Passion Fish (1992)

One of the Enduring Classics of the 1990s

A paralyzed daytime soap actress leaves the Big Apples and returns to her family's now dilapidated Bayou manor and discovers the difficulty of keeping health care workers, finds one who was a coke head with her fast-running boyfriend in Chicago and, together they seek & find what little redemption can be found in this life.

The script by John Sayles is a masterpiece. All the acting is beyond first rate, Leo Burmester in particular. I have yet to see David Strathairn's prodigious skills on such abundant display as in this movie. Vondie Curtis-Hall is simply amazing as "Sugar" LeDoux with his twenty-one children.

Mary McDonnell and Alfie Woodard both perform at such a high level that their performances are beyond those typical of academy-award winners.

And the music! The wonderful zydeco is wonderful.

And there's a touching scene that involves a man dancing with a small girl I defy you to watch without pathos. I've looked for it on YouTube without success. You'll just have to watch the movie then.

One of the movies that will be watched a hundred years from now. I completely agree with film critic Andrew Sarris in ranking this movie the best of 1992 and one of the very best of the 1990s. I remember in the magazine Film Comment reading Sarris's conviction and utter surprise--bafflement really--that Passion Fish is a masterpiece, although he hadn't realized it at first. He actually apologizes to John Sayles.

This is a piece of art one should see. I consider it Sayles's most brilliant accomplishment. But I'm a little biased: I saw it four times in one day at the movie theater. I saw a young lady about my age and immediately considered her my life mate. We've been married ever since.

Just kidding. December 13, 2008

Flawed beauty

This is a beautifully filmed, splendidly acted, and intelligently written film, well worth watching. At the same time, the movie is overly long and the script contains more than a bit of soap opera. Most objectionable, to this viewer, was the low level of moral sensitivity exhibited by Sayles. There seems to be nothing higher in life than sex, even when it's with someone else's husband. Christianity is sneered at in the script, and there is blasphemy along with the much-used "f" word. At the end, one has the feeling that the two women lead characters will reach no higher goal in life than jumping in the sack with assorted men. Just the message this society needs! October 20, 2007

Sayles Bait

I love John Sayles's movies--and he's an excellent short story writer, too. I hadn't gotten around to watching PASSION FISH, though, until very recently. It's everything I'd come to expect in a Sayles film: compelling dialogue, fascinating characters (all of them, even the bit-players who were only in one or two scenes), great soundtrack, smart casting, and wise, subtle humor.

The story is basically about two guarded, emotionally damaged women who find strength in each other as their friendship evolves.

However, there were a few little errors that irritated me, particularly since I had it on good authority that Sayles's understanding of rural Louisiana was dead-on. Apparently Sayles hadn't hired any Chicago fact-checkers, although one major, and a few minor, characters were from Chicago.

The sticking points were:

1. Two characters are discussing their Chicago origins and mention the high schools they attended. The Angela Bassett character says she graduated from Cooley High. Unfortunately, there's no such place. Maybe Sayles was giving a nod to the iconic movie of the same name, so we'll let him pass on this one.

2. The other character, Chantelle, supposedly graduated from DuSable High. At one point there was, indeed, a high school with that name. But she calls it "Du SAY ble High", while any Chicagoan would know the pronunciation is "Du SAH ble." This is as bad as if Sayles had a Kentuckian refer to LouISSville. Sheesh.

3. A passing reference is made to a "joke" about Chicago having been burned, in relation to the race riots of the late 1960's. Sayles has evidently never visited the West Side, which, 40 years later, still hasn't recovered from the initial arson fest and the subsequent abandonment and decay of that part of Chicago. Despite the occasional stab at gentrification, the area remains impoverished and desolate. That's no joke to the people who are still stuck there.

I recommend this movie to anyone who enjoys a good character-driven tale--and I recommend "The Encyclopedia of Chicago" to Sayles's production team, just in case.






June 6, 2007

PASSION FISH

THis is a movie rich. The acting is superb. No action but pleny of really good story. I have watched Passion Fish many times both in VHS and now in DVD. It never grows old. March 28, 2007

Passion Fish

I borrowed this movie along with four or five others from the local library and I kept putting it off and eventually considered simply returning it without even watching it, thinking that it looked kind of sappy and would be a bore to watch. I decided to give it a try the night--very late in the night, I should say--before it was due, and boy was I ever wrong. This is one of the most moving and evocative movies that I've watched in a while, and could not help but watch it through to the end despite the late hour. This is one of the few times when I can say that I feel that a movie was perfectly cast. The acting, the character development is superb, and a nice tight story and excellent script. I most enjoyed the scene on the Bayou to the song Le Danse de Mardi Gras, it was just so beautifully done and the song really evokes the "fecund"--as one minor whimsically puts it when trying to decribe Louisiana--of the region. This alone makes the movie worth watching. June 18, 2006

More reviews at Amazon.com ...