Jennifer Connelly and Paul Bettany

After their Park Slope adventure, Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly decided to head back to Manhattan, investing in a $6.9 million Tribeca penthouse. Apparently Tribeca didn't suit them either, however, as they have just put the place on the market, Curbed reports.

They're hoping to turn a profit on the penthouse at 288 West Street, as well, listing it for $8.495 million. Those Beautiful Mind royalties not paying off like they used to? The three-bedroom place may be feeling a little cramped, as Ms. Connelly just gave birth to her third child last May.

For a family of slightly smaller size (or one willing to have kids bunking), however, the 4,096-square-foot home is comfortable. According to a listing from Douglas Elliman brokers Raphael De Niro, James Flowers and Niro Pipher, the co-op features a skylight, a library/media room with maple shelves (currently stocked with classics like A Knight's Tale and Labyrinth) and a wood burning stove, a laundry room and "espresso stained floors," (Starbucks, we trust). Curbed has a walk through worth checking out.

eknutsen@observer.com

reation is a sluggish tome on the life of Charles Darwin and his long and painful creation of The Origin of Species, the controversial work of revolutionary thinking about evolution advancing the theory that man was descended not from Adam and Eve, but from monkeys. It caused a sensation throughout the world when it was published in 1859, and changed the history of scientific thinking. This long and wearying movie is about how hard it was to write and publish, and survive the wrath of organized religion that followed. It arrives on the 150th anniversary of the book, and the baroque direction by Jon Amiel is determined that we should live every single minute of it.

Charles Darwin and his wife Emma, played by real-life husband-wife team Paul Bettany and Jennifer Connelly, were first cousins in an uptight Victorian milieu who forged a marriage based on love that surmounted all obstacles, including religious differences and the early death of their 10-year-old daughter Annie, which caused Darwin to lose his faith in God. The film focuses on a short period in Darwin’s life in the mid-19th century, between Annie’s death and the book’s publication, when he spends long, tedious days studying earthworms and barnacles in a microscope. Busy selecting breeds of birds to determine which species nature had selected for survival, Darwin becomes an object of curiosity and suspicion for scholars and neighbors alike, his face grimacing, his shoulders hunched and his brow wet with nervous perspiration. With no time to play husband and father to a growing household, his work is so demanding and repetitive that it drives him into feverish illnesses that take a toll on his mental and physical health. It never is clear what’s wrong with him. I chalked it up to overwork. Constantly throwing up, his eyes red-rimmed and glued to his test tubes, he may be a brilliant scientist in the research lab, but what a miserable sod in the parlor.

The film makes a stab at tracing his theory of evolution from a question as simple as “Where do babies come from?” to an obsession with an orangutan at the London Zoo named Jenny, an obsession that convinces him she’s an ancestor of every human being. He splits with the family minister (Jeremy Northam) to the horror of his wife, who suggests he’s at war with God—“a battle you cannot win.” His love of science is shared only by his worshipful daughter Annie, who sides with her father’s belief that “God’s plan” cannot explain 900 species of wasp caterpillars who can turn into butterflies. After Annie dies, Emma takes further refuge in religion, and Charles in the science lab. The movie is not so much about the masterpiece that results from so much tribulation, but about the agony Darwin endures while writing it. As he retreats from society and almost every human contact, the film has an alienating effect. For a movie dedicated to one of the most exciting, groundbreaking books ever written, Creation is disappointingly dull.

The movie is confusingly nonlinear in structure, with the action taking place out of sequence and leapfrogging all over the place, cutting between the naturalism of Darwin’s love for Annie and his anguish over her premature death (he rarely even speaks to his other four children) and the stylized dream sequences where he talks to Annie’s ghost. Despite the efforts of director Amiel and screenwriter John Collee to humanize the domestic side of Darwin’s struggle between faith and reason, too many surreal images and pretentious camera angles disrupt the flow of concentration, and the viewer loses grip. Every time Charles and Emma draw swords, he skips off for a closer look at a rock formation. Creation would have been more interesting if it concentrated more on the marital conflicts between Emma, a devout Christian, and Charles, who thinks the Bible is divinely inspired hogwash.

Despite my misgivings with the film itself, the acting is first rate. Tall, gangly, sandy-haired and bony, with a deeply receding hairline that shows the veins throbbing through his scalp, Paul Bettany is never remotely handsome, but according to the drawings I’ve seen of the real Darwin, he’s remarkably authentic-looking. And Ms. Connelly, who won her Oscar as the wife of another tortured genius, played by Russell Crowe in A Beautiful Mind (2001)—the film where she met Bettany—is familiar with the risks faced by wives of great men. Their reactions to each other and the untrained actors who play their children are full of trust and intimacy, even if her grating British accent is less convincing. The story doesn’t entirely work for me, though Darwin did live through his debilitating illnesses to become a national hero, his marriage eventually produced 10 children and Emma stuck by him until his death, at 73. He is buried in Westminster Abbey.

I guess you’re pretty much on your own here. Creation is respectable and worthy of attention, but its future seems doubtful in a divisive country where, according to a Gallup poll conducted in February 2009, only 39 percent of Americans believe in the theory of evolution.

rreed@observer.com

In the otherwise somber The Young Victoria, vivacious Emily Blunt, who did so much for stiletto heels in The Devil Wears Prada, puts a modern spin on the famously poised and longest-reigning monarch in British history. This is a lavish and lovingly detailed period piece that attempts to re-create England’s last golden age, but the enchanting Ms. Blunt is the whole movie, and it wouldn’t register even a small bleep on the Richter scale without her. She puts the Vicki in the young Victoria.

Born in 1819, she is crowned almost by accident, and never wanted the job. Between her uncle, the mad King William IV, and his three brothers, they’ve produced only one heir to the throne who lived beyond puberty, so Victoria has no choice but to find herself crowned at a tender age, knowing nothing of the world swirling outside the walls of Kensington Palace. For a spirited child, it is a prison, replete with food tasters to protect her from assassins and endless lectures on protocol from her stern, social-climbing mother, the Duchess of Kent (Miranda Richardson), and her villainous, politically ambitious adviser, Sir John Conroy (Mark Strong). Denied even the briefest privacy, she is used as a pawn in the animosity between her uncles, the loony William (Jim Broadbent), and Leopold, the King of the Belgians (Thomas Kretschmann), which results in an arranged marriage with Prince Albert of Germany (Rupert Friend). The communion takes—gradually at first, through their love of Bellini operas and the novels of Sir Walter Scott, and then grows with trust and a shared understanding of loneliness in the public eye. Once they are together under the same roof, the movie is over, but not the running time. The second half is a romance novel brought to life, with glittering balls, another scheming palace puppet master (Paul Bettany) working hard to destroy Prince Albert in Victoria’s eyes, and a coronation ceremony in a computer-generated Westminster Abbey. Despite the odds, the royal couple establishes a bond, clashing with Parliament over their views on welfare, housing and education. The movie is not only about a liberal, headstrong princess who would not be controlled, rising above her youth and inexperience to win the heart of the man she loves and eventually the people she rules, but also about how Prince Albert learns to find his own place of importance in the court. The movie should really be called Victoria and Albert. They reigned together 20 years, until Albert died at the age of 42. Queen Victoria died at 81, in 1901.

Moving the action from dreary old Windsor Castle, with its tapestries and mahogany staircases, to a newly constructed Buckingham Palace, flooded with sunlight and gold-leaf crown moldings, French-Canadian director Jean-Marc Vallée gets the pomp and pageantry right, but reveals little insight into the qualities that turned Victoria into the beloved and enduring monarch she later became. What a shame the movie is only about her youth. The most intriguing part of her rule was after Albert’s death, when his widow guided England through the Industrial Revolution in the 1880s—a colorful time of teeming Whitechapel slums, factory-smoke fog, Dickensian derelicts, Oscar Wilde decadence, the Elephant Man and Jack the Ripper (who, according to one popular theory, was suspected to be Queen Victoria’s own grandson, the Duke of Clarence). Julian Fellowes’ script doesn’t get to the good stuff, and reveals nothing about her personal or family life. It’s hard to sift through the numerous palace intrigues. Some of the actors speak with accents thick as gravy. The music is intrusive, overpowering every scene, and there’s even a soapy song by Sinead O’Connor under the end credits called “Only You—Love Theme from The Young Victoria”; it sounds like an audition for one of those Oscar night horrors staged in a cloud of smoke with costumed dancers in white wigs waving candelabras.

At times like these, I was doubly grateful for Emily Blunt. From the coins, stamps and cameos sold in London curio shops, the impression of Queen Victoria has always been starchy and dour. Ms. Blunt provides the charm and charisma to give an old-fashioned profile a welcome contemporary appeal.

rreed@observer.com

"I'm very glad to say I was not thinking about the premiere when I saw the news," said Mr. Bettany. "I went straight to the television to find out what the news of it was and whether everyone had been rescued and I can't believe that they have been. That's an amaaazing story."

In the film, Mr. Bettany play a character named Dustfinger whose magic ability is to eat fire. But the aspect of his character that Mr. Bettany found more relatable is that Dustfinger hates the real world and desperately wants to return to the book from which he came. 

"He feels incredibly out of place in this world and its hectic nature, which sort of describes the experience of every film set I've ever been on--wanting to get home to my family," said Mr. Bettany, who is married to the actress Jennifer Connolly. 

The Daily Transom wondered why the actor, having never really done a children's film before, suddenly wanted to take his career in this direction.

"Because my children are wondering what I do!" he replied. "This is a film they can actually watch. But all films feel like fantasies really when you're working on them. If I'm honest, they all feel very fantastical."

Nineteen-year-old actor Rafi Gavron, who has all the makings of an Ed Westwick-type teen actor--British accent, squinty eyes, a tiny scar near his left eye--arrived wearing khakis, a white untucked shirt, blazer and moccasins. (Gossip Girl producers, take note!)

"Farid is essentially a slave and a thief. He comes out of the book of One Thousand and One Arabian Nights so I'm dressed up like a real life Aladdin and I have hair down to here," Mr. Gavrin told the Daily Transom, pointing to his shoulder. "Which was miserable."

The young actor was also stunned by the surreal events taking place in the city yesterday. 

"Yeah, yeah, yeah! I was getting dressed right next door to it. I didn't see it go down, but I've been watching the news non-stop. It's amazing. It's just madness," said Mr. Gavron. "When you see a flock of geese as the headline on CNN, it's like a joke, you know? I mean, a fucking flock of geese."

Actress Sienna Guillory, who plays a mute character named Resa in the film, was following the news as she was getting dressed for the premiere.

"It's extraordinary! I was watching it on TV as I was getting ready and it totally freaked me out," she said. "It's so remarkable that they managed to get everybody out. It's a fairytale on its own."

The stars were hiking up the red-carpeted steps of the Met. There was Julianne Moore, Jennifer Lopez, Salma Hayek, everyone. And hardly anyone was stopping to talk to The Transom. But wait—here was Christina Ricci, who said that getting ready for the evening had taken roughly two and a half hours, plus a lot of Red Bull. “I loved my dress” (a white velvet Calvin Klein), she said, “and I was so excited to wear it and show it to people, but at the same time it’s very nerve-wracking, because you’re like, ‘Ahhhhh! What if I say the wrong thing?’”

At least Ms. Ricci pronounced Poiret, the evening’s celebrated designer, correctly—unlike some plebes we could mention. “That’s somebody who really changed the world,” she said. “He really altered the way women dress, because he took away the corset—he gave us the bra! I mean, that’s one of the biggest inventions of the 20th century!” (The ample-bosomed starlet then confessed: “As soon as I found out about this, I went online and did a little research.”)

French designer Gilles Mendel, best known for his furs, made the inevitable comparison to the Oscars—where, he said, “I feel very much that I’m sort of like a foreigner. I’m like a guest. And when I come to this party tonight, it’s really like I am a member and the celebrities are our guests. It’s like a camaraderie. I feel very comfortable, even though it’s the most prestigious one.”

Indeed, many of the celebrities on the red carpet didn’t appear completely at ease.

“I have no idea,” said Parker Posey, asked to explain the importance of the Costume Gala. “I’ve never been here before.”

Whether it was that the actors felt it impertinent to suck up too much attention at a fashion-world event (unlikely), or that they just couldn’t wait to get inside and enjoy the so-called “Party of the Year,” most rushed past the hundreds of waiting reporters with nary a nod.

Kirsten Dunst, fresh off Spider-Man 3’s boffo box-office weekend, ran up the steps so fast that the train of her purple Yves Saint Laurent gown was positively bouncing.

“Kirsten! Kirsten!” they all screamed in vain. “I’ve never done anything so humiliating as this,” said one.

At around 8:15, The Transom decided to attempt a stroll through the museum doors, which were heavily guarded by Vogue editor Anna Wintour’s watchdogs. About 10 paces in, there came a tap on the shoulder, then a stern hand pressing against the back. It stayed there on the long, long walk down those blood-red steps to the street.

Spies inside later reported being greeted by a cage containing three peacocks. Breathe easy, PETA people: The cage was enormous.

Then, “everyone has to walk this gauntlet of servants lined up on either side,” said one attendee. At the end of the line was the queen, Ms. Wintour, flanked by the arguable belle of the ball, Cate Blanchett, in fringed gold Balenciaga.

Dinner was announced with a long Henry VIII—style trumpet fanfare. As the hungry hordes poured into the banquet room, they were greeted by Vogue editor at large André Leon Talley, draped in a giant navy tent-like cape, lounging on one of the many couches that lined the walls. “Welcome to my home,” he bellowed upon spotting his friend Donatella Versace, and then erupted into laughter.

Caviar on smoked salmon, veal and chocolate mousse were served. Then Jennifer Hudson performed. “She went on for a good 15 minutes,” said a witness. “Half the crowd was really into it, and half the crowd was just having none of it.”

Guests gushed further that the room’s décor was very “intimate” and “comfy,” despite the grandeur of the event. “It was very warm,” said hotelier André Balazs, who turned up later at an after-party at the Box on Chrystie Street. (The Olsen twins, Damon Dash style="letter-spacing: -0.1pt"> and Mick Jagger stopped by Mr. Chow’s first.) “I’ve never seen that room like that. You were surrounded by all these panels that were hand-painted murals on canvas …. And the whole room was sensual, and there was this sisal carpet. It was a very—strangely enough—intimate evening.”

Actress Rose McGowan didn’t agree. “There were a ton of people I don’t know,” said she, ravishing in J. Mendel, at the Box. “I get nervous around people I don’t know.” She said that she had been introduced to several doctors. Doctors! “You just look at all these people and you say, ‘I don’t know any of you, and I feel completely out of place.’ And you think, ‘Why am I here? You’re all very tall.’” She laughed a great toothy laugh.

“I’m not usually very serious about being myself, and then all of a sudden I felt as if I had to be serious,” Ms. McGowan continued. “So I acted.”

It was now 2 a.m., and the stuffing was clearly coming out of the evening. Many of the women had traded in their long gowns for cocktail dresses. Tuxedo ties swung free about the collar.

Lindsay Lohan swept in and was immediately ushered into the downstairs of the burlesque theater by its bearded proprietor, Simon Hammerstein.

And at the top of the stairs, Jennifer Connelly and her husband, Paul Bettany, were having a little tiff.

“You totally just walked away from me,” whined Mr. Bettany.

“No, I didn’t, honey,” pleaded Ms. Connelly.

“Yes, you did!”

The argument resolved itself quickly, and the couple headed arm-in-arm toward the main room. There, in a booth near the stage, were Mr. Jagger and the chain-smoking Ms. Dunst, sharing a booth.

Ms. McGowan and her new beau, Grindhouse director Robert Rodriguez, were on their way out. Mr. Rodriguez had opted not to attend the gala. “I heard what it was all about, and I was like, ‘I’ll turn right,’” he said. “I just wanted to come for the fun part.”

–Brownstone of Death, by Logan Hill, New York, May 16, 2005.

–The Park Slope Code, by Luke Crisell, New York, May 22, 2006.

The year is 1380, and a defrocked priest (Paul Bettany), driven butt-naked out of his village for adultery and fornication with one of his parishioners (apparently some sins never go out of style), is rescued in the forest primeval by a scruffy troupe of traveling players. Since their forte is performing stories from the Bible, a subject on which he is an expert, the holy man (who is also something of a ham) adapts comfortably to the greasepaint and becomes an important member of this company of strolling minstrels, causing rancor and discord in the ranks between the master player (Willem Dafoe), the wardrobe mistress (Gina McKee) and the jealous old character actor (Brian Cox) who feels his wisdom and seniority threatened by the newcomer. To pad out the running time, there's a lot of medieval hugga-mugga onstage and off, and some antic athletics by Mr. Dafoe, who would be right at home in the Cirque du Soleil.

But the trouble (and the plot) really begins when the depressing little thespian group arrives in a rustic village of restless peasants (were there any other kind?) in time to witness the trial of a deaf-mute woman accused of killing a boy in the nearby woods. For reasons that are not entirely clear, the actors risk their lives by ditching the Scriptures and staging an improvised play about the events of the day that will solve the murder, as well as the mystery of why so many other boys have disappeared without a trace. Obviously, they have neither the information nor the talent to bring it off convincingly, but they are ahead of Pirandello in the improv department and somehow manage to enrage the local citizens and their landlord, a flamboyant count whose blood turns out to be more lavender than blue, dilly dilly. In the final few minutes, this predator emerges from the mist like Dracula to reveal a ravenous appetite for raping the local lads. Nor does his taste stop short of culinary feasting on an occasional priest, as the strapping Mr. Bettany finds out too late-but not before he redeems his own sins and finds salvation in saving the innocent.

Spiritual morality tales in chain mail are not exactly the stuff of box-office miracles, and The Reckoning already opened to less-than-spectacular business two years ago in Norway and Sweden. (I'm all for new test markets, but I never heard of boffo business in downtown Oslo.) Still, there is more to this Gothic yarn than a bunch of knights in clanking armor hacking the tar out of each other with swords and crossbows. Strongly reminiscent of the 1986 medieval thriller In the Name of the Rose , The Reckoning could use Sean Connery once again as a wayward man of God instead of the milk-and-freckles Paul Bettany. Director McGuigan doesn't show much interest in tempo or character development, and the pace is numbing. Still, the strange, desolate landscapes and icy trails in the British countryside add a bleak visual matrix to the medieval melodramatics. And there is always the charge of watching Vincent Cassel in action. Last seen rolling around the Paris underworld in the altogether in the controversial film Irreversible , this edgy French actor really heats things up in the last 10 minutes of an otherwise torpid exercise. In a brief but colorful cameo as the dastardly feudal count who is a cross between Jeffrey Dahmer and Caligula, he proves that even in the 14th century, you couldn't go around littering the backroads with the mutilated corpses of hunky toy boys and blame all the damage on the mice.

One Twisted Sister

The anemic and tiresomely routine crime opus Twisted opens with closeups of Ashley Judd's eyes and dilating nostrils while a knife plays dangerously across her throat. No problem. As soon as the credits end, she grabs her gun and kicks her attacker's gonads every which way from Tuesday. What took her so long? She was never in any real danger in the first place. She's a hard-drinking, sexually promiscuous post-feminist San Francisco homicide cop looking for Mr. Goodbar and finding another (yawn) serial killer on the rampage. The predictable twist in the tangled script by newcomer Sarah Thorp makes this twisted cop with the Peter Pan coif a prime suspect when the murder victims all turn out to be one-night stands that she's slept with. In the ludicrous chain of events that follow, she suffers from bad dreams, hears voices in her pierced earlobes and wakes up in designer jeans after each murder in a drugged stupor. One by one, mutilated torsos turn up with the killer's trademark cigarette burns on their hands. Somebody is clearly trying to turn her into Ingrid Bergman in Gaslight (a better film in every way). Verily, I say unto you, this is a twisted sister. But "I'm not pulling her from her first homicide case-it would kill her career," says Samuel L. Jackson, her dead policeman father's former partner and the godfather who raised her. So she sticks around to kill the movie instead, avoiding jail even when the fourth corpse turns up in her own bed.

Meanwhile, the bored audience is asked to sift through the red herrings and contrived motivations of cardboard characters to identify the real killer. Is it her shrink (the wasted David Straithairn)? Maybe it's her horny partner (Andy Garcia), who is always slamming her up against the kitchen stove for a feel, like Mark Ruffalo does to Meg Ryan in the catastrophic Jane Campion sex thriller In the Cut , which this misguided film resembles in all the wrong ways. Does anybody care? The potential for suspense is so quickly smashed that if you don't spot and label the real lunatic in the first 10 minutes, you flunk Hollywood Forensics Lab 101. (Hint: Pick out the star with the most minimal dialogue, the least amount of business being there, nothing to do with the plot and no justification for a paycheck.)

The outdated, cliché-riddled direction is so inept and indifferent that it's hard to believe Twisted was lensed by the same Philip Kaufman who made The Right Stuff . Could there be two Philip Kaufmans? One wag has written that Twisted was directed by Rip Van Winkle. I can't improve on that. Anyone, however, could improve on the phony, one-dimensional performance by Ashley Judd. As weak and clueless as she was onstage in the calamitous Broadway revival of Cat on a Hot Tin Roof , she's no less wooden onscreen. Playing an irritable, sluttish, stressed-out cop on the boil, traumatized by rage and slowly going loopy, is a challenge that is sadly but demonstrably light years beyond her range. She needs a transfusion, and so does Twisted .

Horny in Havana

Seventeen inexplicable years after Dirty Dancing , we now get Dirty Dancing: Havana Nights . The Catskills are now played by Cuba, and despite a guest appearance by Patrick Swayze and a dishonestly misleading title designed to suggest a sequel, it has nothing whatsoever to do with the popular 1983 original. The year is 1958, under the pre-revolutionary reign of Battista, when Cuba was at the height of its exotic splendor. To this tourist mecca comes an automobile executive and his luscious wife (John Slattery and Sela Ward), who have uprooted their two teenage daughters in their most crucial high-school years. Older daughter Katey (pretty-in-pink Romola Garai) is miserable in her privileged-immigrant status until she meets Javier (Diego Luna), a waiter in the four-star oceanfront hotel where her family lives. He's as poor as a slum rat, but that boy can dance.

When the Ivory-scrubbed Katey gets her first taste of salsa and sin in Havana after midnight, there's no turning back to root-beer floats in the malt shop at high noon. While her snobby American classmates drive their convertibles to the school prom at the country club, Katey is drawn to the undulating sway and dirty pelvic thrust of the Cuban beat, following Diego to the throbbing, sweaty and very sexy Latin music at La Rosa Negra, a club where body slamming has replaced the fox trot and the bananas are not the only things fried. As her new friendship turns to physical attraction, Katey is exposed to a different Cuba-the real country behind the golf links and casinos. Through Diego's eyes, she sees the class prejudices, and watches the seeds of Castro's revolution.

But forget about politics and violence. The conflicts can wait. First there's a dance contest to be won, and with the $5,000 prize, Diego's dream of a trip to the States could finally come true. Despite tango lessons from Patrick Swayze, Katey enrages her parents, who look down condescendingly at Diego's Third World manners. This is one of the film's many odd incongruities, since Katey's parents were once a champion dance team themselves. Everyone sees the light in time for a happy Havana sunset. Katey learns that it's better to lose your guy to a revolution than never love at all. Her folks learn what it cost them to give up show business for the Ford Motor Company. And Javier's Afro-Cuban sensuality unleashes the inhibitions in all of the gringos and puts them in touch with the people they really are in their hearts. Pure schmaltz, but not without its share of feel-good entertainment value.

A whirl around the ballroom floor doing the lambada can do wonders, but it can't make up for a paucity of logic and wit. The Romeo and Juliet love story doesn't fully jell. The direction by Guy Ferland is sluggish, and the screenplay by Boaz Yakin and Victoria Arch is dead on arrival. But Havana Nights has its pleasures. The infectious big-band music is lush and full of vitality, the dancing has verve, and Puerto Rico never looked so good. The shark-fin cars, watermelon-tinted sets and full-fitted 50's costumes are a wonderful throwback to the three-strip Technicolor movies with Lana Turner and Ava Gardner. The kids are attractive and appealing, although the all-American Romolo Garai is really British and the fiery Cuban Diego Luna is really from Mexico (he was one of the stars of the terrific Y Tu Mamá También , the memorable and highly acclaimed Mexican film about the two horny pals who set out to conquer an older woman and ended up seducing each other). Best of all, there is Sela Ward, the warm and vibrant star of my favorite late, lamented television series, Once and Again , in the small but pivotal role of Katey's mother. The film doesn't begin to show off the emotional depth of her artistry as an actress of intelligence and sensitivity, but in those full skirts, halter tops and fruity, edible 50's lipsticks, she looks stupendous. Why Sela Ward is not one of the biggest movie stars of the 21st century is a bigger mystery than the ongoing celebrity existence of the Horrible Hilton Sisters. More than anything else in this film, she makes Havana Nights worth waiting for daybreak.

A legend in crime circles for having gotten away with killing a crooked cop, Freddie has reached a point where he can delegate most of the violence in his trade to such underlings as Tommy (Kenneth Cranham), Mad John (Doug Allen), Fat Charlie (David Kennedy), Roland (Razaaq Adoti), Billy (Cavan Clerkin), Eddie (Eddie Marsan) and, most fearlessly of all, Mr. Bettany's Gangster, the new boy on the block. When Freddie sees that Gangster is truly without fear, he makes him his second-in-command. Gangster becomes intoxicated as much by Freddie's possessions as by Freddie himself. He will do anything for Freddie and against Freddie's enemies, all the way up to torture and murder. Freddie and Gangster seem an invincible team. In Gangster's words, it's "Moët and fucking Chandon all the fucking way." But then a beautiful girl named Karen (Saffron Burrows) enters the scene, and takes up more and more of Freddie's time and attention. After failing to drive away the clear-eyed Karen with not-so-thinly-veiled insults, Gangster feels that Freddie is about to betray him for Karen, and that he must act first if the opportunity arises.

It does in the form of a rival gang leader, Lennie Taylor (Jamie Foreman), who shares Gangster's perception that Freddie has been made soft by Karen and is ready for plucking. Through a complicated series of bloody intrigues, Gangster first allows Freddie and Karen to fall into a trap without warning them that Lennie Taylor is out to get them, and then disposes of Lennie Taylor and his bodyguard in such a way as to incriminate Freddie, who was known as "the Butcher of Mayfair" in his salad days.

What's the motivation amid all the blood-letting? Remember Edward G. Robinson's Capone-like gang boss setting out to kill his old pal, played by Douglas Fairbanks Jr., for becoming involved with a woman in Little Caesar (1930)? There was a homoerotic subtext at work then, as there is in Gangster No. 1 now. Our young Gangster does not come at Freddie directly, but lets a rival gangster do the dirty work. But the end result is the same: Freddie is framed for a murder he didn't commit, and he goes away for 30 years. Gangster takes over the mob without any trouble; deep down, he'd always coveted Freddie's throne.

The story is told in flashbacks, with a monstrously made-up Mr. McDowell playing the Macbeth-like Gangster No. 1 (Bettany's Gangster aged 30 years), with nary a Lady Macbeth to "soften" him or even to steel his resolve. He prefers hanging out with the boys, watching boxing matches in hotel suites and exchanging vile jokes. When Gangster No. 1 learns that Freddie is getting out of prison after 30 years, he realizes that he has remained obsessed with Freddie all this time and must have a final accounting with him. Both Freddie and Karen have almost miraculously survived the murderous assaults by Lennie Taylor and his henchmen, and now, 30 years later, are prepared to resume their relationship. Almost as miraculously, they are played by the same actors, David Thewlis and Saffron Burrows, though mostly in middle and long shots.

The close-ups are reserved for Mr. McDowell and Mr. Bettany in their blood-soaked and sneering moments of hollow triumph over the world around them. There's no moralistic comeuppance for Gangster No. 1. Nor is there any evidence that the treacherous second-in-command has inherited Freddie's exquisitely high style, though he schemed and slaughtered to acquire it. All the misappropriated tie pins and cufflinks from London's Bond Street cannot transform a mug into a gentleman gangster. And the mug knows it.

Entangled Inuit

Zacharias Kunuk's The Fast Runner ( Atanarjuat ), from a screenplay by Paul Apak Angilirq, takes us a long way from Robert J. Flaherty's Nanook of the North (1922), when the Inuit were known hereabouts as Eskimos, and my uncle drove an ice-cream truck selling Eskimo-pie sandwiches. And then there were all the jokes about selling iceboxes to the Eskimos as proof of one's selling skills. Back in the 60's, I wrote of Flaherty in The American Cinema : "By involving himself in his material, he established a cinematic principle that parallels Werner Heisenberg's Uncertainty Principle in physics, namely that the mere observation of nuclear (and cinematic) particles alters the properties of these particles. One of the most beautiful moments in the history of the cinema was recorded when Nanook smilingly acknowledged the presence of Flaherty's camera in his igloo. The director was not spying on Nanook or attempting to capture Nanook's life in the raw. He was collaborating with Nanook on a representation rather than a simulation of existence. What Flaherty understood so well was the potential degeneration of the documentary into voyeurism when the images of the camera were not reprocessed in the mind of the artist."

I must confess that this passage seems somewhat paternalistic today, in that it never seems to have occurred to me (or Flaherty) that future Nanooks of the North would be capable of recording their own lives, stories and myths on film, as they do in The Fast Runner , which is only incidentally a documentary, though more of a place than of a people, and not at all of a time. I have agitated for several years against the schoolmarmish term "documentary," and have suggested instead "nonfiction" as a less pedantic and misleading substitute. Alas, my campaign has met with only limited success, and the word "documentary"-popularized by the British-Canadian John Grierson-continues to ghettoize a great deal of the most vibrant cinema of our time.

The Fast Runner defies any category, old or new, in its communal scope and historical perspective. Mr. Kunuk and Mr. Angilirq have worked apart from modern Inuit existence to reconstruct a world that existed centuries ago, before the advent of Europeans. The title of the film refers to a character in legend who ran naked from three pursuers who had already killed his brother. The feud began in a dispute over a woman pledged to one man, but claimed by another with the woman's consent. There is no night shooting in the film, with its barren Arctic landscapes, but the diurnal rhythm is maintained between daylight exteriors and golden-hued interiors.

One warning to the viewer: The Fast Runner is slow to unfold, a laborious untangling of family and clan relationships and conflicts, and even once the action begins, it can be a trial to the non-Inuit viewer (the film is nearly three hours long). It has nonetheless won many honors and audience-appreciation awards at film festivals around the world. Its long takes on the cryptic facial expressions of characters who have suffered great losses and violations generate viewer sympathy, but are never condescending. The pain is acted, in however elementary a fashion, rather than actually endured. Like so many-perhaps too many-movies around right now, The Fast Runner can be safely recommended simply because there is nothing else remotely like it. It's creatively authentic, and its creators are also its subject.

Love in Haifa

The 18th Israel Film Festival begins on June 13 at the Clearview Cinema 59th Street East Theatre, with an opening-night gala at the Directors' Guild of America. The opening-night film is Lina and Slava Chaplin's A Trumpet in the Wadi , from a screenplay by Amit Lior, based on a novel by Sami Michel. As I am writing this notice, the news is reporting a suicide bomber in Israel killing 17, and Israeli tanks raiding Ramallah in response. Yet here in Haifa's Wadi neighborhood, a romance is blooming between a beautiful Arab woman named Huda (Khawlha Hag-Debsy) and her upstairs neighbor, a Russian-Jewish trumpeter named Alex (Alexander Senderovich). The tone is mostly comic as Huda and Alex pursue their romance in the midst of mildly disapproving Arab and Jewish parents and relatives. There's a subplot involving a more acceptable romance between Huda's younger sister and her Arab suitor, and there's more good will spread around between Arab and Jew than seems credible in view of the latest headlines.

Yet the film won the Best Film Award at the Haifa International Film Festival and the 2001 Israel Academy Film Awards for Best Drama, which suggests that, in some circles at least, an Arab-Jewish romance is still considered neither pure fantasy nor dire sacrilege. It's safe to assume that most if not all Israeli filmmakers are considerably to the left of Ariel Sharon. It's that way in most countries, including the United States. Still, A Trumpet in the Wadi is told from the point of view of an Arab family, and there are nervy mentions of Arab "collaborators" and Israeli repression. All this takes place, of course, within Israel itself, and therefore does not approach the Palestinian problem directly.

The characters are remarkably buoyant under the circumstances, and there's a naturalness in their intermingling that couldn't be entirely faked for the sake of a movie. The old question thus reappears: Can love conquer all? Having seen A Trumpet in the Wadi , I'm less sure that it can't. The grace and charm of the performers has much to do with my conversion to optimism on the chance of eventual peace in this tormented region.