Also this issue:

Shhhh
The Quiet American muffles its politics.
-Sam Adams

The Art of War
Max imagines Hitler as an artist gone awry.
-Cindy Fuchs

New

Continuing

Repertory Film

Showtimes

February 6-12, 2003

screen picks

by Sam Adams

Six Feet Under: The Complete First Season ($99.92 VHS/$99.98 DVD) "I'd forgotten how bad this was," said a diehard Six Feet Under fan as I was plowing, for the second time, through the show's premiere episode. That was as far as I got two years ago, when American Beauty writer Alan Ball's much-hyped series debuted on HBO. Then as now, the first episode seemed full of the kind of glib, cursory flirtations with "controversial" issues that made Beauty's acclaim so tedious; coupled with Ball's ham-handed first-time direction (plenty of showy camera placement and leering into the lens), Six Feet Under looked like an instant write-off. It turned out, though, that Ball -- a series TV veteran (including stints on Grace Under Fire and Cybill) -- is at his best in the soap opera form, which is to say that after a few episodes, SFU became as addictive as salt and vinegar potato chips. The episodes Ball directed (the season opener and closer) are still the weakest, but check out the opening credits and you'll find a surprising number of respected indie feature directors, including Jeremy Podeswa (The Five Senses), Lisa Cholodenko (High Art, the upcoming Laurel Canyon) and Miguel Arteta (The Good Girl).

Where the first episode centers on a none-too-subtle dramatic irony -- the patriarch of a family-owned funeral home is killed while driving his hearse -- subsequent episodes make the point that death is less extraordinary than mundane, albeit more pointedly so if you live in a funeral home. The show's writers load Ball's dysfunctional Fishers -- tightly wound mom Frances Conroy, even-more-tightly wound (and closeted) son Michael Hall, prodigal brother Peter Krause and conflicted teen Lauren Ambrose -- with enough adversity to lay waste to a small nation, and aren't above resorting to the odd twist on sitcom hijinks. (The episode where Conroy accidentally takes ecstasy Hall's left in an aspirin bottle might be an alternate-universe I Love Lucy clip.) Rachel Griffiths' Brenda, who has unaccountably drawn much of the attention focused on the show, seems like a contrivance, a conglomeration of neuroses designed to show that some families are even more fucked up than the Fishers.

On closer viewing, though, you see past Brenda's psychodrama and into Michael Hall's crushingly closeted David, whose self-loathing only makes his struggle to find himself that much more heroic. His may not be as "positive" a portrayal as the out, loud and proud folks on Will & Grace, but David is, ultimately, a far more subversive, even radical characterization. A devout Christian who gave up his dreams of law school to stick with the family business, David is beset by expectations (not least his own) from every side, but simple rebellion -- his brother's route -- won't cure his ills. When he's offered his late father's deaconship at the family church, David accepts it even though he knows it means continuing to camouflage his homosexuality -- not because he's a hypocrite or a coward, but because the opportunity to do God's work is more important to him than what he sees as an issue of personal identity. Of course, it's more than a personal issue, a fact the season forces him to confront in an episode where the body of a young gay-bashed man is brought into the funeral home. Though the device of using reanimated corpses to convey the characters' inner thoughts can feel like a cop-out, the way the boy's banged-up body keeps showing up to dramatize David's lingering guilt is little short of chilling. It reminds you that there are worse things than death.

My Big Fat Greek Wedding/Sweet Home Alabama ($27.95/$29.99 DVD) Like Sherman marching through Georgia, My Big Fat Greek Wedding rolled over the box office in 2002, barreling past $238 million to make it into the domestic all-time Top 30. Even more impressive, it's the only romantic comedy in the Top 50. (What Women Want, the next entry, clocks in at No. 58.) Its flukish success had box-office analysts scrambling, but if its extraordinary takings are best chalked up to the whims of fate, the basis of its popularity isn't that hard to understand. Director Joel Zwick might get the highest billing, but it's pretty obvious star/screenwriter Nia Vardalos, who based the script on her own life, is the real auteur here. While Vardalos' supper-club voiceover can be cloying at times, she's as immensely likable as any good sitcom actor; she'd be great as the Greek Friend, if Jennifer Aniston weren't already filling that role. (Of course, the film is being developed as a sitcom for the fall season.) Zwick's direction is clumsy at best -- the scene where Vardalos fishes a college brochure, symbolic of her desire to change her life, out of a Dumpster behind her father's restaurant is so beset with mood-enhancing wind you'd think she was being visited by a holy helicopter -- and John Corbett's romantic lead is a wet noodle with stringy hair. But Vardalos injects a glossed-up version of truth into every scene. It's too simplistic to say audiences respond to honesty, but when the alternative is something like Sweet Home Alabama, you can see why Wedding trounced the competition. Though, like Wedding, Sweet Home has its similarities to its star's life -- well, at least Reese Witherspoon is Southern -- it's so immediately, repulsively false that I had to shut it off after several minutes. You just know if My Big Fat Greek Wedding had staged that scene where Witherspoon's wealthy boyfriend proposes by sneaking her into Tiffany's after closing time, Vardalos would've thrown in a bit where the manager urges his clerks to push the most expensive ring, rather than having them all standing there grinning like idiots. Given the choice between genial schlock and vile schlock, I'll take genial any day.

The Slaughter Rule (Sun., Feb. 9, 7 p.m.; Wed., Feb. 12 and Thu., Feb. 13, 7:30 p.m., $8.50, Prince Music Theater, 1412 Chestnut St., 215-569-9700) Directed by former PFWC shorts programmers Andrew and Alex Smith, The Slaughter Rule is a Malick-esque tale of a high-school boy working through the death of his estranged father by playing a particularly rough form of pick-up football known as "six-man." The centrality of sports gives the film an unpleasant whiff of after-school special, but Ryan Gosling as the boy and David Morse as the coach turn in nuanced performances, and the film has a quiet air that's worth savoring. No further theatrical release is planned, and the film does lovely things with 35mm, so mark your calendar. Morse will take time off from shooting Hack to present Sunday's screening.

Red Beard (Sun., Feb. 9, 3:30 p.m.; Tue., Feb. 11, 7 p.m., $8.50, Prince Music Theater) Catch your breath from the Prince's Kurosawa/Mifune retrospective in this slow week, but don't skip over Red Beard, their final collaboration. Kurosawa spent two years filming the three-hour film, the story of the relationship between an eager medical intern and the hospital director (Mifune) who teaches him to appreciate life. The movie took something out of Kurosawa. The filming ended his relationship with Mifune, and, after filming 16 movies in 17 years, his pace slackened dramatically; he would only produce seven movies in the next 28 years.

Shane (Tue., Feb. 11, 1 p.m., $1, The Bridge, 40th and Walnut sts., 215-386-3300) The Bridge's Silver Screen Classics series continues with George Stevens' western tearjerker, the only American movie Woody Allen will admit to loving. Take that for what it's worth.