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About Just out. (Portland, OR) 1983-2013 | View Entire Issue (Jan. 1, 1985)
“ Brother From Another Planet" and “The Fourth M an" hq E lean or M a lin The B rother From Another Planet is nicelv put together from beginning to end and is loaded with laughs, given the serious subject m atter — racism. By now everyone must know the premise — a slave from another planet escapes on a space craft and lands on earth on Ellis Island. He cannot speak, possi bly a condition imposed upon him because of his enslavement. He looks m uch like the rest of the black men in Harlem where he ends up. except that he has three toes on each foot. One foot was missing on his arri val. and he had to regenerate it himself his first night on earth. He is superior to earth lings in several ways — an uncanny knack to fix machines by touching them. He is also a sensitive, able to see, feel, and hear things the rest of us are unable to perceive, both past and present. He is being pursued by a couple of space m.p.'s, dressed in black, stiff looking guys who track him with the aid of some kind of interplanetary dictionary and culture manual. Director. John Sayles. who plays one of the m.p.s. gets a lot of mileage out of juxtaposing characters of different backgrounds and points of view. At a neighborhood tavern where several scenes are set, the space trackers are shown to be laughable, and draw immediate distrust from the regulars. At a later time, two white guys from out of town duck into the bar looking for directions to the subway. They are uneasy, and in trying to fit in they also look foolish. They m ight just as well be from HELEN L C T T E I E G E PucToecAPny another planet. Mot speaking gives the part of the Brother more potential, and Joe Murphv does a super job of portraying this interplanetary fugitive. The costumes are great, the cast is excellent, down to the smallest roles, and. best of all. though this is a “ message movie, it is always entertaining. The misadventures the hero goes through, the colorful characters he meets and the satisfying resolution of the storv makes this a great flick. Don't miss it. The Fourth vIan. which plaved around town during November and December, is the perfect movie to go to if you are liberal, agnostic and 7or of a literary bent. Written and directed by the man who gave us Soldier o f Oranqe. <a wonderful war movie), the thoroughly engrossing plot is played out through a series of literary technigues. Pre sented as they are in filmic form, they work beautifully. We find out in the beginning that the main character in the story is homosex ual. an alcoholic, and that he has vividly im agined fantasies. He imagines he has killed his voung lover: in the next scene, the young man is again playing his violin, coolly inform ing the main character (an author), that he'll have to take the train to his lecture, it's the voung man's turn to use the car. At the train depot, the author sees a hunk of a young guy in the magazine shop, is smitten, and follows him out to the train. The young man departs on the train to Cologne, and the author goes off to his lecture in a little town on the coast (of Holland). While on the train he sees vivid images, so intense he thinks they m ight be real. This movie is even more visual than most movies. The images are all of startling things, like a poster for a hotel that, next view, has blood on it. Blues and reds are the main colors used throughout these episodes, and details from one set of images will occur in another. At the train station, the author approaches a man dressed formally, and inguires if he is I 4 1 V f in«* I ( i n i s IC * \ . H . y ml j j j - 11 »< the person sent from the literature club to meet him. The man turns out to be an under taker and he is picking up a casket. The author thinks the ribbon on the casket has his name on it. but the undertaker pulls up the ribbon, and some missing letters appear to form another name. “ Hermann. " At the lecture, the author is filmed by a voung woman dressed in red with a movie camera. At the intermission, she invites him to her home and he asks about provisions for a hotel room. She says they have a reserva tion for him at the town's finest hotel. He looks across the street at the hotel, and it is the same one in the poster earlier — not only that, it s the same night view as on the poster. He tells the young woman he will stay with her if he misses the last train, and since it s im portant to the plot, of course, he misses the train. The young woman drives him to her place, a m ansion by the seashore, with a deluxe beautv salon and luxurious living quarters inside. The neon sign has some letters out. It’s supposed to say “ Sphinx." but it says "Spin." — the Dutch word for spider — in stead. Another little word game and set piece where missing letters fall into place. That night the young woman seduces him He has a dream the woman has emasculated him with a pair of barber shears. In the dream, she is wearing green Fingernail polish. The wom an awakens him and e are relieved to see it is a dream, which we know right away, because she is wearing red Fingernail polish. In the next scene, it is morning, she is wearing a green uniform and painting her nails the same seafoam green as in his dream. This woman seduces the man materially when she invites him to live with her. and showers him with gifts. One gift is a shirt that once belonged to her late husband. She gets him to stay a few more days by leaving an 8 x 10 glossy photograph of the voung man he had seen at the train station (in a red bikini), as as bait. His name is Hermann. If there was anyone in the audience who had not had any suspicions about this woman, they sure did by now. The young woman goes to Cologne to get the young man and bring him to her home, with the unspoken promise that the author will have a chance to enlighten him sexually. The young man is a gay basher, but the au thor seduces him anyway. But just in his m o m ent of trium ph, the author looks around and sees they are in the crypt containing the ashes of the spider woman's three loving husbands who have gone before. The previ ous night, he had stumbled upon movies the woman had left accessible, and they were movies of the three weddings and the three unfortunate husbands. One died in a parachute jum p, (in that section, the young woman is shown with scissors, jokingly pre tending to cut the lines. In another scene, the voung husband gets out of the car (she is shown in the car — just iv h o is taking these movies?) in a jungle zoo environment, and is killed by a lion. In the third scene, the young husband takes off in a boat and is drowned when someone in a speedboat capsizes his craft. Now. the author is drunk when he sees these movies, and we wonder if he is en hancing these moving images from the al cohol or from his author's imagination. If the woman did edit these movies down to the wedding, then the death scenes, m ight she then be very strange? Anyway, they are in the crypt because the author saw a woman he had seen earlier in a vision and he followed her. He had seen the door to the crypt in the same vision, and the woman (in a blue coat) in the crypt, with three hanging beef carcasses. ^he author, now in a state of panic, decides *o ]et out of there right awav. ' m dvinq to tell vou the rest, but will exer cise a lot o f restraint and just say that at the end. we are left wondering if the young wo man is a witch, or if the author has flipped out because of the alcohol or his authorhood. His thinking she is a witch, after all. m ight only be a manifestation of his m istrust for women. On the other hand, a female character who appears throughout the movie in different guises, turns up as the nurse in the emergency room. The author thinks she m ust be the Virgin Mary, com e to warn him about the witch. Maybe she represents the other side of the female character to the author. The characters this woman plays are benevolent, but enigmatic. She says she is not Mary. The doctor's m iddle name, however, is Maria, and he's a Catholic with six children. But he thinks the author has gone mad. The doctor is the man who met the author at the train to escort him to the lecture. He knows about the three un fortunate accidents and he knows about the author's alcoholism and the weak-m inded ness brought on by his authorhood. He sympathizes with the woman for her heart break, and suspects the author of diminished capacity. This movie is witty, beautifully filmed, well acted, not a frame is out of place. It is best seen with a friend, however, as there will be lots of questions you'll want to ask someone, and you'll want to compare notes. Just Out is requesting contributions from others in the community. Just Out needs book reviews, Oregon news, com puter talk, business news, movie reviews, opinions, commentaries, religious news, sports, profiles. And who. what, when and where. Just Out loves tips but Just Out also requires people to talk about them. How about it? Call 23 6-6628 or write Just Out, PO Box 15117, Portland, OR 97115. MUSIC IN THE MOVIES Rock, Jazz, Soul, Country, & Blues on Film Northwest Film Study Center January/February 1985 221-1156 fo r schedule 1219 SW Park Ave. Portland, OR 97205 u Just Out, January, 1985