Word: messiahs
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...SAVAGE MESSIAH Directed by KEN RUSSELL Screenplay by CHRISTOPHER LOGUE...
...wristwatches. His directorial tone has the subtlety of a timp roll played on an eyeball. A new Russell film, particularly one about an artist (the dramatization of artists' lives being his forte, or rather his fortissimo), is therefore to be approached warily -especially with a title like Savage Messiah. What squalling imp have those nuns of Loudun now suckled...
...sensuality. He is indifferent to the artist beneath. For his empathy with Gaudier-Brzeska is based on no more than the latter's rebellion against society's distrust of freely expressed emotion. It is finally a shallow empathy that perverts sympathy into sensationalism. He sees himself as the artist messiah, bridging the gulf between art and life with a film style incarnating creative energy. But his subject depends on its special social and artistic history for its form and interest, and Russell piles on period decor more for effect than for comprehension...
...Savage Messiah is not only as offensive as Russell's earlier films, but lacks their only redeeming virtue, the power of visual shock. Its ingredients are the same: scenes of destruction and decadence, of incredible decor, exaggerated sentimentality, twisted passions and a non-stop dialogue of references to the terrors and joys of artistic fervor. But by now, this melange of heavy drama and unbroken noise-making is as old as Hollywood's infant epics. The vulgar baroque that once amazed, is muted in The Savage Messiah and serves only to exacerbate the bankruptcy of Russell's vision. He projects...
...minutes he says aloud just what anyone who knows Dick Bach realizes he would say: "Look, voice. If you think I know what this means, you're absolutely out of your mind. If it means something, tell me." What follows is like a Ken Russell film version of The Messiah with George Frederick Handel composing away as flights of angels swarm over his harpsichord. The voice comes through to Bach like a three-dimensional movie, and as Bach writes it all down with a green ballpoint pen, it shows-and-tells the story of Jonathan Livingston Seagull. Precisely...