Stage
Weales, Gerald
SCREEN MYTH & DARKNESS 'MERMAID,' 'TRIUMPH,' & 'CLAUDEL' here have been so many "adult" cartoons recently-Rambo, Rocky, Batman, Ghostbusters-that it is a refreshing shock to get back to the...
...For two hours we watch the inmates at work, a behind-the-scenes look at slave industrial production...
...one sporadically strong feature film (Sophie's Choice) went inside the camps for key sequences, followed on television by parts of The Winds of War...
...What keeps Arouch going is patronage from one German officer-a former boxer whom he had met at the 1936 Olympics-who uses him as a sure winner to bet on in boxing matches between inmates on SS nights off...
...the end, when her brother commits Camille to the asylum, tragic darkness...
...But it fails to justify her manic resentment and self-destructive extremism or to make the whims of neglected genius interesting or explicable...
...SCREEN MYTH & DARKNESS 'MERMAID,' 'TRIUMPH,' & 'CLAUDEL' here have been so many "adult" cartoons recently-Rambo, Rocky, Batman, Ghostbusters-that it is a refreshing shock to get back to the genuine article in The Little Mermaid...
...TOM O'BRIEN...
...To its credit it leaves you with a blank numbness appropiate to the horror of its subject...
...Animation and screenplay in The Little Mermaid work well together...
...As many have said, it is sometimes ironic that these stories are thought apt for children...
...Documentaries and some features have traced the fate of the perpetrators of these crimes (Hotel Terminus, Judgment at Nuremberg...
...A mermaid princess, Ariel, falls in love with a human prince, despite the warnings of her father, King Triton, about getting involved with those "barbarians...
...The plot follows some predictable fairy tale lines, including a good, hard dose of terror and anxiety...
...Despite the title and hype about the "indomitable sources of the spirit" displayed by Arouch, there is no real triumph here, just survival...
...Triumph of the Spirit can't really manage this...
...But to my knowledge, no film has ever exclusively focused several hours on the terrors of a death camp and the struggle to survive there...
...The beginning of the film (directed by Bruno Nuytten, who shot Manon of the Spring) is all brightness and hope...
...n equally distressing but well-made film is Camille Claudel, the story of Paul Claudel's sister, Auguste Rodin's mistress, and a sculptor only recently being rediscovered in her own right...
...As Elie Wiesel has said, to speak of triumph and Auschwitz in the same breath is impossible...
...After the fateful train ride to the camp, he must endure the separation of his family, not knowing the fate of its female members in the gas chambers, which the movie shows sparingly...
...Mermaid may not be Snow White or Cinderella, but it is one of the best Disney cartoons in years...
...It strives to make a feminist point, but confuses two things: an artist who is neglected because of her sex and a woman whose irrationality brought neglect on herself...
...other works have described in grisly detail how they were committed (Shoah...
...Strong in his support of Dafoe is Edward James Olmos as a gypsy who runs one section of the camp for the SS...
...This disturbingly authentic film, based on a true story, begins in Greece, where Jewish families are living in the ghetto awaiting deportation...
...for magnificent comedy, Sebastian's big Reggae number, "Under the Sea," with its inventive variety of water images...
...With time, he loses both a brother and his father (Robert Loggia...
...Movies don't have to be optimistic, but they should create some feeling, and this one can't...
...It has the old Disney magic-vibrant animation, tunefulness, good storytelling, here based on Hans Christian Andersen...
...Wendy Gazelle, as Dafoe's fiancee, is also affecting...
...The most scarifying moments occur near the end, when the Germans crush a resistance effort as Russians approach...
...Essential to its success are the voices of Jodi Benson as Ariel, Pat Carroll as Ursula, and Samuel E. Wright as the scene-stealer Sebastian...
...its early scenes of Adjani sculpting alone or at Rodin's studio have an exciting visual flavor...
...Still, an overview of plot misses the texture of Triumph of the Spirit, which is relentless...
...The Little Mermaid has enough verve and wit to please any audience...
...Camille is strongly played with youthful exuberance, brilliant impulsiveness, progressive dementia and final breakdown by Isabelle Adjani...
...Its intention is to be honest, but in being so it is likely to drive away even an interested audience...
...riumph of the Spirit is a particularly bleak Holocaust film, which focuses almost exclusively on day-to-day "life" in Auschwitz...
...there is no way to snatch victory out of the jaws of this defeat...
...The drawing-except for the eyes of the two lovers, which are flat and listless-is excellent...
...Camille Claudel is in love with the beauty of the human form...
...casually, with no false hint of moral intention, he teaches Arouch how to endure...
...Ariel persists in her romance, aided by a flounder, a ditzy seagull (with the voice of Buddy Hackett), and a perfectly grumpy crab named Sebastian, who has a wonderful Jamaican accent...
...Rodin is the sturdy Gerard Depardieu...
...Camille Claudel won five 1989 Cesars, including Best Film and Best Actress...
...Producer Arnold Kopelson (Platoon) worked hard for this effect...
...The Disney team deserves credit for finding new means to update this classic story, making relevant even its romantic view of "the generation gap...
...many imports have shown us the fate of deportees and escapees (The House on Main Street, Angry Harvest...
...The central figure, Salamo Arouch (Willem Dafoe), is a Greek middleweight whose fighting skills eventually enable his survival...
...Thanks to Adjani, the film does make us sad at such a terrible waste of her talent...
...They illustrate that magic flair for physical beauty, the beauty even of a meal, that explains the vibrant, unique texture of French filmmaking-although it has fewer lively stories to tell than a quarter-century ago...
...Gorgeous opening shots explain its awards for Art Direction, Costume, and Cinematography...
...underwater scenes have an exuberant lyricism which recalls Fantasia...
...A wicked witch named Ursula (half-octopus, half-beefy soprano) tries to get Ariel to use love potions to wreck the young mermaid's romance and get revenge on Triton, the witch's ancient enemy...
...The movie invites us to sympathize with Camille as someone whom Rodin abused both as a lover and worker in his studio...
...Several musical numbers stand out: for pure desire, Ariel's first aria...
...oddly, after interesting us in her, the end of the film never tells us her final fate...
Vol. 117 • January 1990 • No. 1
