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STN Entertainment

'Jude'

'Ransom'

Rated R

Rated R

These scenes are large pools
xcept for a few modern cine-
matic flourishes, Jude stays through which Jude moves as he
faithful to its roots as a late- trudges toward his dream of an
19th century novel about the academic career at Christminster
life of would-be scholar Jude Faw- University and marriage to his
beloved, free-thinking cousin, Sue
ley.
Thomas Hardy's protagonist is Bridehead (Kate Winslet).
At the center of the epic is his
not exactly born for the movies —
he's rugged rather than hand- Aunt Drusilla (June Whitfield),
some, more dim than enlightened, who serves as a kind of superego,
he doesn't rise newly born from prophesizing and warning him
the ashes of defeat, and he is dri- about the fate that will befall him.
ven more by love than religious She is right, of course, but she fails
devotion and professional ambi- to grasp her nephew's quiet sin-
gle-mindedness and the
tion — and that makes
strength that enables him
this adaptation all the
to withstand fate's worst
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more interesting, if not
slings
and arrows.
satisfying. There are no
Both Mr. Eccleston and Ms.
catharses here. This is a story
about moral purpose, without a Winslet are superb in their roles,
as is Rachel Griffiths as Jude's
moral.
wife,
Arabella Donn, who walks
Jude follows the extraordinary
life of an ordinary man, and un- out on him because he is more in-
like other recent cinematic adap- terested in books than in pig farm-
tations of English novels — Sense ing. Mr. Eccleston's craggy face
and Sensibility and Emma, for ex- has an ancient, mournful quality,
ample — it maintains the novel's while Ms. Winslet's freshness is a
pensive tone and its darkness, poignant counterpoint to her
daring to peer at the ugliness of stoutness and the tragedy that ul-
working-class squalor and the timately maims her spirit.
Ms. Griffiths is both cunning
frailty of the human heart.
and
openhearted, making it diffi-
The movie opens with a black
and white shot of young Jude cult for the viewer to dislike her,
shooing away crows in a tilled even if she sets in motion the
field, presumably to save them chain of painful events that cul-
from their fate as hanging decoys. minate in tragedy. Liam Cun-
He is beaten for his sensitivity. As ningham as the schoolmaster
a young man, Jude (Christopher Phillotson is honorable, despite
Eccleston) sits at his kitchen table his failure to become a university
on a winter morning watching his professor and his rage at losing
spirited wife skin a hanging pig Ms. Bridehead, whom he weds.
Jude isn't about failure, but
while he slogs through Greek and
Latin texts. She later leaves him. about the struggle of the common
We later see him cut the rope with man, stripped of a political con-
which his son has hanged himself text. It is intimate, heart-wrench-
ing and yes, depressing. This is
not for the faint of heart.
Julie Edgar, senior writer, is a
former movie reviewer for the
Metro Times.
— Julie Edgar

PHOTO BY JOSS BARRATT

E

Sue (Kate
Winslet)
and Jude
(Christopher
Eccleston)
enjoy
themselves
at the local
fair in the
Michael
Winterbotto
m film Jude.

R

ansom is a film that toys with
expectations. Because the
name of the film is Ransom,
it can easily be deduced that
the plot involves a kidnapping. Be-
cause the film is from mainstream
Hollywood, one can safely assume
that everything will turn out OK
in the end. And, because the film
stars Mel Gibson, we know that
his heroics will be instrumental in
saving the day.
Since all these elements are
known going in, the challenge for
Mel Gibson and Rene Russo star as the parents whose child
has been kidnapped in Ransom.
Director Ron Howard is to create
a film about abduction that capti-
vates the audience. In spite of scandal, Mullen is just beginning the tension that such circum-
some intermittent lapses in logic, to settle into a peaceful existence stances must produce, but what
he pretty much gets away with the when Sean is kidnapped right distinguishes the film is its aware-
from under his nose while at play ness of our expectations and its
caper.
ability to mix in a few curve balls
Mel Gibson plays Tom Mullen, in Central Park.
In spite of the kidnappers' to keep the viewer off guard.
founder and executive officer of a
(Gary Sinise and Lili Taylor)
We have seen enough of these
popular international air-
orders, Mullen turns the movies that we think we know
line. Mullen's maverick
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case over to the FBI and is what's coming. Ransom knows
ways have allowed him to
willing to follow its direc- that we know and occasionally
provide wealth and corn-
fort for his wife Kate (Rene Rus- tions. That is, until the FBI strat- serves up something different.
so) and son, Sean (Brawley Nolte), egy goes awry. Instinct soon takes And, like a daredevil jumping
but have also produced some en- over, to the dismay ofhis wife and busses with a motorcycle, the film
emies. Having recently dodged a the investigation team, as Mullen manages to hurdle some gaps in
federal investigation into a bribery launches a perilous counterattack logic by the sheer velocity of the
on the villains.
pace.
In. many ways, Ransom is typ-
Richard Halprin, between
ical Hollywood fare, with broad-
watching movies and writing
ly drawn characters and
about them, is a self-employed
forgettable dialogue. The actors
attorney.
do a fine enough job of conveying
— Richard Halprin

'Small Worlds'

Allen Hoffman ($24.95, Abbeville)

ollege professor and noted events that will
short story writer Allen Hoff- forever change
man's inaugural foray into the the inhabitants
world of fiction novels brings of this small
a fresh and deservedly lauded world.
Weaving
voice to the forefront.
mystical
illu-
His new book, Small Worlds,
chronicles the eccentric residents sion, talmudic
of Krimsk, a Jewish shtetl on the law and political
Polish-Russian border at the ideology, Mr.
dawn of a new age. With hints of Hoffman intro-
Isaac Bashevis Singer and duces us to a lively cast of char-
Sholom Aleichem, the story is set acters, including Yechiel
in 1903 on Tisha B'Av, the holi- Katzman, the disenchanted young
day commemorating the destruc- talmudist searching for answers
in a rapidly changing world,
tion of the Holy Temples
and Shayna Basya, the
in Jerusalem.
Boo KS
faithful but weary rebbet-
The legendary Krimsker
rebbe, Yaakov Moshe Finebaum, zin, sure she has married into a
has been in self-imposed seclusion family of "dubious sanity."
From the stuffy ramshackle
for five years. His unexpected ar-
rival for prayers on the eve of beit midrash to secret meetings
Tisha B'Av sets off a chain of among social revolutionaries and
passionate romantic interludes,
the story winds itself through the
Leslie Joseph, a member of our
lives of the Krimsk villagers and
production department, has
their
struggles for truth and hap-
worked as a book editor at
piness. The tale culminates in the
several publishing houses.

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destruction of Krim-
sk's own synagogue at
the hands of an anti-
Semitic mob from a
neighboring peasant
village and Rebbe
Finebaum's arrival in
St. Louis, "the depths
of exile," to further
spread the messianic
redemption.
With a refreshing intelligence
and a large dose of humor. Mr.
Hoffman takes a poignant look
back at a world of yesteryear, fa-
miliar and yet no less charming
in its telling.
Mr. Hoffman will be a featured
speaker at Detroit's Jewish Book
Fair on Wednesday, Nov. 13, at
the JPM JCC. His talk will begin
at 8 p.m.

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— Leslie Joseph 01