The Great Movies III

The cops and FBI agents are instrumental to the film, but less fully developed than the people in the bank. Charles Durning plays the NYPD officer in charge, and James Broderick is the chief FBI agent. Neither one is given the kinds of plot elements that usually come with cops in hostage movies. They're unburdened by standard subplots (trouble at home, a conflict with a superior) and just do their jobs; afraid that a bloodbath will erupt, Durning actually runs at cops who won't holster their weapons. Both are matter of fact, direct, playing their roles right down the center. Many of Broderick's most essential moments come in reaction shots. They help demonstrate Lumet's naturalistic approach.

Sidney Lumet is a master filmmaker. His book on directing joins David Mamet's as two contrasting approaches to the subject, both written with clarity and conviction. Starting young by directing live TV, Lumet launched his big-screen career with za Angry Men, based on one of his TV productions. His subjects have ranged widely; he clearly cares for the story above all else and doesn't specialize in genres or themes. If he's known for one aspect of his broad creative career, it is films about New York, including The Pawnbroker, Bye Bye Braverman, Serpico (also starring Pacino), Q&A, Network, and the suburban Before the Devil Knows You're Dead. Here he has created a film made brilliant by its deeply seen characters, in a plot that could have obviously been cheapened and exploited but is always human and true.

ere is a film about a feeling. Like all feelings, it is one that can hardly be described in words, although it can be evoked in art. It is the feeling that we are not alone, because there is more than one of us. We are connected at a level far, far beneath thought. We have no understanding of this. It is simply a feeling that we have.

There are theories about events affecting other events at a distance. Chimpanzees on one island are taught a skill, and those on another develop it. Twins say they intuit each other's feelings. The first four-minute mile is run, and then it becomes common. Two vibrating strings on a quantum level seem to be in synchronicity-or are they in two places at once? Krzysztof Kieslowski's Zbe Double Life of Peronique (i99i) does us the favor of not supplying any explanation for itself, and is not even very clear about what actually happens. It evokes.

It does this above all with the face of Irene Jacob, who plays a Polish woman named Veronica and a French woman named Veronique. Bergman said the human face is the great subject of the cinema. Kieslowski's camera spends a great deal of time regarding Jacob's face. Let's not waste any time observing how beautiful she is. What he is searching for is her soul. Sometimes he asks her to smile, or look pensive or thoughtful, but sometimes he simply shows her thinking. She shows herself vulnerable, romantic, joyous, tender. She has a good face. We become invested in her introspection.

The film opens in Poland with a luminous and happy young woman who goes to Krakow to visit her aunt. While there, her pure, flawless voice wins the attention of a choir director, whose husband is a famous conductor, and Veronica is chosen to sing at a concert. Before that takes place, she is in a square and sees-herself-boarding a bus. She stands transfixed. The other woman, taking snapshots, doesn't see her. The Polish Veronica seems to exist on a plane above the mundane; a flasher exposes himself to her, and she hardly seems to notice, or care.

In Paris, we meet Veronique, a schoolteacher. Attending a marionette performance with her students, she sees the puppeteer in a mirror at the side, and he sees her. "Papa, I am in love," she tells her father. A little later, her father asks her if she is sad. She is, but doesn't know why. We think we know: a shiver in the web of time and space has vibrated from Poland. She and the puppeteer Alexandre (Philippe Volter) are somehow connected; he pursues her with mysterious gifts and tape recordings. She finds him, flees him, is pursued, and love is admitted. Later, she tells him that all her life she has felt she is in two places at once.

We know how that feels. We feel it ourselves. Let us agree you have a favorite cafe in Venice, where you like to sit alone with a book and a cup of coffee. You have never been to Venice, but set that aside: you are there now. You lift your eyes from the book and are filled with a faint feeling of being still at home. You, at home, occupy the table in Venice. In either place, you are in communion with the other.