EDITH KURZWEIL
157
years-a luxury he no longer can afford. The actual problems of this
impenetrable story have
to
do with the meditations of the protagonist, a
Red Army general-will-brain surgeon, on the tragicomic grotesqueries
surrounding the final days ot Stalin. The protagonist takes for granted that
we know not only the details ot large events, but the devious ways Russians
apparently had used in order to cope, and to antici pate the various possi–
ble courses demented and scared individuals might choose to protect
themselves against the corrupt system. The other, and very different,
Russian production was
Strikc
(I <)24), a celebration of the hundredth
birthday of Sergei Eisenstein. (This breathtaking silent film was accompa–
nied by the Alloy Orchestra, which played loudly enough to overpower
that black-and-white masterpiece.)
Yet another black-and-whi te production,
Thc GCllcml,
is the tale ot a
notorious Irish thief, Martin Cahill, who plans his heists as carefully as
General ])ouglas MacArthur mapped OLlt his battle plans. As we watch this
scoundrel develop his style, observe him get away with his two-house
domestic setup with his wife and her sister, and behave as decently as a
father should, we actually sympathize with the mischievous criminal. But
gradually, as we see him perform ever larger misdeeds-brutally punishing
one of his men who tries to steal, executing a robbery that eventually costs
one hundred workers their jobs, hoodwinking the entire apparatus of the
police and the museum 's satety system to spirit away its most valuable
paintings, whose irreplaceabili ty he doesn't even grasp-our tondness for
him diminishes.
Another movie by the same director, John Boorman,
Poillt Bialik,
was
shown to COJllmemorate the impervious Lee Marvin, who plays an invul–
nerable, vengetul killer in this dazzling thriller-which allegedly was the
defining film ot the 1<)60s. Since ('m not addicted to that sort ot enter–
tainment, I couldn't understand why this production was resuscitated,
unJess it was designed to celebrate Marvin and to preview its imminent
retake as a television series.
A black criminal who is very different from Marvin, and to me much
more appealing, is Ray Joshua, the protagonist of
Slalll.
Ray is a street poet
who is thrown into prison tor possession ot marijuana. He is abused and
brutally roughed up by his cellmates until, somewhat miraculously, he
meets up with a creative writing teacher who recognizes his talents. Since
I have read in PEN newsletters about the efforts of "Writing in Prison"
for many years, I probably am less surprised at the theme ot conversion
through cuI ture than most peopl e. That the soft-spoken Ray transforms
his hard-core fellow inmates by means of his rap performance poetry,
however, is rather tarfetched. As is the likelihood that the teacher, who in
the meantime has tallen in love with him, will wait tor him whatever his
