|
Browning's "Apparent Failure" is the foundation of the joke, with La Cava's My Man Godfrey for the screwball social order. The patriarch (Dabney Coleman) is a demolition expert, the wrecking ball is his brush, "sheer poetry" is what he sees as an edifice implodes into dust. The snag is a dilapidated Brooklyn fleapit turned historical landmark, the simple solution is to drop his pampered brood there for some life lessons. "You can't spoil us, then stop when it suits you!" The daughters (Suzy Amis, Uma Thurman) fancy themselves painters and anarchists and the son (David Hewlett) designs video games, they plead with Mom (Joanna Cassidy) to return to the moneyed nest but instead must face the utter horror of getting jobs. Yuppies and flakes complete the milieu, the stockbroker beau (Dylan Walsh) has his eye on the family stock, boarders include the "closet heterosexual" aspiring couturier (Crispin Glover) and the dip who specializes in glossolalia (Sheila Kelley). "The karma here is major." A satirical parable of creativity and renewal, John Boorman's New York originated in London and shot in Toronto as a recomposition of Leo the Last, a delicately sustained captivation. "People, Paint, Illusions" is the title of the young aesthete's trompe-l'oeil presentation, into an insurance calendar it goes. (Advertising is said to be "the only true art of our time," meanwhile "the true magic of the age" comes out of a brat's computer.) Christopher Plummer as the raspy illusionist-hobo with the excremental moniker might be Boudu aged and reflective, marvelously attuned to Boorman's airy inspiration and lambent textures. The patriarch exits the church in a rain of feathers and awakens in an indoors jungle, real beauty turns out to be the molding of personal reality, the punchline finds Lear rediscovering his dance steps. "Is this the end of capitalism as we know it?" Brooks is nearby with Life Stinks, a similarly misunderstood poem. Cinematography by Peter Suschitzky. With Maury Chaykin, Ken Pogue, and Michael Kirby.
--- Fernando F. Croce |