Word: causticity
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...major Italian directors have their own highly personal vision of spiritual and psychological deterioration, whether it be as flamboyant as Fellini's, as operatic as Visconti's or as brooding as Antonioni's. Now Salvatore Samperi, 25, continues the tradition with Grazie Zia, a bit of caustic surrealism that dazzles with the energy of youth while it is disappointing with excesses of inexperience...
...something or other with his life. As a photographer he has specialized in pictures of human excrement, which is presumably Feiffer's ultimate comment on the state of contemporary society. But the fiance is catatonically passive. At one point his would-be bride (Linda Lavin) says with caustic distress: "See, he doesn't know how to fight. That's why I'm not winning." Finally, the pair gets married out of something resembling verbal combat fatigue, and the bride is arbitrarily killed by a stray bullet shortly after. At play's end, the family...
ALBEE, though, betrays himself and the real force behind his vision by reaching too quickly for what has become the Superhero of the Sixties: he, of course, is Richard and Jenny's fifteen-year-old son. As played by Jack Simons, Roger is a kind of caustic Graduate. He is forced into combatting rampant evils like anti-Semitism with bewildered protests such as "Quite a lot of us are circumcised." (Try that at your parents' next bash.) From the audience's enthusiastic reception -- even though many looked suspiciously like their stage counter-parts -- it seems America finally does believe that...
...write a book mellowly asserting the "humanity" of a loving Creator. Though a critic of the Roman Catholic Church until Vatican II renewal, Barth had to concede that some of his most astute interpreters were Catholic theologians. He mixed profound spiritual insights with a wit that could be caustic or self-critical; a friend called him the only Swiss with a sense of humor. He was aggressively anti-Nazi, yet strangely unconcerned about Communist aggression. An ordained minister of the Reformed Church, he delivered his best sermons before those whom he called his fellow sinners-the prisoners in the Basel...
Still, there are a few scenes in Dark As the Grave that recall the control of Under the Volcano and Lunar Caustic, the humor and self-mockery that save Lowry's protagonists in spite of themselves. When the imagery gets a little too mucky even for Lowry's strong-backed readers to bear, he pushes his always tenuous symbolism gently over the edge, and it tumbles to the bottom with the almost comic relief of self-parody...