An American Rhapsody

It's hard to make art out of your own life, even when that life has been an eventful and dramatic one. The temptation to do it is both obvious and undeniable - after all, who knows your story better than you do? But this familiarity can be a downfall. No one will ever be able to appreciate the drama of your life in the same instinctive way that you do. You must take the difficult step backward from yourself as a person and look at yourself as a character, isolate what is essential and what is meaningful to you but meaningless to an audience, and then use all your skill as an artist to recreate, rather than re-enact, those moments which have defined you as a person and which you hope will define a character for your audience.

Eva Gardos does not take that step backwards in "An American Rhapsody," a new film which she wrote and directed "based on [her] true story." She shows scenes from her life which must have been powerfully affecting, but her script neglects to communicate the interior emotions of her characters in all but the most perfunctory way. What results is a well-acted film about a fascinating story which is nevertheless boring, because even a sympathetic audience will find it hard to become much involved with the film.

The film opens in ponderous black-and-white, the color scheme of choice for depicting countries in the shadow of the Iron Curtain - in this case, Hungary. Peter (Tony Goldwyn) and Margit (Nastassia Kinski) have suffered much at the hands of the Soviet-installed Communist regime, and are prepared to take a huge risk and attempt an escape to Austria and, eventually, America. The only problem is their baby Zsuzsi, who would pose an impossible burden during a 20-kilometer trek across patrolled fields. The parents make alternative plans, but they go awry. Fortunately, Zsuzsi is adopted by two loving parents in the Hungarian countryside. Of course, not matter how loving these peasants are, her parents desperately want her back.

Six years later, they get their wish, and Zsuzsi (played as a child by Kelly Endresz-Banlaki), is rechristened as Suzanne and comes to join her family in America. Yet even as she approaches adulthood (and is played by Scarlett Johansson) she still feels as much Hungarian as she does American. As Suzanne struggles with the extreme emotions of adolescence, she ponders questions of identity and homeland which seem to have no obvious resolution.

Obviously, this is a story worth telling. And indeed, some of the most searingly dramatic moments come across well, due in large part to the eloquent acting of Endresz-Banlaki, Johansson and Goldwyn. But for most of the film, the emotional impact simply isn't there. Gardos seems preoccupied with telling what she thinks is the whole story, at the expense of pace; a less busy tale told in a more measured way would have given both the actors and the audience time to register the profound shocks of this life. She also neglects to give Suzanne any real concern outside of her national identity; thus, the emotional high points come across as unconnected islands of pathos, rather than places in a life connected by character. Some of the plot details may be more true than realistic, as when zealously overprotective Margit nevertheless allows her daughter to keep a .22 rifle, with ammo, in the space above her closet.

Most distressingly, Gardos never manages to convey the roiling tension behind the words and actions of her characters. Suzanne states that her life has fallen apart, but from the audience's perspective, it seems as if she has simply had a typical adolescent spat with her mother that has reached a somewhat unusual peak. Hungary never comes across too well as a country, as a culture; we see brief, unconvincing glimpses, not the effect they have on Suzanne. Elsewhere, too, the deeper feelings are not available to us, perhaps because they are so available to Gardos.

"An American Rhapsody" is not a cynical failure in the manner of the summer blockbusters. It is an artistic failure. It attempts something difficult and worthwhile and does not succeed. Thus, its failure does not create the disgust one feels at another crass blockbuster, but rather regret. Nevertheless, you still shouldn't pay eight dollars to see it.

GREGORIO VILLALOBOS, HELPING CARRY THE LOAD

I saw this film about a person leaving the country at a young age and attempting to come to grips with her identity as an adolescent with Gregorio Villalobos, who left his country at a young age and attempted to come to grips with his identity as an adolescent, and he didn't like it either. In fact, he didn't like it so much that he decided to help me write my lead, using the final paragraph of my review of "The Deep End" as fodder:

"The [...] problem with "[American Rhapsody]" is that so much care and intelligence has been used to make it that you want more. The film has nothing "deeper," [...] and [...] cannot quite elevate anything in here to the level of a universal truth."

 

This is a bit more self-plagarism than I normally like to do, but it's a damn good idea, helping me write my reviews. In fact, I think it would be cool if people who hadn't actually seen the movie helped me write reviews. Like, "'Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back' takes the blunt that is current cinema in hand and smokes that bastard like it's the finest weed in all Jersey." Or something.

Dramas Home

Movie Reviews Home

Spam-O-Matic Home