DIRECTOR/SCREENWRITER
Tim Robbins
PRODUCERS
Lydia Dean-Pilcher
Jon Kilik
Tim Robbins
CINEMATOGRAPHER
Jean-Yves Escoffier
MUSIC
David Robbins
EDITOR
Geraldine Peroni
CAST
Hank Azaria (Marc Blitzstein)
Ruben Blades (Diego Rivera)
Joan Cusack (Hazel Huffman)
John Cusack (Nelson Rockefeller)
Cary Elwes (John Houseman)
Philip Baker Hall (Gray Mathers)
Cherry Jones (Hallie Flanagan)
Angus Macfadyen (Orson Welles)
Bill Murray (Tommy Crickshaw)
Vanessa Redgrave (Countess LaGrange)
Susan Sarandon (Margherita Sarfatti)
Jamey Sheridan (John Adair)
John Turturro (Aldo Silvano)
Emily Watson (Olive Stanton)
Bob Balaban (Harry Hopkins)
Jack Black (Sid)
Kyle Gass (Larry)
MPAA rating: R
Running
time: 132m
U.S. release: December 10, 1999
Video availability: VHS - DVD
Other Tim
Robbins films
reviewed on this website:
- Dead
Man Walking
|
Tim
Robbins' Cradle Will Rock casts its net out for a lot
of fish; it's not surprising that only a few of them make it
into the boat, then flip right back out again. The movie roves
around in the arty New York scene of 1937, when poverty and politics
rubbed elbows with painting and performance. The rich are getting
richer at the painful expense of the poor; capitalism is starting
not to seem like such a humane idea, so a lot of frustrated people
are turning to the rhetoric of socialism or communism (which
have their own pitfalls). Robbins tries to cover all this and
Orson Welles, too. Cradle Will Rock is an amiable jumble,
a sort of Schoolhouse Rock primer on the tenor of the
'30s and an homage to free expression.
The sprawl here is about an hour shorter than another recent
ambitious misfire, Magnolia,
and is therefore more forgivable. Besides, it's about
something (its trouble is that it's about too much, a dilemma
I almost wish more movies shared). Robbins has become an easy
and elegant director: he loosens his collar and takes us right
into the action, trying a few things that don't come off (a pair
of strange muses haunting playwright Marc Blitzstein, for instance),
but never putting too much stress on them. His camera is active
and alert without calling attention to itself, giving us a sense
of teeming simultaneity: Things are happening here, all
around, and the characters are sprinting to keep up with history.
So is Robbins' script, unfortunately. Generally, each character
steps forward and defines himself, either politically or artistically,
sometimes both at once. Some of this rattling on is engaging,
depending on who's delivering it (I enjoyed the rapport between
Ruben Blades' Diego Rivera and John Cusack's Nelson Rockefeller),
but other characters, such as the waifish homeless singer Olive
(Emily Watson) and, oddly, the blustering Orson Welles (Angus
Macfadyen), never really say anything. (The Welles of this film
is like a frat boy who somehow got entrusted with a theater company.)
Robbins also tosses in some padding, such as the anti-communist
Hazel Huffman (Joan Cusack) and the on-the-fence ventriloquist
Tommy Crickshaw (Bill Murray), who seems to go along with Hazel's
views because he's been snubbed by the allegedly communist Federal
Theatre.
Robbins builds the political tensions until they come to a head
with the suppression of Marc Blitzstein's pro-union play The
Cradle Will Rock, which Welles' company wants to perform.
Forbidden from acting it out on stage, the troupe in real life
performed the play, songs and all, from their seats among the
audience. Realizing that a climax involving a dozen talented
people sitting down isn't very cinematic, Robbins cashes in his
artistic license and lets the actors roam all around the theater
-- at a certain point, you figure they might as well be on the
stage. What should strike us as a great moment of ingenuity and
a defiant gesture -- and has been chronicled as such in various
Welles biographies -- comes off instead as a stunt, and the play
itself doesn't seem as if it was ever that impressive.
Perhaps that's not the point. The performance is intercut with
images of hammers smashing the giant mural Diego Rivera painted
for Nelson Rockefeller, and the film may be saying that art will
endure even if the corporate philistines and political bulldogs
temporarily smash it down. Well, yes, art endures if well-meaning
directors like Tim Robbins make a movie about it. There's a whiff
of liberal self-congratulation about Cradle Will Rock.
The movie's radical stance is that artists should get to do their
art without being destroyed by mean rich people, and aren't we
just wonderful for agreeing with that? Tim Robbins has the technique
and facility with actors to make a great movie, but he needs
to stop trying so hard to enlighten us. After all, Orson Welles
wasn't out to improve anyone's political consciousness with Citizen
Kane -- he was just having a great time, and Robbins could
stand to do a little hell-raising himself. Entertainment comes
first; enlightenment takes care of itself. |
