Screen:

...as brought to the screen by Martin Scorsese and (in an access V. S. Pritchett has said of Stone that "he should stifle his ten- of courage or insanity) given mass release by Columbia...

...It is time for a new dialogue [between the Orthodox Church and Protestantism], and it would be hard to imagine a better starting point than this book...

...Once again, • Media * Stage * Art * Poetry * Fabulous a log collapses but this time May goes to the fireplace and Columnists & Shocking Editorials...

...Stone has given a good deal of Scorsese is a filmmaker of sensation, not sensibility...

...But, good as the script is, a routine director might have turned it into a sluggish, though literate, movie...

...And so one of Wharton's best ironies is lost...

...Dionne on Politics * Kenneth the bustle in the orchestra seats below...

...programs in Christian Ethics and New Testament & Early Christianity Two programs for full-time students which draw on the distinctive resources of the Roman Catholic theological tradition...

...Pfeiffer's triumph lies not in rationalizing Olenska...

...Alexander F. C. Webster looks at the Russian Orthodox Church, the Romanian Orthodox Church, and the much smaller but vocal Orthodox groups i n the United States...

...Newland Archer, who has never questioned his society's ethos, finds himself attracted to Ellen Olenska just when he has announced his engagement to May Welland, a seemingly docile product of that society...

...It's a bold yet complicated stroke...

...My only other criticism is that the screenplay's concentration on the book's lyricism is at the expense of its wit...

...best...

...Webster has a vigorous and jargon free style...

...Later, when Ellen shows Newland Closkey on Fetal Tissue * Chet Raymo on Science why he must give her up and marry May, the shot of the burn• Kenneth L. Woodward on Catholic Higher Edu- ing wood is repeated: now it's his turn to submit...

...foreign while in the adjoining theaters, behind walls so thin you can policies are not outrageous or simple-minded as are those of hear the gunfire and the shrieks and the thuds, Stallone and Van Oliver Stone nor wooden and predictable as were those of Gra- Damme and Bruce Willis pound their enemies to pulp...

...He says that he does not believe that the course the U.S...

...This problem could have been avoided by a quick flash-back...

...Like approving in advance of her contemplated divorce-each in14: 5 November 1993 Commonweal vitation is returned with regrets...

...One could have given the same advice to Dostoevsky, of most of his peers, not its essential nature...

...RICHARD ALLEVA Ph.D...

...Otherwise, the adaptation is a model for what it includes and excludes...

...At his of Stone's stories...

...ed in this issue The problem for the three leads was to keep the audience aware that under polite surfaces storms are raging but never to let the audience dismiss those surfaces as mere hypocrisy...

...He frequently this novel's texture...

...pushes the wood into the center of the fire so that it may be This Christmas send a star that will arrive all year long: consumed even more rapidly...

...will not do, and of writing in a crucial passage that "Everything Francois Mauriac, Stone could say of himself, "I am a metaseemed obviated in its plainsong," which is questionable at physician of the concrete...

...But the views he has expressed about this country, novelists whose next work a serious reader can anticipate with particularly in its foreign ventures, seem time-bound by the high and confident expectations...

...We may associate red with anger or at least passion, but Ellen is not given to rage nor is the expression on her face anything but stricken...

...In The Age of Innocence, the balance between what is seen and how the camFOR CHRIST MIAAS era sees it is adjusted in favor of the actor...

...Yet the countess is now unreachable while May has him in a bear trap...

...self hurting May, and since the countess herself declares that But then May intervenes again, this time deliberately and even she can love him only if he remains the sort of man who does (under her placid exterior) ruthlessly to keep her man beside not hurt the May Wellands of the world, he breaks with Ellen her, and their place in society intact...

...We live in a world, after all, in which even Vietnam is trying to entice U.S...

...And into this sudden silence the countess Forests & Streams * Jo McGowan on Mixed Mar- speaks, while the whole world is hushed so that Archer may riages * Elizabeth Beverly on Muriel Spark * Peter savor her words...

...DayLewis's acting had been going on since his first moment on camera, but it is the sort of acting that has no bravura "points" and flourishes...

...And continued with a sort of muragainst a sense of the possibly transcendent, his characters act muring boldness that was amazing after its blaring beginning...

...Yet how many Americans know what these vast and ancient Christian Churches stand for, especially on crucial issues of freedom and human rights, war and peace, and national security...

...But wasn't Scorsese overdoing it...

...He remains one of the few American experience...

...Day-Lewis can do the bravura stuff, too, as witness A Room with a View and My Left Foot...

...He has seen and felt and imagined what war best, Stone achieves that fusion, technique and vision, style and can do, and has reflected on what part it plays in the American substance, becoming one...

...In retrospect, I now wonder that I doubted Scorsese to be the right adaptor for Edith Wharton...

...The one major fault of the script occurs near midpoint, when May expresses suspicion of Newland's previous involvement with "a married woman...

...My dency toward godly musings and carryings on and let his comic fear was that Scorsese would justify the wide distribution all urge go where it will...

...The skepticism "that led me out of religious belief also leads Didn't his hyperthyroid cinematics distance us from the setme out of secular complacency...

...In a physical detail and Wharton's people are certainly the slaves sense, I'm a theologian...

...The narrative's second half shows Scorsese and his scriptwriter, Jay Cocks, lay out this story Archer struggling desperately against his persisting love for faithfully and, for the most part, lucidly...

...She expresses a need to be alone and yet is eagerly social...

...Even critics who have liked this movie have had reservations about Winona Ryder's depiction of May as being too "modem...

...interests to return...

...Edith Wharton and Martin Scorsese are perfectly congenial because both of them understand the uses of force...

...get, and that leftover summer fluff, Sleepless in A legacy of the '60s in which he was shaping his political Seattle...

...Early in the story, when the countess Banki on Catholics & Jews * Christopher Koller on yields to Archer's counsel that she remain in her loveless marHealth Care * Margaret O'Brien Steinfeis on The riage, the director cuts to the fireplace as a semiconsumed log Laity * Don Wycliff on Race * Liz Leibold Mc- collapses into the blaze...

...MICHAEL BOURDEAUX, director, Keston Research, Oxford, England 365 pages  $24.50 cloth  ISBN 0-89633-169-5 Available at bookstores or through University Press of America, 1-800-462-6420 ETHICS AND PUBLIC POLICY CENTER 1015 Fifteenth Street NW  Washington, DC 20005 Commonweal 5 November 1993: 15 are for the sake of momentum, not inflation...

...Of Ronald Reagan, Stone has said that There it is, in the same suburban multiplex that is only his charm is authentic...

...Their few alteration THE PRICE OF PROPHECY Orthodox Churches on Peace, Freedom, and Security Alexander F C. Webster Foreword by George Huntston Williams As Eastern Europe struggles to emerge from its Communist past, the public moral witness of its Orthodox Churches has assumed a special importance to Americans seeking a truly just world order...

...In this unprecedented analysis, Fr...

...Scorsese's staging probes and illuminates, but in a very different manner from that of his earlier films...

...Take advantage of our special or, May knows exactly what she wants and exactly how to Christmas rates by using the handy envelope provid- get it...

...tings and characters instead of making us intimate with them...

...The Countess ty, their true self...

...in such a way that it raises questions about their inner identi- For me, the ignition was a snub to the heroine...

...It's a coup de theatre, yet, as executed here, Steinfels on Priests & Pedophilia * Daniel Callahan intimate and unforced...

...His book is a pleasure to read...

...In the book, this old flame was identified by name and clearly placed in relation to Archer's past, but since she's never shown or even named on screen, audience members who haven't read the book may assume that May is being jealous of Ellen...

...and marries his betrothed...

...For nearly 70 years, COMMONWEAL has been shedding In a box at the theater, Newland joins the countess and her light with timely analysis, illuminating reflections, and companions...

...He expertly mines the primary sources to reveal a story of both political collaboration and moral courage, of ideological compromise and spiritual conviction, of faithless betrayal of the Church and selfless fidelity to its moral tradition...

...This has nothing Ellen Olenska, born and bred a New Yorker, but married into to do with the "enrich your inner life, make money, and dis- the Polish nobility, has fled Europe and her disastrous marcover God" pitch, and everything to do with locating the self riage and taken shelter with her relatives...

...For instance, by lifting Olenska's disparaging remarks about American high society aping European manners from the novel's last half and inserting them into her first encounter with Archer, the adaptors prepare us for Ellen's later difficulties...

...And so far as I know the only one...

...After a time, I realized that I was regarding Newland Archer as if he were a childhood friend, as if I were privy to his deepest secrets (as, of course, I was, thanks to Wharton...

...D Vietnam experience and recent Central American conflicts...

...Yet the color is right, for it expresses not Ellen's emotions but the vicious societal animosity underlying the cold societal snub...

...A spotlight illuminates Untener on 'Humanae vitae' * Chris Anderson on the two lovers...

...He is the greatest living American film director, ic, but with the first part of his advice he has, I think, gone off but it's only the quality of his work that sets it apart from that the rails...

...For, like his peers, I believe, with as much effect...

...Application deadline February 1st...

...that it's hard to ignore religion "when you mess with acid," and Setting the scene, Scorsese's camera seems to wallow in the he knows these concerns distinguish him from most other luxury of Wharton's bon ton: the quantity of food, the eleAmerican novelists today...

...Pritchett is a wise and penetrating crit- too handily...

...A moral vision as intense as Stone's can be communicated War and references to war are, it seems, an inevitable part artistically only if it is fused with techniques equal to it...

...Same goes for this latest gem from Day-Lewis...

...His most deeply moving scenes occur when, And then it did begin...

...Archer's adored one is at his elbow while his wife is separated from him by the length of the table...

...refers to the influence of his early Catholic schooling, has said The first fifteen minutes threatened to justify my fears...

...seems to lead Archer on, yet sternly reminds him of his obligations to others...

...Despite her simpering exteriCOMMONWEAL...

...and special group...

...Pfeiffer understands that Ellen is a maddening complexity even to herself...

...These concerns do not make him unique among American When would this travelogue into the past cease and the writers-as he seems to think-but they do place him in a small drama begin...

...Daniel Day-Lewis fooled me again...

...For more information, write to: Director of Graduate Programs Department of Theology Loyola University Chicago 6525 N. Sheridan Road Chicago, IL 60626 312-508-2353 5 November 1993: 17...

...Her family tries to in the universe...

...has trod is simply some SCREEN horror story of racism and murder...

...On the other hand, Olenska is also the most ambiguous character...

...I found it to be a beautiful piece of work, always in character and in period, and revelatory of both American turn-of-the-century innocence and a hard pragmatism that could coexist with that innocence...

...Then beth Johnson on God as She * Wilson Carey Me- Scorsese abruptly shuts off the surrounding sound, including Williams & E.J...

...on Mortality * Lawrence Cunningham on the Cate- Scorsese can take a perfectly ordinary sight, logs burning chism * Diogenes Allen on Iris Murdoch * Christ- in a fireplace, and transform it into a motif that certifies what opher Lasch on Romantic Love * Judith Hershcopf an actor is expressing...

...Here, and throughout the rest of the movie, Scorsese's accomplishment is to use the resources of his medium to depict the currents under surface events...

...Scorsese composes a closeup of Ellen, looking like a slapped child, and then reddens the shot until she is obliterated...

...Those events constitute a very simple plot about two very complicated people inching toward a love affair that never takes place...

...fueled his romantic feelings and he wants to share his rapture with this woman he desires...

...There it is, using its two-hour-plus runoutlook, Stone's thoughts on the role of America abroad are ning time to explore the refined sensibilities of lovers stifled notable neither for originality nor acuity, but only for his imag- by the rigorous social code of upper-class New York in the 1870s, inative possession of them...

...The whole woman is there: the attractive physicality (Pfeiffer knows the trick of making cigarette smoking look chic), the nonchalance of a Europeanized American who knows the falsities that prevail on both sides of the ocean, the desperation of a woman who sees an abyss of poverty and friendlessness opening before her...

...of their own accessories...

...At first, they neither speak nor look This year's galaxy of authors has included * Eliza- at each other, and the chit chat of their friends prevails...

...And the serving men, at attention behind the seated guests, stand as strong as sentries, as merciless as prison guards...

...His critical views of U.S...

...Yes, his art is violent and coruscating, but Wharton's is robust and highly dramatic...

...This assertion is demonstra- Woo-Jean-Claude Van Damme killfest, Hard Tarbly false...

...And the cinematic erasure corroborates what the narrator (Joanne Woodward) tells us about this society's rejections serving to obliterate individuals who do not conform...

...He has been profoundly moved by the play...

...All or call 212-732-0800 three performances succeed brilliantly...

...James Agee once described a performance of Teresa Wright's as showing "a novelist's perceptiveness behind the [acting] talent...

...Michelle Pfeiffer, in a sense, had the easiest task since the countess is the one character in this story to whom modern au16: 5 November 1993 Commonweal Commonweal K LOYOLA > ¢ UNIVERSITY AWA'a CHICAGO O O 1870 diences can relate easily: the proto-liberated woman in revolt...

...Wouldn't public testimony that he takes very seriously the question of Scorsese, however much craft he put into this project, coarsen God's presence-or absence-in the world...

...It is a universe in which God may be absent give a welcoming dinner party for her, but-the gentry disbut evil is almost palpable...

...desires to be protected by her lover yet can find a way out of a desperate situation without his help...

...ham Greene, but they remain, in spite of his vigorous appro- "It," of course, is Edith Wharton's The Age of Innocence, priation of them, a weak pillar in the architechtonics of his work...

...Nevertheless, in a reference to Central America he can assert, "we have incurred a blood ENTRAPMENT debt, and it is coming up for payment...

...it has electrifying prose...

...Financial assistance available...

...Since he cannot conceive of him- his wife and affront, even break from, his New York matrix...

...The socialites seated on either side of the table have primed that trap to perfection...

...Near the cation * Stephen L. Carter on Law * Robert Hoyt conclusion, when Archer is about to ask his wife for a divorce, • David Carlin on Homosexuality * Plus: Screen she thwarts him with a startling announcement...

...I listened and watched very carefully, wondering when the performance was going to begin...

...As in My Beautiful Laundrette and The Last of the Mohicans, here he seems to spend the first fifteen minutes skating on the surface of his role as if being comfortable with one's costume and hair style were all there is to acting...

...It's a trap of obligations that Jean-Claude Van Damme couldn't slug his way out of, against which even Clint Eastwood's six-shooters couldn't prevail...

...Now, it's true that milieu must be defined by seriously questions that the culture has largely obviated...

...Accepting his premise SCORSESE MEETS WHARTON for the nonce, it would be interesting to learn who or what country he thinks is going to attempt to collect on that debt...

...They seem highly familiar, even conventional...

...When the defeated Archer finds himself seated at a farewell dinner for his never-to-be-mistress, Scorsese's climactic long shot is as highly evocative of entrapment as Wharton's language...

...Satan is very powerful here...

...In them, there was always an abundance of pungent dialogue and good acting but everything was COMMONWEAL swept along by Scorsese's visual rhetoric...

...The first half of the story dramatizes his increasing attachment to this instinctive and stylish nonconformist until his fiancee inadvertently the countess, finally reaching the point where he must leave calls his honor to account...

...There are no writers I'm aware of gance of the place settings, and the vastness of the brownwho are doing the same sort of thing I'm doing because I take stone interiors...

...Otherwise he's always been the showing Warlock II: The Armageddon, the John agent of someone else's agenda...

...What is the use of me...