Change Your Image
cturner-5
Reviews
Into Thin Air (1985)
A must-see but disturbing film
Why would I so strongly recommend a film which I describe as deeply disturbing and which I would never want to see again? The reason is that we live in a world in which we do not adequately understand the dangers around us and how ineffectively our institutions deal with them. In that respect this film is an eyeopener. It is incumbent upon us as a society to do more than try to imagine what a victim and his family go through; since we are involved to some degree in punishing criminals, we must know what their victims experience. As great as this film is (especially Ellen Burstyn's performance), it cannot compare with the original documentary about the actual case. It was called Just Another Missing Kid, and the story was told by the family members and detective involved. (If you are interested in details about the documentary, it was made for a Canadian television series called The Fifth Estate, and it is search-able on IMDb under the title but the heading TV Episodes must be selected from the drop-down menu, since it is not a commercial movie title). We hear, practically daily, about horrific things being done to people, but knowing something of the circumstances and repercussions of one such case is a powerful experience. I vividly remember many details about it even now (some 25 years later), including the criminal's real name. I will never forget the documentary, this subsequent film, this case, this college student with the world ahead of him, and his wonderful family. I still think of them and grieve for them, and with them.
Father (1990)
Highly recommended.
This is an excellent film which should not be overlooked. Two of my favorite actors, Max von Sydow and Carol Drinkwater, give superb performances. I have admired Sydow since I saw my first foreign film many years ago and I'm sure I am only one of thousands of American men who fell for Carol Drinkwater when she portrayed Helen Herriot in All Creatures Great and Small. (By now she is probably sick and tired of that association.) Perhaps the standout, however, is Julia Blake as the troubled Holocaust survivor. This film deals with an aspect of Nazism not commonly treated in American films, namely that it is possible, perhaps even common, for people who are evil in most important respects, to be absolutely charming in more superficial ones. What moral stance must one assume when faced with the real possibility that a loved one has done unspeakable things? Shakepeare wrote that "love is not love which alters when it alteration finds," but is this really so? Can someone truly love one person, any person, in any meaningful sense of the word and not love humanity as well? The previous commentator is mistaken; Carol Drinkwater plays the daughter, not Julia Blake.