Word: heroism
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...other pivotal casting choice was Carver. In contrast to Hurt, who conspicuously struggled to seem effeminate, Carver comes across as a naturally fragile man fighting with every ounce of his being to be dignified, streetwise and tough. He gives the role a true heroism, and his periodic vaults into fantasy seem respites rather than utter retreats...
Mobs have an evil dynamic. An ethnic tribe, at its worst, is a supermob. A sense of narcissistic self-pity that is merely contemptible in an individual is transformed to heroism in the tribal context: a fierce, virtuous assertion of the group. That is why ethnic grievance -- a rising force in so much of the world -- is so dangerous. When the subjective goes tribal, the self-indulgence of one man or woman comes frighteningly alive, collective, suddenly legitimized, glorious even. What would be individual shame now blossoms into shamelessness. The weak and vicious transfer their worst defects to the larger...
...Patrick Shanley, sounds as if poorly translated from the Spanish: "What have we done that God now asks us to eat the bodies of our own dead friends?" Dissing aside, that makes for a poignant ethical dilemma and a telling religious metaphor. But Alive strands its theme of haunted heroism -- what's inside a man that compels him to survive -- in a snowbank of failed ambitions...
...what it doesn't show: the collision, the sight of May-Alice's mangled legs, even a clip from , the old movie she watches during the edgy vigil of her recovery. Passion Fish is an antidote to a male-buddy uplifter like Scent of a Woman. It suggests that heroism is found not in the public victories we achieve but in the intimate truths we learn to accept...
...Garnier, home of the Paris Opera Ballet, after a performance of his staging of La Bayadere. He needed dancers' support to stay upright. He was gaunt and emaciated, but the style was defiantly intact -- he was swathed in a huge gold-and-scarlet cape -- and so was the fiery heroism...