Screen
Alleva, Richard
general, and the diocesan human rights commission denounced the arrest as a flagrant act of oppression directed against the church. Finally, when more than 4,000 indios marched on Tuxtla...
...Stevens in the book won't admit what he's feeling even to himself...
...On October 25, the Vatican's apostolic delegate to Mexico, Archbishop Girolamo Prigione--the man credited a year ago with reestablishing diplomatic relations between the Vatican and Mexico after a hiatus of sixty-five years--informed Don Samuel that the Congregation for Bishops was requesting his "retirement," a euphemism for his removal...
...This adaptation would ruin, say, Proust, whose meaning emerges from the back-and forth hunt through time, but it does no harm to lshiguro, whose theme is the denial of reality, not its excavation...
...Bishop Reynoso Cervantes of Cuemavaca, spokesman for the Mexican Bishops' Conference, corroborated Prigione's account...
...Reaction in Mexico and elsewhere has not been muted...
...The reader has to piece together the plot, but the scriptwriter unfolds it with easy assurance as a straightforward flashback beginning with Miss Kenton's arrival at Darlington Hall and ending with her departure...
...Ask Carlito...
...For instance, in the movie version of the scene in which Miss Kenton invades the butler's pantry and demands to see the book he is reading, you needn't decode Stevens's deliberately stilted description of what is going on in order to discover that this is a moment of sexual incursion by an attractive woman which falters against a man's emo-" tional armor...
...At the end of the movie, Stevens, with dignity and self-knowledge, resigns himself to the sterility of his declining years, and we don't dare laugh at him The stoic poignancy of the title, The Remains of the Day, is more fully earned by the movie than by the book...
...SCREEN STUNTS 'REMAINS' & 'CARLITO'S WAY' ary McCarthy once wrote that some of the best novelists of her time used first-person narration in such a way that their books became "impersonations, ventriloquial acts...
...The underwater lighting by Tony Pierce-Roberts, Ivory's artfully cramped composition, Emma Thompson's pensive yet aggressive tone of voice, and Anthony Hopkins' s bemused facial expression, immediately transmit what's happening...
...Our hero goes down in a spray of bullets but only after taking his Judas and quite a few other mugs down with him...
...Still other sources in Mexico speculate that Rome's decision had less to do with doctrinal matters than with threats to Don Samuel's life...
...Of course, all this "human interest" stuff is meant to give the conventional gangster narrative weight, and it most certainly does--the weight of cement shoes on a corpse...
...Second, while the book's narrative skips back and forth in time according to the fluctuations of Stevens's memory, Mrs...
...But this new film's scriptwriter, David Koepp, and director, Brian De Palma, are like my loquacious acrobat...
...At the end of the novel, Stevens is still reverting to servile form and the concluding paragraph is the author's joke at the character's expense...
...Reading the novel, 1 couldn't understand why Miss Kenton was attracted to Stevens, but Hopkins, whose speciality is fierce emotion unsuccessfully suppressed, shows why...
...The Mexican hierarchy is divided over the matter, and civil rights activists, including Nobel Peace Prize winner Rigoberto Menchu, have publicly protested the Vatican's action...
...Prigione had nothing to do with the Vatican's decision to remove Bishop Ruiz Garcfa...
...This year's galaxy of authors has included ~" Elizabeth Johnson on God as She ~r Wilson Carey McWilliams & E.J...
...At first Prigione did not wish to carry out this disagreeable mission, but was told that Pope John Paul II had already approved the document...
...A source close to Don Samuel, who wished to remain anonymous, told me that "for some time now, people in important positions in Mexico and Rome have wanted [Don Samuel] and his diocese to rectify and change their positions favoring the poor, the indigenous peoples, and the refugees...
...Finally, he gets his call and enters the tent "And talk about well-trained, p" Commonweal 17 December 1993:15COMMONWEAL FOR CHRISTMAS For nearly 70 years, COMMONWEAL has been shedding light with timely analysis, illuminating reflections, and electrifying prose...
...The event has nurtured a popular string of conspiracy theories implying complicity, hypocrisy, and corruption at very high levels...
...Let my little anecdote serve as my verdict on Cartito's Way...
...I hope the overearnestness of so much of Carlito's Way isn't a forecast of reformation...
...But, in fact, Stevens can't discard his imperturbability even when he is alone...
...How did you think of this performer a moment ago...
...He was ordered by Cardinal Bernardin Gantin to personally give Don Samuel the letter...
...His inamorata (Joan Blondell then, Penelope Ann Miller now) urges him along the straight-and-narrow but a treacherous chum (Sean Penn, who' s quite vivid in a creepy-comic mode) sells him out...
...Finally, when more than 4,000 indios marched on Tuxtla Guti6rrez, Fr...
...From time to time, he does deep kneebends and a few other warm-ups yet seems curiously eager to shoot the breeze with you...
...And what will Don Samuel do now...
...They have wanted to put on notice those who think as Don Samuel does...
...the diocesan human rights commission carefully documents every instance of abuse...
...Never has he better used a public place as a sort of concrete forest (pillars as trees, escalators as waterfalls), never has his choreography of violence been niftier, nor has his camera ever glided through the action with more angelic--or devilish?-ease...
...There is an obvious drawback to this method: the novel becomes almost as predictable as its hero...
...Some women find this inner struggle attractive...
...Likewise, The Remains of the Day...
...While the Vatican and Mexican authorities agreed that it was a matter of mistaken identity, a forensics expert stated on a Guadalajara newscast that the close range of the gunshots pointed to an assassination...
...The James Ivory-Ruth Prawer Jhabvala film adaptation is not a stunt, just a good movie...
...Dionne on Politics -k Kenneth Untener on 'Humanae vitae' -k Chris Anderson on Forests & Streams ~" Jo McGowan on Mixed Marriages ~ Elizabeth Beverly onMuriel Spark -k Peter Steinfels on Priests & Pedophilia -k Daniel Callahan on Mortality -k Lawrence Cunningham on the Catechism -k Diogenes Allen on Iris Murdoch -k Christopher Lasch on Romantic Love -k Judith Hershcopf Banki on Catholics & Jews ~ Christopher Koller on Health Care -k" Margaret O'Brien Steinfels on The Laity -k Don Wycliff on Race -k Liz Leibold McCloskey on Fetal Tissue "k Chet Raymo on Science -k Kenneth L. Woodward on Catholic Higher Education -k Stephen L. Carter onLaw ,k Robert Hoyt & David Carlin on Homosexuality -g- Plus: Screen ,k Media ~ Art -k Poetry -k- Fabulous Columnists & Shocking Editorials...
...There are three reasons why this is so: First, watching the movie you don't follow the story through the veil of Stevens's language...
...to perform...
...the author, like some prankster on the telephone, is speaking in an assumed voice--high or deep, hollow or falsetto, but in any case not his own...
...When Prigione was challenged by the diocesan commission on these matters, the nuncio responded, "It is not about what Don Samuel says in his diocese, but about what he affirms in lectures and meetings, especially abroad...
...If that makes him a "Red," it is not because of ideology but because he follows in the long line of Catholics who have risked martyrdom in Mexico...
...In an irony Greene would have appreciated, the Salinas government then appointed Gonzalez Garrido minister of the interior, a post that endows him with considerable power over the Mexican police...
...While lshiguro presents us with a man trying to turn himself into a robot and being damn near successful at it, the actor portrays a Stevens less rigid than me]ancholy, not utterly dehumanized by his professionalism but clinging like a drowning man to the spars of his duty...
...There is a moment when a young aristocrat toward whom Stevens has avuncular feelings wishes the butler a cheerful farewell...
...Take advantage of our special Christmas rates by using the handy envelope provided in this issue...
...His interior monologue is the substance of the book and it is couched in a language that demands the reader's mistrust...
...If Stevens says white, then you must think black...
...then the present-tense reunion of the two servants gives us a tristful coda...
...Banal...
...Alas, the fellow is as banal as he is loquacious...
...magine this...
...In an interview with Rodrigo Veto in Proceso (November 8), Prigione tried to vindicate his actions by saying he had only carried out the Vatican's request: "I limited myself to forwarding to Don Samuel the letter that the pope has sent him through the Congregation of Bishops...
...He is still waiting to hear what the alleged charges are all about, but he has decided to conduct a self-evaluation in his diocese with the leaders and the faithful before deciding whether or not to resign...
...He covers every topic with clichds...
...Rebroadcast of the segment was later blacked out...
...Surprised and confused, the bishop asked the nuncio for an explanation, but Prigione refuse d to give particulars...
...Chiapanecos wait to see what vengeance the new minister may exercise against the church and the poor in San Crist6bal and elsewhere...
...The masterpiece of this genre is still The Roaring Twenties because Raoul Walsh's direction is a kinetic treat, serving up a ballet of screeching, swerving cars and crumpling bodies...
...Thinking the delicate matter an inhouse affair to be resolved privately, Don Samuel decided to remain silent...
...But the matter ceased to be private when Jesfis Aranda of La Jornada (October 26) obtained and publicized a document from a meeting between the nuncio and a diocesan commission concerned about Don Samuel's future...
...But without Rome's apparent support, Don Samuel will need more than a CB radio in his car to prevent him from one day joining the long and growing line of Mexican Catholic martyrs...
...Stevens rates "dignity" as the ability of members of his profession "to inhabit their professional role and inhabit it to the utmost...
...So A1 Pacino, as Carlo Brigante, spends a lot of screen time pondering the degeneracy of the new generation of criminals or--the gangster as Hamlet--wondering if he has really reformed or just "run out of wind...
...It was there he was given the letter requesting Bishop Ruiz Garcfa's retirement...
...In this Booker Prize winner, Kazuo Ishiguro (born in Nagasaki but resident in England since the age of six) has imagined himself into the skin of a butler who defines himself, sees himself, strictly in terms of the service he renders his employer, Lord Darlington...
...But, like my acrobat, De Palma keeps warming up by staging the bursts of action he can do well: assassination attempts, a pistol whipping, a striptease...
...It may be that Cardinal Juan Jesus Posadas Ocampo of Guadalajara, killed last May in a volley of bullets fired at close range, is the most recent...
...Don Samuel remains vigilant...
...He does stunts...
...The rest is not my affair...
...Prigione ended his vacation in Italy in October and stopped by Rome...
...hough Don Samuel may be spared a physical martyrdom, he and his diocese are suddenly experiencing a state of siege from a different quarter...
...Almost paralyzed with boredom, you can barely bring yourself to tug aside the canvas flap and look toward the circus ring...
...That's typical of the man...
...When Prigione arrived in Mexico, he bad to call Don Samuel in Brazil, where he was attending a meeting in S~o Paulo...
...There are conflicting accounts of Posadas Ocampo' s death...
...The acrobat has abolished gravity...
...Some believe the cardinal was killed because he planned to issue a pastoral letter condemning the growing Guadalaj ara-based narcotics industry...
...As an afterthought, the nuncio added that he did not know whether the Mexican government had requested Don Samuel's removal...
...the reader] senses the author, cramped inside the character like a contortionist in a 14:17 December 1993 Commonwealbox and suspects (often rightly) some trick...
...The professional mask has become a face, a face that can't express emotion or alter in response to the passion of other people...
...Third, and most decisively, Anthony Hopkins...
...As Stevens motors from Darlington Hall in Oxfordshire to the west country in order to visit Miss Kenton, the Hall's former housekeeper, he reflects upon his life of service...
...This action by Rome seems to be their way [of doing this...
...RICHARD ALLEVA 16:17 December 1993 Commonweal...
...De Palma unleashes all his virtuosity on a wonderfully inventive chase sequence that has Pacino fleeing mobsters first on a subway and then all over Grand Central Station...
...Much of Penelope Ann Miller's role consists of shrilling at Pacino for his recklessness at trusting Penn or bestowing wistful side glances at baby-hugging moms who have heeded their biological clocks...
...Without spelling out particulars, the document stated that the Vatican was very concerned for Don Samuel's doctrinal and pastoral errors and his difficulties with the Mexican government that "went against the church and offended the Holy Father...
...You find yourself outside a circus tent and in conversation with an acrobat who is going to perform his act in a few minutes...
...Most of this movie is just a repackaging of the story that Warner Brothers gangster movies told again and again in the thirties and early forties: a mobster (then James Cagney, now A1 Pacino in a Puerto Rican variant) elects to go straight and is hassled both by the law and his former cohogs...
...He certainly has abolished your gravity as you watch him trace curlicues in the air, execute quadruple somersaults and...God knows what that last stunt is called in acrobat's jargon...
...But it's a stunt with a humanistic purpose: cramped inside Stevens's bland monologue is Kazuo Ishiguro mischievously indicting Stevens--and through Stevens anyone who fails to live his own life...
...Apparently, they have convinced themselves that they aren't mere crowd-wowers but serious artists offering a powerful character study with fresh sociological sidelights...
...This Christmas send a star that will arrive all year long: COMMONWEAL...
...Every character inhabits the same plane of cinematic reality...
...they will not be shaken out by external events, however surprising, alarming, or vexing...he will discard it when, and only when, he wills to do so, and this will invariably be when he is entirely alone...
...If Stevens tells you that his feelings for Miss Kenton were entirely professional, then you must suspect suppressed sexual longings...
...And in the last twenty minutes, the acrobat finally gets up on his trapeze and really flies...
...Some hoods shouldn't go straight...
...Jhabvala has made the film story linear...
...It's a stunt and you soon learn the mechanics of the stunt...
...De Palma doesn't do humanism...
...This man puts his feelings on a leash but can't bring them to heel...
...Up in the air, he's the most astouishing man on the face of the earth...
...Joel was released...
...If Stevens tells you that his employer was a perfect nobleman, then you know that Lord Darlington will turn out to be an incipient Fascist...
...Hopkins, caught off guard, raises his hand to wave back, then quickly pulls it to his side...
...the movie Stevens knows perfectly well what he's feeling but also knows that he's not equal to it...
Vol. 120 • December 1993 • No. 22
