2 reviews
Do you remember where you were and what you were doing on Sept. 11 2001 ? "The Shoemaker" will transport you back to that moment in time so gently that it is amazing. The scene is a shoemakers repair shop in midtown, but you have no knowledge of the date as the story begins. Judith Light enters the shop with a broken heel needing repair while Danny Aiello the shoemaker is getting ready to close the shop. He is waiting for one patron who had left her shoes for repair the previous day, but has not returned for the shoes. Unfortunately the day is September 11, 2001. The performances given by Danny Aiello and Judith Light are electric. They are both worthy of consideration for the Academy Award. Danny Aiello's desperation as he tries to make sense of the day is riveting. Judith Light's experience of the day heart rending. Susan Charlotte's writing is crisp and direct, not a wasted word. This is a large movie in a short form, worthy of anyone's time.
A triptych of short films set on and immediately after 9/11, "A Broken Sole" is based on a stage production by its screenwriter and co-producer, Susan Charlotte. One hopes the material played on stage, because it dies on screen.
The film's director, Antony Marsellis, attempts visual lyricism with jump-cut montages and shots of twinned objects meant to evoke You Know What. But "A Broken Sole" consists mainly of boringly staged tableaux of self-involved yuppies and sentimentalized white working-class ethnics struggling to connect.
On 9/11 an opera-loving cobbler (Danny Aiello) recalls a painful World War II experience while fixing the broken sole (cough, cough) of a shoe belonging to a Columbia film professor (Judith Light) who witnessed that morning's catastrophe. In October 2001 a cranky, love-scarred real estate broker (Laila Robins) takes a cab ride with an eccentric, nosy driver (Bob Dishy) who weirdly over-enunciates while discussing his wife's diabetes and explaining why he declined his passenger's offer of fudge. In December 2001 an actress (Margaret Colin) and a philosophical dyslexic (John Shea) come to terms with their one-night stand while pondering picnic baskets, foreign films and palindromes.
Throughout, 9/11 doesn't so much loom over the proceedings as pop up now and again, to lend gravitas to characters and situations that wouldn't otherwise hold your attention.
The film's director, Antony Marsellis, attempts visual lyricism with jump-cut montages and shots of twinned objects meant to evoke You Know What. But "A Broken Sole" consists mainly of boringly staged tableaux of self-involved yuppies and sentimentalized white working-class ethnics struggling to connect.
On 9/11 an opera-loving cobbler (Danny Aiello) recalls a painful World War II experience while fixing the broken sole (cough, cough) of a shoe belonging to a Columbia film professor (Judith Light) who witnessed that morning's catastrophe. In October 2001 a cranky, love-scarred real estate broker (Laila Robins) takes a cab ride with an eccentric, nosy driver (Bob Dishy) who weirdly over-enunciates while discussing his wife's diabetes and explaining why he declined his passenger's offer of fudge. In December 2001 an actress (Margaret Colin) and a philosophical dyslexic (John Shea) come to terms with their one-night stand while pondering picnic baskets, foreign films and palindromes.
Throughout, 9/11 doesn't so much loom over the proceedings as pop up now and again, to lend gravitas to characters and situations that wouldn't otherwise hold your attention.
- sblwilliams
- Jun 29, 2008
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