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Carried Away (1996)
Two thumbs up for the forgotten film and for a surprisingly deep
performance from Dennis
Hopper.
Scoop's notes in white
So if I told you that the movie stars
Dennis Hopper and he has sex with a 17 year old girl,
you'd think it was some film about biker psychopaths. With Gary Oldman as his psycho mass murderin' best
pal, right?
Wrong.
You're forgetting that Hopper has two
characters.
- Type A is the cool-blooded
psychotic seen in Blue Velvet, Waterword and Speed, and
- Type B is the lost and lonely midwesterner seen
in Hoosiers.
This film features Type B Hopper, and it is some
of the best work he has ever done. Hopper plays a depressed
middle-aged man in a depressing small town. His mother is
dying. He's been dating the same middle-aged woman for six years. He's a plodding, uninspired schoolteacher, and his family farm
has failed. His heart is pure, but his life is
safe and hardly worth living ...
... until a sexy nymph of a 17
year old and her retired Army dad move into town.
The vixen ends up in Hopper's class
and, shortly thereafter, in his bed. Hopper never had any intention of making
a move on her, but she initiated the sex. He said no, then changed his
mind and experienced some forgotten passion.
The film is based on
the novel "Farmer", by Jim Harrison, author of
"Legends of the Fall." Although the movie
was made in America with American actors, from an American
novel about American characters, it is fully steeped in the European sensibilities.
It's a real movie about real people doing things on a real schedule.
There is also a minimum of action and plot contrivance. Although there
is considerable sex and nudity, there is no sensationalism in the plot
after the initial set-up. The principal characters all accept what has happened
and try to figure out how to move on with their lives. The girl's dad doesn't want
to kill anyone. The middle aged girlfriend tries to understand the
situation, and
ultimately benefits from her lover's dalliance. There is a minimum of judgment, either in the words the characters
speak about one another, or in
the attitude of the scriptwriter as measured by the consequences of
people's actions. If anything, the film ultimately concludes that Hopper
was right to let himself get "carried away", that it saved him from
spending the rest of his life sitting around waiting to die.
Tuna's
notes in yellow
Carried Away belongs
in a small group of films that should have been very well known, but
somehow went to video with a whimper after a token theatrical release.
I was unable to discover why. Now that it is available on DVD, it may
gain the audience it so deserves.
Joseph is a 47 year old teacher in a two room schoolhouse. He is
uncredentialed, and the school will be closed after the current year.
Having been crippled by a farming accident in his teen years, he still
lives at home with his dying mother. He feels, not without good
reason, that life has somehow passed him by. He "fucks" Rosalee (Amy
Irving), a widowed fellow schoolteacher two to three times per week,
but their lovemaking is perfunctory and in the dark. He is not hot to
marry her because everyone expects him to, and that union just
represents more of the same.
Then 17 year old
Catherine walks into his classroom. She is sexually precocious, and drop
dead gorgeous, After she decides that Joseph is about as good as it gets
in the hick town, she has no trouble at all seducing him. Joseph, for
the first time in his life, allows himself to be carried away. It begins
to get messy when Catherine concocts some fantasy that Joseph will marry
her, and people start finding out about their relationship. It is at
this point that the film could have gone way over the top, but didn't.
In the last analysis, you might call it a romantic drama about the older
couple, showing how Joseph's affair with the young girl revitalized his
dying relationship with Rosalee, but there are many other subtexts going
on as well.
Joseph was played by Dennis Hopper, in what I feel is the strongest
performance of his career. Rosalee was played impeccably by Amy Irving,
who also co-developed the project with her husband, the director Bruno
Barreto. The Lolita part was nailed by Amy Locane, who does the sultry
siren and insecure little girl perfectly. Hal Holbrook is the country
doctor and everybody's shrink, and Gary Busey rounds out the cast as the
retired Major, father of Catherine, who has moved to the country to try
and get his wife dried out.
Amy Irving and
her husband Bruno Barreto, who directed the film, both feel it is a
beautiful film. I agree.
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- Amy Irving (1,
2)
- Amy Locane (1,
2)
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