Big Fan - "Hero War Ship"

Written and Directed by Robert D. Siegel

           

How much do you love your passions? At what point would you give up on something; when does undying love die?  Standup comedian and animated rat Patton Oswalt plays Paul Aufiero, or “Paul from Staten Island” as he is known when he calls into his local sports talk radio show to make methodical statements about the dominance of his local New York Giants football team. Paul has a crappy job as a night attendant at a car park, but at least it lets him listen to the radio while he works. On weekends, he and his buddy Sal (Kevin Corrigan, who seems stereotyped into these types of roles) head down to the stadium to cheer on The Giants even though they are too poor for actual tickets. Instead, they sit in the parking lot watching the game on a tv rigged to a car battery. They are die-hard fans, and nothing is more important than The Giants winning it all this season.

When they spot star Quarterback Quantrell Bishop one night in Staten Island, they begin to follow him, which leads them to a strip club in midtown Manhattan. Eventually they meet him, but with dire consequences- Paul is beaten within an inch of his life. The ensuing events pull Paul apart from the inside out. Does he hold Bishop responsible for his actions, bring a lawsuit against him, and get him thrown out of the NFL? Or does he keep his mouth shut and try to put the entire ordeal behind them all so that The Giants can win games? Meanwhile, Paul continues the back and forth rivalry he shares with “Philadelphia Phil” (Michael Rapaport), his Eagles-fan counterpart who calls the NY sport shows just to rile up the local fans.

Staying up nights at work and listening to the radio well past midnight have given him bags under his eyes and a zombie-like sleepwalk through anything that isn’t football related. Writer/Director Robert D. Siegel would like you to think of Paul as a modern day Travis Bickle from Taxi Driver or Rupert Pupkin from The King of Comedy (both portrayed by Robert Deniro and directed by Martin Scorsese). He has the drive, the trauma, and the celebrity worship to follow in their footsteps (and in Pupkin’s case, the berating mother as well). What’s missing is a serious dissection of the mind that ends up a political commentary on par with these predecessors. Most likely, we have become too jaded with professional athletes in recent times to have this story be as shocking as it could be. The idea that a drug addled football player would beat up an innocent fan seems like nothing new.

What does hold your attention is the way in which Paul deals with the event. There is a tension to his love for the Giants that makes one fear the possibilities of what he is capable of. Outside forces are swirling around his head and he would like nothing more than for them to all disappear. But Paul is a weak man. He is well into his thirties and still living with his mother who he has a frighteningly realistic love-hate relationship with. He asserts himself in his convictions but cannot bring the people around him to follow suit (excepting Sal, who for undisclosed reasons is such a loser that he worships Paul as the next man up the evolutionary chain of football fans).

Paul Aufiero is a man that we may all have met at some point in our lives and passed over. He loves football to a dangerous degree, a reflection of how these teams of sport reflect the tribal warfare of the past. With that conviction, you know it will all end in some kind of violence. When the ending comes, and you are expecting the worst- only to basically have your fears met- Siegel plays on the way we subconsciously associate Big Fan with Taxi Driver. The film plays like a parody of ‘Driver’ in a way that befits Paul’s weak will and need to vent his aggression not against the real life villains that he loves but against the villains in his head.


***1/2 Three and a half stars – Take it or leave it

Big Fan is available now on DVD, with too cheery a cover.

Adam Resurrected – “The Day the Clown Cried”

Directed by Paul Schrader

Screenplay by Noah Stollman based on the novel by Yoram Kaniuk

In 1972 Jerry Lewis made a film called “The Day the Clown Cried” about a Jewish clown in WWII-era Germany who is put into a concentration camp. He ends up being used by the Nazis for entertaining children, gaining their trust so he can lead them to the gas chamber. It is infamous in film circles as an unfinished, unreleased film for obvious reasons. “Adam Resurrected”, based on the 1968 novel “Adam Ben Kelev” (“Man, son of a dog” literally translated from Hebrew) by Yoram Kaniuk, addresses similar subject matter. Here, a clown is again juxtaposed against the horrors of the Holocaust. However instead of a distasteful farce, we see a moving and all too human portrait of the torture that the concentration camps inflicted, including the lasting effects it had on those who survived.

Adam Stein is played by Jeff Goldblum, who sheds most of the clichéd quirks we have come to expect from him over the years. He loses himself in the role creating levels of both sadness and joy, sometimes piled on top of one another. As the film opens we find out Adam, living in 1960’s Israel, has recently almost killed a woman during a magic trick, and is headed back to a mental institution for unstable survivors where he has spent most of the last 10 years. Adam has a run of the joint; the other patients treat him like a king, the doctors let him work out his own treatments, he sneaks alcohol from behind air conditioning vents, and the head nurse (Ayelet Zurer) even carries on an affair with him. But he cannot escape the torture that is bottled up inside.

It is at this point the film begins to flash back to life for Adam in Germany. In the 20’s he was a huge star, headlining his own circus and magic show. He had a wife and two daughters, who supported his act. But as the Nazi party rises in a beautiful sequence showing how his audience changes over a 5-10 year period, it is no longer appropriate for such a revered entertainer to also be a Jew. And so, Adam and his family end up in a concentration camp. Commandant Klein (Willem Dafoe) recognizes Adam from his show, and has him act like a dog for his amusement. This begins a long scarring period of humiliation for Adam where he is given “preferential” treatment by Klein by acting just like a pet dog, where he crawls on all fours, begs for scraps, and wears a choke collar. All the while he begs for his family to be spared due to his compliance. These flashback sequences are portrayed in stark black and white, a clean and elegant cinematography comparable to Schindler’s List, while the rest of the film is lit in a modern, muted color palette.

Director Schrader is no stranger to dark material. I’ll admit this is the first film of his I sat through since feeling like my brain needed a bath seeing “Auto Focus” in the theater. Schrader is famously the screenwriter of such dark psyche-delving material as “Taxi Driver”, “Hardcore”, and “American Gigolo”. Here, working from someone else’s screenplay, he strikes an excellent balance between the horrors that exist in humanity and hope for those who can live through such things. Hope for Adam comes from being forced to finally confront his “dog days”, and while forcing humanity on a feral fellow inmate, he has a chance at finding redemption himself.

There is a reoccurring theme throughout the film of Purim, probably the silliest holiday on the Jewish calendar. It is mentioned several times in different sequences, and the climax of the film takes place on this day. Purim is a day of joyous drinking, wearing masks, and celebrating survival in the face of near destruction. The holiday is about pointing out how what is on the surface is separate from what is inside or what we could be at our best. It is an apt metaphor that ties together the themes of life and death, suffering and celebration that resurrects Adam.

****1/2 Four and a half stars – Definitely See This Film

Adam Resurrected, after having an almost non-existent run in theaters, was recently released on DVD and Blu-ray and can also be watched streaming online through Netflix.