Unstrung Heroes

I read this book a while ago and looked everywhere for the movie version, but to no avail. I knew it had been made, I just didn’t know where to get it, so naturally I leapt at the chance to review it for DVDnet.

It’s such an unusual story this; a boy essentially raised by his two mentally ill uncles whilst his mother is dying and his inept father struggles with the widening gulf between his dreams and his reality. Stephen Lidz is a regular kid with a weirdo dad. His father is an inventor and speaks in science and gobbledygook, always documenting life but not truly living it. That is, until his revered wife gets ill. So Stephen, realising he can’t watch his mother dying and desperately craving attention, moves to his uncles’ apartment in the city. What he finds on his arrival is so unexpected he is fascinated in a way only a nine-year-old boy can be. The place is a labyrinth of stacked newspaper towers and canyons, vast rooms of collections and junk, lost toys and detritus. It’s a goldmine.

"People, they get trapped in their own history unless someone shows them a way out."

The longer Stephen stays, the easier it is for him to cope with his father and his practically friendless life. He begins developing plans to help his uncles’ illnesses, even as they help him become less afraid and better adapted to being himself. Meanwhile, the spectre of death hovers menacingly over all.

By no means a common story, this has been shot in a truly moving manner. We are objective about the unchecked illnesses of the brothers because everyone else accepts them as they are. Therefore; no problem, just eccentricity. The temptation to make this a sentimental sugar-frosted midday movie may well have been overwhelming, but director Diane Keaton has kept her feet planted solidly in the story without resorting to a fully sanitised adaptation. And not that the story is so messy; it’s not, it’s just that people tend to tread softly around the shambling shade of mental instability.

This is a sweet film told in a nostalgic, yet progressive manner that manages to find the comedy in life, in death and in plain old existence.

A very clean transfer from Buena Vista here that doesn’t let the film down for a moment. Picture quality is very nearly razor sharp and flesh tones are perfect. There are limited artefacts throughout, but I barely noticed more than a couple and certainly there’s nothing obtrusive. Shadow detail is moderate only; sometimes well described and at others murkier. The film is delivered here in 1.85:1 with 16:9 anamorphic enhancement and looks very nice, capturing well the essence of a nostalgic ‘50s childhood with a crumbling urban environment surrounding the brothers. Both look great and bookend the calibre of the rest of the scenery and shots quite well. I only noticed one real gremlin at 41:23 when a shot of a photograph jitters momentarily. Still, it’s rather minute and unaffecting.

Again, everything is fairly even here. There are some great old songs used to highlight feeling and have been chosen very cleverly for both lyrical content and mood. Thomas Newman’s score is also worth a mention here as it covers a wide gamut of emotions and evokes a range of moods, including the paranoia of a schizophrenic or the deep unhappiness of a husband desperately in love with a dying wife. It really amplifies the feelings of the film in a marvellous fashion and is a real credit to the piece.

Dialogue and sound effects are both fine and there are no issues with synching that I could see/hear. Although only transferred in Dolby Digital 2.0, this is more than enough for the film’s intentions and it sounds just fine.

Unfortunately, we are bereft of extras here. So much potential wasted! Even talent profiles for the extraordinary cast would have been better than the nothing we get here.

While appearing on the surface like a sweet film of an unusual childhood, there is a deeper and subtler undercurrent of the blacker moods of humanity running beneath. Not immersed in misery, the film is a celebration of life, regardless of who is living it or who you’re living it with. Good, solid and fun performances come in from the dependable Maury Chaykin and Michael Richards as Stephen’s eccentric uncles and they carry much of the madness of the film in excellent fashion. They even rename Stephen at one point to Franz, which is the pen name of the author of this story, Franz Lidz. Certainly an unusual autobiographic piece, this is a likeable film most everyone can enjoy.