THE CRUISE Charter Films
Credits: Director/Producer/Photographer: Bennett Miller; Executive Producers: J.B. Miller, Theodore Miller, David Yamner, David Cohen; Editor: Michael Levine; Music: Marty Beller. Featuring: Timothy "Speed" Levitch. No MPAA rating." Running Time 76 minutes. B&W.
Timothy "Speed" Levitch, the one and only subject of Bennett Miller's documentary gem "The Cruise," is an authentic improvisational master of the non-stop rant, an unproduced 28-year-old Manhattan playwright whose only venue is the windblown upper deck of a Grayline tour bus. Miller, working as a one-man film and sound crew, records big chunks of Speed's tourist-baffling workday spiel ("The sun, another great New York landmark, above you on the left") and follows him from one temporary dwelling to another, as he pursues his dedication to "the cruise," a free-flowing passionate interaction with the world, and above all with the inexhaustible metropolis. ("I couldn't believe how angry the city was with me," Levitch recalls, of an especially dicey period in their relationship.) Anything that impedes or restricts his intensely focused drifting is dismissed as an aspect of "the anti-cruise." We can imagine Speed Levitch making the transition to a job in radio or performance art; he's certainly a more bracingly original voice than a lot of what passes for greatness now in either medium. Several chunks of his monologue here, particularly an extended denunciation of "the grid plan," initially as a function of urban design and then as an extended metaphor for boxed-in modes of thought and behavior in general, are polished enough already. Miller seems to revere Levitch's principled devotion to all things shapeless and impulsive, but a note of sadness creeps in. Levitch wonders aloud if his judgmental relatives are right after all; if he really is just one more babbling urban nut-case. In order to shape his eddying perceptions into performance pieces he'd have to collaborate with the anti-cruise in a way that may be impossible for him. Luckily, Speed Levitch had Bennett Miller to shoot and re-shape this very raw material, to craft something durable from Speed's ecstatic ramblings. -- David Chute
David Chute
chute@loop.com
www.geocities.com/Tokyo/Island/3102
===================================
"I don't believe in inspiration.
Inspiration is for amatuers."
--- Chuck Close
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