RAGTIME

Howard E. Rollins Jr. as Coalhouse Walker

RAGTIME (1981). Director: Milos Forman. 

A well-to-do couple (James Olson and Mary Steenburgen) live with their young son and her brother (Brad Dourif) after the turn of the century. They take in a homeless black woman, Sarah (Debbie Allen), and her baby, and become friendly with the child's father, Coalhouse Walker (Howard E. Rollins Jr.). Dourif pursues a relationship with Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern), whose husband Henry Thaw (Robert Joy) shoots and kills her former lover, the architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer). Evelyn also encounters Tateh (Mandy Patinkin) and his little daughter, and winds up starring in the silent films he makes when he goes to Hollywood. When Coalhouse is humiliated by a bunch of Irish firefighters, feces dumped in his model T, he tries to get justice. Failing that, he somehow puts together a virtual militia with many weapons and begins bombing firehouses and shooting firemen. Dourif agrees to supply them with explosives. Nothing good will come of this ...  

Elizabeth McGovern as Evelyn Nesbit

For me Ragtime pretty much falls apart about this time as despite Coalhouse's understandable anger at his treatment, his murderous overreaction seems wildly contrived -- it's not as if these firemen killed anyone after all. (Besides, I have never found any kind of terrorism to be justifiable no matter how legitimate the grievances.) Dourif's character and his actions go undeveloped and unexplored, and the whole notion of mingling the Stanford White/Evelyn Nesbit story and its "trial of the century" with the Coalhouse Walker story (novelist E. L. Doctorow based all this on a German novella entitled Michael Kohlhaas, and claimed Ragtime is a homage to it) is perhaps ill-advised to begin with. What might have worked on the printed page doesn't always work in the cinema. 

Mandy Patinkin, Mary Steenburgen, James Olson

There are good performances in the film -- Rollins (who was Oscar-nominated and died of AIDS-related complications at only 46); an excellent Olson; James Cagney (at 81 playing a real-life police commissioner who was actually in his thirties at the time); Moses Gunn as Booker T. Washington trying to convince Coalhouse of the error of his ways --  and a notable score by Randy Newman. But as a whole I found the movie unconvincing and occasionally ridiculous. Other old-time stars in the film are Pat O'Brien and Donald O'Connor. Later this was turned into a Broadway musical. 

Verdict: Has its pleasures, but overall a misfire. **1/4. 

PHILADELPHIA

Tom Hanks

PHILADELPHIA (1993). Director: Jonathan Demme.

"Everyone in this room is your friend, more than your friend -- family." -- Wheeler to Beckett.

Andrew Beckett (Tom Hanks) is a young lawyer in Philadelphia who is going places -- until he gets AIDS. Although he tries to hide it from the partners, he is fired (just as much for being gay as for his illness) on a trumped up charge of incompetence. Turned down by most lawyers for a wrongful dismissal lawsuit, he is finally represented by ambulance chaser and part-time homophobe Joe Miller (Denzel Washington). Although Charles Wheeler (Jason Robards), the head of the firm, is importuned to settle with Beckett, the crusty old lawyer is not about to give in ... Philadelphia, the first major American movie to deal with AIDS and homophobia, is an admirable if flawed motion picture. It doesn't shy away from stark realities such as depicting the illness and its effect on other people; the way that gay partners are not considered "family" in the hospital; invisible gays and closet cases; and difficult questions about so-called "risky" behavior. On the other hand, with so many points to be made on such an issue, the characters sort of get lost, and the viewer probably gets to know Joe Miller better than it does Andrew Beckett. Andrew's partner Miguel (Antonio Banderas) is only given a couple of scenes, remains a distant figure, and worse, the two men seem more like friends than partners -- it's almost as if Banderas was afraid to ruin his "macho" image by kissing Hanks. Hanks [Road to Perdition] won a Best Actor Oscar, and is quite good, even if he's perhaps a bit too "fluttery" on certain occasions [the film seems to show the diversity of the gay male community, and even indulges in some stereotype-busting at times]. Washington [American Gangster], Robards [You Can't Take It With You], and Mary Steenburgen as opposing counsel are excellent, and there's an effective cameo by director Roger Corman as one of Beckett's former clients. As for the music (the main score is by Howard Shore), the soundtrack makes effective use of Maria Callas singing "La mamma morta" from Giordano's Andrea Chenier, although one wonders if either Bruce Springsteen (Oscar winner for the title tune) and Neil Young (composer of the haunting end-title piece "City of Brotherly Love") knew the subject matter before they wrote the songs.

Verdict: Whatever its imperfections this is an often powerful and very affecting picture. ***1/2.