Maudlin Metaphors

By JAY COCKS

SCARECROW directed by JERRY SCHATZBERG Screenplay by GARRY MICHAEL WHITE

Lion (Al Pacino) is an innocent, and Max (Gene Hackman) a combative cynic of the open road. Like George and Lenny in Of Mice and Men -rather too much like them, in fact -Lion and Max fall in with each other while hitchhiking on a lonely country road. Max has spent six years in stir at San Quentin; Lion has been at sea in the merchant marine for five, fleeing the strangulating responsibilities of family and a 9-to-5 job. Lion is on his way to Detroit to see his wife and the child she was about to bear him when he took flight. Max is trying to get to Denver to visit his sister Coley (Dorothy Tristan) and invest his frugally accumulated prison pay in a proud new business tentatively christened Max's Car Wash. He takes Lion on as traveling companion and prospective partner. "I'm the meanest son of a bitch alive," Max tells Lion by way of a warning and a boast. "We're gonna have a fair car-wash business or I'm gonna break your neck."

Max's and Lion's progress across the country is not so much geographical as spiritual. Max likes to whore and brawl; Lion favors the easy approach: he sees himself as a scarecrow. "Those crows don't bother the field because they're scared of the scarecrow." Lion tries to live a life of casual but crafty comedy. Max is skeptical, reminding Lion that "you're not playing with a full deck. You've got one foot in the great beyond."

Subtlety is unwelcome in White's screenplay. To illustrate that Max's coarseness and brutality are only a defense, he has him dress in layers of clothing, ragged protective armor that Max sheds in a perilously symbolic striptease. It will not do for White to have Lion just freak out; he must grow blank and rigid right on the stone paws of a lion that decorates a Detroit fountain. Director Schatzberg (The Panic in Needle Park, Puzzle of a Downfall Child) bats out these sorry epiphanies and maudlin metaphors with the eager aplomb of a rookie swatting fungoes.

Hackman is fine as the snarling Max. Scruffy and bespectacled, he has a good time hunkering down into his characterization. But he gets in so far that no other actor can reach him. Pacino's characterization of Lion therefore remains unresolved. Hackman and Pacino never really react off one another because Hackman remains too selfabsorbed. The tension between the two actors is tangible and arresting, at least initially, but it eventually hobbles what small humanity the movie might have had.

There are some excellent supporting performances, most notably by the superb and subtle Miss Tristan, an actress who is not used often or deeply enough; by Eileen Brenan as a bitchy, blowsy barfly; and Richard Lynch as a sadistic homosexual. The film also has some remarkable photography by Vilmos Zsigmond (Deliverance, McCabe and Mrs Miller), whose graceful, supple lighting manages to be both realistic and quietly sensuous.

This file is automatically generated by a robot program, so reader's discretion is required.