Word: simpler
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Consider two of this month's releases. One is a science-fiction comedy with more than its share of gags, chills and good feelings. The other is an electrifying whodunit from a veteran director whose films have received 31 Oscar nominations. In a simpler world these two movies-John Sayles' The Brother from Another Planet and Norman Jewison's A Soldier's Story-would pass through the theaters with the usual benediction or indifference from critics and the public. But because the films have casts composed almost entirely of blacks, because Sayles' comedy...
...SOLDIER'S STORY leaves one with ambivalent feelings; upon further reflection, the disturbing issues the film raises become magnified in complexity, rather than simpler and clearer in our understanding. This in itself is an important contribution of the film, and its strongest recommendation. The resulting moral ambiguity is somewhat unsettling for audiences accustomed to having their movie ethics etched in laser beams...
With his uncanny knack for conveying a sense of some simpler, lovelier, bygone American age, Reagan has encouraged the notion that happy days are here again. "Reagan is our past speaking to us," says Political Historian Garry Wills, "and we want to remember with him." Furthermore, as Britain's weekly Economist noted, "Republicans have no hangups about patriotism." The conservative President in particular has always been fluent and profuse with the imagery and language of conventional, Decoration Day patriotism. Says Frank Quam, a farm-management teacher in Stewartville, Minn.: "Reagan is of that nature, the flag waving, and people...
...tournaments?football on Thanksgiving, basketball at Christmas?all blasphemies culminating in Super Sunday. Thorstein Veblen contended that sports and religion have the same genesis in a basic "belief in an inscrutable propensity or a preternatural interposition in the sequence of events." We'll take his word for it. In simpler terms, Americans make stadiums their churches because they trust that therein lies national virtue. Extolling baseball, Albert Spalding, the sporting-goods king, called the game "the exponent of American Courage, Confidence, Combativeness; American Dash, Discipline, Determination; American Energy, Eagerness, Enthusiasm; American Pluck, Persistency, Performance; American Spirit, Sagacity, Success; American...
...appeal of the Games simpler than all this? What one has here, after all, are simple contests, simple consequences, the simple delight of observers at basic human activities. Remove the 8,000 banners, the 52 miles of fencing, and the scene is pastoral. Someone jumps or throws a discus. Someone swims. People play ball. Close out the noise, remove the fancy equipment, and one could feel that the Games show the world rediscovering itself in absolute serenity and innocence. Nothing is supposed to be innocent any more, of course, but it is hard to read corruption in the 400-meter...