pathways: APRIL 09
films
Mary and Max, reviewed by Peter W. Sheehan
Paris 36, reviewed by Jim Murphy
book
The Street Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School in Harlem, reviewed by Frank J. Macchiarola
MARY AND MAX
starring Toni Collette (as Mary), Philip Seymour Hoffman (as Max), Eric Bana, and Barry Humphries (as the narrator)
directed by Adam Elliot
rated PG (mild themes and sexual references)
80 min
Icon Films
showing now
This is an animated (claymation) Australian feature film written and directed by Adam Elliot who gave us the excellent 2003 Academy Award winning short, Harvie Krumpet.
Here he follows up with a wonderfully creative film about our perceptions of the disabled, the experiences of disabled people themselves, and values we should look for in ourselves when we form judgments about other people.
The film is filled with messages that demand our attention, and they occur at all three of these levels. Embracing differences and acceptance of the marginalised lie at its core.
A strong cast of well known actors provides the voices for the animated clay figures.
The film's vision clearly reflects the darker side of human nature, although many comic moments and instances of hilarity are part of the mix. The feelings of the characters range from joy to depression, and from happiness to acute anxiety.
The film as a whole is uncompromising in facing the complexities of human survival and suffering.
The relationship between Mary and Max is a tough one for animation to capture, but the effectiveness of the effort is never in doubt. The scripting for the film is innovative, and reflects the needs of the disabled very sensitively; the detail of the clay animation is amazing; and settings are created that depict their character with potency.
There is extraordinary attention to detail. The film took five years to create its complex world, and involved four-sec takes every day for more than 57 weeks. It used 218 puppets, 133 sets and 132,000 individual frames.
Overall, this is a film that you admire and respect greatly.
Peter W. Sheehan is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film and Broadcasting.
PARIS 36 (Faubourg 36)
starring Clovis Cornillac, Kad Merad and Nora Arnezeder
directed by Christophe Barratier
rated M (infrequent violence)
119 mins
Sony
out April 30
For anyone with a penchant for the traditional accordion-based Parisian music known as musette and the unique song style of the French music hall, Paris 36 is sheer delight.
The film is not strictly a musical, because characters do not break into song to develop the story, but music is a key component because it is about characters whose business is making music.
There are many other components too - such as gangsters, murder, romance, infidelity, fascism, communism, the Depression, union unrest, anti-Semitism, you name it. Writer director Christophe Barratier (Les Choristes) has bundled them all together to tell a colourful story revolving around a rundown music hall in a suburb of Paris (the original title is Faubourg 36, meaning the suburb).
If it isn't quite the epic Barratier might have hoped for, it is none the less stylishly made, engagingly acted and effortlessly entertaining - and far from your conventional film, which is half its charm.
Jim Murphy is an associate of the Australian Catholic Office for Film & Broadcasting.
book
The Street Stops Here: A Year at a Catholic High School in Harlem
by Patrick J. McCloskey
published by University of California Press
reviewed by Frank J. Macchiarola, chancellor of St Francis College, Brooklyn, N.Y. (for the National Catholic Reporter)
In the 1980s, James Coleman's studies of the effectiveness of American Catholic schools showed that despite factors that would cause one to expect these schools to perform more poorly than their public school counterparts, they, in fact, did much better.
Their students performed better on standardized tests, they had higher graduation rates, and they had, in the most difficult neighborhoods of the nation's cities, managed to keep the street out of the school. Although controversial when first reported, later studies almost invariably have confirmed Coleman's findings.
... There have been many efforts to support students in Catholic schools and thereby preserve the institutions that have served students so well ... If one needs to see at ground level why it is worth making the effort to save these schools, one should read this book.
Rice High School is an all-boys school on 124th Street in New York City's Harlem neighborhood. It was founded by the Irish Christian Brothers in 1938 and at first was staffed almost entirely by the brothers. Its student body then was overwhelmingly white boys from Manhattan, Bronx and Brooklyn. But through the 1960s it began to change its racial composition until by the 1970s it had become a black high school serving a significant number of non-Catholic boys. It was also struggling to maintain its academic reputation and to meet increasing budget shortfalls.
While others have told the story of Catholic education today, none have told the story on the school level better than McCloskey, who chronicles the 1999-2000 academic year by being a daily presence at Rice and engaging students, parents, teachers and administrators to tell their story in compelling ways. Total access, which is what McCloskey had, is an incredible testimony to the Rice administrators, who allowed the story to be told, "warts and all."
Their stories, and those of the staff, are heroic ones ... The book's publication date was delayed for several reasons, and the delay allowed McCloskey to track students several years after their time at Rice.
In the last chapter, we see that while not all the outcomes are good ones, most are, overwhelmingly so. Those who are successful bring home the message that Rice High School does very good things for youngsters.
The Street Stops Here gives us reason to be hopeful for those lucky enough to attend a school that loves them, nurtures them, teaches them to be men and to live productive lives.
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