Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: TUESDAY, June 6, 1995 TAG: 9506060099
SECTION: EXTRA PAGE: 1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: JAMES RYAN ENTERTAINMENT NEWS WIRE
DATELINE: LENGTH: Long
Shoestring constraints aside, "Brother's" tacky New York Harbor crash-landing was intended to put moviegoers on notice that what they were about to witness had no illusions of crossing light sabers with "Return of the Jedi."
A decade later, Sayles has employed a similar technique to forewarn viewers that his latest film, "The Secret of Roan Inish" (showing in Roanoke at The Grandin Theatre), will make no attempt to outgun MTV in an effort to capture short attention spans.
Adapted from an Irish children's book about a half-seal, half-human creature called a Selkie, the movie begins with an old fisherman (Irish stage actor Mick Lally) telling a long-winded story of the sea.
"One of the main things this movie is about is taking the time to tell a story, and storytelling itself," explains Sayles. Viewers ``will be in a world where there is a lot of time, where people tell stories, where people don't even have watches."
What the opening says, in essence, is that if this is your cup of tea, hang in there. If not, there's still time to slip over to the screening next door for explosions, cheap jokes and car crashes. But if you decide to stick around for Sayles' old-fashioned yarn, which features a cast of talented Irish actors, be prepared for ruminations on his favorite theme: community.
Born 45 years ago in Schenectady, N.Y., of Irish, German, Polish and Czech ancestry, Sayles has long been fascinated by America's rootlessness and search for identity. He has explored these themes in his short stories and books, including the novels "Union Dues, "Los Gusanos" and "The Anarchists' Convention." His first movie, 1980's "Return of the Secaucus Seven," continued along the same lines with its story of a group of '60s radicals at a weekend reunion.
In their own way, many of his other works - his 1987 movie about striking coal miners, "Matewan," his 1988 baseball drama "Eight Men Out," 1991's tale of local political intrigue "City of Hope" and the 1992 character study "Passion Fish" - were also about people seeking to form a community.
"America is a very nomadic country," Sayles points out. "More and more people don't live in the place where they grew up. Built into American society is this break with traditional culture. So you have a lot of question marks. People don't know their place. There's a great liberty that comes with that but also a great anxiety. [A sense of community] is something that a lot of people don't have and long for.
`` `Roan Inish' is about a family trying to decide whether to return to their traditional roots. Can you choose to go back like that, and what does that choice mean? It means you're going to take yourself out of the mainstream, and that has a cost and a benefit."
Sayles has spent much of his life outside the mainstream, beginning in his late teens when he thumbed rides through the Midwest. "I was part of the last generation for whom it was somewhat safe to hitchhike," he says. "The percentage of hitchhikers to lunatics at that time was still very high."
Dual interests in acting and storytelling cultivated in college eventually led him to try his hand at filmmaking. Although his name has come to be synonymous with classy, gritty art house films - he received an Oscar nomination for his "Passion Fish" script - it was another very different fish tale, "Piranha," for shlockmeister Roger Corman, that earned Sayles his first above-the-line credit in 1978. The "Jaws" spoof was followed by the Corman camp classics "Alligator" and "Battle Beyond the Stars" and the less successful "Lady in Red."
"I just had a lot of fun," says Sayles of his Corman years. "It was sort of like screenwriting school for me."
Sayles, who received a prestigious MacArthur Foundation Genius grant, went on to pen "The Howling" and "Breaking In" and to write and direct "Liana" and "Baby It's You."
"Roan Inish," his ninth film, is based on a children's book, "Secret of the Ron Mor Skerry," written by Rosalie K. Fry in 1957. It had been a childhood favorite of Sayles' longtime companion and producing partner, Maggie Renzi.
Sayles says that it was listening to the laments of his friends with children that persuaded him to push ahead with the project. "I know how tough it is for them to find movies for their kids that they would also want to see themselves," he says. "I also thought back to when I was 10 years old. Of all my movies, only `Brother From Another Planet' and `Eight Men Out,' because I loved baseball, would I have sat still for."
He was also attracted by the elements of the Selkie story that pointed to a "fraternity between the animal that's hunted and the hunter," a theme that is common to American Indian, Inuit, Amazon, aboriginal and African cultures.
"One of the things that fascinated me about the Selkie myth is that it is one of the few stories of its kind with guilt in it," he continues. "My theory is that it's because [the seals] have these big, soulful, human eyes, and they died a very violent death at the end of a club."
The director has already begun preproduction on his 10th film, a multigenerational murder mystery set on the Texas-Mexican border. The story concerns a small-town sheriff who dusts off an old murder case that seems to implicate his father. As always, beneath the intriguing yet simple plot are layers of sociopolitical discourse and the ever-present ruminations on community.
"It's about history and what we do with it," says Sayles. "Do we feel guilty about what our ancestors did? How much do you let that define your life?"
by CNB