THE ASSISTANT (M). (Hand Made Films/Sharmill Films) Director: Daniel petrie Stars: Armin Mueller-Stahl, Joan Plowright, Gil Bellows, Kate Greenhouse, Jaimz Woolvet, Frank Moore Running time: 105 minutes.
For director Daniel Petrie (The Betsy, etc), bringing Bernard Malamud's Pulitzer Prize winning 1957 novel to the screen has been something of a labour of love. The result is a profound, intelligent and affecting tale that has some provocative messages. However, the film, which was completed in 1997, has taken a couple of years to reach our screens. This delay is not due to any inherent lack of quality, but rather to the distributor's lack of faith.
It is the middle of the depression and jobs are hard to come by, and a lot of small businesses are struggling to survive. The Bobers are a family of Jewish emigrants who have fled the rising tide of anti- Semitism and prejudice within their homeland to make a new start in America. Morris Bober (German actor Armin Mueller-Stahl, who is probably best know for his role as David Helfgott's father in the brilliant Shine) runs a small grocery store.
Enter Frank Alpine (Ally McBeal's Gil Bellows), a drifter who is unable to find honest work in this uncertain climate. He somehow hooks up with Ward Minogue (Jaimz Woolvet, from Unforgiven, etc), a petty thief, who robs the Bober' store and pistol-whips Morris. Frank is consumed by guilt over the crime, and returns to the Bober's store the next day and offers to help out.
Morris sees in Frank a reflection of his own son, who had died years earlier. His wife Ida (Joan Plowright) is less trusting, and urges caution. A romance slowly blossoms between Frank and the Bober's daughter Helen (newcomer Kate Greenhouse), largely against the wishes of the conservative Ida. But the catalyst that irrevocably changes the uneasy relationship between the Bobers and Frank comes when Morris learns that he was one of the robbers. While Ida's worst suspicions are confirmed, Morris' belief in tolerance is put to the ultimate test.
The presence of Mueller-Stahl and Plowright brings to mind Barry Levinson's elegiac epic Avalon, in which the pair played emigrants establishing their own family in Baltimore in the early 1900's. Rather than a sprawling family saga though, The Assistant is a powerful and quietly affecting tale of prejudice, tolerance and forgiveness, crime and punishment. Although the film has a darker tone, Petrie deliberately keeps the whole thing low key and understated. His restrained and gentle pace perfectly suits the material. The ugly spectre of fascism raises its head in a brief but evocative scene in which Frank and Helen witness a Nazi rally and march.
Petrie draws insightful and honest performances from the ensemble cast, who nail the essence of their characters with unerring accuracy. Working together for the third time, Plowright and Mueller- Stahl strike sparks and develop an easy going, comfortable relationship as the Bobers. Bellows brings a certain charisma to the role of Frank, and elicits the audience's sympathy.
*** greg king http://www.netau.com.au/gregking
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