Word: ringe
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...even admit he has a drug problem -- cocaine and alcohol -- until a tough-love therapist (Morgan Freeman), an A.A. veteran (M. Emmet Walsh) and a nervy fellow addict (Kathy Baker) help him see the dark before the light. Some of the early scenes ring as inauthentic as the Philadelphia accents; each supporting junkie pushes too hard, as if he were part of an Actors Lab experiment that failed. But there are home truths here. Mostly, the film shows, not preaches. And Keaton proves how fully a fine comic actor can inhabit a serious, potentially solemn film...
...which friends or teachers tacitly condone a pervasive drug culture. Bush, with much prompting from an officious young director of the program, is to enact a teacher's concern for a student who has been nodding off in class. The Vice President, casting his eyes uncertainly to the outer ring of reporters, asks what the other "students" will be doing while he approaches the woman teacher playing the student's role. "They will probably be listening," the director responds. The point is to demonstrate awareness of what is going on, to break the unvoiced conspiracy of acceptance. Bush...
...Wieland and Chereau proved, a radical Ring will ultimately be accepted if it is presented with dramatic force and intellectual coherence. Each new Ring director has the obligation to seek the spirit, not necessarily the letter, of Wagner's four-opera cycle, and Kupfer, director of East Berlin's Komische Oper, is no exception. He presents a cinematic rethinking of the myth that projects the action far into a grim, post-nuclear-war future, in which gods, dwarfs, giants and humans stumble through the detritus of a lost civilization in a futile search for salvation. As stern as a Lutheran...
...Ring productions, concept is everything these days, at least until a new generation of heroic singers -- Flagstads or Melchiors -- comes along. Vocally, this cycle offers only two major performances. Tenor Siegfried Jerusalem, in the title role in Siegfried, may lack the ideal resonance at the top, but his voice is fresh and warm, and he cuts a handsome, lithe figure as the hero. As Waltraute in Gotterdammerung, Waltraud Meier got the week's biggest ovation for a blazing performance...
Leading his first Ring, Conductor Barenboim leaves a mixed impression. His predilection for slow tempos is very much in evidence, yet occasionally he bolts precipitately, as in the final scene of Siegfried, when it is all that Polaski and Jerusalem can do to keep up. There is some piquant orchestral detail at times, but at others the texture is crude. Barenboim's challenge is to find a convincing, unified point of view...