The movie is told in a lot of flashbacks, to when Billy was ten, and when he was sixteen, and when he was older, and when he did this, and when he did that, and a copy of the screenplay should be provided to anyone entering the theater, since the casting of the “young” versions of various characters is so confusing, and the flashbacks so inept, that it’s a guessing game most of the time as to what we’re watching, and why. Things are further complicated, unnecessarily, by the addition of a Best Friend character (played by Jonathan Silverman as a youth and Harold Ramis in the present), who has his own adolescent adventures, which get confused with Billy’s.
A disproportionate amount of the film is devoted to the issue of whether one of these friends did, or did not, seduce the would-be prom date of the other one. I mention this because it is symptomatic of the film’s general malaise. Stealing Home was cowritten and codirected by Steven Kampmann and Will Aldis, who based it on some of their own memories. Much of the film suffers from the “you shoulda been there” syndrome, in which scenes feel suspiciously like family legends that should have been left around the dinner table instead of being inflicted on us.
Movies like this possibly get talked into being by the confidence of the collaborators, who are so familiar with the material that they never pause to make it accessible, comprehensible, or interesting to the rest of us. Kampmann and Aldis labored for a time in the 1970s at Second City, and have been associated with such TV shows as WKRP in Cincinnati and Mork and Mindy. Did nothing in their previous experience tip them off that this film was KRP on the Jersey shore?
Stigmata
(Directed by Rupert Wainwright; starring Patricia Arquette, Gabriel Byrne; 1999)
Stigmata is possibly the funniest movie ever made about Catholicism—from a theological point of view. Mainstream audiences will view it as a lurid horror movie, an Exorcist wannabe, but for students of the teachings of the church, it offers endless goofiness. It confuses the phenomenon of stigmata with satanic possession, thinks stigmata can be transmitted by relics, and portrays the Vatican as a conspiracy against miracles.
The story: In Brazil, a holy priest has come into possession of a lost gospel “told in the words of Jesus himself.” In the priest’s church is a bleeding statue of the Virgin Mary. The Vatican dispatches a miracle-buster, Father Andrew (Gabriel Byrne) to investigate. “The blood is warm and human,” he tells his superiors. He wants to crate up the statue and ship it to the Vatican for investigation, but is prevented. (One pictures a vast Vatican storehouse of screen windows and refrigerator doors bearing miraculous images.)
The old priest has died, and in the marketplace an American tourist buys his rosary and mails it as a souvenir to her daughter, Frankie (Patricia Arquette), who is a hairdresser in Pittsburgh. Soon after receiving the rosary, Frankie begins to exhibit the signs of the stigmata—bleeding wounds on the wrists, head, and ankles, where Christ was pierced on the cross. Father Andrew is again dispatched to investigate, reminding me of Illeana Douglas’s priceless advice to her haunted brother in Stir of Echoes: “Find one of those young priests with smoldering good looks to sort of guide you through this.”
The priest decides Frankie cannot have the stigmata, because she is not a believer: “It happens only to deeply religious people.” Psychiatrists quiz her, to no avail (“Is there any stress in your life?” “I cut hair.”). But alarming manifestations continue; Frankie bleeds, glass shatters, there are rumbles on the sound track, she has terrifying visions, and at one point she speaks to the priest in a deeply masculine voice, reminding us of nothing so much as Linda Blair in The Exorcist.
Now there’s the problem. Linda Blair was possessed by an evil spirit. Frankie has been entered by the Holy Spirit. Instead of freaking out in nightclubs and getting blood all over her bathroom, she should be in some sort of religious ecstasy, like Lili Taylor in Household Saints. It is not a dark and fearsome thing to be bathed in the blood of the lamb.
It is also not possible, according to the very best church authorities, to catch the stigmata from a rosary. It is not a germ or a virus. It comes from within. If it didn’t, you could cut up Padre Pio’s bath towels and start your own blood drive. Stigmata does not know, or care, about the theology involved, and thus becomes peculiarly heretical by confusing the effects of being possessed by Jesus and by Beelzebub.
Meanwhile, back at the Vatican, the emotionally constipated Cardinal Houseman (Jonathan Pryce) rigidly opposes any notion that either the statue or Frankie actually bleeds. It’s all a conspiracy, we learn, to suppress the gospel written in the actual words of Christ. The film, a storehouse of absurd theology, has the gall to end with one of those “factual” title cards, in which we learn that the “Gospel of St. Thomas,” said to be in Christ’s words, was denounced by the Vatican in 1945 as a “heresy.” That doesn’t mean it wouldn’t be out in paperback if there was a market for it. It does mean the filmmakers have a shaky understanding of the difference between a heresy and a fake.
Does the film have redeeming moments? A few. Arquette is vulnerable and touching in an impossible role. I liked the idea of placing her character within a working-class world; there’s a scene where one of the customers in the beauty shop resists having her hair treated by a woman with bleeding wrists. And Nia Long has fun with the role of Frankie’s best friend; when your pal starts bleeding and hallucinating, it’s obviously time for her to get out of the house and hit the clubs.
Stigmata has generated outrage in some Catholic circles. I don’t know why. It provides a valuable recruiting service by suggesting to the masses that the church is the place to go for real miracles and supernatural manifestations. It is difficult to imagine this story involving a Unitarian. First get them in the door. Then start them on the Catechism.
The Story of Us
(Directed by Rob Reiner; starring Bruce Willis, Michelle Pfeiffer; 1999)
Rob Reiner’s The Story of Us is a sad-sack movie about the misery of a married couple (Bruce Willis and Michelle Pfeiffer) who fight most of the time. Watching it is like taking a three-day trip on a Greyhound bus with the Bickersons. I leave it to you to guess whether the movie has a happy ending, but what if it does? A movie like this is about what we endure while we’re watching it, not about where it finally arrives.
Meet the Jordans, Ben and Katie. He’s a TV comedy writer, she composes crossword puzzles. They have two kids, Erin and Josh. Their marriage is a war zone: “Argument has become the condition for conversation,” he observes. They fake happiness for the kids. How did they arrive at such pain? It is hard to say; the movie consists of flashbacks to their fights, but their problems are so generic we can’t put a finger on anything.
Gene Siskel used to ask if a movie was as good as a documentary of the same actors having lunch. Watching The Story of Us, I imagined a documentary of the marriage of, say, Bruce Willis and Demi Moore. I do not say that to score a cheap point, but because Moore and Willis are spirited and intelligent people who no doubt had interesting fights about real issues, and not insipid fights about sitcom issues.