Category: Caroline Goodall

CLIFFHANGER

By Marc S. Sanders

It’s an action picture.  What’s common?  Sylvester Stallone, the MacGuffin is money, and the villain has a European accent.  What’s uncommon?  The setting is a Colorado snow covered mountain. 

The movie is Cliffhanger directed by Renny Harlin.

This film deserves much praise for the photography it offers of Stallone and his sidekicks (Michael Rooker, Janine Turner) scaling steep rock formations while trying to evade brutal, but moronic, thieves who have foolishly lost their booty in midair. Now the bad guys must recover the stolen Federal Reserve bills which are scattered in three different locations within the mountain range.  When their plane crashes they force the heroes into leading them on an expedition to locate the money before they will surely kill them.  John Lithgow leads the villains.  Thanks to his slithery English dialect, he’s not bad in the part.

For a pinch of character depth, Gabe (Stallone) is haunted by the opening scene of the film where he failed to rescue the girlfriend of his buddy, Hal (Rooker).  Gabe and Hal will be awarded the opportunity to make amends thanks to this unexpected adventure.  Cliffhanger is not just a thriller.  It’s also a chick flick for guys. 

On a modern flat screen TV, it is quite discernable to recognize the CGI and handcrafted sets that make up much of the scenes.  However, the thrill of it all still holds up and as noted before, the overhead shots really look spectacular.  Stallone really is hanging from these bottomless heights with just one hand; at least that’s what it looks like.  If there is an illusion at play, then there are moments where I can’t tell if I’m being deceived.

The opening scene is the highlight of the picture as Gabe must zip line himself upside down over a wide crevice while attempting to save a hapless climber whose harness has given out.  It’s impossible not to sit still during a well edited and directed moment like this.  This is a masterful scene of terror and suspense.  Renny Harlin is certainly an undervalued director in the action genre.  (I wonder what he’s been up to these days.)

The bad guys are quite hapless though, as they freely bicker among themselves and give away how they’ll happily kill the heroes quickly, allowing one to warn the others.  They are dumb right from the start by killing the pilot of the plane they’re on before fully completing their mission and idiotically losing the money at play.  Then again, as my Unpaid Critic colleague would say, “Then there’d be no movie.”  True Mig!  Very true.

Still, the atmosphere of Cliffhanger is what works.  Blustery snow and wind come off convincingly as Gabe is forced to freeze and shiver with no layers to keep him warm while executing some daring escapes.  Rescue helicopter stunts and collisions are sensational.  There are obligatory shootouts and bloody slashes of skin from climbing tools.  There’s even a bat cave, with no superhero in sight, but it will give you the willies.

I’m hot and cold on many of Sylvester Stallone’s films.  Don’t get me started on Assassins with Antonio Banderas or The Specialist with Sharon Stone.  Those movies required some nuanced acting that the action star just wasn’t offering.  However, here the adventure makes the piece thanks to the director, and Stallone fits right into this environment where the role demands strength, stamina, and outdoor intuition.  Renny Harlin is the top hero here, allowing the marquee actor to look really good on screen.

SCHINDLER’S LIST

By Marc S. Sanders

Oskar Schindler was a handsome, well dressed man. A man of wealth, power, and influence. A successful businessman. He was a womanizer. And Oskar Schindler was a Nazi who saved 1100 Jews from the atrocities of the Holocaust.

On a filmmaking measure alone, Schindler’s List is one of the best pictures to ever be made. Steven Spielberg’s production value is incomparable. Nothing I can recall appears as grand (not sure that’s the appropriate word here???) and authentic as Schindler’s List. How did Spielberg pull off this feat? How did he direct hundreds, thousands maybe, of extras to reenact the vilest human suffering that a generation of people could ever encounter? I’m astounded. Positively astounded.

This evening was only my second time seeing the film. I always put off watching it over the last 30 years; reluctant maybe to see a horrifying truth. The first time I saw the film was on Christmas Day, 1993 at the Hyde Park cinemas in Tampa, Florida with my father. I didn’t realize it at the time, but I was in the beginning stages of the flu with a high fever. Midway through the film, I had to leave the theatre as my illness caught up with me. I mustered the strength to return to watching the remainder of the movie, as I recall I could not go without finishing this masterpiece. I was horrified and yet amazed; amazed that this moment in world history could have ever occurred.

To see a man like Amon Goth (brutally and uncompromisingly played by Ralph Fiennes), a high ranking Nazi, excuse himself from his nude mistress’ bed and perch himself on his balcony to sniper random Jewish prisoners as a means of sport was sickening and twisted to me. Twenty five years later, it is this moment that has always stayed with me, as much of the story and scenes left my memory from so long ago. This moment as well as Spielberg’s choice to highlight a young girl in a red coat amidst a most somber black and white picture have stayed with me all these years. The glimpse of red serves as a truth to Schindler’s naivety. Spielberg is a thinking director. He never follows the manual. He chooses to think outside the box. A glimpse of a child dressed in red in a sea of black and white where mutilated corpses and possessions are aimlessly strewn about. It’s a marvelously telling moment.

Liam Neeson plays Schindler. It will likely be the greatest role of his career. Schindler is a man who even fools the audience until the very end when he reveals that the war has ended and his salvation has rescued these 1100 souls. Finally, his humanity no longer hides and he weeps to his accountant and accomplice, Itzhak Stern (played subtly and beautifully by Ben Kingsley). Schindler weeps for he could have saved more. Neeson is superb in this moment. His commanding stature crumbles, his materialism and wealth have disappeared. Neeson translates all of that clearly, and finally my tears arrive. Prior to this moment, I was numb to the Nazi tactics of gas chambers, careless bloodshed and apathetic separation of families and friends; perhaps because I’ve extensively studied it during my years in Yeshiva. Before Schindler’s List, much of the history on the Holocaust seemed like textbook fare to me. Spielberg made its terrifying and tragic reality real.

Ben Kingsley’s performance is so important as well. The architect behind the list, his portrayal of Stern is countered with contained fear and leveled sensibilities amid the senseless intentions of a dominant force of evil. His instincts kept him alive so that only he could help keep his comrades alive.

Schindler’s List won the Best Picture Oscar for 1993, only 50-52 years following the events of the Holocaust. Many survivors thankfully remained to see Spielberg’s epic premiere. People who I share this planet with experienced the most insane and heinous evil ever encountered. They were well to do people living normally until they were violently pulled from their homes, stripped of their possessions, separated from their families, suffered at the threat of murder, witnesses to other murders and hate crimes, humiliated, beaten, forced into slave labor in tightly contained ghettos and eventually thrust into concentration camps. Yet, these few survivors lived to carry on with their lives and deliver new generations, beyond this morally ugly and evil historic episode.

I’m being redundant as I’ve said it many times before, but isn’t that the point? The Holocaust and the Nazi regime only occurred around 85 years ago. This happened before. This can happen again.

Thank you, Steven Spielberg for Schindler’s List.

I don’t consider myself to be very religious anymore. Because of moments like the Holocaust, I question how a God could ever be possible. Still, for the survivors and those that perished, I can only say Baruch Hashem, and L’Chaim. 

Peace.  Progress.  Love.