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Fiddler on the Roof (1971)
A Beloved Classic Which Will Never Age
Inspired by the Tevye the Dairyman stories of Sholem Aleichem, the great Yiddish Renaissance writer and playwright, Fiddler on the Roof has its critics. The heavyweight political analyst and cultural critic David P. Goldman (himself Jewish) has indicated he despises Fiddler, as a sentimentalist, corrupted version of the original works that inspired it. Persons who don't appreciate music or musicals may also be left cold by this 1971 movie. But such purist and crabbed views will gain little traction against the large and continuing cultural impact of this film, and the stage play that preceded it, which broke Broadway records in its day—nor should they gain traction, in my opinion, as in some cases there is more to great art than historical fidelity to a source. Indeed, this work, although "merely" a musical, opens important dimensions of historical awareness for its audience that, even if rendered somewhat imperfectly, would in all likelihood otherwise have remained closed—assuming the audience doesn't already know a lot about Russian history.
The story revolves around the highly sympathetic figure of Tevye the Dairyman, played marvelously by Topol, who with his cows and lame horse (a companion more than a helper) ekes out a grinding existence for his wife and five daughters while reflecting on God's mysterious ways and the dramatic changes underway in his world. As the cruel and dreaded pogroms (persecutions, attacks and murders by Christians, sometimes abetted by the Tsar) reach his village and his daughters encounter and fall in love with young men of uncertain (and even forbidden) favor, Tevye must make a series of increasingly difficult choices, for himself and his family. Set in 1905 Russia as the Bolshevik Revolution winds up, this movie offers an excellent introduction---not a detailed study, but an introduction---to Russia's fascinating history in this period, while giving a great flavor of traditional Jewish village culture in the Pale of Settlement, the age-old homelands of Jews in rural Russia.
Throughout, Fiddler offers plenty of Yiddish humor, known for its excellent and ironic joke-craft. According to Wikipedia the work is performed in high schools and play clubs over 500 times a year in the USA alone. With great music and a number of powerful, melodic and unforgettable songs, Fiddler on the Roof deserves its place in the canon of American classics.
Runaway Train (1985)
A (deservedly) minor classic
A visually beautiful, emotionally wrenching film, based on a screenplay by the great Akira Kurosawa. Some minor flaws necessitate the 2-star dock (8 out of a possible 10 awarded), but this is a film worth seeing. Jon Voight offers here perhaps his most powerful and impassioned role ever, playing a brutal and amoral convict on the escape from a maximum security prison. At points the plot stretches credulity, and the film offers some frequently stilted dialogue: forced and awkward, and too stereo-typically prison-convict-vulgarized--- but hey, maybe that's what the director wanted. It's a fantasy allegory, not a history film. Runaway Train, set on board a runaway locomotive in deeply frozen winter Alaska, partakes of a fantastically raw human and elemental energy. With Rebecca De Mornay, Eric Roberts and John P. Ryan.
Jefferson in Paris (1995)
A great work, attempting to reconstruct a difficult and fascinating history
Amazingly, several reviewers have apparently found that this marvelous 1995 film just could not meet their evidently peculiar standards or expectations. It boggles the mind and defies comprehension to consider the sort of niggling, whining, nagging, crabbed sort of critic that could, somehow and beyond all belief, manage to find serious error, or in fact any error, in this outstanding and beautiful film, shot on location in Paris with many scenes filmed in the palace of Versailles. One has to wonder: if this movie doesn't do it for them---what sort of film it is that appeals to this class of critic? Perhaps if the movie had included a few car explosions it might have pleased better these silly persons. The film chronicles the years 1784-89, when Jefferson served as Minister to the Parisian royal court for the fledgling US Congress; that is, in the period before and during the passage of the United States federal constitution, Jefferson being by then a world-renowned political celebrity. This is a historical drama of pitched and immense interest, presenting with great skill and art the sad and terrible racial politics of colonial America as presented through the fascinating personage of Thomas Jefferson, and his entourage of slaves---slaves now (temporarily) liberated in the environs of pre-revolutionary Paris. Conflicts ensue between Jefferson as Slave Master and his slaves, as the inevitable return to Monticello Plantation, which figures here almost as powerfully as it did for Jefferson himself, looms always ahead. Nick Nolte, an inspired if perhaps controversial and unexpected choice for the difficult role, portrays Jefferson's genius, complexities and faults with a fine and austere dignity and grace. The outstanding cast includes James Earl Jones; a young Gwyneth Paltrow as Jefferson's conflicted daughter Patsy; and a young Thandie Newton as Jefferson's paramour-slave-concubine Sally Hemings. With the imperial Court of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette as background, and featuring the Marquis de Lafayette, Dr Joseph-Ignace Guillotine, Jefferson's beautiful Parisian lover Maria Cosway, and the brewing Terror of the French Revolution, this film is a true and unique, classy feast for the eyes and mind---for viewers of elevated taste and learning only; cretins and historical ignoramuses should seek their entertainment elsewhere.
Bhowani Junction (1956)
An excellent film, technically and historically
A film for those who like history and large-scale analog cinematography in the classic mode. While it departs in certain details from the original novel, and while it did not score well at the box office, Bhowani Junction stands in retrospect as a monument to filmmaking excellence in the epic age of Hollywood, with a fine script, great historical verisimilitude, gigantic production values, and excellent performances all around, most especially by a ravishing Ava Gardner as a half-Indian, half-English minor officer in the British colonial corps, and by Stewart Granger as her commanding officer. The star-crossed pair eventually find love amidst the coming departure of the British from India, encountering Gandhi's cadres of non-violent resistors, scheming and marauding Communists directed from Moscow, and the sexual and racial politics and ambiguities of the late colonial period. The titling styles of films in this era can feel dated, but who cares---all in all this is great stuff, and an entirely educational and pleasant way to spend a couple of hours.