Alan Parker's "Shoot the Moon" (9 p.m., Tuesday, Preview) got short shrift when
it was released theatrically last year. Although greeted with generally
superlative reviews, business dropped dead and MGM dropped the film. In the
industry it was referred to as a "tough sell." It deals with a tough topic,
features actors with little box office punch and was ignored by both the studio
publicists and the movie-going public.
Perhaps it will finally receive the attention it deserves during its
extended run on subscription television.
The title comes from the card game called Hearts. If a player "shoots the
moon," he is betting that he can win the entire game in one hand. Like betting
all your chips on one poker hand, it's a make or break proposition.
In the film, George (Albert Finney), a prize-winning novelist, leaves his
wife (Diane Keaton), four daughters, and his lovely suburban home to live with
his lover, played by Karen Allen.
This basic scenario has been played out across America as the marriage rate
drops and the divorce rate soars. Advising married couples has become one of
the biggest growth industries, and pop psycholgists have made millions from
books on how to keep a marriage together, how to dismantle it without guilt,
how to live alone, how to adjust to divorce and how to cope with single
parenthood. Yet, each of these tomes makes everything seem so easy. It's not.
In "Shoot the Moon," when George leaves home, his reasons are never
explained, only implied. Instead of simplifying his decision by blaming the
wife, blaming him, blaming his life as a writer, blaming the kids or blaming
society in general, director Alan Parker lets the viewer deal with the
complications.
On the surface, it seems George is bored with a woman who is more mother
than wife. She's no longer the attractive, vivacious woman who attracted him in
the first place. His lover, a divorced parent with a child of her own, embodies
all of the lovable characteristics that we presume his wife has lost.
In an early scene, George accepts an award at a formal writer's dinner.
Keaton and he share a table, but not the limelight. She has become an appendage
to his ever-expanding ego, and he treats her like a sleepy-eyed, floppy-earred
house pet.
If "Shoot the Moon" was a simple case of male boredom and female
submission, the film would disappear as quickly as one of the aforementioned
quick cure tomes. But it's not.
Slowly, Parker begins to dig deeper and deeper into the multi-faceted,
mysterious aspects of marital breakdown. In emotional scenes between the father
and his daughters and post-marital spats between estranged husband and wife,
Parker explores the deep-seated resentments of two people who are unsure of
their relationship because they are unsure of themselves as individuals.
What emerges is a disquieting portrait of confused people attempting to
find some stability in an unstable world.
Fortunately, the actors are equipped to handle Parker's subtlety. Finney,
playing an older version of his character in "Saturday Night and Sunday
Morning," conveys both the guilt and joy of a man in crisis. In scenes of
tenderness with his children and rage with his wife, he communicates the
extremes of a man experiencing what is jingoistically called a mid-life crisis.
Keaton's performance is a bit more restrained and takes a while to warm up.
At the beginning of "Shoot the Moon," she is a moaning wife who resents her
husband's success, and it seems that Finney is justified in leaving her.
However, after Finney leaves, she begins to grow. Like someone who has long
lived in the shadows, she begins to appreciate the light. Ironically, she re-
discovers those sprightly qualities that probably attracted Finney in the first
place.
Parker, through magnificent images of a tranquil suburban home as seen
through a soft, morning mist, suggests the deceptive power of physical reality.
The beauty of the northern California coastline, often used in movies to
romanticize love stories, becomes a place to contemplate the wreckage of life,
not its renewal.
Obviously, it is tough to sell a movie filled with marital discord, scenes
of domestic violence and terrifying verbal cruelty. But it's even tougher when
the film doesn't end on an optimistic note.
"Shoot the Moon" cannot be conveniently categorized into a moral fable and
doesn't offer any solutions, but it does evoke a merciless portrait of domestic
reality - and it's worth seeing more than once.
Copyright © 1983 Globe Newspaper Company