Screen:

...And this he simply taxes them the least...

...You can see Mamet's ining the concept of free choice in order to beg out of his social tent: he is trying to portray Hoffa indirectly, through the obligations...

...Only John Thaw (Inspector Morse on PBS's "Mystery") ten in her secret notebook...

...He's not only the hero...

...But Mamet has only one surprise in store for us and I will now spring it on you...

...That caption perfectly encompasses the not quite breathtaking moral scope of David Mamet's script...

...girls...

...December at the Manhattan School of Music, Example: the convicted Hoffa is driven to jail in a police Ronald Perera (music) and Constance wagon on a highway lined with grateful Teamsters who cheer Congdon (libretto) explained the strategies their fallen hero...

...Robert Downey Jr., who the room, to create a world beyond the character's isolation, if 16: 12 February 1993 Commonweal...

...From this movie you will learn that the world is a corrupt place and to get anything whatsoever accomplished you have to get your hands dirty and eventually you become corrupt yourself and the hypocritical world stomps you not to punish your corruption but to save its own virtuous face...

...The night after I saw The Yellow and only hero of Richard Attenborough's Wallpaper, I saw Orpheus in Love at the Circle Rep...

...No, of course not...

...Into Hoffa's private pock- is wrong with it...

...The moralists a perilous master who blasts even as he befriends...

...Of course, if the movie had some texture, some surprises in its storytelling or its style, there would be rewards for staying with it despite its paltry cynicism...

...At the genius he hired...

...What has happened to Mamet's sense of dramatic econSome years ago President Ronald Reagan was being pres- omy...

...Thank you, Professor Mamet...

...You realize, don't you, that this will eventually lead The hero of Hoffa isn't Hoffa...

...Attenborough seems never to have asked himself what there To get the precise feel of the Gilman story, a dramatic piece was in this woman that left Chaplin speechless in his enmity would have to be a solo performance, like Sorry, Wrong Number so many years after the marriage...

...Did everybody fall asleep in the editing ers has altered the canon in so many colleges...

...The rhetoric of responsibility is, I think, often put ultimately pernicious effect he has on a Joe Average...

...Her docing Charlie to be cautious, to betray his art for the sake of prof- tor-husband has put her on a regimen devised by the celebratit...

...Any more questions...

...If he had, he might have had or The Human Voice...

...A pipsqueak only trying to prove himself to his older brother...

...Big, baleful men in dark suits slip cholic...

...Commonweal 12 February 1993: 15 seriously for a second...

...That's what where exactly does the money go...

...When the editor of Chaplin's au- and is creeping around and around the edges of the room, havtobiography asks Charlie why he has said so little about Lita, ing been driven mad by her husband's loving but oppressive the reply is, "Because I detested the little bitch...

...Jack Nicholson obviously realized that he was hired to do a star turn and he picks up his paycheck n the newspaper ads for Hoffa, Jack Nicholson glow- with honor...

...And that is both self-pitying and menacing-the Hoffa carapace has underneath his picture the advertising geniuses have writ- been admirably assembled by this dynamic actor and he struts ten, "He did what he had to do...

...When filmmakers nod off, why shouldn't the audience Congdon said that working on the piece had been fascinating do the same...

...One playwright who was not in the No one can say that Charles Chaplin isn't the one audience had already done that...

...that...

...There aren't any The narrator/protagonist of Gilman's turn-of-the-century other characters, only the mannequins whose story is a woman suffering from what she calls a "temporary function is to evoke some show of emotion from The Great Man...

...At one point, room...

...ment which we all struggle to provide for our children is ac- pletely fictional character called Bobby Ciarro (played by ditually of no moral or characterological consequence...

...Class dismissed...

...The view of the crowd through the car's win- they used in making an opera of the Charlotte Perkins Gilman dow is, of course, a traveling shot...

...And just in case we're such have it, more) fortunate, so will the downtrodden find it more numbskulls who wouldn't know that the cronies of union bossdifficult than others to will themselves into certain states of es enjoy certain perks, Manet obligingly and boringly spends mind (e.g., confidence about the future, or a conviction that it several minutes of this overlong movie showing us Bobby using is a just world and that hard work will be rewarded...

...At first appalled by the ugly wallas music hall impresario Fred Kamo seems to have an exis- paper, she becomes obsessed with it, tries to follow the pattern, tence apart from Chaplin's, partly because Thaw is first-rate and comes to see that the pattern behind the pattern is a woman but mainly because Karno's ego was as massive as the young (or a group of women) trapped by the exterior design...

...But for this who preach that those without boots ought to pull themselves concept to work dramatically instead of remaining a mere conup by the bootstraps ought at least to recognize that of all pos- cept, Mamet would have had to place the viewer very deep withsible messages, this moral is, strangely enough, the one which in Ciarro's perception of his friend and boss...

...The The protagonist is to rest, exercise, eat heartily, take tonics, but various wives and mistresses all put in three-minute appear- she is to avoid any kind of excitement, which means no work, ances just to evoke our hero's kindness and/or frustrated long- minimal conversation, no writing (the story is what she has writings...

...At one of these pressure points, he tionship...

...He's never a character, only a device to keep SCREEN the plot in motion...

...Douglas Fairbanks is her heroine, she escaped...

...the next second he sneers STAGE at the idea himself...

...The actor has done his homework admirably: the ers out at us like a man with a particularly bad case of stiff neck, the bantam strut, the slavically slitted eyes, the whine hemorrhoids nearing the end of a six-hour bus trip...

...The protagonist is a com- to a Teamsters' Union...

...El fails to do...

...in and out of cars transporting suitcases filled with money, but Charles Chaplin would have loved this movie...

...By watchto the same self-excusing purpose and as such it is capable of ing Bobby's corruption and destruction, we perceive Hoffa as undermining our sense of social responsibility...

...Poverty, his connections to evade speeding tickets, get access to gangno less than riches, but in a different way, can severely diminish ster power brokers, and enjoy the company of high-priced call the sway we have over ourselves...

...But Attenborough isn't interested in testing his hero...

...The movie ances of The Yellow Wallpaper given last is sometimes embarrassing even at the strictly technical level...

...ing with Perera and director Mark Harrison, chose to go outside he's too busy genuflecting before him...

...Don't make me laugh...

...Who says there's no his stuff...

...He wins Ciarro over to the union cause first by for the homeless because most of the folks who were sleeping getting him fired from a desperately needed job and then by on grates were doing so out of their own free will...

...And that's cure...

...WALLPAPER' & 'ORPHEUS' DeVito's direction seems driven by sheer desperation: arty camera angles, tricky editing, meaningless use of slow-motion photography, inappropriately heartwarming music every time there's a melee (do DeVito and his composer think that a pick- t a seminar before the first of three performet-line brawl expresses the heartland of America...

...RICHARD ALLEVA ets or into his union projects...

...Most of us having him serve as replacement for a henchman who is acciwho caught this gaffe thought the president was hyperextend- dently killed on a thuggish mission...

...Mitchell is mentioned in the story brought to brief, dazzling life by splendid Kevin Kline only to and appears as a lecturer on the edge of the action in the opera...

...he's virtually had done the libretto to Gerald Busby's music...

...nervous depression-a slight hysterical tendency" and a comic Brother and business manager Sydney is always around urg- character in the opera called "Neur-as-then-i-a...

...Ciarro becomes Hoffa's tain spiritual postures than someone less (but, as faith might henchman and rises with his boss...

...But the Great Man always defies the voice of caution and ed nerve specialist S. Weir Mitchell (as was Gilman until, unlike remains true to himself and his art...

...This movie makes a show of getting at the human roots of mendacity, but its only real concern is with the flourishes and trappings of cor- LILTING LIBRETTOS ruption...

...That's exactly what happened to Jimmy Hoffa...

...DeVito's performance, though well balanced, both forceful and restrained, can't disguise the sheer functionality of his role...

...end, she has ripped the wallpaper from the walls to free the The movie's shallowness is fully revealed in its treatment of woman-to escape because she sees herself as the womanthe second wife, Lita Grey...

...Craig Lucas Chaplin...

...The wheels of justice...

...It's a contraption, not a characteriza- does at least as well as Jack Nicholson in capturing the physition...

...I enjoyed this performance without taking any of it truth in advertising anymore...

...Two BUMS Though he's not the protagonist, Hoffa necessarily has all 'HOFFA' & 'CHAPLIN' the show-stopping public scenes in the movie: he bellows at picket lines, punches out company goons, defies Bobby Kennedy and Senate subcommittees...

...Congdon, however, workwoman...

...cal characteristics of his assignment, ends up giving a skillful In fact, the whole movie is a contraption that pretends to be performance not of a genius but of an endlessly forbearing melana serious study of corruption...

...At one point, a workers' recreation center is mentioned by Hoffa...

...there has apparently been such a musito create scenes in which a real man faced off against a real cal piece although I have not seen it...

...and advised "any playwrights in the audience" to consider writing a libretto themselves...

...Bobby trots through the movie, performing one errand after another...

...But then we have a reverse story, which has become a staple of American literature anangle of the smiling Hoffa acknowledging the cheers-and the thologies and courses since the growing interest in women writcar isn't in motion...

...Just as rector Danny DeVito), a truck driver befriended by the upthe well-to-do will find it infinitely more difficult to adopt cer- and-coming Teamster organizer...

...So where does that leave us...

...Hoffa's "befriending" of Bobby always manifests itburbled that it wouldn't do any good to sacrifice public funds self as damage...

...turn into a has-been so that Charlie can show compassion...

...sured about the exponentially increasing number of people with- To be sure, there is a central idea to the Ciarro-Hoffa relaout roofs over their heads...

...the only thing in the movie...