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FH METERWhat s new in movies and videoRobert DiMatteo..**11 rfmjBy Robert DiMatteoIn Movie TheatersMAI Rl( 1- (|{) The producer direc tor team of Ismail Merchant and James Ivory have often seemed toogenteel for their own good turning works of literature into Masterpiece Theatre style entertainments with more prestige than pleasure Hut withtheir charming, beautiful 198h filmA Hoorn With a View the\ seem finallv to tuvr lt\irnlt;Mj to vivify their%period dramas losing anv sense of in timulation at adapting classics for film In the process, they have discos ered how to translate litorarv wit to the screenTheir newest movie lakes off from K M I* orster s controversial, posthumous novel Maurice. in which For ster explored homosexuality in an early 20th century Knglish setting Merchant and Ivors take an old fash loned.time specific approach turn mg an Kdwardian romantic comedy of repressed manners into something close to a definitive, timeless treat merit of the perils and beauty, of homosexual expression in a heterosexual societyThough richly detailed, Maurice is a model of compression (The ele gant. tender script is by Kit Hesketh Harvey and Ivory, rather than by* rthnr longtime collaborator, Huth Prawer Jhabvala ) In a performance that seems to glow considerably m nuance during the film, .lames Wilby stars as Mauric e Hall, the fair-haireii, earnest (ambridge student who is entranced by dark, aristocratic ( liveDurham (Hugh (Irant) (’live tells Maurice that he is in love with him Though Maurice returns the affection. ('live ultimately submits to the intense pressures of the time andlong as possible, without becoming clogged and murky, “Mauriceachieves a satisfyingly full-blown romantie resolution With its leisurely*but sure period evocation and novel is tic grasp of character, the film may even have the power to seduce the most conservative of viewers It offers a lulling, poignant vision one that is nevertheless trulv iconoclasticlt;;r adk * * * *II AMRl lU.KIt HILL (R) This Viet nam film takes a stripped-down, grunt's eye view of the war as it chronicles the efforts of a squad of American soldiers to mount a muddytreacherous hill held by a bunker fullof North Vietnamese.Shooting in the Philippines, director John Irvin (The Dogs of War) and his production team have con jured up some of the most startlingly immediate battle sequences imaginable. while scriptwriter Jim Carabat sos has freshly captured the sense ofdisenfranchisement and pride felt by the young, racially mixed boy-men who fought the warThere's a simplicity to this Viet nam film that provides a bracing con trast to its more portentous predeces sors (Platoon. “Full Metal Jacket etc ) Hut the downside of this simplic ity is a myopia about the war, in staying true to the average soldier’s per speetive, tlit* picture sometimes blurs the line between identification and glorification When one of the movie's squad of 14 men acted with grit and grace by a cast including Dylan McDermott and Courtney H Vance mocks the campus protesters back home, or when a weary sergeant tells off an insensitive newsman, the filmmakers appear to lie telling the rest of us off. too This is still a potent, lmag-istie film (iRADK: AAA
Newspaper Details
Key West Citizen
Key West, Florida, US
Thu, Sep 24, 1987
Page 11
Full Page
Clipped by
Jon C.
NJ, USA 16 Jan 2020
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