Wednesday, September 22, 1982
Page 8
Daily Nebraskan
Arts EMeritara
Film at Sheldon
predictable, good
By David Thompson
The original title of "Cutter's Way" was "Cutter and
Bone." The film has wandered from the shelving room of
United Artists, through redistribution and will emerge as
"Cutter's Way" at Sheldon, where it will run Thursday
through Saturday this weekend.
Why the change of title? Because the studio biggies
were afraid that people would be scared away by a title
that cuts a little too close to the bone with its connota
tions of surgical severity. The change was well made,
because no one should be scared away from a film of such
honest emotion and intelligent technique.
The original title did serve one purpose. It clued the
viewer into the method by which this film works.
Alex Cutter, played by John Heard, is a Vietnam
veteran who is drifting in a post-war melancholia, sadly
accentuated by his loss of an eye, leg and arm. His friend
is Richard Bone, played by Jeff Bridges, who spent the
war in college and now goes sailing and sleeps with women
when hfs not hanging around with Cutter.
Tense friendship
Their relationship is tense. Cutter is the angry, active
force, while Bone is more laid back and leaves the cutting
to his feisty counterpart. It is a tidy allegory with built in
signs to lead us to the meaning that is intertwined with
the plot. One has to accept such an allegory as an art
object, an entity containing the assumptions that we make
in order to absorb what's going on.
The film opens with Bone tying up a tryst on a stormy
. night. Driving home, his car breaks down in an alley. A
big car drives up, stops nearby and a man jumps out.
Instead of coming to help Bone, the man lurks in the
darkness a while and then drives off.
The next day, Bone is questioned as a murder suspect
after a body is found in the alley near his car. Later, while
watching a parade, he sees the man he thinks was in the
car the night before. Cutter sets off to find this would-be
murderer, and the plot is tripped into action.
That is assumption No. 1. We have to accept the
coincidence of Bone and Cutter bot.i oeing at the parade
and just happening to see the man from th alley. If we
spend all our time thinking, "Ah, c'mon, man, you expect
me to believe that?," we miss out on the film's more val
uable aspects. Just as one doesn't look to Ellery Queen for
meaningful insights, neither do we look to literary
allegory for seamless plots.
Within this somewhat ragged plot we have Cutter and
Bone, the active and the passive, trying to find justice.
The search is especially difficult in light of the fact that
the man at the parade, the supposed murderer, is none
other than the infamous Mr. Cord, millionaire president of
Cord Consolidated Oil.
Cutter and Bone become freedom fighters against the
establishment, Robin Hood and the Lone Ranger out to
make waves in apathetic post-Vietnam America.
The odds of their search are made painfully apparent
when they go to Cord's office building in Los Angeles.
They pull their beat up convertible in front of this
monolith to the system. They are like two Mongols
running up against the Great Wall of China. This is great
stuff, folks, so leave your cynicism at the door of Sheldon
with your backpack.
If you decide to go through the film with a fine
toothed comb in spite of my warnings, there are other
delights.
Cutter and Bone have an old friend, who eventually
became Cutter's wife but who actually is balanced
somewhere between the two. Mo, played by Lisa
Eichhorn, is in love with her valiant, fiery husband and
drawn to his more sensitive, relaxed sidekick.
Emotional center
Neither one of them gives her the devotion she
deserves, so she softens her lonely, painful place in life
with alcohol. She gives the film its emotional center, sus
pended somehwere between thought, action and her
devotion to her troubled friends.
What makes the triangle fascinating is the delicate
modes of communication that go on between three people
who don't quite satisfy each other, but are nonetheless
connected. When Cutter becomes overly enthusiastic
about catching the murderous millionaire and Bone bows
out of his friend's struggle with honor. Mo asks him if
he was seized by "a moment of weakness or sanity." It
is a mixture of these two elements that binds the three
people, one fighting his own Arthurcan legend, one
groping at freedom, one at love, and all in the midst of
a world that threatens and succeeds at tearing them
apart.
If that doesn't grap you either, 1 can proceed further
into esotericism and away from feeling by praising Jordan
Croncnweth's cinematography and Ivan Passer's direction.
Events are caught in extraordinary lighting. It is tawny in
the sad, steamy sex scene and crisp and clear at a polo
match. Scenes are constructed that catch, with unabashed
bluntness, everything from the delicacy of facial expres
sions to the tragic fury that leads Cutter to pulverize a
carnival teddy bear with a gun.
Continued on Page 9
ovies
Photo courtesy of Sheldon
John Heard and Lisa Eichhorn in "Cutter's Way"
"Stevie" weaves poetry
By Chuck Jagoda
"Stevie," the first in this year's Sheldon Foreign Film Series, was
a series of poems, then a radio play and then a stage play before becoming
a move. Directed by Robert Enders, starring Glenda Jackson and based
on the play by Hugh Whitemore and the works of Stevie Smith, a well
known British poetess, the movie is made up of poems stitched together
to make a composite portrait of the main character.
There are a number of outdoor sequences and some scene changes
from one room to another, but most of the scenes take place on the
single set of Stevie's living room, as befits a stage play. The poems come
across as poems, most of them spoken by Stevie directly to the camera.
She commutes to London to her job in a publishing company and
gives readings for the British Broadcasting Corporation and to literary
clubs. She lives with her aunt in the same suburban house she has lived
in since her childhood.
Most of Stevie's poetry is about herself, her surroundings and her
relationships. She is very fond of odes. When she tells you about some
thing, she doesn't just describe it. She writes an ode to it. She has odes
to the importance of being tired, to suburban people, to suburban living,
living without Freddie and living with her aunt. Most are celebrations of
her unconventional attitudes, and they find a perfect match in the acting
of Glenda Jackson. She is entirely convincing as the independent, self
reliant heroine who clearly hears her own drummer and cares for no other.
Mona Washbourne is fitting as "the Lion Aunt," all tawny and warm.
Trevor Howard and Alec McCown are excellent in their supporting roles.
Although I found much to admire in the film, it seemed more like a
play than a movie, and still more like poetry than a play.
The poems spoken by Stevie, sitting very still and looking at the
camera, did not hold my attention as well as the scenes that integrated
poetry, action and. the interplay between Stevie and the other characters.
The film played at Sheldon Film Theatre Friday through Monday.
I Cx Y
Cartoon by Billy Shaffer
Pink breaks
"The Wall"
By Billy Shaffer
Some people look at a wall and see it
as security. Some see it as a barrier they
can't transgress. By the same token, some
people look at Roger Waters' tour deforce
"The Wall" and see it as a self-indulgent,
confusing and obscure poke at a musician-turned-filmmaker.
Some see it as an
explosive, emotional and personal state
ment. I'm of the latter and, in fact, con
sider "The Wall" to be one of the best
movies I have ever seen.
"The Wall" is much more than a vehicle
for a double-album or an extended rock
video. The movies,, is a very introspective
look at a person who was (unfortunately)
born sensitized. Through a series of traum
atic experiences, such as the death of his
father in WWII while still an infant, to the
breakup of his marriage while on tour in
the United States. Pink Floyd (superbly
portrayed by Bob Geldof of - the
Boomtown Rats) shows us the total range
of human emotion. Although there is
no actual dialogue in the movie, Pink
(Geldof) depicts his life in the most
realistic terms. There is no happy ending
to "The Wall." Life stinks sometimes, and
Waters doesn't pretty up that fact.
"The Wall" opens on an individual
sequestered in a hotel room, locked up
from the cleaning lady and the rest of the
world. That's the first "wall" we're
presented with, a superficial one at best.
The lead character has. chosen to block
off life with a dead bolt, a TV and a venge
ance. The TV in this case becomes Pink'j
symbolic father, and the lock is symbolic
of the walls the protagonist must build to1
preserve his sensitive sanity against the
cruel inhumanities dealt to his life.
Although the idea might sound trite in
print, it is portrayed beatifully and poetic
ally on screen. This movie is stacked with
just such images that reek of poignancy
without getting "schlocky." If a picture
is worth a thousand words, this flick merits
a library.
The plot of "The Wall" is based on a
single evening in the life of an English rock
star, spent in the cold atmosphere of Los
Angeles. The movie includes numerous psy
choanalytic flashbacks to childhood that
involve a younger Pink. As he loses that
precious innocence of childhood, he
eventually comes to that desensitized,
walled-off, "comfortably numb" stage that
provides some solace from the raging
emotions inside himself. Pink finds TV a
solace at home, but in public, it's Pink's
control over an audinence that dishes up
his lifemotivation. In an ironic twist of
fate, Pink becomes an influence over others
in much the same way as Hitler influenced
his behavior. The goal is to control the
people. Power is the motivation. Fascism
is the result.
At once, the movie sums itself up. The
real effects of a fascist movermnt can be
boiled down to the Impact It has on one
individual. Pink's life was devastated by the
loss of his father to the war. And in
emotional retaliation, he becomes very
similar to a Hitler-like personality in mind
controlling his audience to fascist
extremes.
The cycle becomes self-perpetuating.
Pain bequeaths pain. Self-serving leaders
tell us what to do. We listen, we fight,
we build a new wall. We are not men, we
are just bricks.
"The Wall" is a visually beautiful
movie with some incredible animation
thrown in at times. It's intellectually
stimulating, it's emotionally stirring, and
it's aurally exciting. This movie should
be up for no less than four academy
awards, if there is any justice: best film,
best actor, best screenplay and best sound
track. Continued on Page 9
