Search

ARCHIVES
CONTACT US
WORLD NEWS

'M tv-ing it'

Arizona Daily Wildcat Courtesy of Paramount Pictures Frankie Paige (Patricia Arquette) receives painful wounds during an episode of possession on a subway ride in Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures' new film "Stigmata."

Nicolas Cage met Patricia Arquette many years ago and swore that he would marry her. The problem was, neither one of them was really cool then.

Fast-forward 15 years later and they're both Hollywood darlings. They met up again and within a week of reacquainting himself with her, Cage proposed.

And who can blame him? Patricia Arquette is an amazing lady. And boy, is she ever ultra hip! In fact, her coolness level is off the meter, as evidenced in her new film "Stigmata."

As Frankie Paige in "Stigmata," Arquette plays a hairdresser/ Christ figure for the 90s. She wears fuzzy clothes and blue eye shadow while she dances at clubs and has promiscuous sex - with dreamboat Patrick Muldoon, nonetheless.

Top that off with shooting her in the extreme lighting and editing style of MTV, and you're gonna have one super fresh girl.

Paige is a hip American girl whose biggest worry is whether or not she needs to get an abortion. That is until her mother sends her the rosary of a deceased priest in South America, and she suddenly becomes a stigmatic, which is a person whose body receives the five mortal wounds of Christ through some otherworldly force. Vatican private investigator Father Andrew Kiernan (Gabriel Byrne) is sent to investigate - and the wackiness ensues.

There is, however, only one small problem. Paige is a character in a film about discovering the last words of Christ and the slow painful crucifixion of his messenger. The production style, however, makes a joke out of the plot. If done seriously, "Stigmata" would have been a really interesting and original story.

But director Rupert Wainwright (Disney's "Blank Check") took the idea of contrasting the quiet, dignified world of the Vatican with the hip, young, exciting life of a non-religious American girl and went crazy.

Whenever the boring holy man Byrne is on screen by himself, the camera takes long, wide shots of him, allowing some distance between the man and the audience.

Paige, on the other hand, is thrust into the viewers' faces. Half the time she's on screen it's in a close-up - an "extreme" close-up, you might say. There are lights surrounding her, and the camera shakes like the hand-held cinematography of "The Blair Witch Project." The viewer can't even see what's happening on screen.

And the movie nullifies the dignity of the religious aspect of the plot. The cardinal, played by Johnathan Pryce, is (surprise, surprise) evil. And Father Kiernan is easily swayed from the cloth by the fun, flirty Frankie Paige.

With a topic that is based in truth, as the filmmakers themselves are quick to point out, they take away so much by "MTV-ing" it. The film begs to be treated with reverence, to have the quiet self-respect of a movie like "Witness."

But I suppose in the 90s, where the Harrison Ford action hero has bowed down to the likes of edgy crime fighter Nicolas Cage, you can't expect the same type of compassion to appear on film.