The Bridge of San Luis Rey [Import]

Thorton Wilder's novel of ruminations about the quality of love and the extremes to which it can be played out is more of a philosophical meditation than a story and this is probably the reason many people feel upended by Mary McGuckian's film, a project she both adapted for the screen and directed. If this film seems a bit on the static side there is a reason: the tale is a testimony before court by Brother Juniper (Gabriel Byrne) about his investigation into the deaths of five people when the rope bridge of San Luis Rey outside Lima, Peru collapsed. Brother Juniper stands before the Archbishop of Peru (Robert De Niro) and the Viceroy of Peru (F. Murray Abraham) and poses the question as to whether the incident was an act of God or just a simple accident.

In order to present his case he has researched the lives of the five who died (mentioning those five would ruin the suspense of the story). We learn about The Marquesa (Kathy Bates) whose daughter has departed for Spain to marry well (the Marquesa is starving for the love of her estranged daughter); the kindhearted Abbess (Geraldine Chaplin) who gives refuge to the unwanted including identical twin men Manuel and Esteban (the mute Mark and Michael Polish) and Pepita (Adriana Domínguez). We also meet Uncle Pio (Harvey Keitel) who serves as a harlequin for the court and raises Camila Villegas AKA La Perichola (Pilar López de Ayala) who loves the stage and the accoutrements more than she loves Uncle Pio. Through the kindness of the Abbess, Pepita is loaned to the Marquesa's household as a surrogate daughter, the twins share their devotion to the court until a tragedy separates them, La Perichola is impregnated by the Viceroy and banned from the city (she raises her little boy, hiding from the world because of her post-partum smallpox disfigurement), and Uncle Pio eventually assumes responsibility of the child out of fatherly love. Five of these people who are true to love's power cross the fateful bridge. Brother Juniper is condemned by the Inquisition for his treason and the meaning of the story is revealed.

The cast is heavy on big names and while they make the most out of the stiff script, they never really touch us the way Wilder's novel characters did. But the trappings of the film are grand and accurately portrayed, the scenery is beautiful, and the costumes are some of the finest period costumes in many a film. This is one of those films that requires careful concentration from the audience, a willingness to not be disturbed by the at times static proscenium stage feeling of the setting, but the rewards of understanding the message are great. There are some fine performances here and the film is definitely worth seeing. It is more demanding than most films - and that is just fine! Grady Harp, October 05

I loved Thornton Wilder's delicate and moving novel and approached this movie accordingly. By the time I watched it through, I reached a point of exasperation, feeling that so much of it was good or even excellent, yet the pacing suffered and the editing failed to drive the watcher securely along the road to the end. Gabriel Byrne, Harvey Keitel and F. Murray Abraham performed excellently, Byrne in particular. Byrne's ongoing narration does its best to bind the tale together, and his quality of voice enriches this movie, giving it a beauty that persists in my memory. I could only have wished that towards the end he had given us a little more hint of the gathering horror that Brother Juniper must feel at his situation. A horror that will never be allowed a voice.

However, Robert DeNiro was horribly miscast. I am a DeNiro admirer; I have particularly loved his roles in such movies as Awakenings and The Deer Hunter and The Mission. But not here. Whether it is due to the director's reading of the character or his own, he lacked the necessary gravitas to persuade me that he believed in his own identity. He came across as light voiced, dismayingly colloquial, and, perhaps due to the shape of his moustache, perilously close to comical.Even his asking for Brother Juniper's death gave him no depth. John Lynch and Geraldine Chapman fill out their characters amazingly for the shortness of their actual time on screen. Katherine Bates disappointed me a little -- I wanted more heart. Given the nature of the Marquesa, I wanted sloppiness, more piggishness and self-pity from her in the beginning. When Byrne in his overvoice speaks of the tyranny that informs her maternal love, we have only really seen the generosity of that love.Perhaps a little more time to watch her reactions, more time to see her ideas developing on her face, would have aided the realization of the character in full.

Despite that last comment where I am asking for more rather than less, I wonder if more severe cutting might have helped this film. In visual terms it is beautiful and the details are extremely well realized. I must watch this movie again; I feel that it could have been a truly great film and I feel personally disappointed that it is not.

This movie is like touring some famous art museum. You go from painting to painting, trying your dutiful best to absorb the greatness. But it's all just too much. You end up suffering from surfeit - your main concern your aching feet.

The photography and costumes in this movie are exquisite and you often feel as if you are indeed looking at a series of the Master's paintings. There are Vermeer moments, and many scenes that would make astonishing still lifes if you freeze the DVD action. But it is all too dense, too thick with brocade and the lives of too many bewigged characters. For the first half of the film, I felt plunged into the alien world of 18th century Peru without enough focus to orient myself. By the second half of the film, I had grasped enough of some of the characters to begin to identify with them and to feel the poignancy of their lives and deaths. But by then, it was too late. I was suffering the tourist's complaint of too much packed into too short a time - if this is Monday, it must be Lima.

They gathered a truly star-studded cast for this film. Except for Kathy Bates and Geraldine Chaplain though, the actors seem a little stiff and out of their element. And in declaiming their lines, some of their words get garbled. That's fatal, because you do need to catch every word that's being said at the outset of this film in order to appreciate what is happening and how the characters are related to each other.

I had read The Bridge as an assignment in high school, but didn't remember it well. This movie presents a student with the opposite of the usual student recourse. Usually, when assigned a "classic" to read as homework, a student can fall back on Cliff's Notes, or better yet - go see the movie. In this case, in order to get a handy take on the movie - you really have to go read the book.