CAPE FEAR
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1991 Frank Maloney
CAPE FEAR is a film directed by Martin Scorsese. It stars Robert DeNiro, Nick Nolte, Jessica Lane, and Juliette Lewis. Rated R for excessive violence.
CAPE FEAR is a remake of J. Lee Thompson's 1962 Southern gothic thriller. Elmer Bernstein has adapted Bernard Herrmann's original score, and three of the stars from the original have small roles in this version: Gregory Peck, Robert Mitchum, and Martin Balsam. This building on the past may be one of the reasons why this version is such an interesting film, not a film without problems, but a wonderful movie for talking about.
First, there are the remarkable performances by the principals, as well as some excellent character acting by the likes of Joe Don Baker. Most viewers may well dwell on Robert DeNiro's performance, and I'll have something to say about DeNiro, too. But the actor who impressed me beyond any other in this movie was newcomer Juliette Lewis, who plays the 15-year-old daughter of Nick Nolte's character. She gave us a letter-perfect teenage girl, totally convincing, psychologically real. Her body language, her not-quite-beautiful prettiness, her speech patterns, these were the stuff of flesh-and-blood teenagers, not Hollywood stereotypes. If Lewis can keep up this kind of quality, she will have a good crack at being a major star in the next few years and beyond.
Then there's Jessica Lange, who plays Nolte's wife, Lewis's mother, a woman on the verge of a nervous breakdown, a chain-smoking commercial artist, a font of bitter zingers and violent rage. I haven't seen Lange in a long time and it was grand to see her turn in a first-rate performance.
Nick Nolte, looking fitter and handsomer than I've seen him in years, reverses my expectations and plays the "good guy", a successful lawyer who's made some mistakes in the past, playing a little too loosely with the rules of the law and of marriage. His is a very difficult role; we have to see that he is a victim, but one who has to some degree only brought his troubles on himself. We sympathize, but we don't really approve of or like him. It's only that the bystanders, his victims as much as DeNiro's, who suffer, too, that let's us extended a sympathy to him fully. Nolte, to his credit, pretty much pulls it off. He walks a narrow plank and seldom loses his balance.
Okay, DeNiro. DeNiro is America's most distinguished, most intense, most dedicated scenery-chewer, an actor who has no concept of moderation or resting on his laurels. The energy of the man is awe-inspiring. And the role of Cady, the ex-con who has come "to help" his ex-lawyer, gives the fullest possible play to DeNiro's willingness to overwhelm with excessiveness. The most powerful, chilling parts of CAPE FEAR are when Cady is only a threatening eminence, when the story itself confines DeNiro's larger than life interpretation of a nearly impossible character. When script shifts into its ultra-violent second half, DeNiro's Cady slips slightly into incredibility and loses a certain Hannibal-Lectorish attractiveness.
Far and away, the best scene in CAPE FEAR, the one that is sure to remain when all other memories of the movie fade is the extended meeting of Lewis and DeNiro in a darkened college theater on whose stage is a Hansel and Gretel set of the witch's gingerbread house. The lurking, the expectations of unspeakable acts, the absurdity of the setting, the appalling innocence of Lewis, the manipulative genius of DeNiro, and above all the thumb, all these created a scene of tension and shuddery apprehension that made it a stand-alone triumph.
On the other hand, once the mayhem was well and truly underway, I began to lose something of my involvement, a bad situation in any movie, but especially a thriller. Cady shows himself to be not only a genius of manipulation and strategy, but physically indestructible. I cannot believe that any human, no matter how driven by his obsessions and no matter how physically strong could have pulled off some of the stunts Cady is supposed to have survived.
The psychology of CAPE FEAR is fascinating and the real center of the movie's successes. And the moral questions that the story raises are the center of its worthiness of being seen. Unfortunately the movie loses interest in these as it succumbs to a blood lust that all too common in contemporary films. The psychology, briefly put, involves the relationships of the principal characters, the sorting out of responsibility, of blame, of what's of real value. The morality concerns how we face up our responsibilities, what we have to do to atone for our humanness.
I recommend CAPE FEAR, but suggest you will get more of bang for your buck by taking in a low-cost matinee. It will grip you, but it may leave you more dissatisfied than disquieted.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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