A Spiritual ‘Road’

If it’s true that women are dominating the decision about what movie a couple will see, then I’m happy to report that we finally have a wonderful movie to which to drag our other halves . . . in spite of the mixed review by your critic, Kenneth Turan (“ ‘Road’ No Paradise for Female Prisoners,” April 11).

I’m speaking of “Paradise Road,” the new movie so beautifully written and directed by Bruce Beresford, who also directed “Driving Miss Daisy.”

Your reviewer accuses the movie of being filled with “non-surprising surprises.” What a surprise! It’s a POW movie . . . and a true one at that. Where do we think those ideas about men’s behavior in POW camps came from? Does that mean once we’ve seen men in certain kinds of dramas, we’ve said all we need to say about humanity in those circumstances?

For this reason the director is able to explore what makes this war movie so different from the others; what ingredient it possesses that few other war movies share (at least overtly): It has a spiritual component. And although we know that all human beings must draw on this inner resource to survive under such horrific circumstances, nowhere has that spirit been given voice. And what a voice!

So the “surprise” of this movie is not its subject matter or how well it was done but that it was made at all. And for once, we don’t have to thank the Weinstein Brothers; we can thank a studio, 20th Century Fox and, more specifically, its specialty division, Fox Searchlight Films.

ROSILYN HELLER

Los Angeles