Cinema
The Three Musketeers ('PG', selected cinemas) Free Willy ('U', selected cinemas)
Free for all
Mark Steyn
Free Willy the whale, free the Guild- ford Four, free Musketeers . . . Ostensibly as disparate a trio as you could imagine, this week's movies seem strangely connect- ed. For example, to prepare for his role as a victim of British justice in Jim Sheridan's In the Name of the Father, Daniel Day- Lewis was thrown into — or, rather, threw himself into — a gaol cell for two days; similarly, for his part as Willy, an unhappy whale forced to take part in an aquatic show, Keiko the whale endured such hard- ships that the poor fellow's dorsal fin is still droopy. Alas, this was due to studio care- lessness rather than any sense of Stanislayskian integrity on Keiko's part. However, it does make you less inclined to swallow all the guff spouted at the end of the movie about how you can help whales.
Free whales, free Ireland . . . In the Name of the Father, which also wants to be taken seriously, plays fast and loose with the facts, as Alasdair Palmer pointed out in The Spectator (29 January). I don't have much to add, except that, aside from the question of whether Sheridan should have monkeyed with so many of the basics, it's depressing in what it reveals about film-
makers' contempt for their audiences. Film is a medium that should expand your imag- ination, but Sheridan obviously believes that US movie-goers are too lazy and parochial to comprehend something as ele- mentary as the distinction between 'solici- tor' and 'barrister', and need to have them neatly merged into the crusading lawyer of American television courtroom drama.
And playing free with the French . . . It's when you come to The Three Musketeers that you realise what's going on is more than just the routine opportunism of show business. A particular aquatic park owner, the British in general: these are easy tar- gets, and no one's going to worry about whether you're fair or not. But, after seeing what Stephen Herek's done to Dumas, you can't help wondering whether the French weren't right to fight for national culture in the Gatt talks. The opening sets the tone: it is 17th-century France, but, mysteriously, the two swordsmen locked in battle are a West Coast football jock with a neck as thick as his accent (Chris O'Donnell) and an effete, anaemic English ninny (Paul McGann). It's no contest, and soon the jock, D'Artagnan by name, is en route (as we francophones say) to Paris to join the Musketeers. The conventions are simple enough: nobody has a French accent except the Queen's maid; the good guys are American; the British mop up the losers, the jerks or, if they're lucky like Tim Curry (Richelieu), the queeny villain.
I liked Brando's Caesar. What's objec- tionable here aren't the accents — though they're erratic: Charlie Sheen's Aramis (that's his role, not his roll-on deodorant) speaks of the Duke of Buckingh'm; 0' Donnell's D'Artagnan prefers to say Buck- ingham; then again, D'Artagnan's heading for Calais, while Sheen opts for Cuh-Lay. Whichever you plump for, pronunciation- wise, it should be one for all. But that's merely a symptom of the general lack of a consistent take on the material. Sheen, Kiefer Sutherland (Athos) and Oliver Platt (Porthos) are supposed to be devoted ser- vants of the King, yet such courtly concepts as honour and allegiance are beyond them.
No doubt that stuff's for nerds anyway, but, if they don't believe it, neither do they have the courage to send it up. Instead, they play the Three Musketeers with the bloat- ed self-satisfaction of a 1970s rock super- group: Emerson; Lake and Palmer, Crosby, Stills and Nash, Aramis, Athos and Porthos — what's the diff? It's all long hair, beards, puffy faces, ruffs and tunics and too many late nights.
As always with films involving 200 miles on horseback, you vaguely suspect they're just galloping back and forth past the same copse and same brook. But, though they may be in a corner of a foreign field, these boys are forever Hollywood. As Athos cor- ners a little too sharply in their getaway coach, Porthos tells Aramis, 'Next time you drive.' The villainous Captain Rochefort is greeted with the withering barb, 'Rochefort? Isn't that a smelly kind of cheese?' Hmm. Probably only to a visiting American. At least Daniel Day-Lewis and Keiko the whale put in the hours.
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