IN THE DARK/Jonathan Richards
CAPTAIN CORELLI'S MANDOLIN Directed by John Madden With Nicolas Cage, Penelope Cruz UA North R 127 min.
It is said that in preparation for his role as a music-loving WWII Italian officer in the John Madden movie Captain Corelli's Mandolin, Nicolas Cage communed with the spirit of his departed grandfather, Carmine Coppola. Whatever the old man gave him, it wasn't a credible Italian accent. Cage made a good Italian-American in the 1987 comedy Moonstruck, but as an Italian-Italian he does not cut the pasta. This is too bad, because when the central character of a movie leaves a hole the size of Naples, the rest of the movie is hard-pressed not to sink right through it. Another disadvantage for a movie that is primarily a love story is a lack of chemistry between its lovers. Cage has become an action star, and has lost the knack of connecting romantically to anyone other than himself. His love interest here is Penelope Cruz (rumored soon to be Penelope Cruz-Cruise), a Spanish actress impersonating a Greek maiden named Pelagia. Cruz is an appealing sort, and very good in Spanish movies like All About My Mother, but her appeal so far has resisted English translation. The third corner of the movie's romantic triangle is the talented young British actor Christian Bale (American Psycho) who's been chopped and channeled into the illiterate Greek partisan Mandras, a job of tailoring on a par with Natalie Wood playing a Native American. The best acting comes from the always reliable John Hurt as Pelegia's father, the local doctor, who narrates part of the movie. Hurt may not seem very Greek either, but he commands the screen with his hooded eyes and his slow-moving, rumpled dignity. Also good is David Morrissey as a German soldier who would like to be a good guy and join in the Italians' carousing, opera-singing good fellowship, but doesn't quite have it in him. And worth mentioning is the great Greek actress Irene Pappas, who plays Mandras's mother; unfortunately, being really Greek, she sticks out like a sore thumb in this company. The movie was shot on the island of Cephalonia, where the bestselling novel by Louis de Bernieres was set, and Cephalonia at least does not disappoint. John Toll's camera lingers lovingly on the sparkling sapphire water, and moves through the dappled hillsides and the dusty little town with the lazy timelessness of an Aegean afternoon. But Madden, who combined history, romance, literature, and humor so effortlessly in Shakespeare In Love, seems at a loss here without a Tom Stoppard screenplay to set him up. The screenplay in hand is by Shawn Slovo, who last wrote a movie a dozen years ago and probably should have quit while he was ahead. Here he has the thankless task of filleting out the cinematic spine of a well-loved novel, figuring out what to keep, what to jettison, and what to invent. He tries a bit of all three. Those who loved the book will find some passages brought to life, major themes and plotlines and character traits abandoned, and a few surprises, including a Hollywood ending that even the studio wanted to reshoot. Captain Corelli's Mandolin is by no means hopeless. It looks good, and it sometimes comes to life with real tension, particularly when the bad guys show up in the form of vicious Nazi occupiers come to supplant the hedonistic Fascist occupiers who have fraternized to excess with the natives and have abandoned the Fuhrer's cause. The movie surprises itself with flashes of drama and moments of heroism. But at its soft center, where Cage grapples romantically with Cruz, and vainly with his Inner Italian, the movie is yet another of the high-profile disappointments of 2001.
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