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"Meshuggah melodies," a Sunday odyssey. The literary body, "a second-rate talent of the highest order," dead at 41. The widow (Jessica Walter) hopes for a packed funeral, four friends packed in a red Volkswagen are better than nothing. "Born stooge" (George Segal) daydreams of his own demise, you gotta paint the coffin before you can climb into it. The poet (Jack Warden) is an overgrown mama's boy (cf. I Vitelloni), the reviewer (Sorrell Booke) stares at Mallarmé's blank page in his typewriter. The veteran pedant (Joseph Wiseman) casts his eyes heavenward upon hearing the news: "What are you running up there, a city?" Upper Side and Lower Side, East Side and West Side, all representatives lost in Brooklyn. Dying young is tragic, dying old is inevitable, in between is the worst because of unresolved matters, "like leaving before the end of a Hitchcock movie." The wry side of middle-aged mourning, the satirical side of the Sidney Lumet male group. A Jewish state of mind, toasted with the expansive cabbie (Godfrey Cambridge) following a fender-bender and a slap fight. Ode to synagogues, art of parallel parking, reverie of egg noodles. "I would like to know what it is you have against the city. What harm it ever did you?" Help out with a crossword puzzle and risk a punch, ask for a sign and get a downpour. Mortality, bitterness, a bill for the turnpike. The Surrealist Mystery of New York, as Dalí would say. James Joyce is subtly adumbrated and Philip Roth duly noted, the interminable eulogy is an opportunity for the rabbi (Alan King) to try his stand-up routine on body decay. A bulletin for gravestones, from long shot to close-up on a telephoto lens. "Who is a hero? He who keeps down a wisecrack." The immediate response is by Cassavetes with Husbands, the marked inheritor is Seinfeld. With Phyllis Newman, Zohra Lampert, Anthony Holland, and Graham Jarvis.
--- Fernando F. Croce |