Ulee's Gold; Mrs Brown
Alleva, Richard
Richard Alleva MELODRAMAS THAT WORK H ow nonviolent and unlurid
can a melodrama be and yet
remain a melodrama? Ulee's
Gold, written and directed
by Victor Nunez, provides a test case....
...2449-C Hardcover...
...And what was Brown's background...
...Editors This collection of e±saes honoring Father Slogan Open by his colleagues...
...Catholic-'tlusiim relations, and Catholicism itself• It al.ci includes a brief "intellectual autobiography" be Father Slogan and a bibliography of his writings published during the last forty-five rears...
...Far from pumping sinister atmosphere into the Florida setting, cinematographer Virgil Milano's camera seems entranced, even somewhat dazed by the sunlight and heat it renders...
...For Hilde rd of Bingen ( II~9S 7,0)• tine of the first rn..ties, to pray mean t to stand at the window of tarth, to see, to hear, to respond and to be responsible...
...Brown's emotional ascendancy over the queen seemed achieved much too quickly, considering that she barely seems to know him at the movie's beginning...
...The only munificent thing in this movie is the acting...
...To \ichols the notion of hierarchy a. domina tion is distorted, beau's hierarchy's role is to pre serve apostolic teaching and the unity of the Church, and to foster participation and uttegrahon• \ichol...
...No, for the story finally depends on action and sheer fortuitousness rather than character or the working out of a theme...
...Its plot has a kinship to the storylines of other melodramas about solid citizens trying to protect their homes from human predators-Cape Fear, Straw Dogs, The Desperate Hours...
...5857.1 110ce• =- ° a 529 95 of Brown by some bravos, as well as the circumstance in which the gillie contracts his mortal illness...
...T.aiiri x, e, h.1k-, VMUVraao ."V a' a t7ie from your re.giaus ooocatore or THE LITURGICAL Pass I'.U...
...The crooks aren't demonic masterminds but only stupid thugs way in over their heads, yet this movie forcefully reminds us that the evil of stupid thugs can wreak more than enough havoc...
...a two-syeek arrangement of morning and evening prayer and essays that provide an introduction to monastic spirituality...
...The neighborly love interest, though handsome, is frankly fortyish, unapologetic about her two divorces, and endowed with enough sense to call the police when her man drives off to face danger alone...
...Dragging her feet but with real concern on her face for the kids, the nurse is a study in reluctant decency, and the camera's distance from her face is an inextricable part of the scene's diffident pathos...
...Box 75(x1, Col legeville, MMN 56321-73[1[3 phone...
...friends, and former students probes the most crucial concepts in the Catholic tradition: God, Jesus, Church, ethics...
...Yet Ulee's Gold is a rarity: a lulling melodrama, an uninflated crime story...
...Tim Wood, as Ulee's son, is like a seemingly sturdy bell that cracks upon its first toll...
...This film is sufficiently handsome (is Scotland the most photogenic country in Europe or is Italy...
...Ulee's Gold, written and directed by Victor Nunez, provides a test case...
...5979.2 Paper...
...Victor Nunez's very real directorial gift is not for violence or suspense but for giving us unexpected glimpses of people teetering on the verge of emotion...
...Richard Alleva MELODRAMAS THAT WORK H ow nonviolent and unlurid can a melodrama be and yet remain a melodrama...
...A knife-thrust must be misaimed and a shrewd cop must be in the right place at the right time for everything to come out O.K...
...Indeed, Mrs...
...From Simon Schama's New Yorker (August 11) arti cle about these events I learn that Victoria actually had an attachment to Brown before Albert's death...
...When a cou ple of criminal associates of his son, believing (correctly) that the younger Jackson had stashed away some loot be fore his arrest, close in on Ulee and his girls to pressure the beekeeper into lo cating the money for them, Ulee, a vet eran once traumatized by the slaughter of his platoon in Vietnam, now faces vi olence again...
...Not so with the writing of Mrs...
...And having been refreshed, the critics proceeded to heat themselves up by overpraising the movie, rightly extolling Nunez's lithe direction but overlooking his often pedestrian and predictable writing...
...232 pp...
...5 x 8 513 95 Work of God Bered c' ^e °rayer .: dith Sutero, 0-5...
...llhile iyritten primarily for Benedictine oblates...
...The destination of each scene becomes clear before it is twenty-seconds old...
...For instance, the neighbor, a nurse, makes her first major entrance into the story when she is hustled by the granddaughters into Ulee's house to help their drugwrecked mother...
...But this time, fighting for loved ones and winning the friendship of a humane and attractive neighbor, he renews his appetite for life and helps to reunite his family...
...tl(Irk God is an ideal resource...
...If history books don't hold the answers, why didn't the filmmakers invent some, especially since parts of this movie are pure speculation anyway...
...Editor: - -do M. Moloney, o•nslofor ,i is sel t-res ea led through a iyindow" those is ho look to -, d in faith...
...We see all this from a distance, through a window...
...Couldn't this background have been worked into the film with or without flashbacks...
...The various loose ends are tied together (or at least bunched up in a ball of circumstantial yarn) with the same improbability you find in more sensational films...
...That in itself is not a fault...
...And none of the characterizations is sensationalized...
...Antony Sher doesn't just wear the devilish goatee of Disraeli...
...Only his pride in his apiary and his love for his two grand daughters link him to life...
...Brown, directed by John Madden...
...How did this gillie have the nerve to take over the Balmoral household without official permission from the queen...
...O The Windows of Faith Prayers of Holy Hildegard :degord of Bingen: J6 'oiburgo Starch, S• 9...
...Brown is a "Masterpiece Theater" project but strictly a one-shot venture...
...The poignancy of the dialogue for the Brown-Victoria scenes is of a prechewed emotionality, just as the lines written for Disraeli have the gloss of wit without any of the pith...
...1-800-858-5450 fax: ) -800-445-5899 www.Iltpress.org e-mail: sales®iitpress.org Commonweal 27 September 12, 1997...
...Ulee, roused to action, is intrepid enough, but like Gary Cooper in High Noon, he is an aging man whose body hobbles him in the fight against young punks...
...The title is the scandal-monger ing nickname given to Queen Victoria when, after the death of Prince Albert, her spirit was revived by the Scottish servant, John Brown...
...Victorian novelists often announced the purpose of each chapter with headings like "In which the hero discovers that his betrothed has not been entirely candid," but the drama of the chapter lies in the psychological subtleties that emerge on the way to that destination...
...I found two performances in the supporting cast more arresting...
...Is Ulee's Gold, then, not a melodrama at all but a Chekhovian character study...
...Their (probably) platonic relationship raised the "gillie" (body servant) to de facto mastery of the queen's country retreat in the Highlands, Balmoral, but was ultimately of greater benefit, first to Victoria by restoring her sanity and popularity, and then to Prime Minister Disraeli, who could use the monarch as an ally against Gladstonian liberalism...
...6 x 9. $19.95 That All May Be One Hierarchy and Participation in the Church Terence L. Nichols Must hierarchy mean THAT At.I dominance, patriarchy, MAY RE and oppression...
...Or is 0tii• there an alternative viex of hierarchy...
...104 op...
...This hexok, a prave•rful selection of Hildegard's visionary and prophetic writing , encourages us all to look through the ' is indows of faith...
...sufficiently humorous, and sufficiently well-paced...
...nother movie about thawed humanity is Mrs...
...It contain...
...When, with a piquant mixture of kindness and mockery in her eyes, she tells Ulee that he's "almost a good man, but you try too hard," you know she's going to be a bigger challenge to our hero than a whole snakepit of crooks...
...2431-6 Hardcover...
...this simple vet elegant prayerhix+k also gives the unfamiliar u-era starting place from which to progress into a more intense practice...
...liturgy, religious education...
...I often had the impression that I was watching the final installment of a long PBS TV saga...
...Overpraised, too, was Peter Fonda's performance, which is always believable but never quite vivid enough in the lead role...
...In the overheated summer of Con Air and Face/Off, it's as refreshing as a glass of Florida orange juice...
...A Florida beekeep er, Ulysses "Ulee" Jackson, has freeze dried his emotions after the death of his wife and the imprisonment of his son for armed robbery...
...B-_ ditor .'r those looking for an crvdav grounding in IWne'dictine spiritualih• and ho wish to pray according the 1k-nedictine style of turgr of the Hours...
...he really makes that brilliant dandy a benevolent Mephisto...
...The details of beekeeping and honey extraction are peripheral to the storyline (Ulee doesn't unleash a swarm to sting the villains to death), but they nicely convey the feel of a life supported and justified by sweat and ache...
...Brown...
...The cinematic flesh on these bare bones of melodramatic narrative is anything but melodramatic...
...details his notion of pa rticipatnn hierarchy grounding it in kript;i , • n Christian tradition...
...The beating Open Catholicism The Tradition at Its Best: Essays in Honor of Gerard S. Sloyan David Efroymson and John Raines...
...As Victoria, Judi Dench is the most noble dumpling of them all...
...But how compelling is sufficiency...
...256 pn . 4 :x6 : S' 9 75 A 997 TITLES Critx licism Th...
...As the neighbor, Patricia Richardson, a middle-aged beauty with Commonweal 26 September 12,1997 a strong, stubborn jaw, fills her rather sketchy role with sheer humanity...
...Billy Connolly, reputedly a comic star in England, makes Brown a figure of controlled, channeled wildness...
Vol. 124 • September 1997 • No. 15
