Relay-Version: version B 2.10 5/3/83; site utzoo.UUCP Posting-Version: version B 2.10.2 9/18/84; site topaz.ARPA Path: utzoo!watmath!clyde!bonnie!akgua!mcnc!philabs!cmcl2!seismo!columbia!topaz!@RUTGERS.ARPA:milne@uci-icse From: @RUTGERS.ARPA:milne@uci-icse Newsgroups: net.sf-lovers Subject: Re: LADYHAWKE (!!! SPOILER !!!) Message-ID: <1703@topaz.ARPA> Date: Sat, 20-Apr-85 04:36:51 EST Article-I.D.: topaz.1703 Posted: Sat Apr 20 04:36:51 1985 Date-Received: Mon, 22-Apr-85 06:50:03 EST Sender: daemon@topaz.ARPA Organization: Rutgers Univ., New Brunswick, N.J. Lines: 110 From: Alastair Milne > Based on boxoffice results, I may be one of the very few people > in the world who liked DRAGONSLAYER. I very simply thought that it > was the best historical fantasy film that I had ever seen. ... > DRAGONSLAYER for the first time had a plot that would have made a > decent fantasy novel, and that was head and shoulders above anything > similar I'd ever seen on the screen. Well, count me as at least one other who likes DragonSlayer. Though the plot was not exemplary to my mind, the production certainly was. In particular, whoever produced the dragon deserved an award. Whether flying, landed, near, distant, or close-up, it looked great. The blasts of fire washing over stone and tree (and people) looked marvelous. The landscapes were also magnificent, but then, they were northern Wales and the Isle of Skye, so it's to be expected. > LADYHAWKE is a beautiful fantasy film set in Medieval France. . . May I suggest an alternative classification? I think of LadyHawke as a love story with fantasy elements. > Matthew Broderick's Phillipe is the main character and at the > same time comic relief. . . . Rutget Hauer is > nearly perfect as the mysterious Navarre. And lovely Michelle > Pfeiffer of SCARFACE and INTO THE NIGHT is terrible as Navarre's > lover. The problem is that she talks like an American and wears > lipstick and eye-liner. . . . Now for a balancing opinion: I liked Broderick reasonably well, but he unsettled me several times when he tried several times to sound English, and finally gave up. VERY few Americans succeed in sounding English: Richard Gere in "Beyond the Limit", and William Hurt in "Gorky Park", come as close as I've ever heard. EVERYBODY in this film (except for the bishop) sounds American. I expected a slight German colour to Hauer's voice, but no: he just sounded American. (Of course, since I'm British, it may fall differently on my ear than it does on American ears.) I really liked Michelle Pfeiffer, at least as much as Hauer. Her quiet dignity and courage on awakening with a crossbow bolt in her breast, her gentle manner with Phillipe (whom she awed), on the one hand; and her outrage when she saw the furrier with a pelt on his pack horse, her charge into the soaking, black forest to kill him, and the contempt in her face as she threw her jesses at the bishop, on the other, impressed me much more than Navarre's constant bluffness (whether this was the character, or Hauer himself, I can't say). He seemed to delight in throwing away chances and rejecting advice and aid (though I don't deny, if he was suspicious, and not thinking clearly, he certainly had cause). > And speaking of things out of place, Andrew Powell's rock score > is totally inappropriate. He takes scenes that otherwise have a > beautiful period and wreaks real havoc with the spirit and texture > of the film. I agree totally. Fortunately, rock occupies a relatively small part of the score, usually occurring when the bishop's men are searching for Navarre and Philippe. The effect is terrible when it happens, though: a powerful, captivating mode is suddenly broken and rendered trivial when rock breaks in. It is, after all, essentially trivial music. Oh well, it could have been worse: John Williams might have imported more of Star Wars, as he did with Raiders, and E.T., and who knows what else. > . . . And speaking of the sky, if you watch the > moon and know some astronomy, you will see something happen that is > actually an impossibility. As opposed to a man's turning into a wolf, and a woman's becoming a hawk? :-) Seriously, though, I don't really worry about that sort of thing. How about the broad, 20th century roads winding about the hills in the distance behind Imperius' castle? I suspect the relevant Ministry of Transport was unwilling to have its roads muddied and narrowed just for the sake of a film. And as long as shooting takes much longer than the time depicted in the film, the moon will appear out of phase in the film. Or did you have something else in mind? > Yet with all these faults, and more, this remains one beautiful > and enjoyable fantasy film. The settings, the photography, Hauer's > acting, the idea of the story are all marvelously realized. I can't resist. To my mind, the most beautiful and moving scene of the film: the four of them (Phillipe, Imperius, Isabeau, and Navarre in wolf form) had spent the night in a trench below the snow. Isabeau and Phillipe were awake and out as the sun was coming up. Isabeau was watching Navarre, and Phillipe, from a distance, was watching them both. As the light grew stronger, Navarre transformed. He was lying with his back to Isabeau, unaware that she hadn't transformed, and she was reaching for him, but not close enough to touch. He turned over, and saw her, with the light strong behind her, streaming through her fingers. He was astonished, and you had to wonder: would she be spared the transformation this time? He started to reach for her --- and she transformed. He threw back his head, slammed his fists in the snow, and roared in pain. Unnoticed, Phillipe turned away, his face wet with tears. That scene has stayed with me as nothing else in the film did. > If this > film dies at the boxoffice the way DRAGONSLAYER did, perhaps modern > audiences don't deserve good fantasy. Perhaps they don't. Personally, I am waiting for somebody to do a film of Lord of the Rings which really does justice to the book (unlike Bakshi, who virtually threw the book away). I am, of course, prepared to wait a good, long time. But if and when it comes, if it is not acclaimed at the box office, then I will say that modern audiences most definitely do not deserve good fantasy. Alastair Milne