Playwright William Mastrosimone hopes that he has done a "public service." This month his Extremities makes the passage from stage to screen with its scarifying story of attempted rape and retribution.
Extremities has caused controversy ever since it first appeared on the off-Broadway stage in 1983. Its frank treatment of rape was gruesome enough to cause complaints, but more criticism raged around scenes in which the assault victim turns tables on her attacker and imprisons him in her open fireplace.
To Mastrosimone, Extremities, for which he wrote the screenplay, can only do good. "Working people feel that there is a war going on, an undeclared war with criminals where they have to defend themselves," he says. "I hope the film qualifies as art, but I can't think of any better function of a work of art than to enable people to take better control of their lives and fight back against crime."
Such themes have been a Hollywood staple in recent years. In Charles Bronson's Death Wish films, in Clint Eastwood's Dirty Harry series, and most recently in Sylvester Stallone's Cobra, tough-guy heroes have repeatedly saved helpless citizens from vicious thugs whom the legal system seems powerless to stop.
To judge by their box-office success, such films seem to have struck a deep chord with an American public fed up with crime. Indeed, no line in recent American cinema is more famous than Eastwood's challenge to a felon contemplating escape in Sudden Impact, "Go ahead, make my day."
But many critics claim these films exploit public anxiety about crime instead of honestly addressing it. Their screenplays read like Xeroxes, with clichéd stories that celebrate their stars as lone, heroic, and sometimes half-savage supermen. With their chaotic plots, repetitive killings, and endless car chases, such films seem less concerned with justice than mayhem.
Extremities is different, starting with what mastrosimone calls a "minimalist plot." A museum worker, Marjorie, is attacked by a rapist hiding in her parked car at night. She escapes, leaving her wallet (with her address) behind, and seeks police help. But she is denied protection for bureaucratic reasons. Assaulted again at her home several days later, she luckily disarms the attacker and then has to decide what to do with him.
The lead is played by Farrah Fawcett, who overcame the image created by her hairdo and Charlie's Angels with fine performances in the television movie on wife abuse, The Burning Bed, and in the stage version of Extremities.
She brings the same conviction to her role in the film, humanizing the machismo of law-and-order films with a rounded, lifelike performance.
There is good reason for her realism and the film's plausible feel, Mastrosimone says. Extremities is based on the actual experience of an anonymous New Jersey woman whom he befriended after she was raped, beaten, and left for dead.
Mastrosimone has re-fashioned the woman's story in a restrained but important way. The woman
...
Read Full Article
|
