividly
transferred to the screen, and UTV is a marvelous success in
that respect. On the other hand, the characters have been
stripped down to nothing; Yvonne and Hugh are ciphers,
Geoffrey a mere shadow of his literary incarnation, so UTV
ultimately fails.
Albert Finney has been getting a lot of press for his
performance in UTV; there are reports of his doing the whole
film drunk, and the current cover story of American Film has
him drinking during the interview and revealing his daily
ritual for getting through the part. Well, if any or all of
this is true, it tarnishes what amounts to half a great
performance. Finney has an absolutely fantasmagoric
sequence starting with Yvonne finding Geoff in the cantina
where he has presumably spent the night and ending with
Yvonne, Hugh, and Geoff setting off for day at the carnival.
He's funny, despairing, nimble, clumsy, understanding, and
cruel, helpless in the bathroom, but pip-piping expertly
with a fellow countryman. I refuse to believe he has that
range drunk. Later on, though, his performance degenerates
into a kind of brooding Howard Biehl (from Network) after
the DS is revealed. Drunk on camera? Well, maybe. As for
Anthony Andrews and Jacqueline Bisset, they make no real
impression, but at least JB doesn't introduce her character
in UTV by drinking an upside-down marguerita as she did in
the mistitled CLASS.
Technically, UTV is uneven. The exteriors and action
sequences are soopah, but the interiors are sloppy - sudden
movements cause the film to strobe. If we take the movie
out of The Event, it's a sometimes substantial adaptation of
a sometimes substantial novel. Attach too much importance
to it, though, and it falls face down in the road. Just
like Geoff.
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Tom Dennehy AT&T BL Whippany,NJ ...bonnie!tgd