THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS
A film review by Michael John Legeros
Copyright 1994 Michael John Legeros
Written and directed by Bille August, based on the novel by Isabel Allende Starring Jeremy Irons, Meryl Streep, Winona Ryder, Antonio Banderas, Armin Mueller-Stahl and Vanessa Redgrave MPAA Rating Presumably "R" for rape, torture, and nudity. Running Time 138 minutes
======
"You used to be a gifted narrator."
- Unidentified priest to Glenn Close, in confession
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is a huge, sprawling train-wreck of a drama that requires some serious suspension of disbelief to take seriously. The problem here is casting and if you can accept Jeremy Irons as a South American and Meryl Streep as a psychic and Winona Ryder as a mother, then you're halfway on your way to "enjoying" Bille August's adaption of Isabell Allende's acclaimed 1985 novel.
THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS opens in a rather Chile South American country in 1926 and introduces Esteban Trueba (Irons). He's a young miner who plans to prosper and, later, marry the daughter of a prominent aristocrat (Mueller-Stahl). But by the time he strikes gold, the daughter is dead--an event foreseen by her psychic little sister Clara. Esteban rides off into the hills and Clara, shocked by her ability to foresee fatality, turns mute.
(Oh no! Not another mute heroine! :-))
Twenty years pass and Esteban has become a powerful (and quite cruel) rancher. When he returns to town to mourn his mother, he spies the now-grown and now-gorgeous Clara (Streep) at the funeral. He proposes, she speaks, the furniture levitates on their honeymoon and, at the moment of her impregnation, Clara jumps up and declares "it will be a girl." Said girl grows up looking like Winona Ryder and takes a lover (Banderas) who is a revolutionary and causes her father all sorts of grief because, by that time, Dad is a senior member of the conservative government.
Soapy? Yes. Super? No. THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is a long-sit, no matter how high you can rise off your seat.
The initial problem is pacing and SPIRITS doesn't flow worth a damn. The director's eye is good--there's no shortage of arresting images here--but his timing is awful. Much of the first half of the film is comprised of truncated scenes--powerful, inspiring incidents that are compressed into moments so momentary that they barely stay on the screen long enough to register.
(The first eighty minutes could be highlights from *another* film, for all we know!)
SPIRITS slows in the second half, thank God, and spends *some* quality time with the story. But even a lively coup d'etat--complete with Winona Ryder undergoing torture--is no help to the viewer, who has been stuck in a twilight zone where the chracters age at different rates.
Watching THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is like watching a high-school production where all of your best friends are playing people of older ages. Except, instead of kids playing adults, it's adults playing kids. Come on, Jeremy Irons in his twenties? You can't tell the age of *any* major character without doing some serious in-your-head arithmetic. And that's no fun.
Age, innocence, or otherwise, the "international" cast is a bust.
The less-than-ethnic-looking Irons puts a wealth of effort into his role of Esteban even though he's saddled with a goofy accent and, what looks suspiciously like, Dustin Hoffman's fake teeth from HOOK. Streep is graceful and serenely strong and has her hilarious moment when filmed asleep in her bed with her hair, arms, and cheekbones perfectly poised.
Vanessa Redgrave and Armin Mueller-Stahl are all but wasted as Clara's parents. So are Winona Ryder and Antonio Banderas--though listed in the credits, they do little more than stand around and look sincere. By default, the standout is Glenn Close as Esteban's spinster sister. She stares and glares and never wears anything but black. But she *does* walk away with most of the film's funny lines.
In fact, THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is filled with more *un*intentional humor than otherwise. Stop, look, and listen for such laughable laurels as Ryder's drab narration, inexplicably awful dubbing, and a vintage automobile that collides with a train and explodes like something from a Mel Gibson movie.
BOTTOM LINE: THE HOUSE OF THE SPIRITS is a huge, sprawling,
epic-wannabe that takes more effort to watch than to
enjoy. You'll laugh, you'll sleep.
Grade: C-
.
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