Convictions

FILM
Convictions
C
AN ANYONE LOOK at a close-up
of Paul Scofield and listen to his moraiizing sonorities without thinking ot"
the beleaguered Thomas More in "A Man for
All Seasons" (Zinnemann. 1%8)? After all.
Robert Bolt's play, a .standard of eveiy high
school dramatics society in the English.speaking world tor the last 30 years, featured
austere black broadcloth of the Puritan elder.
As magistrate, he resonates with legal and
religious certitudes, a man of honor determined to uphold the laws of God and the
Massachusetts Bay Colony.
Danforth. incarnated by the actor who
was St. Thomas More for an entire generation, reveals the dark side of Bolt's moralism. Like the More character, Danforth
wrestles with fact and law, but in the end
his unyielding stance precipitates disaster.
He reflects the smug, self-righteous side of
Carthy, "the junior senator from Wisconsin," as Edward R. Murrow witheringly
called him, and HUAC iire relics of historical lore, to be filed away next to Sacco and
Vanzetti in the archives of American shame.
(Quick: What does the acronym HUAC
stand for? Had to stop and think, didn't
you?)
Those interested in such academic points
can still pick out the parallels in the 195O's
allegories, but why clutter the mind with
such arcane trivia? The play, now the film.
Paul Scofield is the Puritan magistrate, Judge Danforth, and Karron Graves is Mary Warren, both caught up
in witchcraft hysteria in The Crucible, Arthur Miller's 1953 play now adapted for the screen.
a hero of character, an exemplar of moral
decision-making. There was Thomas,
Chancellor of the Realm, surrendering this
passing world in defense of a principle. In
beautifully crafted language, dimly suggesting Shakespeare's rhythms. Paul Seofield
pointed out the inevitable logic of Thomas's
position, confounding tliose men and women
of lesser virtue who .sought a more expedient
resolution of his contiiet with Heniy VIII. In
an age that even then was lamenting the
demise of ethical standards, Thomas, the
Scofield-Zinnemann Bolt creation, was a
reinstitution of moral certitude. It was an
artistic levee against the flood tide of moral
relativism. Well done that. Thomas.
More's personality. Danforth does not pretend to be a man for all seasons, but he certainly is a man for ours. Yes, ethical relativism still thrives among us, but a new
menace of religious fundamentalism, a kind
of hysterical reaetion to the earlier uncertainties, now crowds the religious landscape and robs otherwise sensible people of
their wits. One need not look as far as Taliban, Hamas or even Bosnia and Northern
Ireland. Even some upstanding Catholic
leaders in our own country cannot tolerate
dialogue with those who disagree or dissent. We have the truth and error has no
rights, as an older generation of theologians
might argue.
stands on its own as an incisive examination
of the human condition. The results do not
always inspire or edify, but they do make us
think—about a lot of things. How is it possible that the loftiest of human institutions, like
religion and the law. can be corrupted by
human avarice, or even human ignorance?
Why does reason crumble at key moments in
history? How can a longing for eommunity
in the service of the commonweal, without
which civilization would be impossible, be
so easily perverted into racial politics, religious persecution, ethnic cleansing and a
final solution? And why. conversely, does
individual reason become so easily swallowed by mob hysteria?
Now, in The Crucible, Scofield the
moralist is back. The voice is as rich and certain as ever. The lean face now features a network of deeper erevices bracketed by shoulder-length white hair, iind the rich velvets of
the chiuicellor's raiment have yielded to the
Arthur Miller's original play, which he
adapted for the screen, was an extended
political allegory, a surgical analysis of the
anti-Communist hysteria of the early cold
war period. The years pass quiekly. To
many of today's film-goers. Senator Mc-
ITH THE ACUMEN of a skilled
coroner. Miller provides an autopsy of the
village of Siilem. The stoiy begins when Abigail Williams (Winona Ryder) and a dozen
24
w
AMERICA
FEBRUARY 15. 1997
of her girl friends meet in the woods for what
iixlay would be called "a pajama party that
gets out of hand." Rather than using pot or
vodka to lower their inhibitions, the girls join
Tituba (Charlayne Woodward), a slave from
Barbados, who boils up a magic brew that
will help her clients snare the husbitnds of
their choice. All this talk of boys and marriage has its giggly effect on these ciuivasL-orseted Puritan maids. .Several shed their
ciulhes along with their inhibitions as they
dance around Tituba's fire.
I H E RIGHTEOUS MINISTER, the
oily Mr. Panis (Bruce Davidson) comes
upon the group, and since all dancing, with
or without canvas, is forbidden, he believe.s
he has witnessed a baechanal from hell. Once
discovenxi. tlie party dissolve.s into squeals in
the forest, hut some of the revelers are so
I Tightened by possible consequences that
they fall into a sleeping sickness. Is it God's
punishment for heinous sin, or demonic possession? Who. or what, is respcmsible?
Wlien rumors of these unspeakable events
begin to swirl about the village, the godly
burghers are stunned. Since they believe
ihem.selves holy, they know their daughters
could never be held responsible for this outrage (dancing?). Some outside force must be
at work, like a satanic infiltrator into their
proto-Norman Rockwell American lives.
Such reasoning gives the girls the opportunity to cast themselves as victims rather th;in
perpetrators. As such they can avoid tlogging
and the slocks—or even hanging^simpiy by
sacrificing Tituba and then naming names of
inher agents of Satan. Tlie girls turn the villagers' gullibility to their own advantage.
Abigail, for example, had a fleeting adulterous relationship with John Proetor (Daniel
Day-Lewis), whom she .still loves, and a few
lies about his wife (Joan Allen) could get the
bcErayed woman to ihc scaffold and free John
for a second marriage.
Others join in the feeding frenzy, as
opportunist-s more Ihiin as sharks. The lœal
minister, a Harvard man. has predictably
alienated his congregation through his arrogance. His unrelenting zeal to rid the town of
Satan and his emissiiries might reestablish his
credentials as a man of God and. in effect,
save his job. A visiting clerical expert, whose
coinpetence in such matters is established by
the weight of the books he carries, seizes the
moment to cultivate a wider reputation for
himself by seeing the devil's work where
others, less astutely trained, had failed to
detect Satan's sooty fingerprints. A local
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FEBRUARY 15, 1997
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25
liuitilord denounces a neighbor so thai he ciin
lake over the poor man's property as his
own. A frustrated mother, embittered by the
deatlis of her children, accuses other women,
who, she spitefully reasons, must have been
favored by Satan so ihat their children survived.
Everyone, save the convicted and hanged,
profits from the hysteria, including Magistrate Danfortii and his colleagues, who are
intent on iransftimiing this howling wilderness in the New World into a second Eden,
nourished by God s Ten Commandments
and the Crown's swift justice. If they accomplish this, their reputations are secure, both in
the mils of the heavenly hosts and in the history of the colony. One wonders how such
men could be so gullible, so impervious to
the evidence and yet so convinced of their
wisdom.
"The Cmcible" arrived iti Boston as the
climax to tlie wettest, darkest, dreariest late
fall in living memory. The tweedy gray sky
of midday, mirrored in the drizzle-diamonded parking lot outside the theater, blended
morbidly into the washed-out colors of Andrew Dunn's cinematography on the .screen
inside. The browns and blacks were no doubt
carefully orchestrated to heighten the somber
mood of bleakest Salem, but this year at
least, Massachusetts needed no help in setting mtXKis.
N
ICHOLAS HYTNER'S classy
direction allows the tension to build unbearably. The action moves at a leisurely pace
through the misty shadows of autumn faniilands and dark interiors of near-windowless
farni buildings to brisk exchanges of its several courtRX)ni showdowns.
The cast is uniformly superb. Winona
Ryder has come a long way from "Little
Women." Her passion and unalloyed malice
as Abigail create the suspicion that such a
woman might indeed be possessed by some
malevolent spirit. Daniel Day-lxwis makes
John Prcx;tor an ortlinar>'. mtxiestly prosperous famier, who only wants to keep himseli
disengaged from the lunatic doings in town.
All this Satan talk is none of his business. Or
is it? Like many citizens who air content to
sit quietly in the balcony during history's
maddest dramas, he soon finds him.self thrust
to center stage, uncertain whether he is cast
as hero or victim. And as time s spotlight
falls upon him. he finds moral decisions
much more difficult, more human than did
Thomas More or Dantbnh. And tlnalty. there
is the brilliant Paul Scofiekl. whose Magistrate would be a hem. only to find himself a
victim of both hi.story and his own convictions.
RICHARD A. BLAKE
Fionnula Flanayaíi and Helen Mirren portray Annie Higgins and Kathleen Quigley. mothers fighting to save
the lives of their imprisoned sons in Some Mother's Son, Jim Sheridan's film about Irish struggles.
Sons and Mothers
S
OME WEEKS AGO in this space
( 1 l / l 6 / % ) . I faulted Neil Jordan's
Michael Collins" for its simplistic
and possibly dangerous moral sense. Ac-
26
cording to the script, after the military failure of the Easter Rebellion the eponymous
hero all too facilely redirected the strategy
of the Irish Republican Army. Before the
defeat, Collins's forces challenged the British army of occupation through Iradilional
rules lor military engagement. Baltics in
the war of independence were fought by
uniformed combattants in clearly defined
units with defined strategic objectives.
After the battle he recognized the superiori-
AMERICA
FEBRUARY 15, 1997