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Movie Interview
The horror of indie filmmaking
Scary movie director and "American Movie" star Mark Borchardt talks about living the examined life.
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[11/02/99]

Movie Interview
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Music Review
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Column
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[11/01/99]

Music Review
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From Kiss to loungecore, Kenneth Anger to blaxploitation, Unrest anticipated '90s hipster fads way back ... in 1988.
By Joe Gross
[11/01/99]

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The story, based on a monologue by Italian author Alessandro Baricco, is at once a fable about innocence and inspiration and a childlike fantasy lived out by adults. ("Hey, let's pretend that the clubhouse is a boat, and we'll never leave.") It could have been a fine tale about brave, courageous immigrants, or about how music has the power to transport us to faraway places or about the power of storytelling. But it tries to be each of these things -- and fails at them all.

The Legend of 1900 Directed by Giuseppe Tornatore Starring Tim Roth, Pruitt Taylor Vince and Bill Nunn

Director Giuseppe Tornatore, who made the sappy Oscar-winner "Cinema Paradiso" (1990), coats his first English-language movie with a 50-gallon drum of Kayro syrup. Damp, cobblestone streets reflect glowing gaslights; beautiful girls huddle under umbrellas in the rain; the eyes of tattered immigrants well up with tears at the sight of the Statue of Liberty. Visual clichés and shoddy storytelling reduce the movie to dumb sentimentality: What should be Degas ends up Norman Rockwell.

The story begins on New Year's Day, 1900, when deckhand and coal-shoveler Danny Boodman (Bill Nunn), finds a baby boy in a lemon crate on top of a piano. Beaming as if he's just found a bauble, Danny decides to keep the little whelp and christens him Danny Boodman T.D. Lemon 1900. Danny Sr. dies in terrible accident, and the kid -- who becomes known as 1900 -- grows up working with the ship's crew.

One night, the young 1900 sneaks out from the engine room and sees someone playing piano; pretty soon he's plinking pretty sonatas on the grand. He gets better. The next thing we know, the young boy has grown up to be Tim Roth, who plays the older 1900 like a shivering puppy. He's at once shy and removed and the consummate listener and pal, capable of being swept away in the moment.

It's Tornatore's fault, not Roth's, that 1900 spells out his every emotion and thought in cheap dialogue. Roth is capable of carrying the part, but he's working against a director who seems intent on sabotaging any hint of subtlety.

Eventually 1900 starts his own band. A brash, young trumpet player named Max (Pruitt Taylor Vince, the fat guy from "Heavy") joins up. He and 1900 become pals. In one dizzy, fantastical scene, the two of them go for a ride around a room on his wheeled piano in high seas. It looks like fun, even if it defies the laws of physics. There's a metaphor in there somewhere.

1900 becomes an amazing piano player. Really amazing. He plays so fast, it's as if he had multiple sets of hands. To drive that point home, 1900's hands blur across the keyboard. Sometimes through the magic of digital editing, there are actually six of his hands on the keyboard. The score of the film, written by master movie composer Ennio Morricone, is wonderful. It's a shame that Tornatore portrays it as a feat of supernatural, almost freakish ability.

Next page | Musical dueling with Jelly Roll Morton