Go For Broke!

World War II movies have a general feel and tenor to them. They can be occasionally moving or amusing, but the bulk of them remain Sunday afternoon TV-time-filler, and most of us can’t really remember the names or specifics of most of the ones we’ve seen.

They even share a basic plot arch. A platoon of “regular Joes” make up a rag-tag and endearing bunch, usually comprising of an Irishman, a Southerner, a Jewish student-type, a generalized “big brother” Natural-Leader-type, an Italian guy, and possibly a Greek (maybe even with an accent). Their lieutenant seems distant and/or displeased with them, and they resent how hard he is on them. Eventually, after a short time somewhere in the middle of Missouri, they finish Basic Training and are off to Europe, or possibly the Pacific Theatre. Banding together, and relying on the training they once rebelled against (which now saves their lives), they triumph and win the approval and comradeship of their commanding officer. Usually there is a WAC thrown in for a scene or two, perhaps someone sings a song, there is usually a bar fight at the USO, and oftentimes a squad is cut off from the main unit. In the end, they all sail home into New York harbour with bands playing, and everyone is wiser then before, as they mourn the loss of at least one strategically placed character we have come to know over the previous 70 or 80 minutes. (He, of course, represents all the dead sons, brothers and beaus of the original audience, and serves as a meager attempt to bring home the “reality” of warfare.)

Oh, and there is a requisite number of uses of the terms “Gerry,” “Kraut,” and “Jap.” Probably enough to make anyone born post-70 squirm in our chairs.

In many ways, Robert Pirosh’s Go For Broke! (1951) is quite standard. There is a love interest, albeit only in a photograph (“My girl back home"), and people do sing (although not in the typical way). And there certainly is a rag-tag platoon with a by-the-book CO who must learn to appreciate them. There is even an Irishman… of a sort.

Go For Broke! tells the remarkable story of the U.S. 442nd Regimental Combat Team (along with the 100th Infantry Battalion) that was formed in 1943 under a special presidential order, as a kind of experiment in conceptual nation building. It tested Roosevelt’s assertion that Americanism was not a matter of race, but of loyalty and spirit. The 442nd, whose motto was “Go For Broke!”, was entirely manned by Japanese-American volunteers. They suffered over 9000 causalities and earned more than 18,000 individual decorations. Fighting in Europe (so as to avoid being mistaken for the enemy in the Pacific), these men participated in the liberation of Italy and France, and their story fascinates, but is seldom heard.

In the film, we get to know a handful of the volunteers – adorable Tommy (Henry Nakamura), the Pearl Harbor orphan; Sam (Lane Nikano), the wise and friendly Every Man; Chick (George Miki), the bitter and streetwise tough-guy (who for the life of me brings Cory Feldman to mind in every scene); Ohara (pronounced O’Hara throughout; Henry Oyasato), the “suntanned Irishman.” There are also a handful of other characters who weave in and out, such as the fun-loving and ultra-cool Hawaiian beach-bums (who are constantly singing). One of the most touching men is a soft, bespectacled and scholarly young man who loves cats and architecture, but whose degree in engineering has netted him a career as a fruit vendor due to the racial prejudice of the 40s. All in all, these characters are delightful and intimately sketched. Whereas many war movies can rely on ethnic tropes to convey character, this film must flesh out the men for they are all “Japanese,” but certainly not the type we have been trained to expect in such films.

Leading them is Lt. Mike Grayson (Van Johnson, the tallest and blondest star they could find), a lanky Texan who “signed up to fight the Japs, not fight with them.” Over the course of the picture, he comes to realize that it is the Japanese-Americans (Nisei, or Buddha-heads) who symbolize true American values, and that prejudice has no place in a democracy.

However, I must note that this film is certainly not preachy or trite, and it maintains no glossy image of America or the culture of the front. In the 1940s, War films tended to portray Americans as “one big happy family,” because prejudice was contrary to the war effort. However, common sense will tell you that there was certainly racism on the front. This film opens that up and explores it. This is not done through direct and corny exposition, but by poignant illustration of some sliver of what these men went through. They fought enemies on both sides of the front.

I think that few of us can fully comprehend the reality behind this picture; the cruelty of a system in which a man is distrusted and maligned, even while fighting for his country. The same country, by the way, that has locked his mother and father (and friends, and girlfriend, and little brother, and himself) up in internment camps back home, simply for being of Japanese origin. And Go For Broke! explores why a man would volunteer to die for such a country, and the answers are thought-provoking, human and touching.

All in all, this movie adds a new mode of awareness, and, while it is essentially a War Picture (with all the formula that genre entails), it is one that stands out as an exceptional one. On top of that, as a film, I found it gripping in parts, and I actually cried in one scene. While some of the power diminished in subsequent viewings, I find that this movie has lingered with me for some time, and is far more memorable than its cohort. I can see no better reason to recommend a picture than that.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story.

Apparently, Laurence Stern’s serialised novel “The Life and Opinions of Tristram Shandy, Gentleman,” (begun in 1760) has been deemed “unfilmable.” Although I own the book, it is in my massive “unread” heap, as opposed to the diminutive and Nick Hornby-laden “read” heap. So, for research for this review, I dutifully read it. It, meaning the book’s introduction. (Hey! Cut me some slack! It’s 450 pages of insanely small print, people!)


The introduction says: “[Sterne’s] novel, which consists of an amorphous mass of inconsequential incidents, sentimental episodes, jokes, musings, reminiscences and countless hilarious digressions into side issues of the vaguest tangential relevance, has no beginning, middle or end… Sterne notably lacks any real interest in storytelling and his bizarre technique illustrates his adherence to… the `stream of consciousness` approach of the twentieth-century novelists.”

Flipping through this book, I see glimpses of Kurt Vonnegut, and see more and more why it might be called unflimable. For example, there is a black page after the death of a character (named Yorick – awesome), and squiggly lines indicating the path of stories.

Damn. What comes out is a very creative and imaginatively-written film which documents the poor cast and crew trying to film this “amorphous mass.” They are in way over their heads and nothing seems to go right. Well, at one point the producers luck out and get Gillian Anderson to play a part on one day’s notice (even though, of course, her scenes end up on the cutting room floor).

The opening scene has Steve Coogan (of Alan Partridge fame), who plays Tristram Shandy, in a makeup chair being fitted for a nose prosthesis. He is trying to make his supporting castmate, Rob Brydon (who are both playing themselves in this sequence) understand why he is not leading man material. Rob then bears his teeth to Steve for the rest of the scene, begging Steve to define what colour of yellow they are. Perfec’. Coogan also agonizes over his height, insisting that he should be taller than everyone else because it's artistically sensitive, but he comes across as frantically insecure, which, of course, he is. See picture of Coogan and Brydon in wardrobe, testing the height of their 18th-century shoes.

Tristram Shandy: A Cock and Bull Story (2005) is a very British comedy. You must follow what I mean: annoying, idiosyncratic, and antagonistic characters insult one another while ambling though their egocentric lives. I expected Basil Fawlty to show up. There is some sense of 1960s-style absurdist comedy (no sexy parties, but Tristram is, at one point, hung upside down in a womb), but this, too, is very British.

A Cock and Bull Story successfully adapts “Tristram Shandy” because instead of attempting to force a disparate narrative into a three-act structure, the writers let chaos reign, and the disorganisation of the film’s production (which the audience gets to see) mirrors the novel’s original tone. Some might site This Is Spinal Tap (1984) to fill in the blanks of this odd configuration, but I don’t think this film would be considered a bona fide mockumentary (pardon the oxymoron). I loved this movie, but the more I try to define what it is, the more I come up empty handed. It’s probably exactly what Laurence Sterne would have wanted.

Released on DVD on July 11th, and if you enjoy dry British fare, check it out.

Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I first read the Harry Potter series in 1999, and have anxiously read every single book and watched every single movie. I admit that my ardor waned severely around 2003 (most likely due to the way that everyone and their uncle could talk of nothing but Harry Potter), and that the last book, The Book Which May Not Be Named, was a major disappointment for me; however, I still consider myself a Potter fan.

Nevertheless, I suspended my enjoyment with this last film, Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire (2005). If you are wondering why I am posting a review of this film so long after it was in theatres, and even months after it was new on DVD, I will explain. I refused to spend the theatre price to see this film, as I have become increasingly rebellious against the $23+ that it now costs couples to see movies. Then, when it was released on DVD, I even refused to rent it at new release price. You see, we always buy each installment on DVD, anyway, so we have decided not to, in effect, increase the cost of seeing it by walking through the wallet-wringing steps of theatre and rental, and waited for previously viewed to buy.

Last night, John brought home our spanking new (second-hand) copy! Naturally, we watched it right away.

There seems to be no major need to explain this series or the plot of a movie/book so well known as this, so I will be brief. Harry, who is now in fourth year, mysteriously gets entered into the famed Tri-Wizard Cup competition in which champions from the three major European magic schools match their wizardry skills and bravery. Harry’s friends turn on him, seeing this as his newest ploy to win attention and fame (it was about time that Ron and the rest got sick of being the sidekick of a spot-light hog). The cup trials begin, and Harry wins back much of his popularity. Then, just when it all seems that we will have yet another “Harry Wins the Match, Saves the School, and Goes off for Summer Vacation” triumph, everything goes to pot and we realize the world is about to end.

Any major problems I can find in this movie’s plot rightfully belongs to the book, so I will not spell them all out, except for a small mention that the loss of Cedric Diggory would probably have meant more if we had known him for longer than just one episode. However, as Goblet has been my favourite book thus far, I have few complaints in that vein.

As to the film, the special effects were good, the lighting was very nice, and the acting, when it wasn’t sliding into Dawson’s Magical Creek territory, was usually engaging and likeable (except for those poor actors who had no more than three words to say in the whole movie). Certainly those awful jeans-model-haircuts on almost every single boy was distracting and will be, in a few years, the first horribly “dated” thing in the series, but I have no qualms about the overall look of the film in general.

As far as characters are concerned, Michael Gambon didn’t even annoy me too much here (though I will forever mourn the loss of Richard Harris), and Ralph Fiennes was a stroke of casting genius (though I am sure he regretted having to keep his clothes on for once). But where the hell was Snape (and his voice) in this film? They may as well have had an Alan Rickman cutout standing in the crowd scenes! However, all in all, the general tenor of the book was preserved, though in an abbreviated sense, even if all the new characters were short-changed in terms of development. (Aside from the fact that those Durmstrang Institute fascists scared the tar out of me.)

So the problem wasn’t that I hated this picture, or even that it disappointed me, really (not in the way that, say, The Corpse Bride (2005) made me want to cry from frustrated and dashed hopes). Rather, insofar that this movie was simply a stacato pictorial illustration of the book's major scenes, it is one over which I can neither rant nor gush.

It was; it played. I watched it; it filled a couple of hours. I guess I enjoyed it – after all, it is always a pleasure to enter the world of Hogwarts, and I felt that to some extent here. But I certainly don’t think the movie has really left me with anything lasting. It’s sad, but what can one say? It showed me the important plot points, said the right things, and set up the next movie… mission accomplished. So… Meh, as Catherine would say. Meh.

One must wonder if perhaps the series has outgrown the two-hour movie treatment. It may not be possible for these books (now that they creep in 700 pages, plus) to be presented in any way other than the “illustrated story” form until the makers decide they must go to The Lord of the Rings format (three-hour films, with expanded sets for home video).

And the underwhelming viewing experience of this abridged film makes me hope they decide to do it very, very soon.

Kung Fu Hustle.

Do you ever watch movies and wish you could do the thing that the main characters could do? For me, the usual suspects are Strictly Ballroom (1992) for dancing and Shine (1996) for piano-playing. I finished this movie wishing I could fly horizontally through the air to kick someone in the head.

Something you might not know about me is: I love kung fu movies. I realise that this might be odd for some of you who know me, but then for others it’ll make perfect sense. The kick-ass action, the romances, the honour and the comedy all roll into a great genre that I’ve only recently been introduced to. I didn’t grow up on these things (that would be Pink Panther movies), but ever since I saw the original Drunken Master (1978), I’ve been hooked.

Kung Fu Hustle (2004) starts by introducing us to the ruthless Axe Gang who have a stranglehold on the city’s police force, and whose members are as nasty as Tim Roth in Hoodlum (1997) and as graceful as the Sharks and/or Jets. In the first five minutes, you are introduced to the kind of highly stylized movie you’re about to enjoy. The rest of the movie takes place in a slum called Pig Sty Alley that is so poor, the gangsters don’t even bother with it. The action picks up when two members of the Axe Gang encroach upon the ghetto and try to put the squeeze on its residents.

It turns out that the gang members are actually hapless muggers who are too stupid to know that a) you don’t pose as Axe Gang members and b) it’s fruitless to try to extort money from poor people. It also turns out that the slum seems to have a disproportionately high population of kung fu masters. This makes life difficult for the real Axe Gang members that are dragged into the fray by the stupid muggers.

I was laughing was so loud, my father came downstairs to see what was so funny. Kung Fu Hustle was so funny. It combines gangster movie with comedy, romance, fantasy, musical, drama, and some live-action animation. This movie has some of the most memorable characters I’ve seen in a long time. It’s more than any other modern wire-fu movie (even though it does use the same martial arts choreographer as Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon (2000), Yuen Wo-ping) – it’s a bending of a genre.

Rent this movie, enjoy it, and then buy a copy of it for me as a thank-you for making you see it. Honestly, this is one of the best movies I’ve seen in years.

Two Versions of The Student of Prague

“I haven’t a penny to my name – O Academia!”

The Student of Prague, the novel, was written in 1913 by Hanns Heinz Ewers, the writer and philosopher of ethics, and it has appeared in film at least four times since it was published. My personal advocacy on the part of silent pictures as an art form is no secret, and, given my friend Amanda’s recent foray into silent films, I have chosen the two German silent versions, both classics in their own ways, for my review this week.

Generally speaking, North Americans today do not have adequate opportunity to explore silent pictures. This is a shame, as the variety and rich skill poured into many of these works can be astounding and arresting.

However, there are also dangers in collecting silent pictures in terms of the availability of quality prints. Unfortunately, most affordable copies of these silent pictures leave something to be desired in their watchability, and the murky, jumpy or scratchy visual quality (and generic or unexciting audio tracks) of these films may harm your enjoyment of silent pictures. But rest assured that not all silent picture prints were created equal, and do not allow one or two sketchy prints turn you off this film form altogether!



This is part of why I have elected to review two versions of The Student of Prague. The first one, from 1913, stars the famed Paul Wegener (of The Golem, 1920), and the second, from 1926, stars Conrad Veidt (best known for his appearance as the somnambulant Cesare in The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari, 1920, and as the Nazi Major Strasser in Casablanca, 1942). Both of these versions are currently only available on DVD in North America through the Alpha Video editions, which were both released in 2004.

Alpha Video is one of my favourite companies, in some ways. On the one hand, this company produces extraordinarily cheap DVDs, and they make it possible for film students to fill their collections with affordable and rare films, many of which cannot be easily obtained elsewhere. For the often impoverished student, Alpha is possibly his or her best friend.

However, the basic logic is that you do, indeed, get what you pay for.

The cheap price they maintain is done at the expense of the quality control done with, say, Kino Video (the more expensive student’s best friend). Whereas Kino restores, cleans and transfers their editions, Alpha transfers them, with various results, from old VHS copies (this is how they keep their cost down). These VHS copies are usually transferred at odd speeds, may have continuity problems (hence the “jump” that tends to appear on such prints), and often have focus issues. Naturally, they often do not compare with the crisp restorations done by Kino, such as with the excellent quality of their editions of 1924’s Die Nibelungen, or with the superior Criterion Collection series (which is often prohibitively priced), such as their wonderful edition of Häxan (1922).



Therefore, one usually has a choice. $5 with Alpha for a watchable, but not ideal, print, or $35 to $40 with Kino (or even more with Criterion) for a very good or excellent print. For many students, the decision is pre-made by our wallets.

However, with The Student of Prague, we do not have such a choice. Alpha is currently the only company with full versions of these movies available for North American sale. Both with the price tag of around $7 American, via Amazon, they are very affordable, but does the respective quality (of both the films and the prints) make them worth the purchase?

The general plot of The Student of Prague is fairly simple. A young student and fencing champion, Balduin, is poor and frustrated in his poverty (a state in which society views him as middle class or higher because of his education, but in which he will never have as much money as such a class rank requires). He falls in love with a countess after rescuing her, and fails to recognize the love of the simple flower girl who adores him from afar. His obsession with the countess and his lowly class inspire him to enter into a pact with the sorcerer Scapinelli, in which the student will become richer than his wildest dreams and Scapinelli may chose and take any one thing in the student’s room. Being poor, the student sees nothing that would be more valuable than the gold coins Scapinelli promises, so he agrees. However, the sorcerer astounds him by choosing and taking possession of Balduin’s reflection.

The rest is a downward spiral, as most re-tellings of the basic “selling your soul to the devil” stories are. Balduin loses the countess because of the jilted love of her fiancé, the trampled heart of the flower girl, and the machinations of his possessed reflection. He descends into madness and debauchery, and finally dies in a (literally) dis-graced state.

The 1913 version of this film is tremendously important, historically speaking. Until quite recently a “lost film,” students and scholars were understandably excited when it turned up. It is considered one of the root works in the influential “German Expressionist” movements, in which inner turmoil and societal unrest are expressed through contrasted light and dark scenes, and through the massively innovative and bizarre set designs. Other famous Expressionist pieces include Nosferatu (1922), Metropolis (1927), and, most especially, The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari (1920). This Expressionist tendency spread from Germany to North America, and can be seen in Chaplin’s short The Bond (1918) and in the John Barrymore talkie, Svengali (1931), but that is another subject.

However, despite its historical significance, this film is a general disappointment. Wegener, who was a major dramatic force in his day, appears hammy and heavily dated in this film. While the film does have some extraordinarily beautiful external camera work, and some wonderful depth of shadow, it is also clumsy in places, and glosses over all but the most cursory of character motivations. Further, the Alpha print, although watchable, is slightly murky and lacks definition. Finally, the worst part of this film on DVD is the annoying and tacky faux-organ soundtrack composed by Paul David Bergel for this edition.



In comparison, the 1926 version is both a stronger film, and, in some places, a worse print. This version, at 91 minutes (compared to the 1913 version’s 41 minutes), is almost luxurious in the time it spends lingering over scenes and character development. The flower girl is tender and passionate, whereas in the 1913 version she was two-dimensional and unlikable. Likewise, in this version the sorcerer Scapinelli is given more of a grander, orchestrating role in the entirety of the narrative, giving his character a greater feel of horror. Granted, I enjoyed the performance of the 1913 Scapinelli (John Gottowt) better than the 1926 one (Werner Krauss), but the role is vastly improved. The countess is also more interesting, and far more sympathetic, moving the role of Balduin from greedy social climber to a young man genuinely in love. Having said this, however, he does not really sell himself out for love, but because of the massive frustration born of poverty (which is a very different thing than greed). In addition, the psychological ramifications of class struggle, which are not really drawn out adequately in the original, are palpable here. In turn, even the stolen reflection is given a gravitas of his own, turning not evil eyes on Balduin, but accusatory eyes of a younger self that has been abandoned and betrayed. The narrative becomes one of what each of us must do for success, and the ideological younger selves we must all destroy or wound in the process. Therefore, the 1926 version carries a symbolic moral significance lacking in the more cut and dry first version.

Overall, the story is better in the re-make version, motives are clearer, and the emotional impact is stronger, and I found this version to be the best viewing experience.

The print, however, bothered me more than the earlier version. Perhaps this is because the film was better and I wished I could see it more clearly. In general, the title cards were harder to read and the print had far more scratches. However, the score is vastly better than the 1913 version, even though it is also composed by Paul David Bergel. Instead of the unremitting synth-organ screech of the 1913 version, the 1926 version, though nothing spectacular, is at least broken by strings and guitar, and the emotional cues are better placed and more effective.

I do recommend both these films for film students, as they are both important and both have specific joys contained within them. However, for an evening in, I am more inclined to suggest the 1926 version for pure entertainment value. Finally, however, if you are unused to silent pictures altogether, you can find easier and cleaner films to start with (drop me a line, and I would be pleased to suggest a few), and you may be well advised to wait until better prints become available.

American Dreamz.

So. American Dreamz (2006). Sigh. There's sorta a spoiler below. You shouldn't care enough not to read on.

Here’s the story: It’s a "Canadian Idol"-esque show, but with only one judge and bigger ratings. The judge is Martin Tweed (Hugh Grant), who is basically a hollow shell of a man who hates his life but likes the lifestyle his life affords him. (“Re-write!”) The president is the spitting image of Martin Van Buren. No, wait… (egad, this is exhausting), George W. Bush, and is played by Dennis Quaid. We get to see, though, that this president is so sheltered from the real world by his advisors (including a creepy Willem Dafoe wearing a Cheney suit), that he is blissfully unaware of all the things that he could be doing to help. Perhaps this storyline was the only thing that kept director Paul Weitz [About a Boy (2002), In Good Company (2004)] away from Guantanamo Bay. The "American Dreamz" contestants: Mandy Moore as the savvy and manipulative Sally and immigrant Omer (Sam Golzari) as the Al Qaeda reject slash token brown guy... who has an uber-gay American cousin. Oh, yeah, and the rapping Sholem Glickstein (Adam Busch). I didn't make up that last name.

The president is shocked into seclusion when he insists on reading the world news as unfiltered through his staff. He begins taking "happy pills." Then the president grows a spine. His advisors want his street cred to go up, so they book him on "American Dreamz" as a guest judge. He doesn't really want to, but he agrees to appear. Al Qaeda creams its collective shorts. The plot goes on from there.

I walked out of the theatre satisfied that I wasn’t let down, but now that it’s been over a week since I saw American Dreamz-with-a-zee, I’m not so sure. Did it just capitalize on the popularity and preconceptions of "American Idol"? (No, I wasn’t so deluded to think that this was based on "Canadian Idol". Please.) Are there too many pop culture and political references for this movie to stand up against the test of time? Does Hugh Grant get blown up at the end of the movie? Did that event make me happier than I ever could have expected?

Yes. Yes. Yes. Yes.

Rent this one if you really feel like it, but rent it soon, because in a month it’ll be about as topical as watching reruns of Weekend Update from the early 90s.

Ragtime

People have accused me of having a lack of appreciation for “modern times.” When reviewing my tastes, most are surprised that I can identify more songs by Rudy Vallee or Jelly Roll Morton than by Coldplay. (That’s actually quite an easy claim, as I don’t believe I could identify any songs by Coldplay… In fact, I’m so out of the loop, I don’t even know if Coldplay is a current enough reference to make that last line work.)

To prove these people wrong, I have selected a film that is a bit more… up to date, shall we say? I highly recommend Miloš Forman’s Ragtime (1981) as my pick of the week.

Sure, critics will quickly point out that this film is set at the turn-of-the-20th-century… But it’s in colour, so that should count for something.

Ragtime is based on E.L. Doctorow’s Gordian novel about a new century and new ways of life, and the undulating ways in which lives intersect, weave and collide. This novel is astounding in the amount of ground it covers, and I’m not sure how it could have been brought to the screen word-for-word. (As it is, Forman carefully chose the prime dramatic points of interest, and the movie is still 155 minutes long!) Like 1997’s excellent LA Confidential (one of the best films, period), which is a mere sliver of James Ellroy’s mammoth novel of corruption, sex and greed in 1950’s LA, the film version of Ragtime is an expertly pared and culled cross-section of a modern literary classic, with a script written by Michael Weller (whose only other major work appears to have been Hair in 1979!).

(Be warned, I go into detail about the plot in this review. If you want it to be a surprise, then just take my recommendation and go see it. However, I assume that the stage version of this, up there with “Fiddler” and “Our Town” as hackneyed local theatre fodder, has already spoiled most of the plot for you, anyway.)

The plot concerns several lives tossed amid the societal shifts in New York in the early 1900s, a period that has not been filmed as many times as its spectacle warrants. A seemingly perfect late-Victorian family is our starting point. Their lives are disrupted permanently when they find a homeless, ill and pregnant black woman (Debbie Allen) in their garden. The nameless Father of the family, played with massive force and quiet currents by stage actor James Olson, is a repressed and stoic business man whose practical and no-nonsense character is all for turning the woman over to authorities and continuing on with their perfect lives. The Mother, a stunningly serene yet commanding Mary Steenburgen, quietly insists that it is their duty to help. Mother wins – a first sign that things are changing. Mother’s younger Brother merely wants out of the cage of Victorian responsibility provided by his brother-in-law, and is embodied by a typically twitchy Brad Dourif. Soon, good deed done, the family attempts to return to their lives, but now with their charity case as their maid.

Before long the peace is once more shattered when the absent father of the young woman’s baby appears. He is Coalhouse Walker, Jr., and is played by magnetic Howard E. Rollins, Jr., who reminds us here exactly what he could have done as an actor had cancer not tragically cut his life short in 1996. Coalhouse Walker, an assertive and infinitely modern young black man, has made it big as a piano player of the newest and most dangerous musical form yet, Ragtime Jazz, and his character is, essentially, the human form of that music. He is explosive, attractive, disquieting, quick-silver, and charming, all at once, with enough style to win over the entire family, especially since he has returned to marry the woman he loves and give his son a name. The Victorian Father breaths a literal sigh of relief.

However, once again the peace, having twice been patched together, is broken, and this time there is no method strong enough to reestablish it. Racists deface Walker’s car, a brand new Ford Model-T, simply because the sight of a clearly successful black man driving such a car is too much for them to handle, and literally all hell breaks loose. Walker finds himself in a fight that he cannot win, and his fiancé pays the price. As the new century ravaged the social “norms” of Victorian America, this conflagration destroys and re-forges everything in its path.

By the end of the picture, the prim Mother has run off with a Jewish immigrant (Mandy Patinkin) who is involved in a new industry called “flickers,” the Brother has had a torrid and tragic affair with that decade’s version of a chippy (played by a doll-like Elizabeth McGovern), and he has joined forces with Coalhouse Walker to take the city hostage in a fight for the rights and respect of black men. Suddenly, the world is no longer one the staid characters can recognize, and the dynamic characters flee into their new freedom with an energy that leads to madness, and the actions, music and relationships all mirror this new world called the Twentieth Century.

I cannot easily sum up this film, or the various emotions it demanded of me. Though the characters are many, there is adequate time spent on individual lives to inspire hate, love, respect, humour, excitement and disgust. Often times these buttons are all pushed at some point by a single character as he or she develops! Further, for the film buff there is ample eye candy in terms of the mix of up-and-coming stars and the living legends. Keep a sharp eye out for, among others, Norman Mailer, Fran Dresher, Jeff Daniels, Frankie Faison, Michael Jeter, Samuel L. Jackson, Ethan Phillips, John Ratzenberger, and who knows how many others of interest in this cast of hundreds. Especially important is the final big-screen appearance of legend James Cagney, who is older and weaker at 80, but who still can give a body shivers when he snarls.

Unlike many films made in the 1980s, this is one picture that will be good for un-ironic viewings for decades to come. From point A to point B, this film is made with care and attention, from the spot-on casting to the hundreds of period costumes, right down to the clever paper cut-outs made by Mandy Patinkin’s Jewish tinker. The soundtrack (including Randy Newman’s first full-length film score, for a script he was born to bring to life), direction and acting are uniformly first-rate, and part of my reaction is one of simple admiration for a towering job of enacting such a book.

However, this is only a part of it. This picture challenged me. While the brief plot I have described may bring to mind ideas of “Noble Minorities” versus the “Brutal White Establishment,” Forman has done something different and far more complex. There are no easy answers in this film, and the audience is pushed by the choices we see on the screen. We are told that film going helps us create and re-create ourselves, and Ragtime is clearly a picture that takes this job seriously. Through the screen action, I interrogate myself, and this is at times engaging and at other times extraordinarily uncomfortable.

This is not a perfect film in that the draw of the first half seems unevenly matched with the repulsion of the second half, and it certainly isn’t a feel-good hit, but, nevertheless, it shouldn’t be missed.