Word: film
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Dates: during 1980-1980
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Like its characters, Resurrection is a sympathetic but irreconcilable olio of extremes. The film swerves between irony and sentimentality, human drama and melodrama, powerful acting and shameless hammery-sometimes in the same sequence or shot. Screenwriter Carlino and Director Petrie have previously worked in the genres of sci-fi schizophrenia (Seconds and Sybil) and domestic conflict (The Great Santini and Eleanor and Franklin). Here, they have tried to blend the two forms, but the film does not always gel. The problem may stem from a lack of faith in its "small," challenging story. When in doubt, Carlino inserts a violent...
...earliest form, Resurrection was the story of Christ returned to earth as a woman. It was Ellen Burstyn who urged the film into the direction it ultimately took. She brings to the role her customary intelligence, passion and a humanizing sense of humor. Edna Mae is just as surprised and troubled by her healing gift as her neighbors are; and Burstyn helps the moviegoer share in this discovery. She may not walk on water, but she still performs a miracle of sorts: turning this ambitious, split-level movie into a personal triumph...
...where, of course, the evil one waits, knife at the ready-she must have a logical reason. She does: to act as avatar of the movie audience's delicious vulnerability. Also to reap big bucks for the merchants of low-budget menace who have revamped an honorable film formula...
...high with ground round and too much ketchup. But class will tell, and Curtis has worked with the men at the head of the scare-picture class: John Carpenter, who directed her in both Halloween and The Fog, and Cinematographer John Alcott, who makes this toy locomotive of a film look as sleek and eerie as the ghost of the Twentieth Century Limited. Curtis brings her own class to the genre, though one wonders where her career will lead her next. Into an ominous shower stall? Like mother, like daughter, bless...
Modern, that is to say post-Freudian, Vienna. But the doings related in this film are strictly pre-Freudian, not to say prehistoric, in their banality. A rather dour young American psychiatrist (Art Garfunkel) is accosted at a party by a young American something or other (Theresa Russell), who is rather feverish in her gaiety. Instead of his suggesting a professional appointment, they decide to have an affair. But he cannot keep it light, and she cannot take it seriously; the rich variety of sexual experience she has had has led her to the conclusion that the pleasures of romance...