Word: bosch
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Penderecki: The Devils of Loudon (Philips, 2 LPs; $11.96). Focusing his threnodies and oratorios on man's worst moments (Hiroshima, Auschwitz, to name but two), Poland's Krzysztof Penderecki has emerged in recent years as the Hieronymus. Bosch of contemporary music. Here, in his first opera, he examines the nightmarish moods surrounding the torture and execution (at the stake) of a falsely accused 17th century French provincial priest. Penderecki's lurid vision of hell on earth rivals Berg's Wozzeck and Lulu. Splendidly performed by the Hamburg State Opera, Devils is clearly the operatic record...
...aura of hallucination. Russell lashes his actors into a histrionic verve that is reminiscent in equal parts of the Royal Shakespeare Company, the Living Theater and Bedlam. The supporting cast (Dudley Sutton and Michael Gothard most prominent among them) act like a chorus and look like creatures from a Bosch triptych. Oliver Reed is suitably forceful as Grandier; it is indeed his best performance. Vanessa Redgrave, a consummate actress, is fine as Sister Jeanne, except that she tends to get lost amidst all the sound and fury...
Children of War. The streets of Saigon contain an incredible panoply of Hieronymus Bosch figures-limbless veterans stumping about in camouflaged fatigues, hideously napalmed women nursing children on the sidewalks, deaf-mute prostitutes selling their wares in sign language, and lepers holding hats in gnarled, swollen hands. But few are more poignant than the ever-present "street children...
Given the political nature of the subject, the temptation is toward a hopelessly academic treatment, but Saura, for the most part, avoids high-minded moralist (though there is in particular one strained metaphor of a paralyzed right hand for right-wing ideology). Like Bosch's fifteenth century painting from which Saura takes his title, the film tries to step inside the allegory it sets up and give itself to a wide-eyed fascination with the workings of vice. Saura has learned from Bunuel, whom he openly imitates at times, how to use sensual indulgences to make an intellectual point...
...LEAST some of the time, the world appears to me as a painting by Hieronymous Bosch; were I to follow my conscience then, it would lead me out into the desert with Marion Faye, out to where he stood in The Deer Park looking east to Los Alamos and praying, as if for rain, that it would happen:'... let it come and clear the rot and the stench and the stink, let it come for all of everywhere, just so it comes and the world stands clear in the white dead dawn...