10 - The Michigan Daily - Friday, April 3, 1998
Can't-miss 'Sarajevo'
submits powerful
By Matthew Barrett
Daily Arts Writer
What's worth fighting for? What's worth putting your
life on the line for? These are questions with which
today's movies are constantly dealing.
Although it's not an easy subject, it is one that direc-
tor Michael Winterbottom handles with great skill in
"Welcome To Sarajevo" The story is told from the
point of view of several journalists who are in Sarajevo
covering the war between 1992-93.
This is an intense movie that grabs the audience by
the throat during the opening sequence and doesn't let
go until the credits roll. The constant shootings and
explosions create exceptional tension that will keep
viewers on the edge of their seats throughout the entire
way. Citizens and foreigners are shot out of the blue and
in totally unexpected moments, leading us to wonder
who is next.
The character at the center of the movie is British
reporter Michael Henderson (Stephen Dillane). In the
beginning of the film, he recognizes the problems that
the people of Sarajevo have, but seems uninterested in
helping, as he points out to a colleague, "We're not here
to help, we're here to report."
At one moment early on, a frustrated Michael is sitting
in his newsroom watching the national news from
Britain. His story has been pushed to the back of the
newscast, something that seems to be a regular occur-
rence. This moment is not meant to portray an egotistical
person who wants to have the lead every night, but rather
a reporter who feels he has stories that should be more
important to the people than the latest happenings of the
royal family. ,
As his frustration builds and evolves, Michael starts
to go to an orphanage full of children who are barely
hanging onto their existence. This touches a nerve in
him, and he makes a variety of pleas to have the chil-
dren removed from Bosnia.
For one newscast, Michael stands in front of an
almost vacant airplane that is set to return to a safer land.
Welcome
to Sarajevo
***i
At the Michigan
Michael befriends
As the plane pulls away with only
the few ambassadors who were in
visiting the troubled land, he
imagines all of the children
whose lives could have been
made so much better by being on
that plane. At this point it is clear
that Michael will do whatever it
takes to get as many children as
possible out of Bosnia.
Dillane gives a powerful per-
formance as Michael and does a
stellar job conveying the struggle
that his character faces. During
the many visits to the orphanage,
a young girl named Emira. He
Courtesy of Miramax
Marisa Tomel stars as an aid worker in the dramatic film, "Welcome to Sarajevo."
The movie opens on Sunday at the Michigan.
promises her that he will get her out of Sarajevo, and
this relationship becomes a point of fierce conflict later
in the movie.
As time goes on, Michael comes in contact with Nina
(Marisa Tomei), an aid worker. She arranges for a bus
to take the children to safety during a one hour cease-
fire. Although it is illegal, Michael arranges for Emira
to come along with him on the bus under the condition
that he will care for her once he takes refuge.
Tomei's part in the movie is quite small, but it does
The University of Michigan
School of Music
Friday, April 3
Paradise' traps readers mi
Guest Lecture/Demonstration
China Found Music Workshop
Chinese Traditional Instrument Ensemble from Taiwan
"Preservinu and Redetining Traditions"
Blanche Anderson Moore Hall. E. V. Moore Bldg., 3:30 p.m.
Opera Workshop
Joshua Major, director: Timothy Cheek, music director
.,Offenbach: The Lantern Marriage, a one act comedy
McIntosh Thearre, E. V. Moore Bldg., 5 p.m.
Symphony and Concert Band Wind Ensembles
Rackham Auditorium (first floor), 8 p.m .
BDA/BFA II Performance
Media Union, 8 p.,m.
Friday - Sunday, April 3 - 5
Theatre & Drama
Sophocles: Antigone
Glenda Dickerson, director
Trueblood Theatre. 8 p.m. (Fri. and Sat.); 2 p.m. (Sun.)
Admission S4; for information phone 734-764-0450
Saturday, April 4
Women's Glee Club
Sandra Snow, conductor
Hill Auditorium. 8 p.m. (free)
BDA/BFA 1 Performance
Media Untion, 8 p.m.
Sunday, April 5
Campus Symphony Orchestra
Charles David Burke, conductor
Allen Tinkham and Adam Glaser. guest conductors
Fawn Juvinall, guest clarinet soloist
" music by Brahms, Weber and Tchaikovsky
Hill Audiorium, 4 p.m.
Faculty Recital
Logan Skelton, piano
Freda Herseth, mezzo soprano: Phillip Frohmayer baritone
" World Premiere of Cummings Songs: An American
Grab Bag by Logan Skelton. Also songs by Ives and Stevens
Brinon Recital Hall, E.V. Moore Bldg.. 4p.m.
Percussion Ensemble
Mike Udow, music director
McIntosh Theatre. E.V. Moore Bldg., 4 p.m.
China Found Music Workshop Concert
Chinese Traditional Instrumental Ensemble from Taiwan
Rackham A uditorium (first floor), 8 p.n.
Monday, April 6
Opera Workshop
Joshua Major. director; Timothy Cheek, music director
Opera scenes by Tchaikovsky. Bellini, Verdi, Mozart and more
McIntosh Theatre, E.V. Moore Bldg., 7 p.m.
Trombone Student Recital
Students of Dennis Smith perform trombone repertory
Britton Recital Hall, E. V. Moore Bldg., 8 p.m.
Guest Lecture
Franz Mohr. legendary Steinway piano technician
* "My Life with the Great Pianists"
Blanche Anderson Moore Hall. E.V. Moore Bldg.. 8 p.m.
Tuesday, April 7
Opera Workshop
Joshua Major, director; Timothy Cheek, music director
Scenes from Mozart's Cosi fan tui and Gounod's Faust
Mcintosh Theatre, E. V. Moore Bldg.. 5p.m.
University Choir
Sandra Snow, conductor
" music by Beethoven, Diemer, Brunner, Ramnish and more
Hill Auditorium. 8 p.m.
Wednesday, April 8
Opera Workshop
Joshua Major, director; Timothy Cheek, music director
Opera scenes by Tchaikovsky. Bellini, Verdi, Mozart and more
McIntosh Theatre, E. V. Moore Bldg., 7p.m.
Arts Chorale
David Fryling, conductor
" music by Britten, Copland, Haydn, Schubert and more
Hill Auditorium, 8 p.m.
Thursday, April 9
Opera Workshop
Joshua Major, director; Timothy Cheek, music director
Paradise
Toni Morrison
HarperCollins
There arq'only a handful of writers
brilliant enough to instruct and enter-
tain on a multitude of levels, while
innovating stylistically and critiquing
cultures through shrewd and wise eyes.
Never mind. There's just one, and she
has just released a new novel,
"Paradise," which can only add to her
stellar reputation.
Toni Morrison conceived
"Paradise" as the final novel in a tril-
ogy, beginning with the famous
"Beloved" (currently being made
into a movie by Oprah Winfrey) and
continuing with the dark rhythms of
"Jazz." Morrison's
newest novel has
been long-antici- .
pated, and is less ,
anticlimactic (fol-
lowing her 1989-
Nobel Prize in
Literature) than one
would expect. "Paradise,
as its name suggests, has
been well worth the wait.
Morrison's extensive read-
ings in African American history
partly inspired this book, as well as
"Beloved" and "Jazz;" all are based
on little-known incidents that she ran
across in her reading. Discovering
that groups of ex-slaves had traveled
to the northwest post-Civil War and
attempted to establish all-black
utopian communities, Morrison
imagines one of these towns as the
setting for her novel. The hopes of
these adventurers are contrasted with
the realities of their town, Ruby.
Although all the citizens are black,
and thus protected from a large
amount of the racism that blacks in
desegregated more diverse cities
were suffering, the ugliness of social
structure still emerges. Political and
religious factions form; there are a
few very rich blacks, and the rest are
middle-class or poor; the young are
rebellious; unplanned pregnancies
occur; insanity seems almost regular.
This segregated utopia does not
work, and Ruby's citizens cannot let
go of their pride to see it. Morrison
employs Ruby masterfully as a
microcosm of U.S. society, showing
us many of the communicative prob-
lems and inherent prejudices within
our supposed Land of Opportunity.
Racism is not, however, the dominant
theme of Morrison's work. It provides a
background, undercurrent and frame-
work for the very feeling of "otherness"
that she can so powerfully convey.
Every character in the book has
experienced liminality at
some point. The men
may be powerful in a
patriarchy, but
Morrison's men are
black in a white
world, Their power
is lost in certain
groups. When they
are threatened by an
outlying house of women
(the "Convent"), they are frightened
enough to decide that these women are
the root of all evil in Ruby, form a posse
and attempt to murder them (hence the
novel's shocking first line: "They shoot
the white girl first."). Some of the male
characters allow themselves to be gov-
erned by the women they have sex with,
even to the point of bringing extramari-
tal affairs, illegitimate children, and
abortion into pure Ruby.
The whites who venture into Ruby
also are marginalized. For a moment,
they are the only white people in a town
full of black residents - delicious
reversal. Their discomfort at their "oth-
erness" leads them out into a blizzard
that the blacks had warned them about,
and the entire family is found dead in
their car the next spring.
The most brilliant marginalization
Morrison portrays in "Paradise" is that
of its women. Compared to "Beloved"
and "Jazz'" "Paradise"'s women have
incredibly little space in which to speak.
This peripheral presentation, however,
only serves to make Ruby's women
more dynamic to the reader; when they
speak, their voices are often the bravest.
They are the ones acknowledging the
failure of their segregated utopia. They
are the ones trying to balance the disaf-
fected youth (who are reacting strongly
to the assassinations of the Rev. Dr.
Martin Luther King, Jr. and Malcolm X
and attempting to recover an African
heritage that their elders advise them to
ignore) with the disillusioned founders
(men who insisted that a symbolic oven
be carried on their search for a home,
rather than an extra crib or badly need-
ed food). They are the one
mately, band together to ove
vidual differences for the
aspiration: life on their own1
only Morrison's widely-var
who get anything done. The
etly, they do it instinctively
regardless of personal dis
tress's and their lover's wi
each other) and they do it o
Love, which is always
most beautifully wrought
Morrison's writing, is slowt
"Paradise."Yet it finally doe
such a force that the reader
ing, dizzy from the evang
Morrison slips into, confu
of the simultaneous appe
murder and love.
Finally, one of the stron
between "Beloved," "
"Paradise" is seen: the co-e
murder and love. Love exist
People can murder ou
People can love someone w
dered. Love itself cannot b
Morrison layers, weaves,
these two severe aspects o
together so deftly, withs
prose and wide-ranging sk
are ensnared in the great b
this tiny little Paradise. Butt
from which we do not wa
free.
-Am
report
give her one great scene to showcase her talent. During
the ride across Bosnia, a bus is taken over by soldiers.
As the situation escalates and becomes more and more
frenzied, Tomei aptly portrays the anger of her charac-
ter while trying to shout over the crowd. The frantic
pitch of the scene is also due to superb direction and a
variety of camera angles.
The only other actor of note in the film is Wood
Harrelson. He plays a loud and obnoxious American
reporter, and adds some well-needed humor to the film.
Harrelson's shares a memorable conversation with
Michael in their apartment about the differences
between their homelands.
Director Winterbottom does a tremendous job with
"Welcome To Sarajevo" He splices real footage of Bosnia
into the story and it works. Often times this does not work
so well on the big screen because the "real" footage looks
out of place in a movie. Since the story is done from the
point of view of television reporters, it is entirely believ-
able that the footage could have been theirs.
Winterbottom also uses very little light in nearly
every scene that takes place inside which helps create
the feeling that the characters are hiding from some-
thing truly horrible outside. He also fills the movie with
shots that are not important to the plot, but that add to
the overall story.
"Welcome To Sarajevo" is an amazing movie that
was somehow passed over by both critics and audiences
alike. Be forewarned though that it is extremely graph-
ic and contains several images of mutilated dead b
ies. If you can overcome the violence and grueso
imagery, you should be in for one of the best movies of
1997 - a few months removed.
e-M
poetic prose
s who, ulti- tures."
rcome mdi- Doty tears into that uneasy gap
ir common between plastic, unreal experienc
terms. It is and appreciation of modern beauty
ied women in "Lilies ip New York."
y do it qui- Contemplating a sparse, unfinished
, they do it sidewalk drawing of flowers, he
putes (mis- curses the frenzy of city life
ves support "Trumpet, now New York's a smear
ut of love. and chaos of lilies." But before leav.-
one of the ing his urban vision, he realizes "a
aspects of sketchy, possible bloom, about to,
to appear in going to, going to be, becomin
es, and with open," the traces of resurrection in
r is left reel- dark corner of modern decay.
elical tones The poem "Fog Suite" deepens
sed because these feelings from a literary per-
earances of spective. The fog serves as both a
metaphor for his own confusion wh
ngest bonds words and the "visible uncertainty"
azz" and of contemporary alienation. In all
existence of this confusion, Doty reassures, 4it
s in murder. feels like home here, held - like any
it of love. line of text - by the white margins
ho has mur- of a ghost's embrace."
e murdered. By translating the overcrowded,
intertwines consumer world into similarly diffi-
f humanity cult language, Doty calls poetry
such poetic itself into question. He proves that
ill, that we the days of natural, reassuring pas-
ig world of toral images are gone. In his poem
this is a trap "Concerning Some Recent Criticism
nt to break of His Work," Doty answers com-
plaints about his dissonant, over-
7my D. Hayes loaded lines. Calling his new idea
ideal art "an opera of atmospheres,
he defends his flashy, strange words
by writing, "every sequin's an act of
praise."
In "Murano," Doty mourns the
loss of natural creation driving his
collection, crying for a world that
became "a struck match-head of a
city, ungodly lonely ... why do you
break yourself further and faster?"
Doty's craft is strongest and crus
m is over," elest in his title poem, "Swe
a swan, set Machine." He pounds out of th
y, mechani- tragedy of a young crack addict with
world that the frightening, stunning lesson of
collection, contemporary life. "We're all on dis-
s the world play in this town, sweet machines,
here beauti- powerless, consumed, just as he con-
d by gaudy, sumes himself."
e same new Underneath the darkness in those
us. lines, Doty saves the end of the book
four books for images of "Mercy on .Broadway."
Prize, and The chaos of words and meanings
tics Circle his poetry is translated into a new.
er confronts rhythm and hope for salvation. For,
of poetry's beneath this sweet machine, Doty
s: how the finds "lonely and fragile armor
rld building dressed up as tough, its so many beats
there's something you can dance to."
ns with an That powerful, deep foundation
ade color, holds his wild, consumed poetry to
glass with human roots, a balance rare in poets
sters in ref- who tackle the darkness of modern
'In contrast lives. "What did you think, that j
nd this arti- was some slight thing?" he co
covers "the eludes, finding a source of fire and
insist that hope for poets with whom to work in
ok centers years to come.
e new beau- - Jason Boog
of tiny ges-
ast day to place your vote for
n Arbor. Give credit to some of
places to visit on campus and i
u love best about Ann Arbor. A
e found on page 2 of today's
you may also vote online at
ubumich.edu/ daily/. Cast your
Sweet Machine
M ark Doty
Harper Collins
"The beautiful kingdo
Mark Doty meditates on
against the contemporary
cal and unnatural city-
man has created. His new
"Sweet Machine," probes
all poets struggle with, w}
ful swans are overwhelme
man-made creations -th
kingdom that holds all of
Doty's career includes
of poetry, the T.S. Eliot
the National Book Cri
Award. This mature writ
in his new collection one
most difficult problems
lyric can survive in a wo
over natural beauty.
"Sweet Machine" ope
ode to the man-ma
"Faurille," a color of
"compounded metallic lu
erence to natural sheens.'
between natural beauty a
ficial object, Doty disc
luster of things which
they're made." The bo
around this uncomfortabl
ty, in the modern "world
I.
.1
Trapped between
MODERNITY and
TRADITION,
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