GRAND CANYON
A film review by Frank Maloney
Copyright 1992 Frank Maloney
GRAND CANYON is a film by Lawrence Kasdan. From a script by Lawrence and Meg Kasdan. It stars Kevin Kline, Steve Martin, Mary McDonnell, Danny Glover, Mary-Louise Parker, Aifre Woodward. It is rate R due to language.
Of the films I've seen recently, GRAND CANYON is most like CITY OF HOPE. GRAND CANYON has a large, ensemble cast who act out a veritable anthology of interconnected storylines.
However, this film lasts the political sensibilities of John Sayles' film and it lacks that epic feel. Kasdan's film is a much smaller film in the sense that it doesn't offer us some of the directorial and editing pyrotechnics of Sayles' film and in the sense that Kasdan does not try to manage anywhere near as large a bundle of threads.
Yet, GRAND CANYON is anything but modest in its intentions, its meaning or meanings, or its effect on the audience. I take its subject to be the meaning of chaos, and how to live with it. Its message is, inter alia, that life is shitty and dangerous and a lot of bad things happen to us, but if we can manage to survive the bad things long enough something wonderful, miraculous will also happen to us every now and then. Not too assuring as messages go, but it seems to describe my life. Certainly, incorporating concepts of chaos seems like a good idea in modern life.
GRAND CANYON is by and large an enjoyable and original film, a film that is somehow better than it ought to have been. It is a personal film for the Kasdans; one of its central episode is directly out of Lawrence Kasdan's own life. It is a very entertaining film with excellent, ensemble performances from some of Hollywood's most recognizable stars.
Kevin Kline and Mary McDonnell are the central couple. They both turn in interesting, intelligent, and film-saving performances. They have to rise above their yuppie characters, their quasi-mystical lines, and their dubious relationships to establish their characters as real people that are worth caring about. Miraculously, they do it all. When McDonnell gets around to her speech on believing in miracles, she is totally convincing. And they are both very funny in the right places.
(Incidentally, Kline has a dream that is the occasion for the best, most naturalistic dream sequence I've ever seen in a movie.)
Danny Glover also registers an excellent performance as the philosophical, brave tow-truck driver. His sister is played by Tina Lifford, who has a couple of showcase scenes, but who has less of an opportunity to be fully established as a real character. Similarly, some of the other secondary characters, mostly women, suffer similar fates of being only half-developed, in particular, Mary-Louise Parker as a whiny secretary who finally figures it out, and Alfre Woodward as the blind date.
But the real star of the film has got to be Steve Martin playing a schlock-film director, a glib, loquacious, rationalizing creator of ultra-violent flicks, in the name of honesty. It is said that his character is a parody of Joel Silver, director of THE LAST BOY SCOUT. Martin is becoming an actor of amazing pureness and transparency.
GRAND CANYON is worth at least two viewings. The first viewing may leave you a little confused and even depressed. But the second will reveal to you a film of amazing, subtle powers, seamlessness, and perfection, realistic but hopeful, a snapshot of the amazing mess we're in.
I recommend, obviously, GRAND CANYON, even at full price.
-- Frank Richard Aloysius Jude Maloney .
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