CARRIED AWAY
A film review by Steve Rhodes
Copyright 1996 Steve Rhodes
RATING (0 TO ****): *** 1/2
CARRIED AWAY is an incredible film being opened slowly around the United States by its distributor Fine Line Features. Locally it is playing at the Towne Theater in San Jose. The film has two amazing performances by Dennis Hopper and Amy Irving that are both worthy of Oscar consideration, and the rest of the cast gives great performances as well. Most of all it is a devastating film although ultimately a hopeful one.
As the story opens, an exhausted middle aged farmer named Joseph Svenden (Dennis Hopper) is having a nightmare about the time he permanently damaged his leg in a farming accident when he was a youngster. He is woken out of the dream by his elderly mother. She chides him, "Get up. It's 5 o'clock already." Despondent and using his old cane, he limps in the darkness through the cold and bleak wind to the barn.
Joseph makes most of his meager income as an uncredentialed teacher in a two room school house. His fellow teacher and long term lover is Rosalee Henson (Amy Irving). The school is in the middle of nowhere, and the school board has declared that this is its last year. It will be consolidated with a more modern school that is thirty miles away. The only part of his life that he is good at will then vanish.
Rosalee has always wanted to marry Joseph, but perpetually melancholic Joseph is not ready to get married now or maybe ever. His mother is dying, and he is not happy with what he views as his miserable existence. Thanks to drab and ugly costumes (Grania Preston) and makeup, both of these forty-seven year olds look to be going on sixty.
Joseph has given up on life, but still he longs for meaning. His relationship with Rosalee is going nowhere. As he describes it, they make love in the dark on Friday and Sunday nights. His whole life is monotonous, and he despises it.
One day, a vivacious new seventeen year old blonde student, Catherine Wheeler (Amy Locane - the rich girlfriend from SCHOOL TIES), comes into his classroom and his life is changed forever. Ah, now you think, this is the LOLITA story for our generation. Well, maybe it is, but I don't think so. The script by Ed Jones is based on the novel "Farmer" by Jim Harrison who wrote "The Legends of the Fall," and I found this script more intriguing and believable than LOLITA (1962). Actually, this film is not near as much about the forbidden love of a teacher and a student, as it is the study of two middle-aged people who feel like their life has passed them by.
Catherine and her dad, an athletic and imposing looking retired Major (Gary Busey), ask Joseph if she can board her horse in his barn and come everyday to ride it. He says yes with both anticipation and anxiety. One day she comes to ride her horse, but when he sees her in the barn, she starts stripping to see if she can seduce her teacher. He has the good sense to run away from such a minefield of trouble, but lacks the convictions to stay away for more than a few minutes.
Soon the forbidden affair is in full bloom. From there the story is a mixture of the predicable and the complete surprises. When the Major declares on a hunting trip with Joseph that "I'm too old to just kill for the sake of killing" and that he only shoots what needs to be shot, Joseph is suitably frightened, but then again, not enough to alter his amoral behavior. The casting of Busey as the Major is perfect.
Director Bruno Barreto asserts remarkable control with his charges. Who else could take explosive and uncontrollable actor Dennis Hopper (WATERWORLD, PARIS TROUT, and almost a hundred other films) and get a touching, quiet, and poignant performance out of him. Watch especially how sadly he fiddles with his old pipe reminding the audience how hopeless Joseph feels in his situation and how trapped in his environment. His acting is reminiscent of Anthony Hopkins in one of his pensive English roles.
Similarly, the director takes Amy Irving, who hasn't had a good part since MICKI + MAUDE and YENTL, and gets a performance of great beauty of a woman even more trapped in her shell than her lover. Their love making and their false starts range from the sad to the sweet and to the powerful. None are erotic, but all are tastefully done, and at least one, is quite surprising.
Amy Locane plays a supporting role, but she is excellent and certainly much more effective than Sue Lyon was in LOLITA (1962). Catherine plays Joseph like a fish on the end of a line. Whenever he even thinks about breaking off, she starts a provocative undressing routine, and he postpones any notion of leaving her. She owns him like the devil owned Faust.
There are a few other characters in this fairly sparse drama. My favorite of those not already mentioned is Hal Holbrook who plays Dr. Evans, who is Joseph's friend and his mother's doctor. There are also many charming scenes of Joseph taking care of his mother (Julie Harris). Sometimes they play an old piano together, and other times he rubs lotion on her decaying body. He loves her intensely. One time he confesses to her, "What can I say. I'm a bad man. But sometimes it is fun to be bad."
The movie is extremely sad, but never lugubrious or manipulative. Many of the lines are gems. When Rosalee cries that "I'm not going to get another chance," she sums up in a single sentence all of what it means to be a late middle-aged person. As Joseph puts it, "I don't have any excuse. I guess I wanted to be carried away." Rosalee feeling just as trapped and lost as Joseph, declares, "I want to be carried away too."
Cinematographer Declan Quinn (VANYA ON 42ND STREET) picks the most gray and depressing colors he has in his bag to construct the images. He uses the lighting to cast darkness on his characters reflective of their feelings about themselves and their lack of opportunities in life. Usually cinematographers use their skills to enliven a picture, but here Quinn is quite effective in make an already morose tale, even more so.
The sets by Peter Paul Raubertas are bleak and foreboding. Bruce Broughton's music is full of soulful violins, flutes, and muted trumpets to cast a dreamy and nostalgic feel over the sets. The music is subdued, but it is perhaps the most hopeful part of the production suggesting the hope of redemption.
CARRIED AWAY runs a well edited (Bruce Cannon) 1:44. It is rated R for sex, full frontal male and female nudity, and some bad language. There is no violence. Given the nature of the relationships, I do not recommend this show for teenagers. For adults, I give it a strong recommendation and award the film *** 1/2.
**** = One of the top few films of this or any year. A must see film. *** = Excellent show. Look for it. ** = Average movie. Kind of enjoyable. * = Poor show. Don't waste your money. 0 = One of the worst films of this or any year. Totally unbearable.
REVIEW WRITTEN ON: September 9, 1996
Opinions expressed are mine and not meant to reflect my employer's.
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