Page 10- The Michigan Daily- Friday, August 15, 1986.
Featherweight champ
By Kurt Serbus
3 MEN AND A CRADLE is one
of those movies that you just hate
to say anything bad about. This
featherweight French comedy about
a trio of swinging bachelors who get
stuck with a very unwanted baby is
darn cute; it's full of fascinating,
lyrically-composed shots and wonder-
fully understated performances.
Thematically, it reaffirms things that
should'be reaffirmed, and it's got one
of the best screen babies since that
kid in Popeye. But, sweet Jesus, it's
just soooo long (actually, it clocks in
at about 105 minutes, but what a 105
minutes). Do we really need to see
scene after scene of directionless
sweetness in order to figure out that
the fellas are falling in love with the
little nipper despite her serious
disruption of their lives? Not this
jaded Yankee-about an hour of that
and I was ready for a little plot
development to keep things in-
teresting.
But, alas, things never do get very
interesting. A promising subplot in-
volving drug-runners and mixed-
packages surfaces at the beginning,
but it gets quickly resolved, and shor-
tly thereafter the film starts a long
slide downhill. A lot of French cinema
tends to be lethargic and repetitive,
and writer-director Coline Serreau
has proven that she can meander with
the best of them. 3 Men and a Cradle
doesn't really go anywhere, but it
sure takes a long time getting there.
Which, in retrospect, seems like a
rather harsh critique for this classy,
at times beautiful little comedy;
movies like this don't come around
that often these days, and we should
be thankful someone's still churning
them out. But, hey, all I know is what
I see, and what I saw in this flick was
a lot of wasted space. I would have
welcomed a good, old car chase to
relieve the boredom. And that, I
think, says it all.
Bachelors Michel (Michel Boujenah) andP ierre (Roland Uiraud) are interrupted ny te sudden ap-
pearance of Marie (Gwendoline Mouret), who has been left on their doorstep in "3 Men and a Cradle."
CcontinuedfromPages) Palmakh in the Israeli War of In- disillusionment and loss. Amichai
dependence, and with the Israeli ar- beautifully captures the longing for a
Selected Poetry of my in 1956 and 1973 - thematically return to innocence, and the im-
Yehuda Amichai haunt his entire body of work. The possibility of ever achieving it:
Ed. and Trans. by Chana memory of loss winds insidiously into "My father in a white space
the life of this survivor, so that the suit,/walks around with the light,
Bloch and Stephen past forever shadows onto the heavy steps of the dead/over the sur-
Mitchell present: face of my life that doesn't/hold onto
"I came upon an old zoology tex- a thing.
157 pages tbook,/Brehm, Volume II Birds:/in "He calls out names: This is the
Harper & Row sweet phrases, an account of the/life Crater of Childhood./This is an ,
$22.95 cloth, $12.95 paper of the starling,/swallow and abyss.../He calls me/the planet of
thrush ... the robin,/red-breasted. his longings, land of my childhood,
For American readers, the Selected "Year of publication: 1913, Ger- his/childhood, our childhood ...
Poetry of Yehuda Amichai is a many,/on the eve of the war that was "And then he floats, how he floats,
remarkable journey into war-torn to be/the eve of all my wars./My good into/the grief/of his endless white
Israel, and the equally turbulent life friend who died in my arms,/in his death."
on one of its most revered poets. blood, on the sands of Ashod./1948, Like Bly, Snodgrass, or, more
Indeed, as art imitates life, so June. recently, Carolyn Forche in her poe-
Amichai's experiences of war-with "Oh my friend,/red-breasted." try on El Salvador, Amichai deftly
the British army in World War II, the Living so close to such brutality and
pain, it is not surprising to find
Amichai turning, with a Wordswor-
.. thian nostalgia, to childhood, as a
land foreign to the enemies of
jMc.ofa5'sG 2.50 I* ' Wipers - Land of the Lost
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1214 S UNIVERSITY 6 0 Greg Sage and the Wipers have been
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universalizes the experiences of war, "Underneath the world, God lies
and the repercussions it has had on stretched on his back,/Always
his life. Indeed, the poems that remain repairing, always things get out of
firmly rooted in concrete imagery, whack./I wanted to see him all, but I
poems that reveal not the inhumanity see no more/than the soles of his
or suffering of nations, but of shoes and I'm sadder than I was
mankind, are stunning. b hefore."
Yet, at the same time, his vision is Ultimately, Amichai's longing to
always personal, always intensely know God is a longing to know life.
Jewish, calling on a religious The beauty of this collection is in a
typology virtually absent in contem- quiet understanding of man that
porary American poetry. A modern- defies nationality and creed:
day Job, Amichai looks relentlessly to "After midnight, everyone's the
God for an explanation of suffering. muezzin/of his own life, calling from
The silence of his God does not the top of himself/as if from the top of
discourage, but only fuels the a minaret,/... about the failure of
inquisition, heightens the irony flesh and blood,/howling lusts that
surrounding a creator who, although have never been fulfilled."
"his hands reach into the world," is
yet entirely unknowable: -Suzanne Misencik
sounding album, all produced and
engineered by Sage. From the first
track onwards, the band neatly lat-
ches into a sound of their own: dark
and mysterious, with brooding lyrics.
Their angry sound has been tempered
into a more refined groove, with less
of that fervent, visceral punk
"angst." The eerie guitar lines and
quietly creeping bass form the perfect
accompaniment to Sage's echoed
vocals on "Different Ways," giving
this song a subtley threatening
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quality. The title track is an excellent
example of how the band keeps a wat-
chful, cynical eye on society's decline.
And relationships, too, take a few
fatal blows on "Nothing Left to Lose"
and "Fair Weather Friends." Sage's
guitar work punctuates it all with a
grim, nasty quality of its own.
Land of the Lost has a definitely
oa steot musical quality; law's attla
too consistent. The constant, steady
drumbeat knits all of the material so
tightly together that it prevents
anything from getting really revved
up or exciting and the Wipers have
shown themselves capable of such
energy on past endeavors. "Way of
Love" comes close with its searing
guitar work, but in general these
songs just end up getting all tangle
together in one solid sound. This cer-
tainly doesn't make them unen-
joyable, however. It just cuts down on
diversity; and luckily, the Wipers
prove they're able to do without a lot
ofBthisfactor.
Beth. Fertig