Word: epical
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...BEEN A WHILE since the last time anyone tried to make a movie in the style of Sophie's Choice a sweeping, panoramic, more-than-full-length feature patterned with word-for-word faithfulness on a bestselling epic. The classic of the genre is, of course, Gone With the Wind. Alan Pakula's new film has much of the grandness and majestic scope of such predecessors Based on the long-time 1980 bestseller by William Styron, which attempted to make some kind of comprehensive statement about the naive American outsider and the Holocaust, the movie progresses through Poland and Auschwitz...
Gandhi. Richard Attenborough's 3-hr. 20-min. film is a historical epic on the grand scale, but one that touches the heart with its moral earnestness and the marvelous humanity of Ben Kingsley's performance in the title role...
...first month, only one shot a day was completed, as Hoffman's complex makeup literally slid down his face under the lights. Eventually, it cost approximately as much to bring in a small-scale comedy ($21 million) as it did to film the life of Gandhi on an epic scale. ("Yeah, but they didn't have to shoot in New York," says Hoffman...
...matter how vast and tumultuous the crowds assembled for its most spectacular sequences, no matter what the cost and care lavished on its re-creation of vanished epochs, no matter how vividly it realizes the violence of great historical forces caught up in deadly conflict, the epic cinema finally depends on small matters-the touch of a hand, a look in the eyes, a whisper of dialogue-to make a lasting emotional connection with its audience. This is particularly true of films about figures whose claim on the attention of the world is exerted not through force of arms...
...Murphy. Four other films are touted as hot Oscar contenders: The Verdict, in which Paul Newman plays a burnt-out Boston lawyer; Frances, a Hollywood horror story starring Jessica Lange; Sophie's Choice, with Meryl Streep as William Styron's tragic heroine; and Richard Attenborough's epic Gandhi. These four films will be released for selective engagements in a few cities in the hope of garnering media attention and year-end critics' awards. But there will be less time and space available for serious pictures in competition with the inevitable Christmas hits. In shooting...