In ”Men Don`t Leave,” a superb family drama released last winter to the general indifference of both the critics and the public, director Paul Brickman draws on uniquely cinematic means to create the film`s most subtle and moving effect.
Near the beginning of the film, a teenage boy (Chris O`Donnell) is seen bouncing a bright orange basketball down a staircase; about half an hour later, an orange falls from a food basket being carried by the boy`s mother
(Jessica Lange)-it, too, rolls down a flight of stairs, establishing a mysterious sense of continuity through the unexplained visual rhyme.
Another half-hour passes before the round, orange shape appears again, this time as a huge passenger balloon that appears in a clearing, to take Lange, a recent widow, on what is meant to be a spirit-boosting tour of the countryside. At the very end of the film, when it seems that Lange might succeed in holding her wounded family together, she and her two sons are seen wearing bright orange, overstuffed life preservers as they prepare for a boat ride.
When that particularly heightened color and that particular round shape
(once hard, but now soft and comforting) are reintroduced at the film`s climax, the effect is one of almost unbearable poignancy, thanks to the emotional associations Brickman has developed patiently and carefully over the entire course of his movie.
The viewer may not even be aware of the rhetorical mechanisms Brickman has put in place; we will only sense their ultimate effect, the cumulative power of the director`s carefully considered repetition of the formal elements of line and color. But a work of art seems much more beautiful once we learn to observe the development of an image or the elaboration of a formal figure; style this elegant is its own reward.
”Men Don`t Leave” represents filmmaking of a very high order, though it is not unique among the American movies of 1990: There are comparable moments of tremendous formal intelligence in Charles Burnett`s ”To Sleep with Anger,” John Boorman`s ”Where the Heart Is,” Clint Eastwood`s ”White Hunter, Black Heart” and Martin Scorsese`s ”GoodFellas.” As long as there are directors capable of creating such moments, the art of the cinema seems likely to survive.
What`s disturbing is the dearth of viewers capable of appreciating them. With the single exception of ”GoodFellas,” none of the above-named movies made more than the faintest ripple in the public or critical consciousness. It is not that they were misunderstood so much as they were not even perceived as ambitious movies, worthy of a little bit of extra attention or analysis.
”Men Don`t Leave” went down in the annals of 1990 as a moderately effective tearjerker, ”Where the Heart Is” as a failed, confused comedy, and ”White Hunter” as an unconvincing Hollywood expose. They somehow dropped below the range of seriousness; they were not bloated with social significance in the way of a ”Dances with Wolves” or as stylistically exaggerated as a
”Miller`s Crossing” or a ”Mo` Better Blues.” Functioning quietly, they may have just as well not functioned at all.
If ”GoodFellas” was the exception, it was almost certainly because of its violence, and not the subtle irony it possesses in equal measure. A high degree of ”impact”-that almost physical pummelling that comes from watching a movie of extremely violent content or of extremely aggressive style-has long been crucial to the commercial success of a film; it now seems crucial to its critical reception as well.
Unless a film manhandles its viewers, it runs the risk of being ignored;
to capture the attention of contemporary critics, it takes, almost literally, a well-aimed 2-by-4. The expressive repetition of round, orange shapes in
”Men Don`t Leave” stands no chance against the jetliner that dives headlong into a runway in ”Die Hard 2.”
Much of the important film criticism of the last 25 years has been devoted to rescuing American genre movies from the label of junk or pulp-proving, in fact, that there is much of value in movies that were once dismissed as trashy westerns, cheap thrillers or crude horror films. It`s possible that the process has now gone too far-that it has become difficult for an American film to be perceived as art without being perceived as trash first.
Why else would a crude, sadistic cop thriller like Mike Figgis`s
”Internal Affairs” be subjected to infinitely more analysis in the national press than a beautifully layered and crafted film like Charles Burnett`s ”To Sleep with Anger”? Burnett`s film, a fable-like study of a mysterious stranger who appears on the doorstep of a middle-class black family, comes filled with graceful Biblical references, poetic dialogue, dozens of carefully delineated characters, a highly evolved visual style and a challenging enigma at its center-just the kind of thing that critics and critical viewers once loved to get their teeth into. At the moment, however, it is fatally unsexy-”boring,” by which is meant an absence of major gunplay.
The effort that once went into examination now goes into justification, as film reviewers scramble to account for the excitement they feel at a
”Henry and June” or ”Total Recall”-excitement the less self-conscious might ascribe to these films` exploitation of sex or violence, but which now must be explained in terms of ”energy” or abstract kinetics.
The thoughtfulness and control exhibited by a Burnett or a Brickman are now unfashionably Apollonian virtues lost in an increasingly Dionysian cinematic context, where impulse is the highest motivation and sensual impact the noblest effect.
With the internationalization that came increasingly to Hollywood this year-the purchase of Universal and Columbia by Japanese interests, of Fox by an Australian tycoon, of MGM by an Italian financier-it seems likely that this coarsening of effect will continue. Action is the one story element tha cuts across borders-a car chase is a car chase is a car chase, in Manhattan or Bogota. As the market spreads, the common denominator must necessarily become lower and lower. Directors no longer aim to stir spirits, but to stimulate pupil dilation and increase the surface tension of the skin.
Movies are indeed a highly sensual medium-inevitably, because they engage more of the human senses more profoundly than any other art form, demanding that we look as intensely as we listen, that we respond to textures, rhythms and compositions at the same time we process highly physical performances and follow the flow and sense of the spoken word.
But because the sensuality of film is so strong and comes so easily, it needs to be channeled and controlled rather than indulged; otherwise, we will soon reach the point in American movies where nothing remains to distinguish them from simple pornography.
The subtle formal pleasures of a ”Men Don`t Leave” may no longer be central to anyone`s filmgoing experience, but we can`t afford to lose them.
