At home
Hazo, Samuel
At Home Two decades of hell could not convince Odysseus to think of Ithaca as just another island. Where else did Churchill go in his defeat but back to what he fondly called his...
...Obedient chairs remain on duty at attention, and sleeping rugs stay territorial as ever...
...Later we find the cardinal that died colliding with our kitchen window...
...Since the hero's wife is an artist and art restorer who shared her vocation with her husband, Chris strolls through a heaven that contains echoes of several artistic masters...
...The joke running through Defending is that the next world isn't so different from this one (only with fewer hassles), and that since the punishment awaiting the hero is simply another mortal lifetime, it's hard to care about the court's verdict...
...Robin Williams wears the same self-pitying, moist-eyed, cocker spaniel look he puts on for all his "serious" roles...
...The birch beyond the driveway tell us why our house is not an igloo or a hut...
...He (Brooks) has fallen in love with another recently arrived soul (Meryl Streep) whose obvious qualification for higher existence will separate him from her forever if the verdict goes against him...
...Commonweal 20 February 13, 2004...
...Opened, they seem the same as doors extending welcomes, page after page...
...The first third of Defending charms because of Brooks's inventiveness in creating a heaven that is pure Southern California: the weather stations can do nothing but report that it's seventy-four degrees and clear all day, every day...
...His wife, another paragon but more fragile, attempts suicide but is restored to hope by one good heart-to-heart with her husband...
...The gulp of faucet-water being swallowed by an unplugged drain in a swirling funnel mimics the treachery of suckpools and whirlwinds...
...Dreams won praise for its visuals, even from critics who derided its script...
...Yet, whereas Matter continued to charm during its climactic trial scenes, Defending falters when Daniel goes before the court...
...Here, the hero, Daniel (an adman killed in an car accident), wants to remain in heaven, but the celestial judges may drop him back to earth if their examination of his mortal days proves that he lived without conviction or emotional commitment...
...And this fatuous performance is entirely representative of the entire movie, which never once stops wagging its tail while slobbering all over your sensibilities...
...Samuel Hazo of Life and Death in reverse...
...We bury it enfolded softly in its wings like every bird in death...
...While clocks repeat their treadmill trek of going nowhere by the numbers twice a day, the furnace hums the only tune it knows...
...Where else did Churchill go in his defeat but back to what he fondly called his "habitation...
...Unlocked, an opening door extends its own welcome...
...where Chris, having braved armies of demons, once more redeems her with an-other heart-to-heart...
...and enjoys the delights of heaven until he learns that his spouse has killed herself and is condemned to...well, not hell, since this movie is determined with gritted teeth not to believe in hell, but to an extremely desolate place, full of smoke and mist and fire (oh, all right, already, it's hell...
...Chris (Robin Williams), a wonderful doctor, perfect husband, ideal father, loses both his children in a car crash...
...Like bottles of patient wine they age in place and wait to share themselves with anyone...
...At Home Two decades of hell could not convince Odysseus to think of Ithaca as just another island...
...They are our truest natures peacefully in print in perpetuity...
...Or maybe there is a dramatic flaw inherent in the premise...
...Perhaps Brooks expended all his comic genius setting up the premise and had nothing left for a follow-through...
...Surely a heaven for art lovers would be radiant with the beauty that art materials and techniques reach toward, but wouldn't be bogged down in the materials themselves...
...Then he dies (another auto accident...
...and the Past Life Pavilion is hosted by Shirley MacLaine...
...They both end up reincarnated as children who meet cute somewhere in...New Jersey, was it...
...If all our books were people once, we house a thousand people underneath one roof...
...But is its heavenliness supposed to be intensified by the fact that the colors in it remain, literally, paint that Chris must squish through, while a bird that poops on his shoulder poops paint...
...Even when he is eulogizing his son at the funeral, Williams seems concerned only with how deft and poignant he him-self is...
...In What Dreams May Come (1998), directed by Vincent Ward from a Richard Matheson novel, you're zapped up to an Elysium not to await judgment but to relive the goodness of you...
...the restaurants force magically nonfattening portions on the guests...
...What else but home restores us in the wake of acts of God or national catastrophes...
...The pause between wars the world calls peace is not their peace...
Vol. 131 • February 2004 • No. 3
