1980 Week: Resurrection

          Ellen Burstyn’s crowning achievement in movies might be her multidimensional star turn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), though strong arguments could be made for her fearless work in The Exorcist (1973) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Obscured by these famous movies is the offbeat gem Resurrection, in which Burstyn not only incarnates the complex facets of a fully rounded individual, but in which she explores realms beyond normal human understanding. As its title suggests, Resurrection is about a woman who dies for a brief time before returning to life, and upon returning from “the other side,” she gains supernatural healing powers. As Burstyn articulated in her autobiography, she’s been on a lifelong spiritual journey, so in some ways, Resurrection might be her ultimate role. It’s a problematic film that some viewers will find too incredible, and even fans of the picture are likely to quibble about plot points. Nonetheless, most of what happens onscreen in Resurrection is memorable and strange and touching.

          Burstyn, who received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for the picture, stars as Edna, an everywoman who experiences a terrible car accident. Her husband dies in the crash, but Edna rouses despite being legally dead for a period of time. Upon discovering her brush with morality has gifted her with special abilities, Edna gradually detaches from her old life and becomes a faith healer. She also falls in love with Cal (Sam Shepard), a deeply religious man whose beliefs allow him to accept the “miracle” of Edna’s supernatural power. Yet a schism grows in their relationship because Edna refuses to acknowledge God as the author of her destiny, which puts Edna on the road to the film’s powerful final act.

          Written by the imaginative Lewis John Carlino and directed by the reliable Daniel Petrie, Resurrection has a bit of a TV-movie feel, but the smallness of the presentation is perfect for the subject matter. By eschewing grandeur, Petrie keeps the focus on the turbulence that paranormal phenomena causes in Edna’s life and the lives of those around her. Seeing Edna do incredible things sparks revelatory reactions, with desperate people seeing Edna as the deliverance they crave, small-minded people seeing her as a personification of everything that frightens them, and spiritual people seeing Edna as proof that forces beyond man guide the universe. Through it all, Edna experiences a litany of surprising emotional changes, some of which are more believable than others, but the stark contrast the filmmakers draw between the person Edna was before her transformation and the person she is at the end of the story makes a powerful statement about human potential.

         Burstyn commits wholeheartedly to even the most outlandish scenes, thereby grounding the picture in simple emotional truth. The fine supporting cast, which also includes Roberts Blossom, Jeffrey DeMunn, Richard Farnsworth, Eva Le Gallienne (who received on Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress), and Lois Smith, helps weave a canvas of rural authenticity, with Shepard’s fire-and-brimstone ire providing a sharp counterpoint to Edna’s embrace of the mysterious. Resurrection is far from perfect, but it’s filled with ambiguities that provide fodder for fascinating conversations.

Resurrection: GROOVY

Days of Heaven (1978)

          Much of the mythology surrounding enigmatic filmmaker Terrence Malick stems from the making and aftermath of his sophomore feature, Days of Heaven. Following idiosyncratic artistic instincts rather than Hollywood convention, Malick took nearly three years to craft this moodily poetic work, which treats its simplistic storyline like an afterthought. During that time, rumors spread about the director’s offbeat methods: For instance, he dictated that large sections of the film be shot at dusk, thereby abbreviating many of his shooting days to short bursts of activity. Then, after the film received a mixed critical reception, Malick disappeared from the Hollywood scene for 20 years. His mysterious withdrawal cast Malick as an artist too pure for the crass ways of Hollywood, triggering years of reappraisal and rediscovery.

          By the time Malick resumed directing with The Thin Red Line in 1998, Days of Heaven was firmly entrenched alongside the director’s debut feature, Badlands (1973), as one of the most respected films of the ’70s. Does it deserve such rarified status? Yes and no. Visually, Days of Heaven is unparalleled. Malick and cinematographers Nestor Almendros and Haskell Wexler mimicked turn-of-the-century paintings and photographs to evoke the supple textures of a Texas wheat farm circa 1916, the movie’s central location. Malick presents several astoundingly beautiful scenes of workers wading through fields, their bodies silhouetted against pastel-colored sunsets, while composer Ennio Morricone’s lilting music evokes a time when life moved at a more contemplative pace.

          Working with frequent collaborator Jack Fisk (credited here as art director), Malick oversaw the creation of a remarkable focal point, the elegant mansion that sits atop a wheat-covered hill, and Malick uses this structure as an effective metaphor for man’s tumultuous relationship with nature: Not only is the house a shelter during weather, it’s a place where relationships that had previously been allowed to roam freely get trapped within the conventions of propriety.

          The main plot, which never quite gels because Malick leaves many details unexplained and/or unexplored, begins in Chicago. Traveling workman Bill (Richard Gere), his girlfriend Abby (Brooke Adams), and his little sister Linda (Linda Manz) flee Chicago after Bill kills a supervisor during an argument. Upon reaching Texas, the trio accepts work on the wheat farm, which is owned by a sickly man identified only as The Farmer (Sam Shepard). For murky narrative reasons, Bill and Abby pretend to be brother and sister instead of a couple. So, when The Farmer becomes interested in Abby, Bill encourages the romance—believing The Farmer is terminally ill, Bill hopes to seize The Farmer’s wealth through marriage and build a new life for his family. Unfortunately, complications ensue, leading to heartbreak and tragedy.

          Despite the gifts for incisive storytelling he displayed in Badlands, Malcik badly fumbles basic narrative elements in Days of Heaven. His characters are ciphers, his pacing is erratic, and he relies far too heavily on the narration spoken, in character, by Manz. (A similar device was magical in Badlands, but here the narration just seems like a desperate attempt to add coherence.) Thanks to these flaws, the whole movie ends up having the hodgepodge feel of a student film, albeit one with awe-inspiring cinematography. Nonetheless, Days of Heaven casts a spell, which is a rare accomplishment.

Days of Heaven: GROOVY

Zabriskie Point (1970)

          Even though Zabriskie Point is the epitome of counterculture-era cinematic pretention, the film is undeniably arresting. Italian director Michelangelo Antonioni, continuing the English-language adventures he began with the sexy ’60s hit Blow Up, set out to make a tone poem about the flower-power generation. To achieve this effect, Antonioni and his various co-writers (including Sam Shepard) juxtaposed a pair of archetypal characters against the symbolically and visually potent backdrop of an American desert. Unfortunately, using metaphors instead of real characters, and representative predicaments instead of real situations, gives Zabriskie Point a desperate quality—every frame of the movie strains to reach the level of High Art. Shots are photographed from oblique angles that form beautiful but nonsensical compositions; locations are either absurdly picturesque or outrageously ugly; the music score by Pink Floyd (and others) winds and whirls through weird psychedelic textures; and even the attractive leading actors feel like colors Antonioni plucked off his palette.

          The story, which is more of a series of minor events than a proper narrative, goes like this. Mark (Mark Frechette) is a radical student at a university in Los Angeles. During a student demonstration, he aims a gun at a policeman, but someone else shoots the cop instead. Nonetheless, Mark flees and gets accused of the crime, making him a fugitive. Meanwhile, Daria (Daria Halprin) is an ambivalent young woman working for (and possibly sleeping with) an Establishment figure, macho real-estate developer Lee (Rod Taylor). The protagonists meet when Mark steals a small plane and flies to Death Valley, where Daria is driving to join Lee for a business meeting. Mark buzzes Daria’s car with his plane, then lands. Soon, the duo wander through the remote wilderness of the desert, eventually having sex in a notorious sequence: The kids’ lovemaking is so beautiful and pure it causes visions of other writhing couples to appear all around them, leading to a trippy tapestry of hippies humping across the horizon.

          This being an early-’70s social-issues movie, the good vibes give way to a heavy scene, with lots of “poetic” violence during the climax. It’s entirely possible that Zabriskie Point is about something, although the interpretations that immediately come to mind seem naïve and stilly. (Capitalism equals death, nothing beautiful lasts, sex is the only real honesty, and so on.) One hopes Antonioni was aiming higher than that, and, indeed, critics have spent years trying to determine whether the film is legitimately artistic or merely audacious. Still, there’s no denying that Zabriskie Point is among the must-see pictures of its era, since it presents the angst and idealism of a turbulent time in a singular fashion. As the narrator of the movie’s fabulously vague trailer muses, “Zabriskie Point—how you get there depends on where you’re at.”

Zabriskie Point: FUNKY