And, as written by Tom Schulman and directed by Peter Weir, it is a first-rate film. It was not that great a risk, in retrospect, with Robin Williams as its star and a theme-young people in contention with their elders-certain to appeal to young audiences. “Dead Poets Society” defied the wisdom on summer fare, as being about school, literature, frustration and suicide. And the performances, directed by Herbert Ross and Bruce Beresford, respectively, are smashing. The authors, Robert Harling of “Magnolias” and Alfred Uhry of “Miss Daisy,” obviously evoked responses in their audiences in matters of parenthood, tolerance and compassion. Not, you’d have said, sure-fire stuff despite the play’s success and not, as it turned out, a cinch to get financed.īut at the heart of both films is sharp and sympathetic observation of loving relationships. The latter watches an elderly Jewish widow and an elderly black widower grow older. “Steel Magnolias” and “Driving Miss Daisy,” both expert middle-class comedies drawn from successful plays, were nevertheless daring in the eyes of conventional thinking: the former virtually an all-women’s film with the men as ciphers on the fringe and with a tragic death as its centerpiece. But the film leaves him at the peak of his triumphant happiness and it’s the possibility of hope that the audience carries away. The later years were sad for both Brown and the woman he married. The Irish-made “My Left Foot” succeeds on the power of Daniel Day-Lewis’s portrayal of Christy Brown, the severely crippled cerebral palsy victim who by force of will became a poet, painter and novelist. Its scenes of battle, of a rat-infested VA hospital, of family divisions and private anguish, are brutal and uncompromised, but ultimately there is a cleansing and triumphant uplift. “Born on the Fourth of July,” regarded as the short-odds favorite in the Oscar sweepstakes, is another piece of American history, recreating Ron Kovic’s life from gung-ho Marine to embittered paraplegic fighting against the war, and echoing the larger national turmoil about Vietnam. The Civil War battles, as they were fought, have never been so well depicted on screen. It is a rich human drama that carries the reverberating truth of history and as an act of film making it is amazing in its scope and smoky realism. The slaughter at Fort Wagner, S.C., that concludes “Glory” is at least as compelling a statement about and against war as “All Quiet on the Western Front.” But the film, directed by Edward Zwick and written by Kevin Jarre, also illuminates an important piece of American history: the creation and the brief, valiant exploits of the first black regiment in the Civil War. One piece of conventional wisdom that has not been overturned is that audiences don’t mind and may welcome a good cry it’s that they don’t like to go away depressed or convinced that the world is beyond redemption. In truth, the offerings have not been revolutionary.
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