For those of you with Irish blood...
For the rest of you...
Long before he was an Oscar-winner, Russell Crowe was a celebrated Australian actor trying to break into American films. I first became enamoured of his talents thanks to a spectacular (& vastly under-rated) science-fiction film called “Virtuosity”. After seeing it, I sought out as many of his films as I could find. Among those that have struck me the most is a little movie called “The Sum Of Us” (http://aol.imdb.com/title/tt0111309/).
If I had to describe this movie in one word, that word would be lovely. Superbly written by David Stevens & based on his play, it tells the story of Jeffrey (Crowe), a young working, single Australian guy who lives at home with his widower father, Harry (Breaker Morant’s Jack Thompson). The two lead a comfortable existence, a blend of bachelorhood, domesticity, & open, honest friendship, that last one being especially important due to the fact that Jeffrey is gay.
When Jeffrey meets a young football (soccer)-playing gardener named Greg (John Polson), he finds a connection which he hopes can evolve into a full-on relationship. In an incredibly sweet & terrifically funny scene, he brings Greg home, where Harry (whose own mother was involved in a lesbian relationship for the latter half of her life) walks in on the boys in the middle of a kiss & promptly begins engaging Greg in friendly conversation. He is at once embarrassing to his son & kind to his guest, but when the boys begin to subtly (or not-so-subtly) flirt with each other, he gets the hint & takes his leave. But the no-secrets parent/child relationship the closeted Greg will never have with his own father, with whom he already doesn’t get along, proves too much, &, despite an impassioned make-out session, he bails on Jeffrey.
As Harry tries to nurse his son through heartbreak, he decides to search for a romantic liaison of his own. He puts himself on the market via a dating service & gets matched up with a divorced mother named Joyce. They start seeing each other, & their relationship blossoms. In fact, it gets pretty serious. But Harry is somewhat hesitant to inform Joyce of his son’s sexual orientation, for fear of her reaction. Not everyone is as open-minded as he is, after all.
I’m not one to spoil endings, as you know, suffice to say tragedy strikes, bringing out the nobility in some characters, the vulnerability of others, the guilt in the rest. But, as the saying goes, the more things change, the more they stay the same, & what could have been a really depressing finish is actually imbued with humour, warmth, & a glimmer of hope.
It would take a heart of stone not to be moved by this wonderful, endearing picture. Jack Thompson‘s Harry is a model of acceptance, encouragement, & affection, a good-natured man who speaks his mind, but who truly values his son’s happiness & well-being. Russell Crowe’s Jeffrey is sensitive & devoted, carrying himself with the carefree air that seems somehow indicative of Australians, but who is not afraid to show his emotions. These two actors share a genuine chemistry that is an absolute joy to watch.
Directors Geoff Burton & Kevin Dowling, too, must be commended for their deft handling of the film & its delicate subject matter. The mix of idealism & sometimes harsh reality is perfectly balanced, the pace restrained & yet retaining a very natural flow, even when the mode of storytelling switches from the usual, audience-watches-what-characters-are-doing-&-saying, to Jeffrey & Harry‘s ‘asides‘, where they divulge their thoughts & observations by speaking directly to the camera.
Simply put, this is a tender, witty, refreshing delight of a film which should be seen without delay.
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Wes Craven’s “The Hills Have Eyes” (http://aol.imdb.com/title/tt0077681/) starts off unassumingly enough, almost a snippet out of Russ Meyer (without the female endowments): an old man at a service station denies a young girl the opportunity for trade. He tells her he has nothing to trade, & that troopers (i.e., cops) have been snooping around, especially since the girl’s family robbed the nearby air force base.
A family with a station wagon towing a camper trailer pulls in. Hailing from Cleveland & on their way to California, they get gas, use the lavatory, what have you. The dad’s an uptight, retired cop with heart trouble. His wife’s a bit religious, putting her faith, as she says, “in the Good Lord & a little gunpowder“. There’s a couple - the old man’s daughter & her husband - with a baby girl, some bratty teenage offspring (a brother & sister), & 2 German Shepherds named Beauty & The Beast. The old man attempts to dissuade them from going on the unused road toward what used to be a silver mine, which is now mostly used by the air force for target practise. The family, of course, takes no heed, & ends up running off the road they weren’t supposed to be on in the first place, crashing their car quite literally in the middle of nowhere, forcing the dad & his son-in-law to venture out in different directions to search for help.
From a distance, someone is watching. We hear the sounds of voices - low, slobbering, predatory - conspiring, & a faceless being draws an outline of a naked woman in the desert sand.
One gets the feeling, even before it becomes apparent, that the snakes & spiders the family seems so worried about is the least of their problems. Beauty gets loose & runs off into the rocky hills, where she attacks a dark figure, & is soon heard yelping, as if in pain. Young Bobby follows, but arrives too late: he finds a bloody handprint on a large boulder, & Beauty’s eviscerated body not far away.
Day turns into evening, & while the sun is hot enough to make them feel, as young Brenda puts it, like “human French fries”, the night is bitterly cold. Retreating to the warmth of the camper, they try to get help via their CB radio, but hear little besides static...& one heavy breather.
Dad reaches the old man’s gas station & tries to use the phone, when he is touched by a hand. He whips out his gun & fires, but a door closes behind him. Venturing in with caution, he finds the old man in the back room, handing by a belt from the rafters. When he lets the old man down & asks what he was doing, the old man says, “I thought you were someone else.” Left with little recourse, the old man tells a troubling story from his past, a time in which he was a happy man with a wife & daughter. Then a son was born. He was very hairy & far too large, & came out sideways, nearly killing his mother. The boy was adult-sized by the age of 10, & a series of accidents - dogs falling into the well, chickens found with their heads bitten off - cast serious doubts as to his mental state. When the old man left on business & returned to find his house burned down & his wife & daughter dead, he was convinced the boy had set the blaze. He beat the child in the head, & left him to die in the desert.
Except he didn’t die. He grew up. He “stole a whore”. He raised a passel of wild kids.
And it’s this feral family who begins attacking the travelers.
Loosely based on the true story of Sawney Beane (http://theblackhornet.com/stories/beane/), “The Hills Have Eyes” gradually builds up the suspense & then erupts into a non-stop barrage of tension, murder, & mayhem. For all their initial squabbling & sniveling, the Clevelanders, subjected to unspeakable horrors & trying desperately to find the strength to defend themselves, do become a sympathetic lot, especially after the “death of the 2 mothers & stealing of the baby” scene - which, incidentally, made it onto the list of Bravo’s 100 Scariest Movie Moments.
What makes this story truly disturbing, however, is not its suggestions of out-&-out gore & cannibalism, but its blurring of the line between nature & nurture. One is inclined to think that a few of the ‘monsters’ of this tale - who are, themselves, a unit slowly coming apart - might not have been such bad people if only they’d been raised differently - particularly Pluto, played by the physically unsettling Michael Berryman (& evoking - in me, at least - memories of his character in “Weird Science”, one of the “Road Warrior”-type barbarians who, after being confronted, apologise for trashing the house, who says he hopes they can keep the matter quiet because he doesn’t want to lose his teaching job), & his sister, Ruby (especially given her actions at the end of the film). But there is also the flip side of that coin - realised perfectly in the final shot, just before the credits roll - which shows us that there is a primal darkness lying dormant in civilised man, & that the most ’normal’ person can, when pushed to their limit, commit acts of sheer, unrelenting brutality.
Even the family dog.
Sorry there isn't much posting as far as my life or thoughts or whatever. I'm just really dead from work. It's getting better, but it's still very fast-paced & I'm trying very hard to keep up with everything. At least I get to play with models a couple days a week. ^_^