Also playing…

Big
Lebowski fans, sit up and take notice: The Dryden is screening a
little-known template for that film this Thursday, one week before they put the
Dude up there himself. While Cutter’s Way (1981) stands on its
own just fine, thank you, it’s similarly impossible not to view the earlier
film through the lens of the latter.

            For
starters, Cutter stars Jeff Bridges
as a nonchalant layabout who drives a heap of junk and gets sucked unwillingly
into a blackmail scheme by his friend, a rancorous, blustery Vietnam vet who
loves to hear himself talk.

            While
that may sound strikingly familiar, don’t expect too many traces of the Dude
himself (who the Coen brothers based on a friend, in any case). It’s not called
Cutter’s Way for nothing, as it’s
John Heard as Cutter who commands the film.

            Normally
genial and reserved, Heard explodes here with an extravagance that doesn’t
overplay its hand for the simple reason that Cutter is off his nut. Where John
Goodman’s character in Lebowski spews
the babble of an insecure lunk, Cutter is a whirling, thinking fury whose words
only betray a fraction of what’s holed up inside of him. Come to think of it,
the only difference in those two things may be that Cutter is not a comic
character.

            For
a while, the film easily escapes comparison with its progeny thanks to a
delicately wrought tone. It is basically a character study of the three
principles (Cutter, Bridges as Richard, and Cutter’s wife, who completes a love
triangle).

            The
superb score by esteemed composer and producer Jack Nitzsche shifts from sweet
poignancy to growing pools of disquiet and paranoia, and does so with only
minor alterations, monitoring likewise changes in the film. The paranoia comes
courtesy of the satisfyingly ramshackle suspense plot, which traffics in the
hopeless realization of conspiracy The
Parallax View and Chinatown parlayed more famously.

            There
are a few other striking echoes to be found in the incidentals aside from the
plot outline. And as the film’s eccentricities accumulate toward the end, it
starts to seem like the Coens used the film as a creative font as well. A scene
set at a polo match has all the hallmarks of a brilliant Coen brothers comic
piece — except it’s played straight. They could have taken all the lines and
action direct from the script, and turned it into a classic Coen scene, getting
totally different results from a few minor adjustments in tone. (Much as Airplane! retools a ’50s B-movie called Zero Hour!)

            It
becomes impossible not to see the Coens’ loopiness hidden in this and other
scenes when you’re thinking of it. For this reason Cutter is fascinating viewing, beyond the merits of its own
excellence.

            (For
a similarly startling experiment in the origins of a director’s style, newly
minted Guy Maddin fans fresh off The
Saddest Music in the World should check out Fritz Lang’s Secret Beyond the Door. The Monroe
County library has a VHS copy).

            Cutter’s Way screens Thursday, July 15,
at the George Eastman House’s Dryden Theatre.

— Andy Davis

I
am a hardcore romantic. Not the flowers-and-candles kind. I’m talking about
the go-for-broke, no-regrets kind. You know, the foolish kind. The good kind.
And if you’re like me, you will fall hard for Before Sunset. If not,
you and your black heart should go fork your seven bucks over to Mary-Kate and
Ashley.

            Jesse
(Ethan Hawke) and Celine (Julie Delpy), you may remember, met on a train and
wandered through the streets of Vienna the night of June 16, 1994 in Richard
Linklater’s Gen-X talkathon Before
Sunrise. By the close of the film, they were thoroughly smitten with each
other, but he was en route to the United States and she was headed home to
Paris. Too hip/stupid to exchange contact information, they vowed to meet in
Vienna exactly six months after their parting.

            Before Sunset takes place in 2003. Jesse
is appearing at a Parisian bookstore in support of a bestseller he wrote about
that one night when he spies Celine in the wings. What follows unfolds in
real-time as they stroll through the City of Light and reminisce, vent, and
confess. Celine and Jesse no longer enjoy that 20-something idealism. Firmly
ensconced in their 30s, they’re complacent, almost resigned, and slightly
jaded.

            She’s
thinner, and he looks like he’s been dead for a couple of years. But as they
talk, the chemistry and memories that resurface restore some of that youthful
hope, sometimes painfully. To go into detail about their conversation would
ruin the film, as that is the film.
Suffice it to say their one evening together left an indelible impression. This
is not surprising if you’ve ever had a seemingly unfinished relationship —
one that you romanticized because it never had the chance to go bad.

            Linklater
and his two stars get screenwriting credit here, which accounts for the
effortlessness of the dialogue. I’ve never been terribly impressed by either
Hawke or Delpy, but these characters seem to bring out the best in them. Paris
is gorgeous bathed in the late-afternoon sun, and as I write this, airfare is
$303 roundtrip from New York City. Just in case you were wondering.

            The
denouement of Before Sunset is
subtle, scary as hell, and so romantic, as we (and Jesse and Celine),
dread/anticipate what might happen. And the final shot? C’est parfait.

            Before Sunset opens at the Little
Theatre on Friday, July 16.

— Dayna Papaleo

This article appears in Jul 14-20, 2004.