Reviews

VIDEO

A flame of justice amidst repression

ROMERO. Starring Raul Julia. Pro-
duced by Ellwood Kieser. Directed by
John Duigan. At video rental outlets.

This movie, produced by Paulist priest
Ellwood Kieser and directed by Austral-
ian John Duigan, had only the shortest
of runs when it was distributed to thea-
tres earlier this year, on the eve of the
10th anniversary of the assassination of
Salvadoran Archbishop Oscar Romero.
But it has now been released to video
stores and those who missed it on the big
screen can see it at home.

Starring Raul Julia in the title role and
filmed on location in Mexico, Duigan’s
and Kieser’s powerful film dramatizes
the last brief years of Oscar Romero’s
life, from the time of his appointment as
Archbishop of El Salvador — when he
was considered a conservative academic
— to his murder at the hands of a death
squad as he is giving mass in the cathed-
ral.

At the ceremony marking his appoint-
ment as Archbishop he is surrounded by
the wealthy and military officers, sym-
bolizing the comfortable relationship
with the ruling elite that the church hie-
rarchy expected would be perpetuated.
But Romero is drawn relentlessly into
the drama of his own country as he beg-
ins to see the enormity of the poverty and

social injustice around him as well as the

murder and torture that seems to be the
fate of any who struggle for change.
Soon after his appointment, Romero
is asked to intercede to try and negotiate
the release of a government minister,

|. kidnapped-by the guerrillas as part of

their campaign to win freedom for politi-

cal prisoners. As he presses the cases, he
finds himself on a confrontation course
with the military regime.

Step by step, that confrontation grows
as events compel him to chajlenge the
repression that threatens first his priests,
then the church and finally, his own life.

Almost presaging his own death at the
hands of assassins, the real-life Romero
once said: “They may kill me but the
clamour for justice among the people
they cannot silence.” And in that sense,
the story of Romero is almost larger than
life, posing the risk for filmmakers that
any dramatized version will be dimin-
ished.

But Kieser’s story encompasses it well,
compressing into 105 minutes of video-
tape the events, people and perspective
that are essential. Julia plays Romero
with a quiet but arresting intensity, creat-
ing a deeply human character who beg-
ins as a bookish cleric filled with
self-doubt and ends his life as a man
whose commitment to social justice has
come to epitomize courage.

The politics of El Salvador play a dis-
tinctly secondary role in the film — it
makes no mention, for example, of the
U.S. role in supporting the regime — and
the emphasis is on the character of
Romero. But it nevertheless creates
unforgettable images of a country in the
grip. of poverty and repression and the
fleeting glimpses Suggest the larger
picture — the links between the military
and the death squads, the priests whose
common Cause-with the poor leads them
to liberation theology. In the end it is a
film which speaks directly to the events in
El Salvador today. SoCran Gann

The 1950s and freedom

DEAD POETS SOCIETY. With Robin
Williams. Directed by Peter Weir. A
video cassette from Touchstone Home

Video.

Australian director Peter Weir gives us
a chance to re-visit the Fifties we likely
never lived — whether we were around
then, or not — with an expert blend of
comedy, tragedy and rebellion. Dead
Poets Society takes place in an upper-
class prep school, but its theme of casting
off the shackles of repression and
imposed conformity has a_ universal
appeal.

Robin Williams plays a pivotal, but
not central, character in this U.S.-made
film about a former student who returns
to the private school to teach English
literature in a manner not exactly des-
cribed in the course syllabus. His first
day on the job consists of taking his
young charges out of the classroom and
into the college foyer to commune with
the dusty photographs of the now-
deceased students of decades before.

The new teachers follows this with
instructions to perform an act of deliber-
ate vandalism: namely, tearing out the
introduction to the course text in which
the author defines good poetry through
the use of a graph. ‘“‘Excrement,” Willi-
ams declares before the page-rending
begins.

Other outrageous acts follow. The
teacher has the boys stand on their desks
to gain a new perspective; takes them out
to kick soccer balls; informs them they
can address him by name, or by calling
out, “Captain, O Captain.”

Williams’ gifts to the students are
spontaneity and creativity, and his unor-
thodoxy soon fires young imaginations.
The students most disposed to the that
vision discover that the teacher as a stu-
dent was a founding member of an
informal — read underground — group
on campus called the Dead Poets
Society. Its members met ina cave in the
woods nearby to discuss literature or
read out their own works, and several of
the boys proceed to re-establish the
society. ::

While Williams’ _ first-rate perfor-
mance naturally dominates, his screen
time is relatively brief. Much of the story
concerns the young men themselves, par-
ticularly two of them. One is pain-
fully shy and self-deprecating; the other
is on fire with the creative impulse, but
held in check by a domineering father.

Dead Poets Society is not a political
movie as such, but it comes to parallel,
uncannily, the witch hunts of the period.
The teachers’ iconoclasm, albeit a gentle
type, conflicts with the rigid authority of
the school and parents who collectively
represent the pillars of American society.
A tragedy leads to forced confessions of
the trumped-up kind, and betrayal —
not unlike the anti-communist, anti-
liberal hysteria that blighted most of the
decade.

Full of life and hope, Dead Poets
Society invites us, whatever our situa-
tion, field of endeavour, or age, to
forever let the flower of creativity
bloom — and never submit to arbitrary
measures.

— Dan Keeton

- ®
SS » , te ‘
ry outside his church in a scene

ae

Archbishop Romero (Raul Julia) confronts milita
from Romero.

MAY DAY GREETINGS

Many thanks to our friends and supporters for your continued interest in our
project. We have recently received a Canada Council grant and we are all very
-excited about beginning production this summer. Several other grant
applications have been submitted and initial response has been favourable. For
more information or to contribute, contact: On-to-Ottawa Historical Society,
c/o 2149 Parker St., Vancouver, B.C. V5L 2L6. Phone: 253-6222.

Pacific Tribune, April 30, 1990 « 33