A WALK ON THE MOON
Reviewed by Harvey Karten, Ph.D. Miramax Films Director: Tony Goldwyn Writer: Pamela Gray Cast: Diane Lane, Viggo Mortensen, Anna Paquin, Liev Schreiber, Tovah Feldshuh
When you pass by the doorman in front of that fairly ordinary building, the security guard in a run-down department store, the older man who sweeps up inside McDonald's, does this thought cross your mind..."I wonder whether this guy always dreamed of becoming a doorman, a security guard, a sweeper?" People do have youthful dreams. Go into any high school and ask the kids what they expect to be doing in ten years, and you'll find one student who is not even on the J.V. basketball team envisioning his becoming the next Michael Jordan. Another who hasn't taken a course more difficult than health ed. is going to become a neurosurgeon.
But as Jessica Lange's character once said, "People in hell want ice water. That doesn't mean that they get it." Most of us are bound to be thwarted. It's only natural for our reach to exceed our grasp.
This motif of frustrated ambition is an old one: even less fresh is the theme of adultery. Yet when the two concepts combine in Tony Goldwyn's directorial debut film, "A Walk on the Moon," the story works, largely because of unusually good casting combined with an engrossing authenticity. Those in the audience who have personally lived through the period described and vacationed in locales similar to the one portrayed here will feel a gratifying connection to the piece.
"A Walk on the Moon," which takes place in the Catskill Mountains resort area in 1969 (actually filmed in Quebec's Laurentien Mountains), is a poignant tale of a woman who became pregnant at age 17, got married too young, and regrets never having sown her wild oats. Her husband, however stymied in his job as a TV repairman because he did not have the funds to go to college, comes across as more accepting of his fate. And therein lies the conflict between the two.
The story opens as Pearl Kantrowitz (Diane Lane) and her devoted husband Marty (Liev Schreiber), pack up his mother, their two kids, and an array of belongings, and head for their usual summer bungalow resort in the mountains. As was typical during this period and in this culture, the husband would work in the city and come up only for the weekends. When Pearl, envious of the sexual and other freedoms that the youth culture of the late sixties were enjoying, became attracted to an unconventional blouse salesman named Walker Jerome (Viggo Mortensen), she indulges herself in an affair with the young, handsome Gentile man without a thought of the effect of this liaison on her marriage.
At times the dialogue is laughably stilted, as when Pearl tells her incensed husband, "I disappeared. I wanted to be the person you fell in love with." The story flirts with cliche as when Marty retorts, "Do you think you're the only one who had dreams that didn't come true?"
The tale, written by Pamela Gray under a production team led by Dustin Hoffman, is an old-fashioned one told in the most conventional, straightforward way. And yet it is more affecting than quite a number of the so-called hip and edgy comedies that come out of festivals like Sundance each year. Director Goldwyn could not have hoped for a better performer than Liev Schreiber to portray the stereotypical Jewish husband, perfectly willing to sacrifice his own vacation so that he could make enough to keep his family upstate, away from the city heat. At times Tovah Feldshuh steals the show as the Bubbie, a visionary who can tell other people's fate from their tea leaves and who quickly fathoms that her daughter- in-law is straying. Anna Pacquin as the 14-year-old daughter who is experiencing her first period and her first date during that summer of '69 dishes up a subplot, her own coming of age paralleling her mom's newfound freedom and ecstasy.
Goldwyn displays a decent emulation of the Woodstock Festival of that momentous year, a time in which Neil Armstrong walked the moon and young, groovy people were making love, not war, in a way that would infuriate the uptight elders. "A Walk on the Moon" is a low-key romantic comedy with melodramatic undertones--not a momentous film but one whose superlative cast and accurate portrayal of what we once did on our summer vacation is altogether pleasing.
Rated R. Running Time: 105 minutes. (C) 1999 Harvey Karten
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