Knight at the Movies ARCHIVES
Two worthy, offbeat indie entries
This is a good week for independent cinema though the majority of the movie going world may not realize it in the wake of the
ongoing summer blitzkrieg (this weekend’s entry,
The Da Vinci Code will get my assessment next week).  It would be a shame,
however, for cinema-philes to overlook either
The Sisters or Dead Man’s Shoes, as different as night and day, but both excellent
reasons for heading over to your local art house.

Has ever such a photogenic cast performed Chekhov?  Albeit ersatz Chekhov, which Richard Alfieri’s
The Sisters most definitely is.  
Alfieri has written the screenplay for a film based on his play which in turn, of course, was inspired by Chekhov’s “The Three Sisters”
and it has been directed by Arthur Allan Seidelman, a veteran of TV movies and series.  Both are working with a set of lovely bones
that include Maria Bello, Mary Stuart Masterson, Erika Christiansen, Chris O’Donnell, Tony Goldwyn, Alessandro Nivola, and Eric “Will &
Grace” McCormack as the Beaver…er as Gary Sokol, the frustrated suitor of the youngest sister.  Oh, and Rip Torn plays the
doddering professor who looks in on the proceedings and offers tongue in cheek insight from time to time.

It’s not often these days that a movie can rely on words alone, as The Sisters can, to satisfy a petulant, impatient audience
(especially when Poseidon, The Da Vinci Code and M:I:3 et al are clamoring to be seen).  Even the art house crowd has become
accustomed to gimmick pictures (Brick, Yes, Memento) to disguise their essential talkiness or present day settings to disguise their
classical roots.  These modern updates usually wear thin for me (Baz Lurhmann’s
Romeo + Juliet and O come to mind), though they
have the linguistic beauty of the source material.  But the present day retelling of The Sisters – with Masha becoming Marcia, Olga
transformed into a lesbian and Irene suffering from crystal meth addiction – made perfect sense to me.  The latter, especially,
seemed a canny way to show Irene’s reaction to the stifling weight of her elder sister’s insistence on trying to shield her from the
dangers of life.  

The framework of the story is the same – the three sisters, each in the midst of psychological transformations following the death of
their overbearing father and loaded up with secrets galore – gather to celebrate several family occasions and recall their supposedly
blissful childhood.  They barely acknowledge their unassuming brother Andrew (Nivola), have particular spite for his slatternly
intended who they look down upon (Elizabeth Banks from last year’s Heights), and either scorn or ignore their husbands and would-
be suitors.  Until, of course, the brother makes an announcement that threatens to rip the family apart.  

Marcia (Bello), the “mad” one in particular suffers from an uncontrolled passion for honesty and delivers her scathing
pronouncements with a minimum of fuss.  Bello has become the critics darling for her work in a number of roles in independent films
(she was particularly memorable in
The Cooler) and adds another devastating portrait to her gallery.  Masha/Marcia is a tricky, tricky
part and Bello walks the tightrope with authority and subtlety.  An inch to the right and the character is a bitter, strident harpy
spoiling every scene she’s in (just about all of them).  In Bello’s hands, we stand back with pleasure and await her next monologue.

Olga (Masterson) is the peacekeeper who the others at times have accused of being cold and closed off but Masterson, who has
grown has an actor as she has grown out of adolescent parts (she held her own in Broadway’s revival of Nine a few years back) does
well with her moment in the spotlight – as she describes the derision her family has lobbed at her each time she’s proclaimed her
love for a woman until finally she’s shut down.  Sweet Irene (Christiansen) is just trying to assert herself against the two
powerhouses that are her sisters.  And Banks, as Andrew’s fiancée, utilizing one of those Joy-zee accent, relishes the part.  The
character is one of those unbelievably dangerous persons that combine stupidity with aggression – an annihilator who does so with
gusto.

The men in the piece are really there to support the women and set them up for their great monologues (as someone who grew up
in a houseful of women with four sisters this felt intensely familiar).  The exception, of course is Gary Sokol (McCormack), who is
supposedly a good friend of the family but spends his time throwing poison darts into every conversation, all the while pining for
Irene.  McCormack, so familiar from eight years of “Will & Grace,” gives it his all but commending him for not once acting with his
hands on hips is about the highest praise I can come up with.  The other men, however – especially Goldwyn – fare far better.

“Father said we should be four hearts beating in one body – didn’t he?” Irene asks her sisters and brother during one of the piece’s
emotional crises.  Though Olga, Marcia, Irene, and Andrew rarely achieve that lofty emotional ambition during the course of the
movie, the movie itself does.  This is a splendid ensemble cast exuberantly performing material that is compelling and wondrous in
its construction.  What actor wouldn’t love a rare movie like this with such fealty to the spoken word?

The other notable indie release this week is
Dead Man’s Shoes.  It stars Paddy Considine, so memorable as the born again
Christian briefly toyed with by the decadent rich beauty in last year’s sexy lesbian romance,
My Summer of Love.  Considine and
Shane Meadows have co-written (and Meadows directed) a frightfully terse little film that was shot in 2004 and is finally getting a well
deserved theatrical release here.  

Considine plays Richard, a soldier who returns to his small town in the Midlands of Ireland to exact brutal revenge on the gang of
listless thugs that toyed and tortured his mentally challenged brother Anthony while he was away.  Following in the footpath of
Quentin Tarantino’s
Reservoir Dogs, the film is told via tripped up flashbacks.  The movie does not stray from its narrow focus, which,
considering the maddening grief and anger of the brother and his single minded solution to that grief, contrasted with the insolence
of the disaffected slags he picks off one by one, is intensely uncomfortable and, yet, highly watchable.

The Sisters plays exclusively for one week at Chicago's Landmark Century Centre Cinema, www.landmarktheatres.com, Dead Man’s
Shoes
is at Loews Esquire 6 (58 E. Oak) (312-280-0101)
Indies:
The Sisters-Dead Man's Shoes
Expanded Edition of 5-17-06 Knight at the Movies/Windy City Times Column
By Richard Knight, Jr.