Reviews

According to the description and critical reviews, one would think that "My Piece of the Pie" is about class issues, and how a single mother (France), dropped from the payroll because her company in Dunkirk has been wrecked by financial manipulation in high places, fights back.

Most of the movie is a set-up for the hasty and unpleasant conclusion. This set-up is very well done (therefore 3 stars), and one has expectations for a satisfactory resolution. The heroine seeks temporary employment as a housekeeper in Paris, and near the conclusion discovers that her wealthy and self-centered employer (Steve) not only has taken advantage of her sexually, but was actually one of the financial wizards responsible for destroying the Dunkirk company she worked for originally.

At this point, the tale goes downhill very fast and crashes at the bottom.

The way heroine France fights back is to impulsively kidnap Steve's adorable son Alban, who has been entrusted to her care. Furthermore, when Steve arrives with police to rescue the son, she and other Dunkirk workers resist and physically assault the young financier. Not only does she break the law, but her former co-workers will certainly be in legal hot water as well. Why would they become involved? Kidnapping children, whatever the rationale, is a particularly heinous crime. The darkness of this ending eclipses any lessons about class conflict or capitalist predation, and deflects attention from Steve and his questionable antics. In my opinion, this plot needs major rework on its conclusion to merit film critic Amy Taubin's curious rating as "Brilliant Social Satire".

With a title from an era popular song, and the generally favorable reviews, we expected this mini-series to be a typically entertaining British costume period piece. At first, it looked like it might be so, with the lead characters oddly bursting into lip-syncing some of the best tunes that came out of the 20s and 30s. But it was clear that the series was destined to irritate, annoy, and bore. Not only by the poor acting and script in between the musical interludes, satirically coupling the sordid adventures of an ineffectual sheet-music salesman and the other uninteresting people he encounters. In the first episode (the only one we could bear to watch, and even that we could not completely finish) one of the major characters is a stuttering epileptic street musician. We are treated to an entire seizure by this pathetic person, painful enough to witness in real life, but with as much entertainment value as an extended heart attack. Another notable scene is the salesman's simulated sex with a dowdy prostitute in an automobile. If this and more of same sounds interesting, "Pennies From Heaven" might be worth a few pennies from you. And that is all it could possibly be worth.

However, the lip-sync musical interludes, sometimes with imaginative choreography and close attention to era detail, were very well done, and kept us watching long after we lost interest in the story itself. This could be made into a truly entertaining show by editing out the prosaic perversity in between. Sort of an extended retro MTV. That is the only reason we would not give it a worse rating than we have.

After hearing of this famous film for years, I finally got a chance to see Ordet. Despite the obvious virtues well described by others (Dreyer's great photography with superb lighting and framing, and for the most part excellent acting), I was disappointed by Munk's plot development, especially its denouement - a totally avoidable descent into miracle-mongering mumbo-jumbo.

Let me explain why this was avoidable, and suggest that a more satisfactory ending would be possible, even while keeping most of the Ordet story elements intact. Knowing nothing about its trajectory, I at first welcomed the close proximity display of varying religious positions manifested in an early 20th century rural society, where such matters were taken more seriously and dogmatically than is usually the case today. I looked forward to how this diversity would work out, and what point would be made of it. First, you had Patriarch Morten Borgen, who is committed to a less severe form of Protestantism, and second, his son Mikkel, who is determinedly not religious. Third, his son Johannes who had become obsessed with Kierkegaard (a Danish existentialist) that he read while in college, and had returned to the farm thinking he was Jesus, looking down on the others, and given to long boring soliloquies on these matters. Despite Morten's annoyance and his own rigid beliefs, he seems to accept with regret the apparently psychotic Johannes, and is tolerant of the admirable and hard working Mikkel. But he is quite rigid with the third son Anders and his love for Kirstin, a daughter of Peter Petersen, who leads a much more strict Protestant gathering. Petersen also rejects Anders, which leads to some comedy involving Borgen pride. The families almost come to blows over the matter, and Petersen predicts bad tidings for the Borgen farmstead. There are elements of class conflict here; Petersen is an impecunious self-employed tailor with only his skill and tools, while Borgen is a hereditary landowner as well as farmer.

When Mikkel's pregnant wife, Inger, has complications with delivery, Johannes' mouth swings into action, first correctly predicting the infant's death and then that of Inger - despite the doctor's opinion that she is beyond danger. This awes the religious Morten almost as much as the deaths sorrow him. But then Johannes inexplicably bolts from the farm and is nowhere to be found. The film audience may be relieved that this gloomy guy seems to be out of the picture. Mikkel tries to be stoic about Inger's apparent death, up until viewing his wife's body in the casket. Meanwhile, Peter Petersen is sorry for his prediction of doom, has a change of heart, shows up at Inger's funeral, gives his daughter's hand to Anders, and reconciles with Morten. Religious dogmatism and division seem to have taken a back seat at last, and though Inger lies still, there is a rare cloud of joy and tolerance in this dark depiction of Denmark.

Suddenly, Johannes reappears at the funeral, looking less crazed, but still full of chutzpah. Waving the magic wand of his ideology, he raises Inger. Mikkel is so overjoyed that he forgets his principles and essentially promises to become religious. The others, including an impressionable child, are thrilled. The doctor, also at the funeral, smiles but is noncommittal. What could have gone through the good doctor's mind might have been the seed of a plot alteration that would raise Ordet itself from a dead religious tract to a live message of tolerance and good will.

Even in the 1920s, doctors were aware of occasional although rare graveside catalepsy, where the apparently dead arise before burial. It could be that Johannes had come to his senses, showed up due to guilt for the hurt caused by his religious snobbery and dire predictions, and merely wished to apologize for his behavior - with no magic word ("ordet" in Danish) necessary. The recovery from catalepsy could have occurred after this apology, perhaps along with some final words from the good doctor explaining what happened. It wasn't so in the Dreyer movie, but it could have been developed that way. The result would have been more enlightening as well as more entertaining.

Since some of the reviews compared "Suture" to a Hitchcock, we watched it waiting for a rationale for why nobody seemed to grasp the lack of resemblance between the presumably half-brothers (one has distinct Afro-American features, the other does not). Could everyone here who pretended not to notice be in a conspiracy to cash in on the white brother's fortune? Didn't seem likely, since nobody was shown even suspecting, but we endured this bore to the bitter end just to find out. No MacGuffin. No relationship to Hitchcock. A complete waste of time, not only for the viewers, but for those involved in making the film.

"End of the Line" is a worthwhile movie for all reasons other reviewers have noted. However, the objection is made that a railroad could not be restructured as an air freight business, and so the plot supposedly has a gaping hole. This misses the point. Due to the special situation in the US, railroads have been losing freight contracts to the trucking industry for years, and small towns are most affected, just as illustrated in the film. Therefore, it would be reasonable for Southland to liquidate unprofitable rail holdings and invest their capital in air freight, which carries a different class of goods and is more profitable. A few shots of semi-trailers pulling into Clifford at the beginning of the film might have made the point, but in restructuring the business one doesn't expect air freight terminals to be located in such small Arkansas towns anyway.

Although it is hard to believe these two fellows would have been able to steal the train under ordinary circumstances, remember that the acting president found out about this and wanted to co-opt the situation for advertising purposes, and so there was a degree of complicity. Perhaps enough for it to come off.

The film is quite pointed about the lack of compassion of capital for the workers, but this is done in an amusing light-hearted way. And the solution for the future of these workers, in spite of the feel-good ending, is left realistically ambiguous.

Go ahead and enjoy this good-natured and well-acted film.