M O V I E S Oscar and Lucinda Directed by Gillian Armstrong Starring Ralph Fiennes and Cate Blanchett - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - ALSO THIS WEEK Spice World The Spice Girls' tasteless debut - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - LAST WEEK Deconstructing Harry Yucky Woody gives his hard-core fans the final finger Kundun Scorsese's exquisite Dalai Lama biopic The family values of "NYPD Blue" By Joyce Millman The most pro-family show on television - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - RECENTLY A full list of recent reviews, interviews and table talk. - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - Blue Glow DAILY TV PICKS - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - BROWSE THE MOVIE ARCHIVES TV ARCHIVES

p i x i e D u s t B__Y___C__H__A__R__L__E__S___T__A__Y__L__O__R _________RALPH FIENNES PLAYS A MISFIT AUSTRALIAN _________GAMBLER IN THE SHIMMERING, FRAGMENTED _________ROMANCE "OSCAR AND LUCINDA." "A BROKEN THING, a miracle, a tragedy, a dream." That line, which comes toward the end of "Oscar and Lucinda," sums up the movie's shattered lyricism. "Oscar and Lucinda" is like an opera that's a collaboration between a crazed composer and a perhaps too-sane conductor. I've read several Peter Carey novels, though not the one this film is based on, and I can recognize his particular brand of whimsy in Laura Jones' screenplay. Whimsy, though, is not a marked quality of director Gillian Armstrong. Armstrong has proven herself capable of getting inside crazy, self-destructive passions (as she did in her too-little-seen "Mrs. Soffel"), but her trademark as a filmmaker has always been her radiant sanity. Armstrong's best films -- "High Tide," "The Last Days of Chez Nous," "Little Women" and her ongoing series of documentaries on the lives of three Australian women and their daughters -- are grounded without being shackled. They feel like the work of someone whose head and heart are in perfect synch, full-hearted and tough-minded. For "Oscar and Lucinda" to really take flight, the material needed a director with a streak of lunacy. John Boorman (one of the few giants among living filmmakers) or possibly Terry Gilliam might have envisioned the story as a cracked quest and invested it with their unreasonable and magnificent passion. But something in Armstrong holds back. Possibly the task of whittling down a more-than-400-page novel to a film that runs just over two hours, or perhaps her decision to go for a mixture of delicacy and off-kilter humor. Whatever the reason, "Oscar and Lucinda" winds up feeling like a collection of bits in search of vision and an emotional surge. But what bits! When you see a church steeple made of glass seemingly floating through the verdant green of riverbanks, or Ralph Fiennes sitting alone in the same glass church as it glides downriver, the images are so odd and distinctive and inexplicably moving that it's easy to imagine Armstrong wanting to make the entire movie just to capture those wonderful sights. What it all adds up to is another story. In the few months since I've seen "Oscar and Lucinda," and mentioned it to people requesting movie recommendations, I've been stumped when they ask me to tell them what it's about. In bare outline, it's the story of two gamblers, set in the England and Australia of the mid-1800s. Oscar (Fiennes) is a young minister in training who discovers his love of gambling at Oxford. He puts most of his winnings in the poor box, keeping only what he needs to live on, but he can't stop himself. Citing Pascal's wager, he refuses to believe that a God who asks us to bet on his existence finds other forms of betting a sin. Predictably, society doesn't agree. Deciding that a posting as a missionary can cure him, he sails to Australia (though he's terrified of water). On board, he meets up with Lucinda (Cate Blanchett), a young woman whose mother's death has left her well provided for and who is returning to Sydney to run a glassworks. Cards are her other passion, the one that brings her and Oscar together. In Ted Hughes' new translation of "Tales from Ovid," he calls the "Metamorphoses" an account of how "bodies had been changed, by the power of the gods, into other bodies." In some weird way, that line explains Lucinda's love of glass, the way it's both fluid and solid, delicate and strong. And it explains how Oscar tries to convert his compulsive gambling into doing God's work. They are both engaged in precarious pursuits, seeking their pleasures in things that can fall apart in an instant, and there's black-humored irony in the way their fates unwind. That irony, though, is at odds with the grandeur the story is simultaneously working toward. And it may be why the final emotional effect feels a bit muffled. When the two would-be lovers finally kiss, standing in a moonlit garden in their nightgowns, it's a sweet moment, all the more so for their tentativeness. But the connection between them needs to be much stronger, much earlier. A love story where the two lovers don't consummate their passion has to teem with longing. There are moments, when Blanchett and Fiennes' smiles seem to match up, or when she beholds him with glistening eyes, that promise that longing. But they pass much too easily. Part of the problem is that, beyond the idea of a woman determined to live by her own rules, the character of Lucinda isn't really developed. (It's the first time I can say that about a female character in any Armstrong movie.) Blanchett is fine; I especially like her whenever a smile curls the corners of her mouth and she gets a sort of dazed twinkle in her eye. She doesn't do anything wrong, she just never gets enough to do. But this is the first time since "Schindler's List" that I've believed in Fiennes as an actor, and the only time I've warmed up to him as a presence. Throughout the movie, Oscar is referred to as a scarecrow, and Fiennes, scrawny with carrot-red hair and wearing threadbare coats and top hat, really does look like a scarecrow. He does wonderful fluttery things with his hands, bringing them to his lips or holding them out in a wait-a-minute gesture that looks as if he expects to be able to pluck from thin air the words eluding him. It's a splendid and shrewd piece of miscasting. On some level, you can't really believe in Fiennes as this odd duck, and yet the character's awkwardness humanizes him, liberates Fiennes from his role as matinee idol for the "Masterpiece Theatre" crowd. The gentle, lost look that he wears throughout the movie is very touching. For the first time, he seems like a real person, and I didn't hesitate to yield to him. As she showed in "Mrs. Soffel" and the exquisite "Little Women," Armstrong must be the least stuffy, least remote director of costume dramas around. You simply feel as if you're in the period, not watching actors pretending to be. (The friend I saw "Oscar and Lucinda" with told me that she looked at the bloomers and smart little hats that Janet Patterson has designed for Cate Blanchett and thought, "I know places where I can get those.") From picture to picture, Armstrong's craftsmanship only becomes more confident. Her longtime editor, Nicholas Beaumann, makes transitions so effortless they glide by like that church steeple through the greenery. And cinematographer Geoffrey Simpson works in a delicate, almost muted palette -- the sky above the Devonshire coastline has the diffuse blue of a Corot painting. What stays with you here though are the odd moments: the serendipitous shot of Blanchett with the actress who plays her mother (Gillian Jones), where it really seems as if you can see one reflected in the other; the open-faced grin of the charming Adam Hayes as the young Oscar, when a servant sneaks him a taste of Christmas pudding (his religious father has condemned the holiday as pagan); the tiger cat who snoozes his way contentedly through several scenes; the face of Bille Brown, as Oscar's caretaker on the expedition, streaming tears when he can no longer protect his charge; Oscar's sudden, shocking and indelible moment of violence; Fiennes' face as it floats sideways into the frame when Oscar views a prototype of the glass church; Lucinda covering her face with a letter from Oscar as if he were caressing her. These are so lovely that they make you protective of the movie's larger flaws. At the beginning the child Lucinda is given a St. Rupert's Drop, a piece of blown glass that, when squeezed, dissolves into what looks like pixie dust. That's the movie. Press it too hard and it falls apart, but the pieces that float by are beguiling. SALON | Jan. 23, 1998  Charles Taylor is a regular contributor to Salon.

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