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Ideals and realities inform the impressionistic collage, it follows Lumet's Lovin' Molly as a conscious transmutation of Jules et Jim to American soil. From Eisenhower's expiration to the Moon landing, the necessary collapse of youth's grace period. "School's ending, kiddos, and it's out into this world with us all." The Yugoslav lad in Indiana (Craig Wasson), the Isadora Duncan wannabe (Jodi Thelen), the mortuary business scion (Michael Huddleston), and the gentle jock headed for Vietnam (Jim Metzler), a whole decade of lessons for each. Music in the streets and brawls on the beach, the moment lost and verity bent by remembrance. "I cannot understand how you can write poems to me and still cling to facts." The Sixties viewed from the Eighties, the autobiographic ardor of Steve Tesich's screenplay cooled by the inquisitive melancholy of Arthur Penn's camera. The protagonist goes to ball games to sing "The Star-Spangled Banner," his college roommate (Reed Birney) explains the cosmic side of loneliness, marital social-climbing is an experiment curtailed with a bang. (Shooting at the wedding ceremony reflects the Kennedy and King assassinations, and also The Left-Handed Gun.) "I don't know what to do with all this love... I thought maybe you might want some of it." The immigrant and steel (cf. Vidor's An American Romance), the burning flag on the windshield, a Ray Charles leitmotif. The psychedelic scene is a glassy-eyed reverie with a car launching in reverse and bursting into flames, the Old World is a stern Papa with a grudging smile. The trunk full of symbols ends up as bonfire fuel for a chummy seaside séance. "I'm so tired of being young." Forrest Gump painstakingly scrapes all vestiges of intelligence and lyricism from it. With Miklos Simon, Elizabeth Lawrence, Julia Murray, Lois Smith, James Leo Herlihy, Beatrice Fredman, David Graf, Natalija Nogulich, and Glenne Headly.
--- Fernando F. Croce |