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Pretty Good

I don't have all the words right now but this film is a work of art.

Watching it is like watching the spectacle of a class clown at their best: you laugh at their jokes, instigate their defiance, and "ooooh" when they get in trouble.

Michelle Pfeiffer's Oscar nominated performance anchors 1992's LOVE FIELD, a surprisingly moving marriage of character study and buddy movie that draws the viewer in with the draw of vividly human characters involved in a somewhat over the top story that manages to hold our attention due to the extreme likability of the two main characters. Pfeiffer plays a Dallas beautician named Lurene in 1963, who is so devastated by the assassination of JFK that she decides, against her husband's wishes, to travel to Washington DC to attend JFK's funeral and, en route, befriends a black man (Dennis Haysbert)traveling with his daughter, and the relationship that develops between the two when circumstances find the three of them on the run together. The story takes on an unexpected richness because these two people are part of the racially turbulent 1960's and because of the beautifully evocative performances from the stars. Pfeiffer, in particular, gives us a sad and slightly pathetic creature, wearing a platinum blonde Marilyn Monroe wig that seems to represent her desire to be someone else, her Lurlene is slightly ditzy, bored,lonely, but with a heart as big as all outdoors and the quiet dignity that Haysbert brings to his character in this tense situation is on target. Brian Kerwin also scores in the most significant role of his career as Lurene's abusive brute of a husband, but it is the performances and chemistry of the two stars that make this journey a memorable one.

This is an American story of irrealizable love between a black man (Haysbert) and a white and already married lady (Pfeiffer), whose meeting is arranged by the chance of President Kennedy's murder. Apart from its effective stressing on the suffocating racist climate of the time, the course of the plot proceeds along the path of averageness and predictability; nevertheless Pfeiffer's enlivens the otherwise meager scene with her magic. About 10 years later Dennis Haysbert will play in another, deeper and closer to poetry yet despicably imitative and also possibly more biased towards commerciability, retelling of this story, «Far from Heaven› by Todd Haynes.

Love Field is an airport near Dallas, named after the pioneer aviator Moss Love. Its relevance to this film is that it was the airport into which President John F. Kennedy flew for the visit which was to end in his assassination. (This has not, however, prevented some people from giving the title a more literal interpretation; the German title, for instance, was "Feld der Liebe", or "Field of Love").The film is set in November 1963, around the time of the assassination. The main character is Lurene Hallett, a thirty-something Dallas beautician obsessed with the President and even more with his wife Jacqueline. (Jackiemania of this sort appears to have been a genuine phenomenon of the early sixties; it was satirised by the British humorist Michael Wharton ("Peter Simple") who wrote of "typical housewives' fan clubs" with names like the "Revisionist Anti-Our Jackie Onassis"). When she learns that the President has been assassinated she is determined to travel by bus to Washington to attend his funeral, without either the knowledge or approval of her husband Ray.During her journey, Lurene meets Paul Cater, a black fellow-passenger, travelling with a young girl named Jonell, who he claims is his daughter. She senses that something is wrong, jumps to the conclusion that Paul has kidnapped the child and raises the alarm. When she realises the truth- that Paul is indeed Jonell's father and that he has rescued her from an orphanage where she was being mistreated after the death of her unmarried mother- Lurene feels that she needs to make amends for her well-intentioned but ill-judged interference, and helps Paul to make a getaway. The two find themselves on a perilous road trip across several Southern states with the police in pursuit.This was the film which won Michelle Pfeiffer her third Academy Award nomination in four years (the others were for "Dangerous Liaisons" and "The Fabulous Baker Boys"), thus completing her successful transition from sex symbol to serious actress. Her Lurene at first seems a slightly ridiculous figure, and not merely because she has the sort of Christian name generally used by Hollywood scriptwriters as shorthand for "dumb blonde trailer trash". Her thick Texas drawl, her overdone makeup and her platinum blonde bouffant hairdo, the sort of big hair that screams "early sixties!" at you, all initially make it difficult to take her seriously. (Even by the end of the decade, this hairstyle had been forbidden by law on pain of extreme ridicule). Her obsession with the President and First Lady seems naïve and childish, an adult version of a teenage crush. Yet as the film progresses, we realise that she is not just a dumb blonde, but someone who has hidden reserves of kindness and decency, especially as she is no middle-class liberal, but comes from the class which, in the South, has always constituted the main reserve of racist bigotry.Films about racial prejudice are today commonplace, and even in the early nineties were not as daring or original as they would have been a few decades earlier. What was original about "Love Field" is the way in which it treats this theme. Lurene's deepening relationship with Paul is always going to cause both of them problems, given that they are travelling through rural areas where even a platonic friendship between a black man and a white woman will always be regarded with suspicion and anything deeper than that with outright hostility. When the couple realise that they are falling in love, they also realise that they have violated a fundamental taboo of their society. Indeed, this was a courageous theme even for 1992. Even ten years later when Dennis Haysbert, who plays Paul here, was to star in "Far from Heaven", another film with a similar theme, it was made clear that his character's relationship with Julianne Moore always remained non-sexual.Like "Frankie and Johnnie" in which Pfeiffer had starred the previous year, "Love Field" is essentially a romantic comedy, but one which contains a greater degree of psychological depth and insight than is usual in films of this type, at least in its portrayal of Lurene. Haysbert's Paul is perhaps the sort of standard stoical, dignified black man common in films with a race relations theme, but it is Michelle Pfeiffer's performance which keeps us watching. I should also mention Jerry Goldsmith's excellent piano score which enhances the appeal of this film. 7/10

Love Field is the kind of movie where you just know the words `set against the backdrop' were used in its pitch: A love story between a black man and a white woman, set against the backdrop of the Kennedy assassination. It's not a particularly comfortable mix of ideas.What's strange is that it handles both threads rather well, if taken separately. The sense of shock at the assassination feels genuine for the most part, mainly because of the inclusion of a contemporary news clip as the newsreader struggles to find words and clear his throat as he announces Kennedy's death.The love story is rather less successful, but comes close to being touching every so often. As Michelle Pfeiffer makes her way to the Kennedy funeral, she meets Dennis Haysbert and his daughter on a long-distance coach. Their growing fondness for each other is mostly convincing, and we should be grateful that there is no mutual-animosity to change to affection, an idea so old it can ruin a movie immediately. Regardless of their individual merits, combine these threads together and the movie starts to unravel. Its heart is in the right place so it can't really be called tasteless, but it skirts the edges a little too often. In one scene we have to switch from the travellers spending a restful night at a friend's house to them watching the TV as Lee Harvey Oswald is shot. This kind of uncomfortable transition is made a number of times, and grates on each of them, none more so than in the climax, when Jackie Kennedy looks at Pfeiffer as she is driven past her on the way to her husband's funeral. Its intention was certainly not to trivialise the assassination, but too often it seemed to be used for dramatic effect in an otherwise unrelated love story.The film seemed to lack confidence; believing that its main story was simply not interesting enough, it included racism, segregation, wife-beating, kidnapping and child abuse for good measure. These darker tones were treated with the gentle touch as everything else, which didn't earn them the credibility they deserved.Love Field probably aimed too high. It just didn't have the weight to carry off the issues it dealt with or the messages it tried to send out. Had the assassination been played down it could have been a great love story. Had the love story been played down it could have been a great story about segregation. Had segregation been played down it could have been a great movie about the impact of the assassination on the lives of ordinary people. It tried to be all these things together, and together they weakened their own credibility.It seems harsh to include these criticisms of a movie that was lightweight and mostly enjoyable, but that was the problem; a film that dealt with these issues shouldn't have been lightweight or enjoyable. Its tone wasn't dark enough to pull them off. It was a nice enough movie, with good performances from Pfeiffer and Haysbert, but it asked too much of itself and forced us to ask the same.