reiher@amethyst.jpl.nasa.gov (Peter Reiher) (09/26/89)
IN COUNTRY
A film review by Peter Reiher
Copyright 1989 Peter Reiher
Some novels make good films. Some novels don't. One good predictor of
whether a novel will make a good film is how much the novel depends on the
inward lives of its characters. DAVID COPPERFIELD, full of incident and
activity, could make a good film. So could GONE WITH THE WIND, or THE HUNT FOR
RED OCTOBER, or TAIPAN. (As the last example shows, just because it could make
a good film doesn't mean it will.) ULYSSES, in which the inward voice of the
author and the details of the central character make the trivial heroic,
probably could not make a good film. Neither would CATCHER IN THE RYE, THE
SOUND AND THE FURY, or ALICE ADAMS. (Again, the latter example shows that
there are exceptions.) IN COUNTRY was obviously based on a very "interior"
novel. Things happen, but most of them aren't terribly dramatic. So
expecting the film to be completely successful is asking too much. What's
heartening about IN COUNTRY is that parts of it work very well.
IN COUNTRY concerns a Kentucky girl who has just graduated from high
school. Gradually, her father, who died in Vietnam, comes to be more and more
important in her life. She must undergo a difficult, painful growth before
finding the right place in her heart for him. At the same time, her uncle, an
embittered veteran, wastes his life because he cannot escape the pain of his
experiences. I'll bet this read very, very well. It films only moderately
well, and only because some very talented people have done superb work.
Foremost is Emily Lloyd, as the girl. Lloyd, an English actress whose
first film, WISH YOU WERE HERE, demonstrated her ample promise, here succeeds
in an entirely different type of part. Working behind a flawless Kentucky
accent (at least to my untutored ear), she portrays a nice, ordinary girl who
finds that her normalcy is undermined by her father's experiences in Vietnam,
even though she never met him. Lloyd ably shapes the character of a typical
American teenager discovering that there is more to the world than her first
car, her boyfriend, and going to the shopping mall.
Bruce Willis does a nice job as her Uncle Emmett. Willis was a bold
choice, since his previous film roles do not suggest depth. However, he
willingly buries himself in the character. No wiseacre smirks at the camera,
no smugly hip attitudes, just an honest and successful attempt to build a
character around his gifts. His performance demonstrates that he is an actor
with more use than carrying DIE HARD II. Unfortunately, the combination of
performance, script, and direction fail to lift Emmett above the role of plot
functionary. He has reality, but he lives in the background.
Any problems with IN COUNTRY have nothing to do with the acting. The
problems are in the script, and, before that, probably in the whole idea of
making a film from the book. IN COUNTRY is filled with modern novelistic
digressions. It perpetually wanders from its central theme. In the novel,
these digressions were probably seamlessly integrated into the experiences of
the central character, enriching the reader's understanding of her growth.
Writers Frank Pierson and Cynthia Cidre and director Norman Jewison fail to
blend them into the story. They are drags on the film, which, around the
hour-and-a-half mark, begins to feel drawn out.
Fortunately, Pierson, Cidre, and Jewison are able to finish very strong.
Bobbie Ann Mason's novel gave them one perfect cinematic scene to work with,
and they make that sequence play extremely well. The final scenes are highly
moving, and redeem the slowness of the earlier film.
Jewison has plenty of good cinematic credits, including literary
adaptations, such as IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT. He does well with IN COUNTRY,
but there are two potential problems with his choice as a director. First, he
is Canadian, and the heart of the story is how the Vietnam War has affected
even those Americans who weren't born at the time. Second, it is a girl's
story, not a boy's. Jewison manages to imagine his way past the first problem,
but not entirely past the second. IN COUNTRY seems an authentically American
experience, but not completely a female one. We've seen a lot of films in the
last ten years that sensitively present boys' stories, but not nearly as many
that have a girl as the central character. Part of the reason is that most
writers and directors are male. They identify with the male experience, and
understand it. To make a good film about a woman, they must rely on
imagination, always in short supply in Hollywood. Jewison successfully
imagines himself a U.S. citizen, but not a young woman. As a result, the film
looks at its central character from outside, despite the fact that the story is
presented through her eyes. That Lloyd's character is not totally a cipher is
due to her talent, and, perhaps, the contribution of Cynthia Cidre to the
script. Jewison must also bear primary responsibility for the lugubrious
pacing of IN COUNTRY.
The supporting cast is good, with Peggy Rea, as Lloyd's grandmother, a
standout. Judith Ivey also does well with relatively few scenes, playing
Emmett's old girlfriend who wants him back. Kevin Anderson mostly drives a car
in a somewhat dispensable role as Lloyd's boyfriend.
The technical credits are high-quality Hollywood professionalism, which is
the best film professionalism in the world. Not brilliant, not inspired, but
very competent and well executed. James Horner's rather routine score fills a
similar bill, supplemented by several rock songs, especially an overused and
somewhat inappropriate Bruce Springsteen number. No one in this film is any
hotter than a low smouldering, much less on fire.
IN COUNTRY is another of those praiseworthy Hollywood films. Everyone had
good intentions, everyone did a good job, some people even did a great job.
But it is only moderately successful, none the less, with none of the snap and
heat of a really strong film. The ending is so surefire and so well executed
that it overcomes many of the rather routine aspects of the rest of the film.
It makes the film worth seeing, especially when coupled with Emily Lloyd's
performance.
Peter Reiher
reiher@amethyst.jpl.nasa.gov
(DO NOT send to reiher@amethyst.uucp)
. . . cit-vax!elroy!jato!jade!reiherleeper@mtgzx.att.com (Mark R. Leeper) (10/06/89)
IN COUNTRY
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1989 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: This film is not so much an attempt to
help the audience understand the Vietnam war vet--it is more
a tribute and its message is diluted by unnecessary subplots.
Rating: low +2.
In the American film industry, lifting a taboo is like opening a
floodgate. Sex was a taboo for a long time; so was very graphic violence.
Neither seems to be a particularly scarce commodity in current films.
Another subject that filmmakers felt they had to stay away from for a long
time was the Vietnam war. The assumption was that films about an unpopular
war would probably be unpopular also. Right into the mid-1980s the film
industry was still making more films about World War II than it was about
Vietnam. But now there seems to be at least three or four major films a
year about the Vietnam war and if after-effects. Many are thoughtfully and
intelligently made. Presently running there is both Brian DePalma's
CASUALTIES OF WAR and Norman Jewison's IN COUNTRY. The latter has gotten
quite a bit of favorable comment.
IN COUNTRY is the story of Samantha Hughes (played by Emily Lloyd) who,
in the summer following her high school graduation, begins asking questions
about her father's death in the war. Samantha lives in the small town of
Hopewell, Kentucky, in amongst several Vietnam veterans, all of whom are
haunted by their war memories and who, in fact, seem to be constantly living
in the shadow of the war. Samantha is spending the summer with her uncle
Emmett Smith (played very convincingly by Bruce Willis in one of his rare
serious roles). The climax and culmination of her summer and the film is
her visit, with her uncle and her grandmother, to the Vietnam War Memorial
in Washington DC.
What makes IN COUNTRY remarkable among all the (respected) Vietnam-
war-related films is how little understanding it really does bring. The
story is diluted by subplots of Samantha's and her girl friend's romantic
attachments, and more time is spent with an old girlfriend of Emmett's going
after him again. The latter plot is tangentially related to the war theme,
since Emmett is still too disturbed to relate well to anybody. But snippet
flashbacks of Emmett's war experiences are just a bit too simple and pat.
The scenes at the Memorial are moving--which is to say manipulative, but in
a good cause--and clearly what the entire film is aiming for. However,
there is nothing in the scene that brings us closer to the war experience.
Like the Memorial itself, the film brings not so much understanding for the
war veteran as a tribute to the veteran. That is not so ambitious a goal,
but it is sufficient. I give the film a low +2 on the -4 to +4 scale.
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzx!leeper
leeper@mtgzx.att.com