THE QUEST: FRANKIE & JOHNNY, HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE, THE VANISHING
As long as there have been stories, there have been stories about people taking journeys, be they physical, spiritual, or psychological. Sometimes, especially nowadays, the journey itself matters more than the destination, but mostly, it's about what's lying at the end. These stories can also be how whoever is on this journey, or quest, is affected by both the journey and what's waiting at the end. Among the movies about quests this year were Garry Marshall's FRANKIE & JOHNNY, Fax Bahr and George Hickenlooper's HEARTS OF DARKNESS: A FILMMAKER'S APOCALYPSE, and George Sluizer's THE VANISHING. And all three movies, for the viewer, are a journey worth taking.
For FRANKIE & JOHNNY, the quest is simply for love (of course, love is never simple, but that's for another article). Marshall's movie is based on the play "Frankie & Johnny in the Clair de Lune" by Terrence McNally, who adapted it for the movies. And in the roles originally played on Broadway by Kathy Bates and F. Murray Abraham, Marshall instead cast Michelle Pfeiffer and Al Pacino, which caused a lot of grumbles from people who wondered how glamourous movie stars could effectively make a gritty story about love and loneliness believable. Those who checked it out, however, would see it's actually pretty good.
As with the play, the movie centers on a diner where Frankie (Pfeiffer) and Johnny (Pacino) both work. Frankie is a waitress who lives alone, and claims to like it that way, since she's had bad experiences with men. Johnny is an ex-con (he forged a check) who's divorced, and gets a job at the diner as a short-order cook. Johnny is soon attracted to Frankie, and to him it's simple; he's in his forties, he likes Frankie a lot, he thinks he's the right guy for her, and he doesn't want to fool around. For, Frankie, however, it's not that simple; first, she's freaked out by him a little (he goes to the funeral of a colleague of Frankie's, when he didn't even know the deceased), then she's upset when she finds out he's slept with Cora (Kate Nelligan), another waitress at the diner, and most of all, she has issues of her own.
Part of what Marshall and McNally do here is open up the play, which was just Frankie and Johnny in Frankie's apartment. So, in addition to Cora, there's also Nedda (Jane Morris), who's also a waitress, Nick (Hector Elizondo), who owns the restaurant, Peter (Glenn Plummer), a busboy who sells his screenplay, and Tim (Nathan Lane), Frankie's gay neighbor and friend (this was one of the first, if not the first, films to introduce the gay best friend stereotype). We see each of them struggling with the love and loneliness issue as well (with the possible exception of Nick, who seems to be happily married), but rather than overwhelming the movie, it compliments it. Which leads to the problem most people had with the movie. One of the few critics who liked it saw both the play and the movie fitting into the classic romantic comedy tradition, which had stars acting out our innermost desires, and I think that's true. And Marshall doesn't jazz things up, but keeps it simple, so the casting works. And lets face it; the play had a happy ending, so it's not like they're wrecking the play.
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