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Nietzsche has the paradox, "a joke is an epigram on the death of an emotion." Profiles, reflections and silhouettes in the New England "ice house," the queen (Geraldine Page) values tidiness above all. Her husband (E.G. Marshall) announces he's moving out in the middle of dinner, "not an irrevocable situation" mainly diffused through three daughters. The poetess (Diane Keaton) nurses a morbid block ("my paralysis") along with a self-pitying novelist (Richard Jordan), the television actress (Kristin Griffith) is "a perfect example of form without any content." The "floundering" middle child (Mary Beth Hurt) shoulders mother's criticisms, lives with a political filmmaker (Sam Waterston), and has the added albatross of playing Woody Allen. "Fashionable pessimism is all the rage these days." Allen on Bergman is a painter's duplicate, Bergman having his own immaculate parody concurrently with Autumn Sonata. ("Spare" is the ultimate compliment between stiffs.) The fearsome hierarchy of the WASP abode, screen space that has been starched, pressed and folded. Pale roses give way to asphyxiating preparations, and to a grim sight gag—the suicidal matriarch uses black tape on windows before turning on the gas, it runs out so she makes do with white tape. "Will you please not breathe so hard?" A Morandi vase embodies the obsession with order, it's inevitably shattered the Life Force in the red dress (Maureen Stapleton), "I prefer a warmer climate." Hammershøi gradations, Strindberg vampires. The clown's tragedy to counterbalance the tragedian's guffaw, cf. Chaplin's A Woman of Paris. A Star Is Born's beachfront has its part to play, the memory of happier times is a memory of Cries and Whispers. Burden of family, elusiveness of style: "She has all the anguish and anxiety of the artistic personality without any of the talent." The ending is that of Love and Death, in all seriousness. Cinematography by Gordon Willis.
--- Fernando F. Croce |