Page 8 --The Michigan Daily -- Friday, October 12, 1990


While longer plays can rely on
elaborate settings and a plethora of
exposition to build excitement, one-
act plays do not have this luxury.
Yet Edward Albee's language and
dramatization makes the simple set-
ting of a park bench in The Zoo
Story come alive. What is initially
a habitual weekly escape for the ex-
ecutive and father Peter, reading in
the park on a Sunday afternoon,
changes with the appearance of Jerry,
a permanent transient. "He talks and

talks and talks," says actor Andy
Newberg, who plays the part of
Peter. "Jerry vents on almost life,
and not being able to make contact
[with other people], pushing and an-
tagonizing Peter." But Jerry does
make some kind of contact with
Peter, and that makes the play work.
"I think it's one of the greatest
one act plays," says Newberg. "[It]
mixes wonderfully colorful language
with enigmatic motives to create
humor, horror, and suspense," says

director Jeffrey Chrisope. "It's about
a transient's battle to breakthrough
the barriers of banality and allow an-
other man to live."
The Zoo Story will be presented
by Basement Arts today at 5 pm and
8 pm and tomorrow at 5 pm in the
Arena Theater of the Frieze Building.
Admission is free, but seating is
limited.
-Mary Beth Barber


Grace'
Continued from page 7
dence for Meryl Streep's claim that
there are no good roles for women in
Hollywood today. The writers at-
tempted to justify the presence of
Wright's confused and unnecessary
character, a successful uptown hotel
clerk, by making her the tough and
defiant sister who is disgusted by the
activities of her family. Her main
function, however, still seems to be
to take off her clothes during love
scenes with Mr. Penn.
The acting remains the salvation.
of an otherwise inconsistent film.

"You believe in the angels and the
saints and a state of grace... but it's
got nothing to do with reality," cries
Penn in a neat theme-summarizing
dramatic moment. The conflict be-
tween the desire to do what's right
and what ends up happening is an in-
teresting one, one which could have
made this film great. But annoying
young director Phil Joanou (Three
O'Clock High: a narcissistic mess of
bizarre camera angles) never really
lets you forget that you are at the
movies - ok, cue the dramatic mu-
sic, guys --- when you really want
to be in Hell's Kitchen.
Joanou borrows heavily from

other mob epics like The Godfather
and The Untouchables, and at times
his film becomes quite suspenseful.
But much of the plot just seems
contrived, occasionally coming off
like a bad parody, especially the
slow-motion final shoot-out. He
also gets a bit carried away with the
ultra-violence, which includes a
graphic throat slashing, a nose
smashed on the roof of a car, and
lots o' flesh-tearing bullets spraying
lots o' blood. Perfect for a mediocre
escapist genre picture.
STATE OF GRACE is playing at the
Showcase and Briarwood.

Now everybody knows that when
they say, "It could only happen in
Hollywood," the proverbial they
sure ain't talkin' about the actual
physical place near L.A. So just try
to imagine an unknown Native
American filmmaker being financed
$20 million to write and direct his
first feature, which happens to be an
adaptation of an old Sioux legend
that he insists is shot without any
stars and in his tribal language.
And yet, amazingly enough, the
equivalent of the above-mentioned
American Daydream really did hap-
pen a few years back in Norway,
when writer-director Nils Gaup, a
member of the Lapp minority, made
the film Pathfinder, the first film
ever to be shot in the Lapp lan-
guage, and the first Scandanavian
film ever to be shot in 70 mm.
Gaup's directorial debut, which
received an Academy Award nomina-
tion for Best Foreign Language Film
in 1988, is based on 'The Pathfinder
and the Torch," a 1000-year-old Lapp
legend which he was reportedly told
by Gaup's grandfather. Making this
an even more underdog story,
Pathfinder was filmed in Lapland
(northern areas of Norway, Sweden,
and Finland) during forty-below
weather, and at times the crew had
only four-hour working days, due to
the fluctuating light conditions
above the Arctic circle.
Newcomer Mikkel Gaup stars as
Aigidn, a 16-year-old boy who wit-
nesses the slaughter of his family by
a band of Tchudes, raiders who
would come from what is today
Russia and Finland to rob and kill
the relatively non-violent Lapps.
Aigin escapes to a nearby encamp-
ment, where he is told- things like

"everything is tied together with in-
visible bonds" by the Obi-Wan-like
Raste (Nils Utsi), the local noaidi,
or spiritual leader. The boy is even-
tually forced by the Tchudes to lead
them to the coastal commudity
where his new friends flee, hence the
title.
The story might sound kind of
corny and predictable, but any weak-
ness in the script is made up for by
the film's incredible cinematogra-
phy. Gaup conveys his simple tale
and message through images more
often than through dialogue, and
these images on the screen, whether
of a bear hunt or a campfire or an
avalanche, are always a lot bigger
than you are, and therefore very
powerful. The end result is that
Pathfinder does for a barren, icy
wasteland what Lawrence of Arabia
did for the desert - justice.
Pathfinder is playing at the
Michigan Theater.
-Mark Binelli
The Nazis marched into the Pol-
ish city of Lodz in September of
1939. From 1940 until their re-
moval to death camps, more than
200,000 Jews were herded into the
city's ghetto and used by the Nazis
as slave labor. The film L o dz
Ghetto, making its Ann Arbor
premiere this weekend, tells the
story of these atrocities.
Unlike many documentaries,
Lodz Ghetto adds a dramatic struc-
ture to its real-life footage which in-
cludes photographs, diaries and
newsreels.
The film depicts the Nazi-ap-
pointed Jewish leader of the ghetto,
Mordechai Chaim Rumkowski. He
is portrayed by actor and novelist

Jerzy Kosinki, who was actually
born in Lodz and lost his family
there.
Lodz Ghetto weaves togethe
firsthand accounts of the terror, tale,
from diaries and official documentsJ
with a variety of visual techniques t
The fimmakers use photos taken, a
risk, by the victims themselves, six
minutes of film made by the Nazai
and footage of the ghetto as it looi
today.
In addition, during the making of
the film, color slides taken by an
unknown German photographer i
the ghetto were sent to the producers
by an Austrian publisher who had
bought them from an anonymoust
antiquarian book dealer.
The co-directors of Lodz, Alan
Adelson and Kathyrn Taverna, sup-
plemented the film taken by the Nazi,
troops with their own footage shot
on location in Poland today. At first,}
officials there did not allow them t
photograph after another recen#
Holocaust documentary, Shoah, br-
tally exposed Polish anti-Semitism
Eventually, the matter was settled
and the filmmaking team was per-
mitted access to shoot footage inside
the ghetto as it stands today.
The film, seen through the eyes,
of those struggling to escape from:
the ghetto, is more a story about:
survival than one about death. An
although its subject matter is de-f
pressing and its outcome well
known, the importance of remember-
ing and understanding the Holocaust
remains one half century later.
Lodz Ghetto, sponsored by the,
Mandell L. Berman Center of the
Hillel Foundation, premieres this
weekend in Angell Hall, Auditorium
A. The show times on Saturday 4
8:00 p.m. and on Sunday at 4:QO
p.m. and 7:00 p.m.. Tickets are $10i
$7 for students, and are available at
Hillel or at the door.
-David Lubliner

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James Belushi

*Michael Caine

1

In Pathfinder, Raste the wise instructs Aigin to "remember the force" as
he hands him the magic drum.

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