Screen Scene

SCREEN SCENE

by John Carlos Cantu

THE LAST OF THE MOHICANS

[1992. Directed by Michael Mann. Cast: Daniel Day-Lewis, Madeleine Stowe. 20th Century Fox / Fox Video. 114 mins.]

  Some movies are simple pleasures. Not really much more than cotton candy for the mind, they don't have much to commend themselves intellectually, except to give us a brief diversion. Michael Mann's "The Last of the Mohicans" falls snugly into this classification.

   Looking past "Miami Vice," easily one of the most visually stunning television programs to ever hit prime time, Mann's big screen escapades - "Thief ," "Manhunter," and even the incredibly inept 'The Keep" - are consistent in two crucial fashions: they're impossible to champion critically; and there equally impossible to ignore - period.

   "The Last of the Mohicans" also fits this recurrent pattern.

   Heaven knows what James Fenimore Cooper would make out of this mish-mash of his famed novel; but there's not much question that he, too, would probably be wowed by the astounding technical, visual, and aural effects which Mann makes of this longstocking tale. Mann's imagination runs over time, and even if the narrative doesn't always work quite coherently, he lays the kinesthetic bombardment upon us so fast and so furious, we're hanging on by our shirt-tails for the nonstop sight and sound avalanche of our life.

   The erstwhile plot goes something like this: Natty Bumppo (Daniel Day-Lewis) - referred to only as "Hawkeye" in the film - is the proverbial country bumpkin, and he's got a couple of pressing personal problems to solve. Generally, his adopted Native American culture - the Mohicans, who adopted him as a youth - are improvidently getting themselves wiped out through successive genocidal assaults by their British, French, Huron, and Mohawk neighbors during the 1757 French and Indian War. Henee the literal meaning of the film's title.

   But far more important to him personally, Hawkeye's also had the outrageous good fortune to rescue British Commander Munro's lovely daughters, Cora and Alice, from an ill-timed scalping. Unfortunately for Hawkeye, his prospective father-in-law isn't particularly impressed with either his breeding or his ability to swing a battle-ax.

   Thus our protagonist is forced to repeatedIy prove himself, to the consternation of his Native American and French antagonists - all of whom would rather see him at the short end of a tomahawk as see him at all.

   Needless to say, the shy Hawkeye manages to fall headover-moccasins over the beautiful Cora (Madeleine Stowe) in the few seconds they have to make eye contact between maimings and other backwoods doings. Mating as if the future of North American civilization depends upon them alone, Cora manages to find out that some men can do quite well for themselves without a silver tongue, and Hawkeye in turn finds out that giving up the homeboys to become a homebody can have its rewards.

  Let's just say the future of our country is insured around the time of the movie's climax.

   Now, exactly why Daniel Day-Lewis chose to play this role isn't really clear; although, perhaps, one ought to speak to his financial advisor first. Maybe Day-Lewis' entourage figured that mangling his Queen's English would slide him past wrestling with the accent of an early American backwoodsman. It's a very close call, indeed.

   Still, even as Day-Lewis is slightly slumming it in the acting department; he's nothing if he's not a game-day player. His Hawkeye has the resiliency of a handsome Übermensch; the charming earnestness of a simple hayseed; and the deadly embrace of the proto-American frontiersman.

   Day-Lewis energetically plays Hawkeye for all he (and his character) is worth, and this unexpectedly virile performance is more than enough to candy-coat our imagination. For between Hawkeye, the non sequitur hunk; a lot of lust in the forest; and enough spectaculariy staged battles to whet our appetite for senseless mayhem, Mann's "The Last of the Mohicans" leaves us gasping to catch our breath.

ALIEN3

[1992. Directed by David Fincher. Cast: Sigoumey Weaver, Charles S. Dutton, Charles Dance. 20th Century Fox / Fox Video. 115 mins.]

   Admittedly, "Alien3" isn't quite up to par with its predecessors: Ridley Scotts 1979 classic "Alien," or James Cameron's ably handled 1986 follow-up, "Aliens." But this is only the short side of the ledger.

   On the positive side - and once you've begun to divorce your preconceptions based on these previous films - "Alien3" is quite a good film in its own right.

   It also does something that perhaps no other conclusion of a thematic trilogy has ever done in American film history.

   It concludes its series on a fascinatingly high, philosophical note.

   One suspects much of the credit belongs to Sigoumey Weaver who undoubtedly told the studio that they couldn't count on her playing Warrant Officer Ellen Ripley, a fourth time. As a result, rather than trail the film off inconclusively, "Alien3" ends with a powerful punch that wrestles with the horrific existential issues which have run through all three films like a golden thread.

   This is a particulariy difficult task as if's a bit much to ask an audience to accept the premise that Ripley has had to fight the same sort of demon across the expanse of the universe three times in a single lifetime. One visit from this monstrosity would be enough for most of us, but Weaver manages to invest her character with enough well eamed tiredness and scarcely suppressed exasperation as to allow us to engage our imagination for a couple of hours.

   In this third chapter, Ripley has crash-landed on an outer space prison, Fiorina 161, and after the autopsy and burial of her informally adopted daughter, Newt, she slowly comes to the realization that she's infected with an alien Xenomorph which can potentially reproduce itself a thousand times over. Following this shocking personal tragedy, she tries to impress upon the prisoners that there's another such creature roaming the recesses of their abandoned Fiorinian mines hungrily awaiting the birth of this Queen. Stranded on this darkened shell of a galactic no-man's-land, these misfits ultimately band together with Ripley in a deadly game of cat-and-mouse against this latter beast, while they nervously await rescue by the "Company" which has sought to capture these creatures for its own research and commercial purposes.

   A veiled allegory of an impending catastrophic epidemic, "Alien3" succeeds in just the gap that the previous two installments of the tale hinted at, but did not explore: the bewildering devastation one must feel when finding oneself consumed by an unspeakable terror which is ultimately uncombatable.

   It's this unspoken hopelessness which pervades the dark corridors of this prison-house of a planet. In the company of two-dozen spiritually deformed convicts, Ripley has finally found her logical family. The companions she initially lost in the spaceship, Nostramo, then the latter group she temporarily saved in the earlier "Aliens," were merely a foreshadowing of these alienated fellows; and the hard justice meted to each and every member of the cadre - including Ripley herself - documents the emotional journey necessary to transform dread into understanding.

   From denial and isolation to bargaining, depression, and acceptance, Ripley does something exceedingly rare for science fiction. She reshapes the frailty of her personal fate into a magnificent human gesture. If s this oddly phrased generosity which enlightens this claustrophobic parable about the regeneraron of one human soul. I

RATING KEY

Acting

Cinematography

Direction

Editing

Narrative

Sound

Special Effects

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