-Arts
The Michigan Daily Wednesday, July 14,1982- Page 7
Records
Laurie Anderson -'Big Science'
(Warner Brothers)
Laurie Anderson, you're a bad artist.
If we've told you once, we've told you a
million times: Artists are supposed to
be theoretical, pompous, self-involved,
and above all else - serious! How do
you expect anyone to take you
seriously as an artist if you don't take
yourself seriously?
Certainly your ear for dialogue
could be better applied to more
Brechtian alientation strategies instead
of using it simply to sift through the lit-
ter of pop culture for the warm remem-
brance or the witty non-sequitur. Wor-
dplay is not the stuff of artists, young
woman, especially when it makes you
sound like Mister Rogers run amuck.
Mark my words, if you don't watch
out, you're going to have everyday
people listening to your pieces, and
liking them, no less ... and it'll serve
you right! But if you think you're going
to get these playfully offhand collages of
everyday chit-chat and rearranged
pop trivia past us as Art, well, you've
got another thought coming!
Laurie: Oh good, I was hoping you'd
say that.
-Mark Dighton
Use Daily
Classifieds-
764-0557
- ' u i ,
Clint Eastwood, using various disguises, attempts to steal the latest Soviet warplane, in the film 'Firefox.'
Firefox' lacks sparkle
By Chris Case
T HE OTHER night I listened while
my friend explained to me all the
reasons I should not review Firefox. I
have not seen many Clint Eastwood
movies. I hate Clint Eastwood and think
he is a joke. I am incapable of writing a
review which will tell the movie's
targeted audience what it wants to
know. I am a snob.
And to a certain extent I think my
friend was right about all this. Except
for one thing. I don't hate Clint East-
wood. And I don't think he is a joke.
There is a certain cold seriousness to
Firefox, an integrity that precludes
hatred or whole-hearted ridicule.
The darkness of this film, the fact
that it is almost completely devoid of
both women and human warmth,
makes it too hard and vicious to be
laughable. Yet there are flaws in the
story line which border on the absurd.
These are all the more disappointing
since the idea for the story (from the
novel by Craig Thomas) is a good one
with nearly limitless potential. And
while some of that potential is realized
(the plot is involving and complicated
enough to keep you on your toes), much
of it is compromised and not fully
thoqght out.
For example, when the Eastwood
character, Mitchell Gant, steals the
Russian "Firefox" jet (a technological
masterpiece years beyond anything the
U.S. possesses), he does so disguised as
the pilot who is meant to fly it anyway.
Gant's cool nonchalance is thus accoun-
ted for, and we believe he could just
walk up to the jet and get into it in the
midst of a crowd of people, since that is
what the Russian pilot would do. Ex-
cept for one problem. There has been a
pre-arranged diversionary tactic, and a
bomb has exploded in the hangar,
causing fire, death, and chaos. Gant
walks through it all as though nothing is
happening, seeming to be subtle and
natural when in fact he is outrageously
obtrusive in his very coolness under the
circumstances. It's a bizarre scene.
I point out faults like this not to prove
that I'm smart, but because they
bothered me. The movie lacks
peripheral vision and often fails to in-:
tegrate its story elements meaningfully
and smoothly. The result is skepticism
and a certain amount of confusion on
the viewer's part.
Also bothersome is the fact that
Firefox is so blatantly anti-Soviet as to
be propagandistic. Every minute of the
film spent in Russia is a minute spent in
the dark, in an eerie, dank environment
in which officials constantly ask for
your papers and dissidents speak only
of the atrocities their loved ones have
suffered under their own government.
Wandering through it all is Gant, a
highly respected pilot who has lived in
seclusion since his days in Vietnam and
who has flashbacks to his time as a
prisoner of war. The role is
stereotypical and shallow (I have told
you in this paragraph virtually
everything there is to know about him),
and yet it invites more than disgust.
There is something odd here, a plain-
tive boyishness, a vulnerability to
Eastwood's Gant. There is an unac-
countable sadness to Firefox which I
don't think is deliberate. That sadness
has something to do with the movie's
reverence for a man who is tough,
haggard, quiet, competent, manly-
and utterly alone.
Firefox lacks the sparkle of the better
James Bond movies: There is no humor
here. There are no seductive women (in
fact, not one woman speaks during the
entire film) and there is almost no
acknowledgement of the existence of
anything like love or sex. This is a
purely cold and metallic thriller, a
movie concerned more with machines
than people.
But the cold and the metal and the
machines pay off at the end: The
special effects for the "Firefox" flights
were done by John Dykstra, and much
of his Star Wars magic is alive here.
There are awesome moments of diz-
zying acceleration from the cockpit of
the jet, sweeping, maniacal flights
along mountains and canyons. Most of
the effects are breath-taking, some are
fake. The "Firefox" itself often looks
flimsy on ground; its parts flap in the
wind. Yet its design is impressive, its
shape futuristic but believable.
Here is a movie which is interesting
as much for its faults as its successes.
See it and figure out all the things that
are both wrong and right about the plot;
it's an exercise in intelligence. I have
the sense that Firefox is only a first
draft. It needs to be tightened,
lubricated, at times re-thought. And for
heaven's sake, Clint, it needs a few
more specks of humanity, if only to
show us what's at stake with all this
weapons madness.