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The Majestic
***1/2
Cinema Releases - May 24, 2002
Rated on a 4-star scale. Certificate PG. USA.
152 minutes. Directed by Frank Darabont. Written by Michael Slone. Starring
Jim Carrey, Martin Landau, Laurie Holden, Allen Garfield, Amanda Detmer,
Bob Balaban, Brent Briscoe, Jeffrey DeMunn, Hal Holbrook, Ron Rifkin, David
Ogden Stiers, James Whitmore.
Frank Darabont makes movies that let us settle
in and get deeply involved -- movies like "The Shawshank Redemption" and
"The Green Mile", whose stories take time to unfold and are populated by
intriguing situations and engaging personalities. You can go to a Darabont
picture reasonably confident of finding old-fashioned, patient pacing and
striking, rewarding details.
"The Majestic" stars Jim Carrey
as a Hollywood screenwriter in the early 1950s who winds up on the blacklist
because he tagged along with his girlfriend to a couple of communist meetings
back in his college days. Carrey was on the verge of getting his big-budget
break before this news came, and he's more than a little unhappy. He drinks
one too many sorrow-drowning whiskies, goes for a drive, and next morning
wakes up on a beach with no memory.
The small town of Lawson is near this beach, so
Carrey wanders into its diner, where more than one person tells him he looks
kinda familiar. Turns out he looks just like Luke Trimble, a local war hero
who has been missing for eight years. Luke's dad (Martin Landau) and girlfriend
(Laurie Holden) welcome Carrey as their missing loved one, as does the rest
of the town, and Carrey himself eventually accepts it, becoming a better
person by responding to local well-wishers and helping Landau reopen the
family cinema, which was a town centrepiece before the war.
I get unreasonably absorbed in movies like "Dave",
"Return of Martin Guerre", "Sommersby" and "The Majestic", where the leading
man finds himself recognised as someone he may or may not be. The uncertainty
of those onscreen is intriguing, plus we in the audience meet a flood of
people at the same time as the protagonist, so this kind of plot is a great
vehicle for introducing colourful townsfolk.
"The Majestic" has a familiar cast of characters,
from the blonde sweetheart to the guy who owns the hardware store, and there
are blatantly tearjerking little motifs all around, such as the obvious set-up
and payoff regarding the cinema usher's desire to own a watch. But the movie
works, because Carrey acts even more like Jimmy Stewart than he did in "The
Truman Show", and Darabont directs with disarming sincerity and an old-fashioned
sense of class. This could have been a whole lot of slush, but it plays like
Capra.
Of course it all ends with Carrey getting his
memory back, remembering the blacklist and having to go testify before a
congressional hearing. The finale plays with power, though, as long as we
go with it, and in these days after the passage of the fascistic USA Patriot
Act, it's good to hear lines like, "The Constitution and the Bill of Rights
may be pieces of paper with signatures on them, but they're not just contracts
you can renegotiate." It's a pity that "The Majestic" failed to set the American
box office on fire -- the film is good entertainment, and shows clearly why
right-wingers are lying when they claim to be defenders of small town
values.
COPYRIGHT©
2002 Ian Waldron-Mantgani
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