Word: protagonists
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...political into a dense web that forces the viewer to get involved. The Deer Hunter did; it made Vietnam an integral element, never just a backdrop. Circle of Deceit, on the other hand, turns the rubble and bodies of present-day Beirut into mere mental furniture for its protagonist. It could just as well have been Angola, Iran or El Salvador. And as an Everymodernman, the protagonist could have been French or American as well as German...
UNFORTUNATELY, IN DEPICTING the dulling of Laschen's senses, the film itself becomes dull. After the initial horror wears off, unrelenting violence is boring. Hardened to atrocity along with the protagonist, the viewer is forced to become amoral in order to empathize. Nothing is less satisfying. The film attaches no guilt to apathy, creating a loss of sensation without sentiment for the loss. In providing the emotional exercise for the audience, Schlondorff's fatalistic approach to indifference falls flat...
MARVELLOUS THEY ARE. Ostensibly, the plot concerns the time Scars spends trying to save a beloved elbow-shaped lake from being turned into a landfill. Both Cheever and his protagonist believe there is a close affinity between the beauties of clean fresh water and the splendors of love. And so, not surprisingly, the sporadic affair Scars has with the curvaceous blond he accosts in a bank queue provides the occasion for plenty of libidinous raptures and a good deal of bewilderment. The novella shuttles, thee, back and forth between a blasted landscape that aches for renewal-the highways stretch...
...victim both of existential ennui and of a sudden obsessional letch for the financier's wife. Much show-biz Big Think ensues, but it is not quite stupid enough to be truly funny. Interestingly, there are several nice, quirky moments of domestic comedy involving the protagonist, his grandfather and his live-in lady in an innocent but funny menage a trois. The old gent is played by the great director King Vidor, who may have given a tip or two, since these scenes indicate that were Toback to rein in .his ambitions, he might have a gift for conscious...
...year is 1918, the place a small university town in a Germany whose people are slowly and unhappily awakening to the fact that they are losing the Great War. The protagonist is Victor Jakob, a professor of physics who, like his country, comes to realize that he too is being defeated. Younger, more imaginative men have challenged Jakob's beloved structure of classical physics, undermining the foundations of his intellectual world. Advancing age has confronted him with a more direct challenge, making him doubt his own usefulness and weakening his will to live. Seated in his study and spreading...