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New orders and the body politic: "You can't grow without burning." Losey's The Servant is the point of departure, the steel business scion (Jeff Bridges) is a lost boy in the vacant mansion, "the comforts of your tradition" avail him no more. Birmingham in swift and weird transition, the shady real estate deal bumps into the Olympic Spa where the former Mr. Austria (Arnold Schwarzenegger) hits the weights. The giant is a thoughtful fellow never happier than with bluegrass fiddle in hand, his scrappy sometime-girlfriend (Sally Field) runs the front desk, the slumming blueblood craves the realness of their world. Their triangle builds to a haughty soirée and a hazardous mix of amyl nitrate and dumbbells, all part of "one of your more peculiar pursuits of higher meaning." After energy misplaced (Five Easy Pieces) and energy repressed (The King of Marvin Gardens), energy explodes merrily for the Bob Rafelson wanderer in his freest film. (People are always ready to start brawls or filch paintings or launch into moonshine-soaked jigs, and the vigorous camera is right by their side to take up the impulse.) The gym and the country club, reconciliation comes with a string of wild gags, a varied cultural musculature flexing itself: R.G. Armstrong with black wig in a jacuzzi whirlpool, Helena Kallianiotes in her karategi, Scatman Crothers' loving look at a medieval suit of armor. (Robert Englund, Roger E. Mosley, Joanna Cassidy and Joe Spinell add to the Sturgesian whirl of bodies and temperaments.) Bodybuilders to the rescue for the climax (cf. Borzage's The Big City), the melee that turns into a hearty spectacle before an eager audience. Artistic hunger amid corrupting luxuries is the athlete's advice seconded by Rafelson, the old uncle in the garden is even more concise: "Do something, and do it unsparingly." With Fannie Flagg, Woodrow Parfrey, Kathleen Miller, Richard Gilliland, and Ed Begley Jr.
--- Fernando F. Croce |