Created by playwright Moisés Kaufman (Gross Indecency) and the Tectonic Theater Project, The Laramie Project is a fascinating twist on the interview-based theater of Anna Deavere Smith. Kaufman and his company traveled to Laramie, Wyo., in the aftermath of the 1998 murder of 21-year-old Matthew Shepard, who was tied to a split rail fence, beaten and left to die by Aaron McKinney and Russell Henderson, two local men who had no greater reason than that "Matt," as nearly everyone called him, was gay. McKinney and Henderson play only a small part in The Laramie Project; quoted in the film’s press kit, Kaufman explains: "This is not about the case. This is about the town." To that end, the film, like the play on which it is based, takes on dozens of perspectives, from the policewoman (Amy Madigan) who cut the cord that bound Shepard’s wrists (and later experienced her own scare when it was revealed that Shepard was HIV-positive) to the man who discovered Shepard’s body, and recalls, "He was the first gay person I ever saw."

Given that the play’s original production was staged by the same actors who traveled to Laramie and interviewed its people, Kaufman’s decision to recast the HBO version with indie-film usual suspects — Christina Ricci, Janeane Garofalo, Laura Linney, Peter Fonda, Camryn Manheim, Jeremy Davies, Steve Buscemi, Dylan Baker and others — seemed worrisome at best, though having each of Tectonic’s actors (several of whom also appear) play multiple roles might have been merely confusing on screen. Using familiar faces more or less shatters any illusion of realism — on some level, you’re never really going to buy that Christina Ricci is a lesbian shopgirl from Wyoming — but much of The Laramie Project’s tale is about the reverberations, both within Laramie and without, of Shepard’s murder, and that’s where the film’s casting pays off. Consider that although Tectonic’s actors are characters in the film, no one plays themselves: Nestor Carbonell plays Kaufman, while Clea DuVall plays actress Amanda Gronich, who herself appears in a small role. Interesting as it would have been to see the play’s original incarnation captured on film, such self-reflexive casting serves as a subtle reminder of the ways Shepard’s story has been processed and reprocessed to a thousand different ends, often with the best of intentions, but still further and further from the center. The Laramie Project doesn’t pretend it can strip away the accreted media hoopla, but it successfully chronicles its after-effects. The effect, ultimately, is haunting and deeply moving, as much social document as drama.

The Blue Angel

(Sat., March 9, 7:30 p.m., $18, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700, www.princemusictheater.org)

In the last several years, we’ve seen our share of instrumental ensembles providing live music to accompany silent films. But how do you accompany a film that already has a soundtrack? Ask the members of the BQE Project, last seen at the Prince accompanying a screening of Charlie Chaplin’s The Gold Rush. Josef von Sternberg’s 1931 is a talkie, to be sure, but filmed early enough in the game that it has only minimal accompaniment, despite being set largely in a nightclub. As the sultry, untamable Lola Lola, Marlene Dietrich drives Emil Janning’s lascivious sugar daddy to ruin, a position she nevertheless makes seem almost enviable when she drawls her way through "Falling in Love Again." Dietrich, of course, provides ample lushness on her own, but BQE’s score should add even more juice.

Terry, Guy, Jan & the Twins

Complementing this weekend’s screenings of Jan Svankmajer’s Alice is this accurately titled compendium of short-form madness. In addition to Svankmajer’s Manly Games and Darkness, Light, Darkness, there’s Guy Maddin’s absurdly dense The Heart of the World, a five-minute slice of arch madness inspired by Soviet propaganda and silent melodrama. On top of that, there’s a pair from Svankmajer disciples the Brothers Quay, whose similarities to early David Lynch can be chalked up to a mutual mind warping by the horrors of Philadelphia. The Cabinet of Jan Svankmajer (1984) is a far-from-straightforward recapitulation of their mentor’s life (a more traditional bio is available on the video Scenes from the Surreal), while In Absentia (2000) features a Stockhausen score and an insane asylum setting. To cap things off, there’s Terry Gilliam’s mysterious Storytime, an early (and nearly unseen) animated short you’ll just have to watch on faith.

Fritz Lang in the USA: The Big Heat and Human Desire

(Fri., March 8, 8 p.m., $5, International House, 3701 Chestnut St. 215-895-6542, www.ihousephilly.org)

Fritz Lang’s substantial Hollywood output has always been overshadowed by the films he made in Germany, and considering that those films include Metropolis and M, it’s not hard to see why. (The latter, for my money, has the most perfect opening sequence of any film ever made.) But International House’s double feature makes a good case that, if not equal to Lang’s visionary best, his American movies show Lang doing strange and often wonderful things with less than stellar material. The Big Heat (1953), which proclaims itself "Based upon the Saturday Evening Post serial," is a straightforward tale of vigilante justice. Glenn Ford plays a homicide detective whose investigation of a cop’s suicide puts him up against the local crime boss (Alexander Scourby) and his quick-fisted henchman (Lee Marvin). While Marvin has a few moments as the hot-tempered thug, Ford’s square-jawed earnestness gets tiresome with speed, and the film’s sappy domestic interludes are fairly dreadful. The movie picks up immeasurably, though, once Gloria Grahame enters it for good. Playing Marvin’s independent-minded moll, Grahame has a tantalizingly brief early scene, then all but disappears from the picture until Ford’s wife is murdered by baddies. As Ford’s eventual accomplice and (denatured) love interest, Grahame brings much-needed snap to the dour proceedings. As in his earlier films, Lang’s attention to light and shadow is exquisite, but The Big Heat’s mood is constrained by a one-note script. (In addition to the I-House screening, The Big Heat is also available as a recently issued DVD.)

Glum and glummer: Human Desire, Lang’s 1954 adaptation of Émile Zola’s La Bête Humaine (also filmed by Jean Renoir, with Jean Gabin in the lead) is almost unremittingly glum, even though its plot is substantially toned down from the novel’s (i.e. Ford’s character, unlike Gabin’s, is not an alcohol-fueled murderer). Human Desire also casts Ford as the square-shouldered conscience, with Broderick Crawford as an abusive husband who murders a man he suspects of having an affair with his wife, and Grahame as the wife who responds to her husband’s violence with a few murderous urges of her own. Lang’s stylish tendencies run rampant over the script — check the moody lighting in an otherwise mundane breakfast-table scene — but the film’s existential intensity plays more like sourness. Look for the cameo appearance by the "Trenton Makes, The World Takes" bridge at the movie’s climax.

Join the
City Paper
Mailing List