June 14–21, 2001

movies

Screen Picks

by Sam Adams

A Huey P. Newton Story

(premieres Mon., June 18, 9 p.m., Black Starz!)

Spike Lee’s film of Roger Guenveur Smith’s one-man show — which he performed in Philadelphia as part of the Fringe a few years back — sacrifices some intensity on the altar of visual interest. Never one to pass up an opportunity to show off, Lee fragments Smith’s sometimes-fragile, sometimes-ferocious re-creation of the Black Panther co-founder, inserting newsreel footage or using inconsistently applied blue screen to isolate Smith’s figure against a background of restlessly shifting images. (Lee seems to be taking his cue from such self-conscious performance films as Jonathan Demme’s Storefront Hitchcock, but he doesn’t have the temperance to apply his technique gracefully.) That said, Smith’s performance is eminently worth capturing, however imperfectly. Shuttling between politically-inspired rants and more personal musings — including a lengthy digression on Archie Bell and the Drells’ "Tighten It Up" — Smith (best known for his role as Smiley in Do The Right Thing) is obviously out to sketch a picture of Newton that goes beyond raised fists and violent provocation. Which is hardly to say that A Huey P. Newton Story shies away from Newton’s militancy, but that he’s not interested in hammering the same note for an hour and a half. His Newton is righteous, yes, but vulnerable, confused, charismatic, funny, possessed all at once — and the audience members raising their fists in response are for real. (You might accuse Lee of staging solidarity for the camera, but the same thing happened in Philadelphia.) Broadened beyond caricature or symbolism, Newton — even in fiction — fills a void. (Incidentally, chalk one up for Gil Scott-Heron: Black Starz!, the channel airing A Huey P. Newton Story, is only available on Comcast’s expanded digital service. Hopefully, this particular revolution will be a little more widely televised in the future.)

Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon

($27.95 DVD)

Without a doubt the most wildly overestimated film of 2000, Ang Lee’s tony chopsocky yarn so stunned audiences (critical and otherwise) with its dazzling fight sequences that they managed to overlook the deadly dullness of the rest of the film. Not exactly known for his viscerality, Lee stages his combat sequences with a quiet grace that for once warrants the term "balletic." On the DVD commentary track, recorded with longtime collaborator James Schamus, Lee cops to stealing just about every trick in the book from martial arts film masters like the late King Hu. (Let’s put it this way: He’s not exactly the first to stage a climactic duel in a bamboo forest.) Even without knowing Lee’s sources, Crouching Tiger still has the feel of a film condensed from a wide range of forebears; exhilarating, but never truly inspired.

The 4th Man/Soldier of Orange/Turkish Delight

($29.98 each DVD)

It’s hard to imagine that the director of Showgirls was once a critics’ darling in the U.S., but back when he was still a Dutchman making films abroad, Paul Verhoeven raked in accolades, awards, even an Oscar nomination. His three best-regarded Dutch films, issued on DVD with commentary by Verhoeven (who, for one, doesn’t seem to see much of a gap between his Dutch and American output), are without a doubt more literary and finely-tuned than movies like Robocop and Starship Troopers. But, oddly, they don’t seem as free. Those predisposed to prefer low-budget foreign fare to studio product can cling to every moment where Verhoeven points out the chances he takes and the complexities he layers that would never make it into an American movie. But both Turkish Delight and Soldier of Orange wear their art-house lineage on their cufflinked sleeves. Turkish Delight, originally released in 1973 (and voted the best Dutch film of the century at the 1999 Netherlands Film Festival) is both sentimental and in love with its own forthrightness. The story of a narcissistic bohemian sculptor (Rutger Hauer) who enters a blissful, then stormy and always sexually charged relationship with a free-spirited teenager (Monique van de Ven), the film features a lot of desperate hopping around (to denote liberated happiness) and liberal glimpses of its 19-year-old female star. (Skeeve if you will over the fact that van de Ven later married cinematographer Jan de Bont.) Soldier of Orange, based on a memoir by a hero of the Dutch anti-Nazi resistance, struggles to marry Verhoeven’s joyfully vulgar spirit to a fairly conventional us-against-the-Jerries tale. The salaciousness with which a Nazi spy waggles his tongue at a naked woman sent to distract him while the film’s hero (Hauer) sneaks off to meet with the resistance is all Verhoeven, but too much of the film bogs down in rousing clichés. The 4th Man, Verhoeven’s final Dutch film, is a different story altogether. Designed to "fuck the Dutch critics" after the universally poor reception to Verhoeven’s films in his homeland (the portrait of Dutch collaborators in Soldier was particularly hard to swallow), The 4th Man is a piss-take on Jungian symbolism, a grinning misogynist cartoon so loaded with overdetermined signifiers, even the most clodpated critic couldn’t help but spot them. Starring Jeroen Krabbè as a penniless but famous novelist who falls into a relationship with a mysterious woman (Renèe Soutendijk), the film riffs on the spider and the fly, Samson and Delilah, castration anxiety, repressed (and not-so-repressed) homosexuality and a horse-choking overdose of Catholic totems (not to mention the liberal thefts from Hitchcock and De Palma). It may be no more than an elaborate joke, but it’s a hell of a joke. Clearly the gateway to such over-the-top satires as Robocop and Troopers, The 4th Man captures Verhoeven at the precise moment he stopped taking himself seriously.