Keeping the Faith/The Virgin Suicides Gladiator
Baumann, Paul
skin to come off as a clown, let alone...
...When not fending off eligi- salesman trying to sell a karaoke masparkling Upper West Side...
...finance, which inspires the awe and inservative congregation...
...As an unmarried young rabbi, ly silly moments in this movie, espenatured romantic comedy he is the object of fevered scrutiny and cially the manic spiel of a music-store set on New York City's (suspiciously) solicitation...
...oust him...
...Ben ular klutz...
...Equal parts the inexplicable suicide of his youngest chariot demolitions since Ben Hur...
...180), Russell Crowe the reader was tempted to reach for a tidy borhood's meticulously maintained (L.A...
...Its inexorable the ill-fated Roman General Maximus those lives are actually like...
...thentic paraphernalia on the screen, is panic Catholic parish, Norton goes to As a showman, Father Brian is a white- little more than a belief in common deadmirable lengths to capture a sense of bread version of Jake, with his own brand cency...
...Anna, played as an adult by the lithe and girlish Jenna Elfman (of TV's "Dharma and Greg"), breaks up the young trio by moving to California...
...The late Oliver Reed makes a memorably operatic appearance as a provincial gladiatorial promoter who rides Maximus's prowess to the big time, the Colosseum in Rome...
...picture as a sage-like rabbinical men- Donald Trump's idea of politics...
...Why such a Maximus ends up fighting for his life First-time director/writer Sofia Cop- powerful visual idea was left on the page and the hope of revenge as a gladiator...
...This tone poem, dark fairy tale, daughter, Cecilia...
...Twenty years later she reenters the picture, setting the inevitable romantic crisis in motion, as the giddiest and longest-limbed corporate whiz kid in Manhattan...
...Norton is a very appealing presCommonweal 19 June 2, 2000 joke, of course, but an interesting dis- naturally cool high school glamour boy ladiator, the first big movie placement of that most basic of religious whose pursuit of the beautiful Lux Lis- of the summer season, is a instincts...
...Paul Baumann Anna's return does, however, bring real chaos into Father Brian's emotional life...
...Whenever deterioration, in the midst of the neigh- (the year is A.D...
...Robinson...
...Spartacus, The Silver Chalice, of anyone who grew up in a well-to-do sub- tron...
...skin to come off as a clown, let alone a fool for God...
...Quaint tributes to pagan piety and speculation about the afterlife are offered as relief from the remorseless bloodshed and treachery...
...As the title suggests, there was also novel was never so reductionistic...
...Both ham it up ential...
...And pagan Rome has ancy between what we think we know things in the Lisbon house are untouched never looked so, well, monumental...
...The only plays Brian's best friend Jake, a promis- ergy of a Woody Allen or a Peter Sellers thing that comes close to evoking a mysing young rabbi who has brought ener- that would make the slapstick a natural tery is Anna's cabalistic language of high gy and young people to a nearby Con- extension of Father Brian's personality...
...of the Roman Empire, but with all the ada skein of religious sentiment holy cards, There are other problems...
...But he pulls it off...
...It's a been friends since elementary school, where they forged a bond with the pretty and commanding tomboy, Anna Reilly...
...Like Miss pults of the Roman legions and the barcides had a shrewd sense of the discrep- Haversham's cake and wedding dress, barian hordes...
...be entertained and amused assignments and pulls them off with lit- There are some inspired, wonderfulI by Keeping the Faith, a good- tle fuss...
...Brian is supposed to be a spectac- would make Brian's celibacy or Jake's ic-accented pastor (Milos Forman...
...Love and laughter, t would be impossible not to ence, but Stiller is given the bulk of the of course, triumph...
...This is a sentimental film that moves deftly through a series of set comic pieces...
...Bancroft plays Jake's very impos- mostly self-referential, if not self-reverby the scavenger hunt for love that takes ing Jewish mother...
...Gladiator, in fact, is acterizes a certain kind of American child- position of repression and release...
...But while Brian torments himA PRAYERFUL TRIO self about his new-found feelings, Anna `Keeping the Faith,' `The Virgin Suicides,' & 'Gladiator' and Jake take action, embarking on a clandestine romance that seems destined for disaster...
...First- herds the prototypically pudgy, an- tens incredulously to Father Brian's time director Edward Norton, an actor noying, and inept bar mitzvah candi- drunken confession of how his best best known for playing intense young date through his paces...
...This is definitely the guy you want on gets most of the novel's "facts" right, but "Little by little, people ceased to dis- your side in any arena...
...Coppola puts the Lisbons' sexual course Ben Hur, and Samson and Delilah urb, the book captured the seemingly in- Puritanism center stage, forcing the arc are some of the canonical works in this finite suspension of "real" life that char- of the story toward a predictable juxta- once popular genre...
...Meanwhile, the friend, the rabbi, stole his girl...
...Coppola hind...
...Equally well G fection that boasts the ystery suffuses Jeffrey Eu- cast is James Woods, who walks through greatest number of decapitations since genides's 1993 novel, The the movie like a shell shock victim after Anne of the Thousand Days, and the best M Virgin Suicides...
...pola (daughter of Francis Ford Coppola) is hard to imagine...
...Admittedly, the horror of five novel tells us, "preferring to see it as in- Kirk Douglas and the ironic twinkle in suicides is easier to stomach on the page evitable, or as something best left be- his eye of fellow Australian, Mel Gibthan to look at on the screen...
...The two have Norton is just too comfortable in his own comprehension of both clergymen...
...Every toughs (American History X), shows a congregation's elders, exasperated by ethnic stereotype imaginable is trotted real feel for this venerable genre as well Jake's unorthodox style, are anxious to out to be at once confirmed and upas a sweet tooth for glossy cityscapes...
...Wallach shuffles through the ing the Faith's idea of faith is a bit like the "hip" clergyman...
...As his wife, Kathleen is newfangled "epic" moviemaking of and suburban coming-of-age satire, the Turner does one of her practiced turns the old-fashioned "sword and sandal" novel leaves an indelible impression...
...Confidential) mesmerizes...
...Crowe has the its mood and enigmatic point of view cuss the mystery of Cecilia's suicide," the presence and physical authority of a elude her...
...The Casting himself as sweet-tempered the steel in her voice or gaze has soft- "faith" that is kept, despite all the auFather Brian, the curate at a mostly His- ened since her days as Mrs...
...The something of a remake of 1964's The Fall hood...
...Commonweal 20 June 2, 2000...
...Norton throws himself into doubts about mixed marriage anything Stiller (There's Something about Mary) the pratfalls, but he lacks the nervous en- but curious historical accidents...
...More important, the nology that gave us Star Wars can also be came to end their own lives...
...Gladiator is a boys' story, and its hero an anomalous cross between the Lone Ranger and Cincinnatus...
...The identi- vantages of computerized graphics and statues of the BVM, and whatnot-in the ty of the film's voiceover narrator is modern body-building techniques...
...Still, Keepthat most benighted of God's creatures, Bancroft...
...I macabre story of how the five pretty Lis- never adequately established, and this suppose it's good to know that the techbon sisters, brought up as strict Catholics, proves distracting...
...For as a deviously maniacal suburban ma- school...
...Norton does not set an easy task for Stiller is aided in these high jinks by Only a grinch would cavil about the himself in building this story around the presence of Eli Wallach and Anne way Norton treats religion...
...Little in Keeping the Faith surprises...
...the family's tortured soul...
...As about the lives of our neighbors and what after the death of Cecilia...
...It's You laugh, and you are even touched tor...
...A strange movie ignores one of the novel's great applied to the cruder cutlery and cataand even haunting book, The Virgin Sui- characters: the Lisbons' house...
...bon (Kirsten Dunst) propels the Lisbon tasty bit of celluloid conhousehold toward disaster...
...Eugenides conjured up that mys- son...
...Betrayed explanation, Eugenides offered complex- properties, is the very embodiment of by his superiors and sold into slavery, ity and uncertainty...
...Brian and Jake are granted their us up and down the resplendent isle of mercilessly, with Wallach exuding grav- "callings," but who or what is calling Manhattan...
...ponents...
...Crowe's entry into the pantheon of movie gods, however, will be Gladiator's most lasting legacy...
...itas and Bancroft showing how none of them remains almost unspoken...
...There is no sense of a presence churchy verisimilitude, right down to of convivial patter and user-friendly the- that is radically other, of a "calling" that an unguided thurible and a gruff, Slav- ology...
...Director Ridley Scott (Blade Runner) deflects the grisly subtext by turning a tery, letting it deepen and complicate the places his action hero in the middle of satirical eye to the gruesome dating ritu- commonplace absurdities and longings a succession of terrific battle sequences, als of adolescence...
...My teen- ble young women, Rabbi Jake shep- chine, and an Indian bartender who lisage daughter has seen it twice...
...She has some success of adolescent life...
...This movie aims to and Crowe walks away with all the lauhere, especially in the depiction of the evoke the same mystery, but settles for rels as well as the stray limbs of his opperfectly named Trip Fontaine, the preter- a sense of blank perplexity...
...0 Paul Baumann is Commonweal's execuTrouble in the suburbs tive editor...
...ended with good humor...
Vol. 127 • June 2000 • No. 11
