GRAND CANYON
A film review by Mark R. Leeper
Copyright 1992 Mark R. Leeper
Capsule review: GRAND CANYON is an iridescent film. It
looks entirely different from different angles. As with a
Picasso, each person must find his/her own interpretation.
Don't believe anyone else as to what the film is about.
Rating: high +1 (-4 to +4).
You made a mistake. Because of your mistake you are about to die. Your loved ones will have to get along without you because they have seen you alive for the last time. You have just lost what would have been the rest of your life. Then a perfect stranger reaches out a hand and saves your life. It is just a tiny action, but it means you are back again in the world of the living. You are going to have that rest-of-your-life after all. Do you see the world any differently now? Darn right you do! Every good thing that happens to you--and every bad thing--is a gift of the stranger. Now the whole world looks surreal. You are much more aware of the happy and unhappy events that make up the life you almost lost. You suddenly have a sense of wonder about incidents you might never have thought about the day before. That is at least one way to look at Lawrence Kasdan's enigmatic GRAND CANYON. My wife sat on my right and claimed to have seen a film making a philosophical point about what comes of good intentions. A friend who sat on my left (even slopping over into my seat) saw a film intended to make a strong but not overly familiar political point that our cities are deteriorating beyond the point of repair. These are remarkably different interpretations of a single film. Perhaps the greatest virtue of GRAND CANYON is its strange ambiguity.
Mack (played by Kevin Kline) is on his way home from a basketball game in urban Los Angeles when his car breaks down in just the wrong neighborhood. He calls for a tow truck but has the feeling he may not see it come. Sure enough, five youths with obviously bad intentions are about to attack him when the tow truck driver, Simon (played by Danny Glover), arrives and diplomatically defuses the situation. Mack is so grateful to Simon he feels he wants to help improve Simon's life. Then an unrelated "miraculous" event happens to Mack's wife Claire (played by Mary McDonnell of DANCES WITH WOLVES and MATEWAN). Soon events are intertwining the lives of these three people, Mack's secretary Dee (played by Mary-Louise Parker of LONGTIME COMPANION and FRIED GREEN TOMATOES), Dee's friend Jane (played by Alfre Woodard, who played Winnie Mandela to Glover's Nelson Mandela in--what else?--MANDELA), and Mack's best friend Davis (played by Steve Martin).
Lawrence Kasdan co-produced, directed, and co-authored the screenplay with his wife. Together, the Kasdans create a story of rapture and disaster. It is a story of mysticism and self-reliance. It is about good luck and bad luck, yet it never becomes soap opera. It is always captivating, yet it is never clear where it is coming from. When the film ends, you sit watching the credits asking, "Well, what was that about?" I give it a high +1 on the -4 to +4 scale. (P.S. Checking the VARIETY review, I find out that *they* think it is a film about survival strategies in L.A.)
Mark R. Leeper
att!mtgzy!leeper
leeper@mtgzy.att.com
.
The review above was posted to the
rec.arts.movies.reviews newsgroup (de.rec.film.kritiken for German reviews).
The Internet Movie Database accepts no responsibility for the contents of the
review and has no editorial control. Unless stated otherwise, the copyright
belongs to the author.
Please direct comments/criticisms of the review to relevant newsgroups.
Broken URLs inthe reviews are the responsibility of the author.
The formatting of the review is likely to differ from the original due
to ASCII to HTML conversion.
Related links: index of all rec.arts.movies.reviews reviews