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| Focus
Year: 2001
Classification: Drama
Directed:
- Neal Slavin
Actors/Actresses:
- William H. Macy
- Laura Dern
Excellent!
William Macy is brilliant again! He portrays a role of a decent man caught up in big time trouble, trouble created by ignorance and misunderstanding. In this post World War Two time, Macy's character suffers through anti-Jew feelings in his neighborhood. It is interesting how he deals with such discrimmination and how he attempts to live his life in a meaningful way. "Meatloaf" plays a frightening but effective bigot..and supporting actress Laura Dern does a great job too. This is a "must see".
Prejudice in our midst
Arthur Miller wrote this novel, so powerful and so incisive in the subject matter that more than 50 years later we can still relate to it. BR>It took a vision such as Neil Slavin to get this into a film and he chose well his actor for the role of Newman: William H Macy, who is perhaps, one of the most underrated actors around, but one actor that always delivers with an integrity and honesty that makes him shine and make this film as enjoyable as it was reading the Miller text years ago.BR>Laura Dern and David Paymer excel in their roles, as well as the rest of the cast, but the biggest surprise was Meat Loaf in a very demanding role as the bigotted neighbor. This actor is just unbelievable and we can only hope he is given new opportunities to excel and shine on his own.BR>The cinematography evokes the New York and Brooklyn of the 40s and brings to mind some paintings by Edward Hopper, especially in two sequences: The first when Newman is looking for a job and leaves a building and he's seen walking down a desolated Manhattan street. The other one is the night sequence where the bullies are going to attack Newman, who is seen walking with his wife and long dark shadows behind them keep following until the confrontation. BR>This is a film worth seeing and recommending to people that enjoy Arthur Miller's work and the work of a good film director with the intelligence of Neil Slavin.
FoKus
Based on an Arthur Miller book of the same name, this brilliant period place set in New York while much of the country is at war centers around a Presbyterian who, when he puts on glasses, both looks Jewish and sees the startling horror of a racist America beset with job discrimination, virulent anti-black and anti-Semitic sentiment, and all around negative energy. Wonderful performance from William Macy and an ever-enchanting Laura Dern as the leads. Both think each other are Jewish. Miller, ex-husband of Marilyn Monroe, who is still alive as of 2004, was considered the dean of American naturalism before drama went off in another direction. Here he exploits his beautiful story sense to focus our horror on the historical tragedy of political factions who think they can fix the world by broadly identifying the particular group of others who are threatening it, thus giving themselves a sense of identity organized by murderous hatred no less than would-be righteous indignation. The leads mistake each other for Jewish even as they know they are not but the world, throwing a noose of love around their attempts to escape this case of mistaken identity, tightening it as they try to wriggle free. The depiction of the Union Crusaders, a Rear Window-like opening scene of the protagonist watching a rape of Puerto Rican woman, and the distasteful factions of American nationalists and globally gathering totalitarianism as it existed over sixty years ago are convincingly portrayed in this touching and revelatory love story.
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