Review: Wager pays off for 'Oscar and Lucinda'

January 14, 1998
Web posted at: 8:06 p.m. EST (0106 GMT)

From Reviewer Paul Tatara

(CNN) -- In movies, as in baseball, hope drifts sweetly through the honeysuckled air at the beginning of each new season. Since so many accomplished films are released in December and January in order to qualify for Academy Award considerations, it's hard not to think that something miraculous has happened, that this year will not degenerate into the usual miasma of clichˇd gun-toting and kissing in the rain. Then, by August, your beloved Cubs are 26 1/2 games out of first place and there's a new Steven Seagal retch-fest at the multiplex.

I'm here to announce the first home run of 1998 as belonging to "Oscar and Lucinda," director Gillian Armstrong's strange but highly involving study of, among other things, compulsive gambling, divinity school, glass blowing, and true love among true eccentrics. Or, as Geoffrey Rush succinctly puts it in the superb (and seamlessly utilized) narration, it's about "a dream, a lie, a wager, and love."

Set in England and Australia in the late 1800s, the story follows the adventures of two outsiders who connect with each other and come to decide that the fringes of a binding society aren't such a bad place to spend your life after all. We see Oscar Hopkins at the beginning of the film as a young boy living under the thumb of his stern, literally God-fearing father. Dad is such a believer in non-flashy religious faith, he even slaps Oscar in the head for daring to surreptitiously eat some pudding on Christmas Day.

This is the 19th century version of "no Nintendo" and then some, so Oscar grows up, quite understandably, to be a nervous, flittery little guy, embodied quite marvelously in the person of Ralph Fiennes. During moments of pressure (intense and otherwise) Fiennes lets his hands involuntarily flap out in front of him, as if he's trying to shoo the troubling situation away. The gesture is endearing and disturbing at the same time, the perfect shorthand for conveying Oscar's confused relationships with the people around him.

Quicktime Video Scenes from 'Oscar and Lucinda' 3.0M/49 sec./240x180 1.8M/49 sec./160x120

VXtreme Video Theatrical trailer

While at divinity school, we see Oscar being introduced to the world of gambling. He's doing the best he can to live up to his father's exacting standards, so (in a moment of willful self-delusion) he determines that winning money at the track is actually a gift from God. Highly focused and intelligent, he develops a system that rakes in the money, but he keeps only what he needs to pay the bills and puts the rest in the poor box at church. After a while, though, he can't stop himself, and decides to flee in order to get away from the horses, dog fights, and dice games that are overtaking his every waking moment.

During an agonizing boat trip to Australia (he's severely hydrophobic), Oscar meets Lucinda, who we've already met. Lucinda Leplastrier, far more of a go-getter than Oscar but every bit as quirky, has inherited a large sum of money from her mother and is heading out to start her own glass manufacturing company. Cate Blanchett is Lucinda, and she brings a delightful abandon to the role. She has a disarming grin, and her cheeks often glow with unashamed happiness.

Lucinda, unlike Oscar, is completely aware of how shocking she is to other people, and she wields it as a weapon. She, too, is infatuated with playing the odds, and her initial get-together with Oscar, during which her formal confession of gambling transforms itself into a joyous card game between the two sinners, is a wonder. It's a beautifully written scene, a moment when two live wires meet, the sparks are clearly visible, and the change in their personalities is completely convincing. This is superb screenwriting and Laura Jones (who adapted Peter Carey's novel) does a first-rate job throughout, even as the story grows more somber, and -- gulp -- symbolic.

Attempted poetic visuals are a sticky thing in the movies. They work best when the metaphor is a vague one that can mean what it needs to mean to any individual viewer, a crowbar that jimmies their unconscious and unleashes their own unspoken perceptions. Think of that piano resting on the beach in "The Piano" or the fancy leather banker's chair that I have crammed into my fraternity house-like bedroom. In "Oscar and Lucinda," the symbol of existential unrest is an ornate glass church that winds up getting dragged and floated across some of the most daunting jungle in the world.

Even as they grow closer together, Oscar comes to realize that Lucinda is pining for her true love, the Rev. Dennis Hasset (Ciaran Hinds), another minister who has started a mission in the farthest reaches of northern Australia. As a way of proving his devotion to her, Oscar takes up a huge wager with Lucinda. They each bet basically all that they own, and Oscar attempts to deliver the glass church to the Reverend within an allotted amount of time. The catch is that it would be tough enough to do while traveling by water, but Oscar has had it with boats, so he decides to get there by land. The journey, to say the very least, is a difficult one for the frail Oscar, and Lucinda soon takes out after him when she learns that he's trying to prove a devotion that is already completely apparent.

This is a thoroughly entertaining, unique film that breathes a badly needed amount of fresh air into the Merchant-Ivory costume drama genre. I'll be very surprised if I see a better matched set of performers than Fiennes and Blanchett in the coming year, or a more buoyantly realized love story. Savor it before night falls on Wrigley Field and our movies.

"Oscar and Lucinda" has one nasty ax attack and a bizarre, Garp-like rape of an ill man by a crafty woman. Mostly, though, it's an easy trip, both on the eyes and the heart. Rated R. 131 minutes.

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