ÿþ<html> <head> <LINK REL = STYLESHEET TYPE = "text/css" HREF = "style-FilmCritics.css"> <title>A Celebration of Earth Day</title> <META http-equiv="Page-Enter" content="revealTrans(Duration=5,Transition=2)"> <META http-equiv="Page-Exit" content="revealTrans(Duration=5,Transition=3)"> </head> <body bgcolor = "#bd00ff"; text = "#eeccff"; link = "#0000ff"; alink = "#ff0000"; vlink = "#ffbbff"> <class = "breadcrumb"> <TARGET=_blank onMouseOver="window.status='http://FilmCritics.funURL.com';return true" onMouseOut="window.status='';return true"> <CENTER> <B><em class = "emphasis"><<a href = "FilmCritics.funURL.com"><em class= "line"><a href><em class = "text"><font face = "Arial"><font size = "5">http:<font face = "Comic Sans MS"><font face = size = "5">//<em class = "purple"><font face = "Arial" size = "6">F<em class = "text"><font face = "Arial"><font size = "5">ilm<em class = "purple"><font face = "Arial" size = "6">C<em class = "text"><font face = "Arial"><font size = "5">ritics<em class = "emphasis"><font face = "Arial"><font size = "6">.<em class = "text"><font face = "Arial" size = "5">funURL<em class = "emphasis"><font face = "Arial"><font size = "6">.<em class = "text"><font face = "Arial" size = "5">com</a><em class = "emphasis">></b> </CENTER> <CENTER> <MARQUEE BEHAVIOR = "slide" loop = "1" width = "550" bgColor = "#bd00ff" height = "21"> <img src = "FlagsWorld.gif" NOSAVE height = 20 width = 551></MARQUEE><BR> </CENTER> <hr> <a href = "Questions.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "menu"><img src = "FilmStrip-2.gif" align = "right" alt = "Any Questions?: Film Critics"></a> <a href = "Questions.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "menu"><img src = "FilmStrip-1.gif" align = "left" alt = "Any Questions?: Film Critics"></a> <center> <b><a href = "main.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "path">INDEX: FilmCritics</a><em class = "m-white"><font size = "3">&gt;<a href = "home.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "path"><font size = "2">HOME: <em class = "path">FilmCritics</a><em class = "m-white"><font size = "3">&gt;</b><br> </center> <center> <em class = "line"><a href><b><em class = "purple"><font size = "8">Previous Film Themes<em class = "amp"><font size = "8">&<em class = "purple"><font size = "8">Seasons</a></b></p> </center> <a href = "Questions.html"><img src = "16mm-2.gif" alt = "Any Questions?: Film Critics" align = "left" ><a href = "Questions.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "menu"></a> <a href = "Questions.html"><img src = "16mm-1.gif" alt = "Any Questions?: Film Critics" align = "right" ><a href = "Questions.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "menu"></a> <center> <b><a href = "Cinema-PreviousSeasons.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "path">Previous Film Themes<em class = "amp"><font size = "2">&<em class = "path"><font size = "2">Seasons</a><em class = "m-white"><font size = "3">&gt;<a href = "Cinema-PreviousSeasons.html#engage" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "path"><font size = "2">Films for a Community Engagement</a><em class = "m-white"><font size = "3">&gt;</b><br> </center> <center> <em class = "date">April 2006<em class = "emphasis"><font size = "4">+<em class = "date">April 2007<em class = "text">:<br> <b><em class = "purple">Films for a Community Engagement:<BR> <em class = "line"><a href><em class = "purple"><font size = "6">A Celebration of Earth Day</a></b><br> </center> <hr> <center> <em class = "date">April 2006<em class = "emphasis">:<br> <b><em class = "periwinkle"><a href><em class = "magenta">A CELEBRATION OF EARTH DAY</a>: <em class = "periwinkle"><a href><em class = "magenta">A Cinematic Forum</a> on the<br> <em class = "click">Struggle between Idealism and Practicality:<br> Self-Reliance, Solitude, Independence, Living of the Land!</b><br> <em class = "text">A Community <em class = "text"><a href><em class = "periwinkle">Screening & Open Discussion</a> <em class = "text">with no experts!</p> </center> <p> <em class = "text">These three films are set (i) on an island off the [US] east Coast, (ii) primarily in Kenya (and other locations), and (iii) in rural New Mexico; and is the focus of the Cinematic Forum. A discussion will follow each screening. The three films are screened over two nights and an afternoon over the Earth Day weekend. A Community Screening & Open Discussion with no experts!</p> <em class = "text">(#1 of 3):<br> <em class = "line"><a href><b><em class = "title"><i>THE BALLARD OF JACK & ROSE<em class = "line"></i></a></b><br> <em class = "text">(<b><em class = "year">2005</b><em class = "text">) <b><em class = "prod">US</b><em class = "text">.<br> Director/Writer: <b><em class = "name">Rebecca Miller</b><em class = "text">, (1 hr. 51 min.) 3½ bones/4.<br> <em class = "comment">This film is the last sad song of 1960 s flower power. On an island off the [US] East Coast, a craggy middle-age hippie and his teenage daughter live alone in the remains of a commune: A generator is powered by wind; there is no television; seaweed fertilizes the garden; they read; he home-schools her; they divide up the tasks. When Rose looks at Jack, her eyes glow with worship -- and is there something wrong about that? When they lie side by side on the turf roof of their cottage, finding cloud patterns in the sky, they could be lovers. She is at an age when her hormones vibrate around men, and there appears to be only one in her life! The director s film is not about incest, but is about the father s efforts, almost too late, to veer her away from danger. Rose, of course, admires Jack -- played by Daniel Day-Lewis, in his usual brilliant style as we have come to expect -- as her hero, when, as a fierce idealist, he occasionally visits the other side of the island to fire shotgun blasts over the heads of workers building a housing development. He hates the developer who is building the new homes on what Jack believes are wetlands. His daughter, he finally realizes, is too fixated on him, and he is forced to think about her future. The writer/director is herself the daughter of a strong father -- the playwright Arthur Miller  - but she had a strong mother too -- the photographer Inge Morath. Roger Ebert informs us that while the cinematography is by the visual poet Ellen Kuras, the director s subject is a father and his daughter. However, he dismisses -- as some writers have suggested  - the notion that the film is acting out of her own childhood, but, instead, suggests that she is identifying with her mother!  It would be reckless and probably wrong to find literal parallels between Rebecca and Rose, but perhaps the film s emotional conflicts have an autobiographical engine. Despite his complaints when events pile up a little too quickly toward the end of the film, Ebert concludes that the film  is an absorbing experience . . . . Countless clichés are sidestepped when Jack finally sees [his] conflict for what it is, not right against wrong, but a matter of taste. Is it idealistic to want a whole island to yourself, and venal to believe that other people might enjoy having homes there? The film is a drama about the idealism of individualism and self-reliance -- long lost in US-American culture  - and the pressures to accept change and conformity<em class = "text">.</p></center> <em class = "text">(#2 of 3):<br> <em class = "line"><a href><b><em class = "title"><i>THE CONSTANT GARDENER</i></a></b><br> <em class = "text">(<b><em class = "year">2005</b><em class = "text">) <b><em class = "prod">GERMANY<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">UK</b><em class = "text">, in <b><em class = "prod">English<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">Swahili<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">German</b><em class = "text">.<br> Director: <b><em class = "name">Fernado Merelles</b><em class = "text">; Writer: <b><em class = "name">Jeffrey Caine</b><em class = "text">, based on the novel by <b><em class = "name">John le Carré</b><em class = "text">. (2 hr. 09 min.). 3½ bones/4.<br> <em class = "comment">The film is an adaptation from the latest thriller by the master spy writer, set in Kenya during the current period, with a fresh approach by the Brazilian director of <em class = "line"><a href><em class = "aka"><i>The City of God</i></a> <em class = "comment">(<b><em class = "year">2002</b><em class = "comment">). It is a story of corruption in the pharmaceutical industry, a deviation from the usual spy thriller we are used to from <b><em class = "name">John le Carré</b><em class = "comment">. The murder of Tessa takes place right at the start of the film, and so it is not revealing too much to mention it. The film is a progress back into her life, and a journey of discovery for Justin -- an official of the British Government in Kenya -- who discovers a woman he never really knew. The flashback structure, told in remembered moments, passages of dialogue, scenes that are interrupted and completed later, is typical of John le Carré, whose novels resemble chess problems in which one solution is elegant and all of the others take too many moves. It is a style suited to the gifts of this Brazilian director, who can tell a story that is composed of countless tributaries that all flow together into a mighty narrative stream. The fragmented style is the best way to tell this story, for both the novel and the film, which is not a logical exercise beginning with mystery and ending at truth, but a circling around an elusive conspiracy. Understand who the players are and how they are willing to compromise themselves, and one can glimpse cruel outlines beneath the public relations facade. As the drug companies pour AIDS drugs into Africa, are they using their programs to mask the testing of other drugs?  No drug company does something for nothing, the author has a character observe. This novel may be the angriest story the spy writer has ever told. Certainly, his elegant prose and the oblique shorthand of the dialogue shows the writer forcing himself to turn fury into style. His novel involves drug companies who test their products on the poor of the Third World and are willing to accept the deaths that may occur because, after all, those people don t count. Why not? Because no one is there to count them. Do drug companies really do this? The recent verdict against the makers of Vioxx indicates that a jury thought Merck sold a drug it knew was dangerous. Facts are the bones beneath the skin of a John le Carré novel. Either he knows what he s talking about, or he is uncommonly persuasive in seeming to. The narrative plays at times like a film that will result in indictments. What makes the film extraordinary is that it also plays as a love story, and as an examination of the mysteries of the heart. The performances need to be very good to carry us through sequences in which nobody, good or evil, seems very sure of the total picture. Justin, the bureaucrat who seems detached from issues is the opposite of Tessa. As he tries to find the underlying cause of her death, he sifts through his discoveries like an accountant unwilling to go home for the day until the books are balanced. One way of looking at Tessa s death is that she was a hothead who had an affair with a handsome African man, went where she shouldn t have and got caught in one of those African border killings where toll-collecting soldiers with AK-47s enforce whatever they think is the law. Another way to look at it is to give her the benefit of the doubt. To wonder what was behind the embarrassing questions she asked at a press conference. To ask why statistics seem to be missing, if a drug study is designed to generate them. As he probes through the wreckage of his wife s life, Justin encounters an array of characters that could have been airlifted in from Graham Greene -- or from other le Carré novels, of course. The film begins with a strong, angry story, and peoples it with actors who let it happen to them, instead of rushing ahead to check off the surprises. It seems solidly grounded in its Kenyan locations; like the previous film by the Brazilian director, it feels organically rooted. Like many le Carré stories, it begins with grief and proceeds with sadness toward horror. As Roger Ebert concludes,  Its closing scenes are as cynical about international politics and commerce as I can imagine. I would like to believe they are an exaggeration, but I fear they are not. This is one of the year s best films <em class = "text">.</p></center> <em class = "text">(#3 of 3):<br> <em class = "line"><a href><b><em class = "title"><i>OFF THE MAP</i></a></b><br> <em class = "text">(<b><em class = "year">2003</b><em class = "text">) <b><em class = "prod">US</b><em class = "text">.<br> Director: <b><em class = "name">Campbell Scott</b><em class = "text">; Writer: <b><em class = "name">Joan Ackermann</b><em class = "text">, based on her play. (1 hr. 48 min.). 3½ bones/4.<br> <em class = "comment">Somewhere in the back of nowhere, in an adobe house with no lights or running water, a family lives in what could be called freedom or could be called poverty. We re not sure if they got there because they were 1960s hippies, making a lifestyle experiment, or were simply deposited there by indifference to conventional life. They grow vegetables, plunder the city dump, and get $320 a month in veterans benefits, but they are not in need and are apparently content with their lot. Now there is a problem.  That was the summer of my father s depression, the narrator tells us. She is Bo Groden, -- played in the film by Valentina de Angelis at about age 12, and heard on the sound track as an adult (Amy Brenneman).  I m a damn crying machine, says her dad, Charley. He sits at the kitchen table, staring at nothing, and his wife and daughter have learned to live their lives around him. His wife is Arlene, played by Joan Allen, as always,  in a performance of astonishing complexity, according to Roger Ebert. Here is a woman whose life includes acceptance of what she cannot change, sufficiency within her own skin and such simple pleasures as gardening in the nude. She is a good wife and a good mother, but not obviously; it takes us the whole film to fully appreciate how profoundly she observes her husband and daughter, and provides what they need in ways that are below their radar. Charley has a friend named George, who sort of idolizes him. Sometimes they fish, sometimes they talk. Arlene wants George to impersonate Charley, visit a psychiatrist, and get some antidepressants. George would rather fish. One day a stranger arrives at their home, which is far from any road. He carries a briefcase, says he is from the IRS and is there to audit them, since the Groden family has reported an annual income of less than $5,000 for several years. He is stung by a bee, takes to the sofa, confesses his dissatisfaction with tax collecting and, what with one thing and another, never leaves. Eventually, he ends up living in an old school bus on the property. He falls in love with Arlene, in a non-demonstrative way, and is good company for Charley.  Ever been depressed? Charley asks him.  I ve never not been, William says. These characters in this setting could become caricatures or grotesques. But the director and the author refuse to underline them or draw arrows pointing to their absurdities. They accept them. Ebert states,  Their film is freed from a story that must hurry things along; life unfolds from day to day. Will Charley recover from his depression? Will William leave? Will Bo, who is being home-schooled, get to go to a real school? The film suggests no urgency to get these questions answered. Instead, in a stealthy and touching way, it shows how people can work on one another. Charley may be depressed because of a chemical imbalance, or he may be stuck because his life offers him no opening for heroism. Arlene keeps herself entertained by surprising herself with her oddities; she handles financial emergencies by observing with detachment that sooner or later they will probably have to deal with them. Bo keeps busy writing letters to food corporations, complaining about insect parts found in their products, and composing personal questions for the  Ask Beth newspaper column. William Gibbs starts to paint and completes a watercolor, 3 feet high by 41 feet long, showing the earth meeting the sky. It is not clear if William has joined them to heal, to escape, or to die.  But his presence in the family, which is accepted without comment, budges the emotional ground under Charley just enough so that he slides toward the edge of his depression. Perhaps it is William s undemonstrative love for Arlene, never acted on, that reawakens Charley s desire for this magnificent beast, his wife, concludes Ebert. The director is an actor, and as a director, he is able to trust his actors entirely. If they are doing their jobs, we will watch, no matter if the story centers on a man sitting at a table and everyone else essentially waiting for him to get up. The life force bubbling inside young Bo, suggested by de Angelis in a performance of unstudied grace, lets us know things will change, if only because she continues to push at life. The film, according to Ebert,  is visually beautiful as a portrait of lives in the middle of emptiness, but it s not about the New Mexico scenery. It s about feelings that shift among people who are good enough, curious enough or just maybe tired enough to let that happen. He cites <em class = "line"><a href><b><em class = "prod">Variety</b></a><em class = "comment">,  the show-biz bible, always assesses a movie s commercial prospects in its reviews. Its chief critic, the dependable Todd McCarthy, loves this film, but does his duty to the biz by noting: <i>Pic s unmelodramatic nature and unmomentous subject matter will make this a tough sell even on the review-driven specialized circuit</i>. Ebert s response:  True, which explains why the film premiered at Sundance 2003 and is opening only now. But it is opening, and by now you have sensed whether you would like it or not. If you think you would not, be patient, for sooner or later you will find yourself compelled to get up from the table <em class = "text">.</p></center> <hr> <center> <em class = "date">April 2007<em class = "emphasis">:<br> <b><em class = "periwinkle"><a href><em class = "magenta">A CELEBRATION OF EARTH DAY</a>: <em class = "periwinkle"><a href><em class = "magenta">A Cinematic Forum</a> on the<br> <em class = "click">Civil War, Diamonds & Globalization:<BR> Impact & Effects of Politics on People and the Environment.</b><br> <em class = "text">A Community <em class = "text"><a href><em class = "periwinkle">Screening & Open Discussion</a> <em class = "text">with no experts!</p> </center> <em class = "text">(#1 of 2):<BR> <B><A href><em class = "title"><i>BLOOD DIAMOND</A></i></B><BR> <em class = "text">(<B><em class = "year">2006</B><em class = "text">) <B><em class = "prod">US</B><em class = "text">, in <B><em class = "prod">Mende<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">l English<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">Afrikaans</B><em class = "text">.<BR> Director: <B><em class = "name">Edward Zwick</B><em class = "text">; Writer/Story: <B><em class = "name">Charles Leavitt</B><em class = "text">; Story: <B><em class = "name">C. Gaby Mitchell</B><em class = "text">; Cinematographer: <B><em class = "name">Eduardo Serra</B><em class = "text"> (2 hr. 23 min.). 3 bones/4.<BR> <em class = "comment">Set against the backdrop of the civil war and chaos in 1990 s Sierra Leone during the late 1990s, the film is an accurate portrayal of South African mercenaries, child soldiers, and the diamond industry circumnavigating the agreements not to sell diamonds from war-torn nations. The central composite characters are an ex-Mercenary from Zimbabwe, a Mende fisherman, his son, and an US-American journalist<em class = "text">.</P> <em class = "text">(#2 of 2):<BR> <B><A href><em class = "title"><i>CHILDREN OF MEN</A></i></B><BR> <em class = "text">(<B><em class = "year">2006</B><em class = "text">) <B><em class = "prod">UK<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">US</B><em class = "text">, in <B><em class = "prod">Serbo-Croatian<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">German<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">Italian<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">Romanian<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">English<em class = "text">/<em class = "prod">Spanish</B><em class = "text">.<BR> Director/Co-Writer: <B><em class = "name">Alfonso Cuarón</B><em class = "text">; Co-Writers: <B><em class = "name">Timothy J. Sexton<em class = "text">/<em class = "name">David Arata<em class = "text">/<em class = "name">Mark Fergus<em class = "text">/<em class = "name">Hawk Ostby</B><em class = "text">, based on an idea from the (<B><em class = "year">1992</B><em class = "text">) novel by <B><em class = "name">P. D. James</B><em class = "text">; Cinematographer: <B><em class = "name">Emmanuel Lubezki</B><em class = "text">. (1 hr. 49 min.). 4 bones/4.<BR> <em class = "comment">The film, set in 2027, is brilliantly photographed in a dystopian London, fractious with violence and warring nationalistic sects, as humankind faces the likelihood of its own extinction. Orwellian control has taken over, taking advantage of the fear and paranoia set off by an overflow of  fugees displaced by globalization. The world s youngest citizen has just died at 18<em class = "text">!</P> <center> <b><em class = "m-white"> [<a href = "engage-EarthDay.html" class = "breadcrumblink"><em class = "go-to">Top of Page</a><em class = "m-white">] <em class = "text"></b><br> </center> <br> </center> <a href = "Cinema-PreviousSeasons.html#engage"><img src = "GoBack.gif" alt = "Return to:"></a> <b><a href = "Cinema-PreviousSeasons.html#engage" class = "breadcumblink"><em class = "menu">Previous Film Themes<em class = "amp">&<em class = "menu">Seasons</a></b> </body> </html>