MOVIE REVIEW : Boorman Dreams Up Rich Fairy Tale in ‘Where the Heart Is’

Few film makers alive have an eye like John Boorman’s. He’s the kind of director who can make the landscapes sing, the drab city streets burst into extravagant bloom.

That’s what happens in the best of “Where the Heart Is” (citywide), a movie fairy tale about riches, poverty, art and the power of family. It’s a movie, to some extent, split against itself. The rapturous visuals, Boorman’s specialty, clash with his own stiff, unspontaneous screenplay, done in collaboration with daughter Telsche. Most of the dialogue in “Heart” seems to have no heart at all. Around it, Boorman’s world--bursting with satirically palatial wealth and funky destitution--flames up with a soul all it own.

This cautionary comedy about extraordinary reversals of fortune is constructed like the Arthurian legends of Boorman’s “Excalibur” or the futuristic fable of “Zardoz.” It has a once-upon-a-time buzz.

Superficially, it’s the tale of demolition tycoon Stewart McBain (Dabney Coleman) who, incensed at his children’s artsy radicalism, exiles them to the Dutch House, a Brooklyn tenement. This building, in a barren block being razed for development, is the thorn in McBain’s paw. He’s locked in a Wall Street battle with a corporate raider; Dutch House, declared a historical landmark, endangers his contracts. Abandoning his children there, McBain is mocking their independence, telling them harshly to sink or swim. Instead, with their friends and roomers, they create an ephemeral Flatbush paradise of art, painting, computer games and haute couture .

But, underneath, this story casts off realism and jells into myth. Two princesses and a prince (Uma Thurman, Suzy Amis, David Hewlett) are banished into the common land by their swaggering king of a father and his wife, queen of shopping sprees (Joanna Cassidy). The exiles join forces with comical rude peasants, wizards, artists, knights and swains, while the fiery dragon of hostile takeover scorches the earth.

Boorman charges New York with his ecstatic vision. The Brooklyn Bridge spans these magical boroughs like castle battlements. The bums that huddle below in their cardboard box shelters are like Shakespearean clowns; natty young brokers peering into computers are warlocks with bubbling caldrons. The Dutch House, in its wilderness of crushed rock, is a cave of goblins and enchanters, where even the paintings--beautifully rendered by Timna Woollard--come alive. Above all this, McBain, king of destruction, watches skyscrapers crumble under his touch and rages against the ingratitude--How sharper than a serpent’s tooth!--of his overcreative children. Destiny obviously waits, with a wink, in the wings.

In reverting to this simple story, Boorman may seem to be retreating from the bold, epic canvases of most of his ‘70s and ‘80s work--or, worse, trying ineptly to Americanize the intimate family drama of his last film, the multi-awarded “Hope and Glory.” Actually, “Where the Heart Is” reprises the mood and themes of an earlier film some regard as Boorman’s masterpiece, 1970’s “Leo the Last.”

“Leo,” which was also shot by “Heart” cameraman Peter Suschitzky, was about a kingly voyeur (Marcello Mastroianni), spying on and envying the London poor with his telescope. And Boorman, who came from the privileged family he described in “Hope and Glory,” is a bit like Leo. He exalts the energy of the poor or natural man, mocks the absurd, overcultivated rich--but he does it from outside. He’s screened off by his own magic lens, his enchanted eye.

Boorman’s “Heart” kids live in a curiously enclosed world. They barely mingle with the commoners at all, except in a few quick snippets and montages. Instead, like slumming rich kids, they retreat into their magical cavern, make art, woo, have parties. Probably, Boorman can’t help turning the experience into a fairy tale. He can’t enter into the lives of the oppressed commoners he wants to exalt any more than he could in “Leo the Last.” In “Where the Heart Is,” he doesn’t even try.

Viewed as a real bum, scarcely a word or gesture of Christopher Plummer’s performance as the unprintably named tramp rings true--but he’s a dandy wizard. The three children seem spurious or exaggerated too, the sisters almost indistinguishable, rich bohemians. Only Crispin Glover, as an apparently gay couturier and Dabney Coleman crack the boundaries of their roles. Coleman is, once again, a virtuoso of snarling frustration and petty patriarchal tyranny, infuriated here that the kids are realizing dreams he’s probably repressed.

As a verbal comedy, “Where the Heart Is” (rated R for language and nudity) isn’t successful; the dialogue doesn’t have the snap, zingers or rhythm it needs to woo the big audience over. But it’s a weird, gorgeous treat anyway, lovably overdone and silly, swimming with loony, lush visual riches. When he’s on, Boorman is like a wizard, a lover. Like Rodgers and Hart, he turns Manhattan, and Brooklyn too, into isles of joy.

‘WHERE THE HEART IS’

A Touchstone Pictures presentation in association with Silver Screen Partners IV. Producer/director John Boorman. Script John and Telsche Boorman. Camera Peter Suschitzky. Production design Carol Spier. Executive producer Edgar F. Gross. Music Peter Martin. Costume design Linda Matheson. Editor Ian Crafford. With Dabney Coleman, Uma Thurman, Joanna Cassidy, Crispin Glover, Suzy Amis, Christopher Plummer, David Hewlett.

Running time: 1 hour, 45 minutes.

MPAA rating: R (under 17 requires an accompanying parent or adult guardian).