The battle for words
Stavans, Ilan
tography) is to make us understand how crushing our civilization can be to a victim of it. The weakest element is the presentation of the legal developments, or rather lack of developments,...
...Why did he burden Hopkins with a musical crutch...
...But once that blessed frozen mountain appears, this movie goes uphill faster than the ship goes under...
...The first ninety minutes is Harlequin romance drivel starring Leonardo DiCaprio as a bohemian artist and Kate Winslet as a society debutante who cross class barriers to fall in love...
...Victor Garber is especially touching as the ship's guilt-stricken architect...
...In short, Amistad, despite its R rating (the slaveship sequences necessarily feature full frontal nudity and the sexual exploitation of the African women), is essentially a children's movie, a heroic romance culled from history...
...Yet Hopkins seemed to me to be toiling uphill because every time he appears the soundtrack is invaded by a musical motif redolent of patriotism, duty, life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness (and composed by Mr...
...Rev...
...Judging strictly by what we are shown (the facts might yield a different impression), all the defense could do at all three sessions was to hammer away at the point that the defendants were captured in the country of Sierra Leone, a protectorate of England where the slave trade was forbidden...
...It's all here: the invading water and the escaping rats, the class warfare enacted over places in the lifeboats, the homicidal rages and the gallantry, the surrenders to death alongside the furious scrambling to escape it, the dimming of the lights and the undimmed music of the ship's orchestra, the dull roar of sinking steel and the shrill roar of panicked humanity, the shattering of the ship's spine followed by a great silence: the stillness of slow death in the water, the stillness of desolated survivors in the boats.Writer-director James Cameron captures everything with mastery of special effects and the deployment of a superb supporting cast...
...This trumpet accompaniment is faint but persistent...
...It comes from the need to have the cavalry ride to the rescue of the wagon train, to see the three musketeers defeat Richelieu's agents and rescue the queen's jewels, to conjure up children riding their bikes to the rescue of a cute little buddy from another planet...
...But Spielberg allows the g r e a t n e s s of Cinqu6 to emanate from Djimon Hounsou himself...
...Why didn't the actor also wear a turned-around baseball cap while he was at it...
...Well, of course he does...
...I've never seen the serendipity of catastrophe captured so well, the way the choice of running down one corridor rather than another can lead to life or death...
...I understand the intention...
...DiCaprio is clueless as to how a working-class boy of 1912 would move and speak, though Winslet remains fetching under 9.5 pounds of make-up...
...Before it sank into the Atlantic, the ship Titanic split in half...
...And all the prosecution could do was to keep insisting that the provenance of the defendants' capture was unknown, that they were strictly property and should be returned to their Spanish owners...
...Responding to a favorable verdict i::: ::!: ii i :i TM ~ ~ ~ : ~ ~ ~ F i i i ~ ~ ~i !~ ii i~ ~ ' Commonweal | 8 Februa...
...And what I'm tempted to call moral serendipity is also touched upon: the way the same situation can call forth the best and worst in an individual...
...Bruce Nieli, Past Director of Evangelization, NCCB "In the 38 years I have been a priest, I have not seen or experienced a more powerful m i s s i o n . " . . . Rev...
...That musical figure represents not only Adams's greatness but the greatness of his ancestors and all the patriots who founded our country...
...13, 1998 at one of the earlier trials, McConaughey leaps to his feet punching the air and shouting "yes...
...n l l never thought I could be so happy at the sight of an iceberg...
...E2 Treat Your Parish to an Isaiah Mission...
...Robert W. Blauvelt, Resurrection-Ascension Church, Queens, NY Over 800 missions given in 125 dioceses since 1 9 8 4 . . . Why Not YOUR Parish in 1998, 1999, or 2000...
...And, in an earlier scene, much is made of the way the traditionproud Adams empathizes with Cinqu6 who speaks of himself as the summation of his ancestors...
...Hopkins gives an excellent impersonation of a vinegary genius, and the careful little gestures he uses during Adams's oratory seem the neat, canny reductions of the sweeping gestures the statesman might have made in his prime...
...404 Isaiah Parish Missions, Abbeyridge Ct., Ocoee, FL 34761 Toll-free: 1-888-472-4241 Commonweal I 9 February 13, 1998...
...Of course, the deus ex machina waiting to descend at the climactic third trial is John Quincy Adams...
...The dialogue is clunky and anachronistic, the camera work conventional at best, at worst faux lyrical (360-degree panning around embracing lovers and that sort of thing...
...Titanic will win the b e s t - p i c t u r e Oscar this year, but it is strictly in its second-half that James Cameron becomes the one-and-only poet of disaster movies...
...Artistically speaking, so does Titanic, the movie...
...Fourth of July himself, John Williams...
...The weakest element is the presentation of the legal developments, or rather lack of developments, in the three trials...
...Spiritual Renewal * Clergy/Lay Team * Personal Witness * Sacrament Based * Training for Evangelization "Since 1984, Isaiah Parish Missions have invited thousands of Catholics to reconciliation, on-going conversion, social justice and evangelization.., creative, positive, inspiring...
...Although Spielberg and his scriptwriters (David Franzoni and the uncredited Steven Zaillian) show us clearly why the government of Martin Van Buren kept prosecuting - - the president was bowing to the pressure of the slave-owning states-- neither the court proceedings nor the behindthe-scenes politicking achieve any high dramatic interest...
...And just in time for Anthony Hopkins (as Adams) to save us from Matthew McConaughey's feeble efforts as the principal defense lawyer (and future governor of Connecticut) Roger Baldwin...
...Because of the lack of dramatic progress in the courtroom scenes, the moviemakers must work up artificial suspense by trying to make us wonder if the Great Man will intervene or not...
...it piously glazes every word Adams utters and it enshrines, embalms, canonizes the old statesman while poor Hopkins is simply trying to bring him to life...
...Witness the behavior of the chief steward who enforces the vile rule of preferring the first-class passengers for the lifeboats, but who draws the line at allowing a millionaire to bribe his way ahead of women and children...
Vol. 125 • February 1998 • No. 3
