Poetry
Stepanchev, Stephen
also hints at broader meanings, just as the reconciliation with SCREEN nature to which Al Gore calls America implies more than a re- lation to the nonhuman environment. From its Columbian be-...
...I blossom all at once won't get into, Chantel can't accompany her), we know just In branches of pink bloom, and only how the film must end...
...did I even feel the first stirrings of boredom...
...And Sayles makes Later put out my simple green leaves...
...For other actress to pull out all the stops, Mary McDonnell is reAmericans, Bill Clinton's promise of a "new covenant" and a freshingly astringent as May Alice, a successful soap opera actress "new direction" sounded chords of memory...
...Human beings are ate...
...It's a little too pat...
...It proffers the revelations of did not make and about which we have no choice, an unalien- character rather than the surprises of plot, yet its story able heritage from nature...
...It remains to be rendered paraplegic by a car accident, who retires in disgust to seen how far he can take Americans toward a rediscovery of her large, deserted ancestral house in Louisiana...
...By the time we are through laughing at the performers, we may feel that May Alice really isn't giving up all that much after all 18: 23 April 1993 Commonweal...
...Once it becomes clear that Chantel simply must keep her job I lie in a green bed like a grave...
...The ed-must be afforded at least equal status with the pursuit of camera is always in the right place and held there for the right abundance and mastery...
...also hints at broader meanings, just as the reconciliation with SCREEN nature to which Al Gore calls America implies more than a relation to the nonhuman environment...
...The beauty of the setting-the bayous of rural Equality implies more than rights: it suggests that, within Louisiana-is gloriously exploited yet never overwhelms the the limits of our circumstances, we can and should be held ac- dialogue or actors...
...It picked me up and flung gent dialogue, the elegant shape of each sequence) and I realMe down on a stone pavement...
...It is humanistic and compassionpolicy, human nature must be given its due...
...Why then do I merely Cracked, the muscles frayed...
...with May Alice in order to win back custody of her daughter A magnolia drops petals on the lawn...
...Chantel snaps May Alice out of her depression not just through Stephen Stepanchev professional competence but by inadvertently revealing her own A Minor Resurrection painful needs...
...like Passion Fish and why do my fingers refuse to type superlatives...
...There is a nice balance between scenes that unmore than consumers and their dignity-their need to be need- fold mainly through dialogue and others told more visually...
...The wall was a dizzying egg-shell white...
...Yet the United States also began by asserting the propo- J oho Sayles's Passion Fish is the sort of movie I want sition that both our equality and our rights are things that we to call a masterpiece...
...In a role that might tempt anto the opportunity to contribute to the common life...
...length of time...
...From its Columbian beginnings, America has been caught up in the modern quest for RESCUE OPERATIONS the mastery of nature, the rejection of whatever humans have 'PASSION FISH' & 'MAD DOG' not chosen or made...
...If people are to come first in public never meanders...
...which she lost temporarily because of a criminal episode involving drugs), and once we see that May Alice has become I imagine sweeping the pain away too attached to Chantel to leave her behind in order to renew In a minor resurrection, when, like her television career in New York City (where, for reasons I The magnolia...
...I howled...
...The theme of Passion Fish resides in that interchange...
...Alfre Woodarf, the republic...
...The sky's clouds, airplanes, birds...
...It becomes ever clearer, however, that technological mastery subordinates us to the things we have made and, left to itself, tends to dispense with human craft and devotion...
...There is only one thing wrong with Passion Fish, but it is a A shadow clung to a crucifix...
...I broke my right arm in a high wind There is much else to praise (a perfect supporting cast, punIn Jamaica...
...grave deficiency...
...Moreover, why, having been gripped by the film's The orthopedist jiggled the bone first half, did I feel my attention wander in the second, and why As I lay nerveless on valium...
...countable to equal standards, offered and expected to live up And the actors are marvelous...
...I know of few other films in which so much emotion is communicated by two actresses simply looking at each other with the camera shifting viewpoints at just the right moments...
...The bone ly wanted, still want, to love this movie...
...The film runs on rails to its predestined conUnder a sleepless window, swallowing clusion and those rails become all too visible in its final hour...
...El as May Alice's nurse, Chantel, matches McDonnell in precision and tacit power...
...it all the more pat by satirizing, in the scene of May Alice's reunion with her former soap opera co-stars, the emotional brittleness of actors and the triviality of much of their work...
...Nurse and patient heal each other by giving each other a future...
Vol. 120 • April 1993 • No. 8
