Screen
O'Brien, Tom
outside of her visible structure." That almost certainly implies, in the not distant future, truly ecumenical -- and increasingly canonically authoritative -convocations or councils in which...
...inevitably, we must endure a contrived rape scene of the sister, terminated by a cliched kick in the groin...
...The film's plot maps the growth of an alliance between two victims, Celie and Shug, the beautiful jazz singer pursued by Celie's brutal husband, "Mister...
...Reading Ferraro's story, one gets a sense of how difficult it is generally to run for high public office in the United States and how particularly difficult it is -- in these times of conservative and anti-feminist backlash -- for...
...But while little is said explicitly concerning what Celie is feeling, every directorial touch is so finely calibrated that we get the point all too clearly...
...To be sure, its theme is important, especially with so many contemporary examples of innocents enduring petty tyrants who abuse them because of race, sex, or both...
...III II Screen I I 1 III I I I IIII IH II II I TENUOUS PLACES OUT OF AFRICA & THE COLOR PURPLE T HE COLOR PURPLE proves at least two things...
...The fine _IL JlOM~% ('ATH()I.I(' .q('ll(X)l, F~)II MI~II~I"IIY A ROMAN CATHOLIC SCHOOL FOR MINISTRY Offering grctduote dolrrees stud con~_n_uing eduaatlon opportunities to priests, reUglous, and la3r people For Catalog or Brochures contact: Rev...
...Unfortunately, The Color Purple also proves that craft and good intention do not a great movie make...
...Redford's best line concerns not love, but land...
...HAT MAKES ONE want to forgive Out of Africa its sins...
...This "exile" passage is also painful to watch...
...eventually she comes to identify with her in the different kinds of sexual abuse that they endure...
...There are other fine lines in the screenplay, but they axe often detachable from their dramatic setting...
...One star redeems her recent work, Meryl Streep as Karen Blixen, the transplanted Danish baroness who later took the pen name of Dinesen when composing her memoirs...
...First, Hollywood has decided that America can take films with all-black'casts: in this respect, the film fulfills what A Soldier's Story had led us to anticipate...
...Always the realist," she initially had strong doubts whether the Democrats would select a female candidate for vice-president...
...and with it he makes one section in Out of Africa unforgettable...
...fice will probably encounter opposition I I I II I G ERALDINE FERRARO'S memoir about the 1984 presidential campaign is disappointing in some respects but it is a pleasantly readable, informative book overall...
...But land, and what one can hope for it, becomes a leitmotif that ties the film together and gives it power...
...Streep, understandably, wants reliable company...
...Thomas E. Wangler James Michael Weiss For further information on graduate programs and resources, contact Dr...
...DEGREE may he qmrned In Theology or Biblical ShldiN...
...Ferraro herself comes across as a capable, smart, shrewd congresswoman...
...At first, Shug only sees ugliness in Celie...
...Anthony J. Saidarini Margaret A. Schatkin Francis P. Sullivan, S.J...
...we're just passing through...
...These expressions must be recognizable by other churches, not simply by Rome, as confessing the foundational apostolic faith...
...Mister continues to lust after Celie's sister once he and Celie are married...
...She even seems to be having real fun acting, and has rarely been better than in several shrewd exchanges with natives, specfically her cook, Kamante, and houseboy, Farah, even in silly scenes with a cuckoo clock...
...Mary Daly Robert J. Daly, S.J...
...One scene, in which Celie watches Mister ask her father not for Celie's hand but for her sister's, is especially annoying: Spielberg has Celie observing through a perfect circle on a frosted window...
...But one never really cares about the outcome, partly because the issues are presented in a cliched fashion, and partly because Redford doesn't make his part convincing...
...Plot interregnums are often awkward, but Pollack makes a virtue of necessity, providing a quick sequence of shots of her Kenyan home and Streep's voice-over describing her yearning to go back...
...But such a confession of faith demands new instruments of confession -- ecclesial instruments to which the "convergences" point...
...Second, Steven Spielberg can direct serious "adult" melodrama, not just science fiction epics which appeal predominantly to youthful audiences...
...And if, as some say, the next century is to be one of controversy between "North" and "South," a clear sign of reconciliation, lived out by the One Church in both North and South, is surely the inescapable vocation of the People of God...
...What goes wrong in Out of Africa is the love plot...
...Visiting) Philip J. King Matthew L. Lamb Frederick G. Lawrence Claire Lowery H. John McDargh C. Sebastian Moore, O.S.B...
...In facing crises in her marriage and on her coffee plantation, she is feminine without being overly sweet, heroic without seeming indomitable...
...Shortly after, when Shug arrives, Mister makes her a comically ridiculous meal...
...Biblical Studlw may he purmued as a minor ftold...
...predictably, Celie quickly outcooks him...
...Silver Spring, Md...
...Directed by Sydney Pollack (maker of such fine films as Tootsie, Three Days of the Condor, and Absence of Malice) and written by Kurt Luedtke (Pollack's collaborator on the last movie), Out of Africa succeeds despite its diffuseness, its romance, and even one member of its big-name cast...
...Ecclesial consolidation is not, of course, the primary reason for looking toward such conciliar events...
...These women's stories remind one of Fanlkner's succinct tribute to the black family who outlasted the madness of the Compsons in The Sound and The Fury: "they endured...
...Then, over Streep's own voice, Pollack floats some soft Kikuyu chants...
...But from the first shot -- an annoying, manipulative introduction of Celie in a cornfield -- Spielberg makes his control and his intentions much too obvious...
...J. Cheryl Exum Miles L Fay, S.J...
...Whether it was Ted Koppel rudely cross-examining Ferraro on "Nightline" regarding her posiI III II no male candidate faces...
...For the sake of those human communities, in the name of that one apostolic faith, we need the creative ecumenical leadership now which Rome has an eminent vocation to provide...
...It registers the ~ director's surest grasp of the dignified nostalgia of Isak Dinesen herself...
...I wasn't prepared," Ferraro writes, "for the depth of the fury, the bigotry, and the sexism my candidacy would unleash...
...But to me, The Color Purple fails to sing...
...20903-3699 (301) 439-0551 31 January 1986:53German actor, Klaus Mafia Brandeaur, is adequate as a rascally and constitutionally unfaithful Baron Blixen, whom Streep tries to eonvert with genuine love...
...she and Redford get involved in a tug of war about freedom, which has to carry the middle of the film...
...DOCTORAL STUDIES In the Joint Graduate Program with Andover Newton Theological School leed to the Ph.D...
...The problem here is that Redford's just isn't interesting...
...Negative comments are not intended to detract from the merits of this account, however...
...The church-world relation and church-Gospel relation have prior claim...
...A. Brandt Henderson James Hennesoy, S.J...
...Out of Africa's best moments convey humanity's deep need for place and the tenuousness of our existence in any given place on earth...
...In beauty it approaches the heights of Streep's trips across Africa...
...When Streep sounds too possessive of the natives who work on her farm, he reprimands her, "It's always my Kikuyu, my Africa, my farm...
...Here, where character is everything, the director should be less visible...
...The film celebrates the solidarity of such women and, in the case of Celie and Shug, depicts a restrained lesbian affection...
...Gary O'Brien, O. Carm...
...TOM O'BRIEN Books: RUNNING DIFFICULTIES FrRRARO: MY STORY Geraldine A. Ferraro with Linda Bird Francke Bantam Books, $17.95, 340 pp...
...The book is essentially a political autobiography written with an eye to possible future campaigns, which means that the reader expecting a complete, unvarnished account of the 1984 election will come away from Fe~aro's book unsatisfied...
...Perhaps The Color Purple is the kind of film that is bound to divide audiences...
...Should we not expect creative ecumenical leadership from Rome especially in light of Rome's irreplaceable role in the Faith and Order studies: "Baptism, Eucharist, and Ministry," "Towards the Common Expression of the Apostolic Faith Today," and "The Unity of the Church and the Renewal of Human Community...
...I lost my fear for her, and consequently my empathy, because I saw she was in such good hands...
...emotional understatement with a heavy directorial hand is a risky mix...
...she reasoned that a walkout would only undermine the Democrats' primary effort of defeating the Reagan-Bush ticket in the election...
...Ernest L. Fortin, A.A...
...Usa Sowle Cahill, Director of Graduate Programs, Department of Theology, Boston College, Chestnut Hill, MA 02167.(617)552-3880 * Commonweal: 52berg and his cast (Margaret Avery, Rae Dawn Chong, Oprah Winfrey, and Whoopi Goldberg as the heroine, Celie) make The Color Purple creditable and worthwhile...
...We are told that she backed John Glenn for president in the early days of the campaign, and that in 1982 she was asked to be national chairperson of the Mondale campaign (she declined...
...This multifaceted performance creates a human character, far away from the single-note roles she has provided recently (especially in Plenty...
...At times I wished that Spielberg would regress to the energetic brashness of earlier films (Jaws, E.T,, and Close Encounters), where extravagant action hid the contrivances which understatement exposes...
...Streep, who initially describes IIII I I I I I herself as merely a"mental traveler," quotes a native proverb that "the earth was made round so that we would not see too far down to the end of the road...
...That almost certainly implies, in the not distant future, truly ecumenical -- and increasingly canonically authoritative -convocations or councils in which the mind and faith of that one "catholic church" can come to fuller and richer expressions...
...I can imagine a better director of Out of Africa (Caroll Ballard of The Black Stallion and Never Cry Wolf...
...We learn that, because she was a party activist, she was the choice of "Team A," a small group of Washington insiders -- female civil servants and congressional staffers -- who spent a good year before the election working to advance the concept of a woman as vice-president...
...Often overpraised (as if another Bette Davis or Greta Garbo), Streep here cuts crutch-like mannerisms to a minimum, and conveys instead a mix of strength, intelligence, and need...
...In SystemMIc TheotoiW, History of Christian Life and Thought, or Christian Ethk...
...Stephen F. Brown Lisa Sowle Cahill Francis X. Clooney, S.J...
...We also learn that she opposed a threatened convention walkout by women's groups if a female candidate were not nominated...
...Oddly, it involves a time when Streep has to leave Africa to cure syphilis, contracted courtesy of her husband...
...The one good sequence early on -- depicting the forced parting of the two sisters -- is ruined by blaring music...
...Thomas H. Groome Margaret Gorman, R.S.C.J...
...Throughout the film, there is a painful contradiction between understatement concerning character, and overstatement via photography, especially overly pretty, overly neat, suggestive shots...
...A W simple thing: whatever its defects, it catches some of the superb spare melody of Isak Dinesen' s prose, her love of early twentieth-century Africa, her affection for its people, its landscape, its animals...
...Out of Africa is no comedy, but here Streep gets to reveal talents in depicting a range of emotions that her previous films have too often denied her...
...That, in fact, is where the film, Anteaus-like, takes its strength...
...David Neiman James A. O'Donohoe Padraic O'Hare Pheme Perkins Susan M. Praeder Louis P. Roy, O.P...
...Actually, he shows up and saves her life too predictably when a lion endangers her...
...Edward J. Kilmartin, S.J...
...Indeed, the film suffers from a veritable overdose of nobility and craftsmanship, especially awkward in view of its initial attempts at emotional understatement...
...Without them the twenty-first century will not receive from the churches a clear sign of hope for the renewal of human community...
...Pollack is fond of staging battles of wit between two points of view, never quite reconciling them...
...WASHINGTON THEOLOGICAL UNION 9001 New Hampshire Ave...
...a woman to be a candidate...
...This film makes such an overly deliberate effort to teach us something soulful that all spiritedness gets lost in the process...
...Here Spielberg has adapted Alice Walker's Pulitzer Prize-winning novel of Southern black women enduring both racial and sexual oppression at the turn of the century...
...But we're not owners here, Karen...
...Commonweal: 54...
...Will it do so...
...When he cannot reform, Streep turns to an English hunter played by Robert Redford...
...Some viewers may be able to tolerate Spielberg's methods and continue to care for the characters, despite these manipulations...
...Raymond G. Helmick, S.J...
...The M.A...
...Charles C. Hefting, Jr...
...The film sequence of marching Masai is worth many other movies this year...
...Those able to tolerate this may see in The Color Purple a depiction of goodness, femininity, and human solidarity against oppression...
...Harvey D. Egan, S.J...
...As the Christian church enters the twenty-first century the crucial question is surely whether it will together confess the apostolic faith afresh as a word of hope for the divided and conflicted human communities on this planet...
...Mary C. Segers tion on anti-satellite weapons or Marvin Kalb asking her on "Meet the Press," "Are you strong enough to push the button...
...or George Bush's press secretary saying, "She's too bitchy," it becomes clear that a woman running for high of...
...it merely hums the blues...
...It's a boring tip-off...
...SpielGRADUATE STUDIES IN THEOLOGY The Faculty: Mary C. Boys, S.N.J.M...
...Q AT BOSTON COLLEGE The Depmrtment of Theology at amlton College, a Iwdlng Catholic university In an ecumenical m~lng, sham the resources of eight other school8 In the ~ area through memberahlp In the Boston Theological In...
...But one of Pollack's great strengths is tight film editing (was any movie ever better edited than Tootsie...
...It makes you wish deeper and harder for the happiness of a film character than in quite some time...
...The style of the book also seems rather sterile and clichdd, geared more to a mass-market, bestseller audience than to the serious reader interested in learning first-hand, from a major par-' ticipant, the historical import and consequences of the 1984 election...
Vol. 113 • January 1986 • No. 2
