![]() ![]() ![]() It has serious things to say, yet it qualifies as one of the most off-the-wall films of the year, worthy of comparison with an Ionesco comedy. This absurdist black comedy has racked up a string of international prizes and achieved cult status back home in the Czech Republic. He gives the film a garish, cartoonish quality (exemplified by Stellan Skarsgard’s shameless overacting as a hedonistic German businessman) that undermines the tale’s intrinsic interest. Unfortunately Prasad, a veteran BBC television director, never finds the right tone for the story. The film focuses on emigre cabdriver Parvez, whose love and respect for most things in his adopted country put him at loggerheads with his newly fundamentalist Muslim son. Kureishi adapted his story for this feature, though he later clashed with director Udayan Prasad over the production. (JR) (Music Box, 7:00)Īmong the most provocative works about the intersection of British and Muslim culture in contemporary England is “My Son the Fanatic,” a short story by Hanif Kureishi that describes generational, religious, and ethical conflicts in a depressed northern town. (GTO hilariously assumes a new identity every time he picks up a new passenger, rather like the amorphous narrator in Wurlitzer’s novel Nog.) Unsettlingly, the movie starts off as a narrative but gradually grows into something much more abstract that’s also what beautiful about it. James Taylor and Dennis Wilson are the drivers of a supercharged 55 Chevy and Warren Oates is the owner of a new GTO (these nameless characters are in fact identified only by the cars they drive) they meet and agree to race from New Mexico to the east coast, though side interests periodically distract them, including various hitchhikers (among them Laurie Bird). This exciting existentialist road movie by Monte Hellman, with a swell script by Rudolph Wurlitzer and Will Corry and my favorite Warren Oates performance, looks even better now than it did in 1971. To be screened Friday only with a short film by Laura Bennett, Double D. The directorial debut of Chinese-American actress Joan Chen, shot on the border between China and Tibet without permission from the Chinese government, is set during the final years of the Cultural Revolution and focuses on the misadventures of an idealistic young woman who travels to Tibet to work in a people’s education program. NEWS & INVESTIGATIONS Open dropdown menu. ![]()
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