[originally published in Film Comment Volume 29 Number 1, January-February 1993, reprinted by permission]
Unforgiven• The wait by the tree, and how Will Munny drinks after getting the news, Unforgiven: as director and actor, Clint Eastwood in excelsis…
• “The pleasure was all ‘mine”—The Crying Game….
• The Player: The fax curling out of the dashboard unit, directing the camera to the floor of Griffin Mill’s car, and formally anticipating what will be found there…
• The skirts of Mrs. Wilcox (Vanessa Redgrave) trailing in the long grass of summer evening as she strolls around Howards End; the reliable serenity of picture-perfect home and window-framed family tableaux; the lone witness to the penultimate moments of a paradise being lost….
• Ana Galiena leaning at her counter and reading a magazine—The Hairdresser’s Husband…
• To the beat of “Stuck in the Middle with You,” big-boned Michael Madsen slips and slides across a warehouse floor, his sweet rhythm segueing into sudden atrocity—Reservoir Dogs….
• “I can’t go too fast; metabolically, it’s not my rhythm”—Judy Davis, Husbands and Wives….
• Jeremy Irons and Juliette Binoche setting eyes on each other for the first time, Damage: Like some creature out of vampire lore, her black-and-white clarity racks a dead man’s focus to make him a figure of passion in her own movie….