Strange Relations: Make & Do
This past weekend, I flipped through cable and found Tim Robbins' Cradle Will Rock on. I've read mixed reviews before but love the subject matter and period: the sucker punching of art and politics in 1930s America. Famous figures and movements turn kaleidoscopically, developing so little biographically but layering the period with each arc of their narrative. After an afternoon of grading, my mind might not have been up for as much detail as I'd like, but definitely, there were moments that placed pithy demands on the attention: the sanctioned performance of the eponymous play, Bill Murray's character's final ventriloquist performance, and a fight between Mussolini's cultural emissary (Susan Sarandon) and Diego Rivera (Ruben Blades).
In the latter, a spit-angry Rivera (whose capitalist-critical mural in the Rockefeller is being hijacked by its commission-er) critiques Sarfatti for her affiliations, saying, "You are at the mercy of a very powerful man!" Sarandon, without flinching, remains right in his trembling face and says, "As are we all. As are we all," her repetition nearly raising her pointed response above the obvious parameters of their political time to the level of a universal state.
***
Maybe because I was in no space to handle such a bleak perspective, my mind wandered more flimsily and speculatively. The main focus of the film is on theater, performing. And often, much effort is done to draw a heavy line between the actor's person and his or her role; it's a matter of art that an actor is able to inhabit his or her character, no matter how psychologically near or far.
My imagination wobbled -- I admit -- and I wondered what would happen if John and Joan Cusack accidently auditioned for and won parts in a film where they were lovers.
I mentally apologized to the both of them, and Tim Robbins, and re-applied my mind to the movie.
I got the feeling that these actors were in this movie for a reason, not for the pure flexing of their craft muscles. Which is a very nice thing to imagine.