User Reviews

After a slow beginning, Oscar and Lucinda meet and create a peculiar relationship with God on one side and the addiction of gambling on the other. The last half hour is quiet fascinating as Oscar takes a journey to sail a glass church down the river and into a small secluded town. This unfortunately was treated with rather hastily, not given the attention the early scenes received. But we still get the picture and by the end of it Ralph Fiennes' brilliant performance as the saintly manic, bible guilt-ridden, phobia riddled Oscar, makes it worth the while.

Mid-19th century tale set for the most part in Australia, about the relationship between Oscar (Ralph Fiennes) an eccentric Anglican minister who has set out from England and Lucinda (Cate Blanchett) an eccentric Australian heiress. Both characters have gambling issues and one is obsessive while the other is compulsive which I how they come to know each other.

Oscar and Lucinda find themselves drawn to one another not only by their mutual addiction but also by their loneliness and isolation. Their ultimate wager concerns the delivery of a glass church to an isolated settlement by Good Friday, which is further complicated by Oscar's insistence that it be delivered overland because of his phobia of open water - despite the hazards of the virtually untouched wilderness.

Directed by Gillian Armstrong with strong performance by both leads and a rather impressive supporting cast including Geoffrey Rush as the narrator. Unfortunately the story wasn't compelling enough.

*Oscar and Lucinda* is based on a brilliant, though very tough-to-adapt, novel by Peter Carey. It is a small miracle that director Gillian Armstrong succeeded so magnificently. (I'm giving all the credit to her: the end-credits tell us that the script was developed by the "Australian Film Commission" or something, whatever that is. I doubt that they were actually on the set.) For all you young filmmakers out there dreaming of making a Big Epic with Big Themes, I urge you to watch this movie right now, and learn how to construct a narrative out of the most rambling source material. The two titular characters -- one starting out in England, the other in Sydney, Australia -- don't even meet until about 40 minutes into the film; it's all the more impressive that we don't feel impatient for this meeting, realizing that their connection will occur as a result of the natural and logical development of the story. Aside from Oscar and Lucinda, Armstrong also has to manage about 8 or 9 other characters who will be crucial to the plot. Each character is introduced just when they need to be: the process is never hurried or confusing. As all the elements of narrative and character come together, we realize Armstrong has created nothing less than an art of cinematic fugue tantamount to genius.

Budding filmmakers may also want to take notes on Armstrong's judicious use of voice-over narration in the film. The Narrator pipes up only when he needs to, providing crucial information or the occasional bit of witty commentary. ("In order that I exist, two gamblers -- one obsessive, the other compulsive -- must declare themselves.") It's also marvelous how the Narrator himself, seemingly so omniscient, becomes the very culmination of the story. In other words, the Narrator is a key element, rather than a superfluous chatterbox -- the case of most movie narrators.

The story is set in the 1850's, revolving around a saintly young Anglican minister (Ralph Fiennes) who, trying to escape his gambling addiction, takes a ship to Australia. On board, he meets Lucinda (Cate Blanchett), an ahead-of-her-time independent businesswoman from Sydney who is returning home after a buying expedition for her glass-works factory. She is also nursing a gambling problem. Naturally, the two misfits form an immediate bond. Upon arriving in Sydney, Oscar promptly wrecks his ministry before it even gets started when he's caught playing cards with his new friend. Adding to his woes, he believes that Lucinda is in love with ANOTHER minister (Ciaran Hinds) who has already been run out of town -- banished to the church-less frontier -- because of his friendship with her. (Beautiful and single and a gambler, Lucinda is a sort of eye of a hurricane -- only her wealth keeps her from getting tarred and feathered, apparently.) The naif Oscar, despite all indications that his affection for her is reciprocated, hits upon a new wager: he bets Lucinda that he can deliver a glass church to Hinds via a dangerous overland journey across the continent. The stakes? Each other's inheritance . . . and, for Oscar, ultimate proof that he loves Lucinda more than any man.

This is a wonderful story, chock-full of some pretty startling ideas -- for instance, that religious faith itself is little more than a cosmic gamble -- and immersed in the visual symbols of water (i.e., Death) and glass (declared here as a solid form of liquid). The two symbolic motifs converge near movie's end, when Fiennes sits alone in the glass church as it floats down a river -- truly a magnificent sight to see that would justify a dozen lesser movies than this one. One review below mine judged this as "overdone": but it seems to me that if you aren't impressed with this image, then you just don't like the movies, sorry. I also differ with the general opinion that the climax of the film is intolerably depressing. It seems to me that God saves the saintly Oscar from an unhappy life shared with someone he could never love. True saints can never be with us for very long: they set examples for us, but they're soon called home to God. In any case, the movie's symbolism was telling you all along what Fiennes' fate would be.

Sorry for the long review, but this is a great film. Let me conclude by saying that Fiennes has never been better than here, perhaps because he's not handsomely and sulkily brooding, for once: Oscar is a true oddball, and Fiennes handles him delicately. Excellent work. And this movie also introduced us to the great Cate Blanchett, who has more than lived up to the promise that she manifested here.

9 stars out of 10.

TV Guide describes this as something like "two gamblers meet on a boat," but it's much more than that. It's a story of romance, religion, and ruin -- but not hopeless ruin.

The first half presents Raif Fiennes as a semi-deacon of a strict English sect, a young man who has been beaten into neurotic submission to the extent that almost EVERYTHING is forbidden. I'm not sure he wouldn't hesitate before scratching an itch. Estranged from his father for some slight, he supports himself by playing cards, giving the rest to charity. He leaves Oxford aboard the Leviathan for a ministry in Sidney. At the same time we meet Cate Blanchett, an ambitious young lady who enjoys gambling, does well at it, acquires a glass factory, and moves to Australia aboard the Leviathan.

The two of them DO meet aboard the ship and spend a lot of time together in Sidney, playing poker and making wagers on all sorts of silly thing, such as who can finish scrubbing the floor first. They're in love, of course, and Blanchett more or less offers herself to him -- she's something of a rebel -- but he shakily backs off.

The second half resembles "Fitzcarraldo," when she furnishes the components of a small chapel made entirely of iron and glass plates. Fiennes' job is to schlep it up overland through tough country to an isolated settlement. He gets the job done but it all ends rather badly. Maybe. I mean, he dies a horrifying death by drowning, but then he sees his smiling father reaching out to him, and then a smiling Blanchett reaching to him. I don't know what to make of scenes like that.

It's a very genteel story as befits the times. Towards the end, Fiennes does get balled by a horny widow but only when he's half conscious from exhaustion and illness. I didn't know it was possible and I'm still dubious.

The photography is crisp and at times epic. The art direction would be hard to improve upon. Blanchett and Fiennes play well together as two somewhat wild redheads. In a way, despite the skilled acting on everyone's part, what's most memorable is Cate Blanchett. She's an actress of considerable range, of course, but she's transcendently beautiful at times in this film -- that long face with its slitted blue eyes, that wide generous mouth, and that impossible, fluorescent nose. It's a face you could fall into.

I hate to sound like a Philistine, but although I have enjoyed many an indy film that was slow and deep and unusual, I found 'Oscar and Lucinda' such a mish-mash of events, characters and crazy actions that I eventually was left simply shaking my head and wondering what on earth could happen next, while not really caring any more.

I hated Ralph Fiennes as Oscar, wanting to jump into the film and cut his hair or give him a new hat and wardrobe. He plays a kind of holy fool, a sweet man overwhelmed by his own skinny limbs and awkward movements and tendency to have strange, non-epileptic fits. I appreciate the chances Fiennes takes here in playing such a character, but I'm afraid I prefer him as a romantic lead. Watching him in this role was as painful as it would be to watch, say, Brad Pitt play Lenny in "Of Mice and Men"--rather frustrating, and seemingly a waste of talent and good looks.

Lucinda (Cate Blanchette) is a more sympathetic character, a tomboy shortening her skirts for greater freedom in an era of female repression. Still, why on earth would a business woman like Lucinda back the idea of making and transporting a solid glass church for some outback town in Australia, especially after several of her advisers point out that the congregation would surely be burned by the sun through the panes? Apparently, love of Oscar has blinded her to all reality. Or else it is her desperation to gamble that drives her do so despite all reason in this case.

And the gambling! We know that respectable Christians at that time disapproved of gambling; and even today, gambling is perceived of as a dangerous addiction. Yet it still seems strange to see the social stigma Oscar and Lucinda face for their obsession. If these two characters kept losing, say, the rent money or food for their families, the social approbation might be more understandable. But they both win all the time. Besides, neither has a family, Lucinda is already rich, and Oscar gives his winnings to charity, so who is hurt by their betting? Only themselves, it would seem, and only because of Victorian religious mores, which appear to view gambling as some kind of horrid act like murder. In fact, Oscar gets away with murder, but he can't seem to escape being punished for his gambling habit.

This is part of the irony and humor of the film, and irony can be by its nature, very frustrating, especially when tragedy lurks so close at hand at all times. It reminded me of a Thomas Hardy novel, filled as it was with frustrating happenstance and bad choices.

The trip across Australia by the men taking the pieces of the glass church to its destination,seems to be so quick and apparently easy (with only one scene of a wagon mired temporarily by mud, for example, and no incidents of threats from the aboriginals) that we never really get the feeling that this is a very dangerous journey, especially comparing it to movies showing wagon trains crossing America around the same time, with the pioneers constantly in danger of attack by angry Indians. And yet we know that this must have been a rough journey; Gillian Amderson simply doesn't take the time to show us the difficulties.

Yes, the scenery is beautiful, but not amazingly so--or at least, not for anyone who has seen the Lord of the Rings trilogy, shot in New Zealand. To a Canadian, this looks more like British Columbia than Australia, pretty but tame. In other words, viewers are not going to be so thrilled by the scenery that they will forgive the film's strange pace and frustrating character development.

Only in the last few minutes do we get a satisfying sense of the film coming together. By then, it's a little too late.

-

Watching the film for a second time with a critic's eye did not do one thing to diminish the awe I felt the first time I saw it. I could not find a weakness. It's well-constructed, well-shot and well-acted. The story and characters are interesting. I care about the characters and their conflicts and I want to know what happens to them. What else is there? There's a moral, that's what.

So many people had a problem with the ending. Nobody likes an ending in which such a sympathetic character meets his end, but what other choice was there? Even if it hadn't been an adaptation, could one really imagine Oscar and Lucinda settling down, making a go of the glass factory, raising a flock of kids and sneaking-out on Saturday nights for some cards? No. We all want happy endings, but we all know too well that their existence is a blessing more than a given, and that has everything to do with why we crave them so much.

Oscar and Lucinda are misfits, pure and simple. They're ahead, or behind or beside or below their time. We know by now that people who are on the fringes of society are never treated well by it. I don't think the ending should have come as a surprise to anyone. That's how life was then and how it still is today. "Fit in or you're setting yourself up for sacrifice." We don't like to think of ourselves as the slaughterers of society's squirrely lambs, but if we aren't, who is? I think the ending's so disquieting to so many because nobody wants to think of him/herself as one of the wielders of the axe ... especially when such an innocent, like Oscar, is the victim. It's not a shock that such a misfit dies, the shock is that we killed him, under the guise of society.

The scene in which the husband-nabber, for all practical purposes, rapes Oscar, drives this home starkly and succinctly. One minute she's sympathetically lowing, "Look what they've done to you" and the next she's sealing his miserable fate for her own warped needs. Society's a self-serving hypocrite.

Unfortunately, that hasn't changed much for the better in 150 years. Anyone who calls this a "period piece" is so very wrong. The setting is merely a sly vehicle to slip into the front of our collective psyche those ills of which we already are aware, but which we daily choose to ignore. Any attempt, successful or not to accomplish this should be lauded.

This attempt was successful. I'm not going to go into any specifics about performances or camera angles. That would be an insult. I can think of so few films that teach so important a lesson. The obvious lack of ego shown by any participant is evidence that the perfect cast and crew was assembled and that they got the job done. They already know they did ... they've got the finished film as a beautiful reward for their hard work.

It should be required viewing for all as a beautiful lesson in tolerance. There are Oscars and Lucindas around us everyday. It's up to all of us to create the happy ending that we say we want to see so badly.