Young filmmakers, take notice. "Eureka" is a case study in bad filmmaking which could be used in filmmaking and/or film appreciation classes. The premise could have worked all right if the script had had about a half dozen additional rewrites and if the many cinematic tricks had been pared down. The story-line itself seems like it was recycled by out-of-work screenwriters dumped from "Days of Our Lives", barring the opening sequence. Part of the problem is the film throws more symbolism at the viewer than all of Orson Wells' films combined which we'll explore later. The scenes are also so overly directed the resulting cinematic experience seems more like a desperate film student trying to "prove" he is the next Orson Wells or Fritz Lang rather than allowing the characters and the scenes to tell the story.
In the 1920's Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) is a gold prospector in the arctic who finally hits it rich. He doesn't just become rich, but purportedly becomes the richest man in the world, so tally up silly problem number one. (If you examine history, almost no one became the richest person in the world from gold prospecting.) Fast-forward to the 1940's, McCann now owns an island in the Caribbean. He has a daughter Tracy McCann (Theresa Russell) who has given her heart to an emotional walking soap opera, Claude Maillot Van Horn (Rutger Hauer). Of course, Claude and Jack can't stand each other, although when we first meet Tracy, I thought she had had an affair with Jack, not that she was his daughter! Tally up silly problem number two. (They actually talk about having been in Paris, similar to Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca"!)
Hackman for about the next hour rants and raves about Hauer groping his daughter: tally up silly problem number three. For being the richest man since John D. Rockefeller, he seems unable to control these people! Couldn't he just hire some hit-men and off this irritant? At the same time, two Italian mafia-types played by Joe Pesci and Mickey Roarke are trying to finagle Hackman into starting a casino in Miami. Several times I couldn't hear what they were saying, but, more importantly, I didn't really care! Tally up silly problem number four.
Silly problem number five gets the silver medal: the shots. The shots were too innovative for their own good. Zooming in on characters when they do something "strange" or become emotional occurs ad infinitum. If a character is unhappy, zoom! If they're giving an endless tragic speech, as a fortune-teller/brothel madam does at the beginning, zoom! It's zoom in for this and zoom in for that, zooming down from above, zooming up from below. There was more zooming around than a typical Superman film. A strange episode at the beginning was supposed to be a dream sequence but there was so much zooming around and strange symbolism I didn't understand it was a dream or what it meant.
Which brings us to silly problem number six: the gold medal goes to the symbolism! Yes, this film is so chock full of symbolism applied with a sledgehammer I started forgetting why I care about the story! Explosions, candles and clocks get about as much screen time as the characters in "Eureka"! They also seemed to be overt homages to Orson Wells' "Citizen Kane" referring to the exploding crystal snow globe after Kane says "Rosebud". Explosions run rampant at the beginning of the film in the arctic, including a horrid blast-your-brains-out suicide which served no purpose at all. Later it's clocks and candles. And of course all the symbols are zoomed into again from all angles imaginable. Particularly, towards the last half of the film, we're zooming to clocks! Is the filmmaker running out of footage? Candles are also everywhere. People even walk around with candles as if we're in a bad Hammer Film from the 1950's!
The film is essentially a cinematic mess. For all the zooming and symbols, I couldn't get a hold of the characters. Hackman who often plays very resolved characters seemed strangely ambiguous. For a guy who has everything, he seemed to be in a real rut! Hauer is little better. He's won Theresa Russell, the most attractive character in the film, and even he doesn't seem very happy about it. Actually, Russell's character was the only one who was reasonably well-defined. But even she can't save this odd mess of a movie. Sadly it wasn't quite so bad that it was good. Essentially everything which should never be in a movie, and more.
In the 1920's Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) is a gold prospector in the arctic who finally hits it rich. He doesn't just become rich, but purportedly becomes the richest man in the world, so tally up silly problem number one. (If you examine history, almost no one became the richest person in the world from gold prospecting.) Fast-forward to the 1940's, McCann now owns an island in the Caribbean. He has a daughter Tracy McCann (Theresa Russell) who has given her heart to an emotional walking soap opera, Claude Maillot Van Horn (Rutger Hauer). Of course, Claude and Jack can't stand each other, although when we first meet Tracy, I thought she had had an affair with Jack, not that she was his daughter! Tally up silly problem number two. (They actually talk about having been in Paris, similar to Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca"!)
Hackman for about the next hour rants and raves about Hauer groping his daughter: tally up silly problem number three. For being the richest man since John D. Rockefeller, he seems unable to control these people! Couldn't he just hire some hit-men and off this irritant? At the same time, two Italian mafia-types played by Joe Pesci and Mickey Roarke are trying to finagle Hackman into starting a casino in Miami. Several times I couldn't hear what they were saying, but, more importantly, I didn't really care! Tally up silly problem number four.
Silly problem number five gets the silver medal: the shots. The shots were too innovative for their own good. Zooming in on characters when they do something "strange" or become emotional occurs ad infinitum. If a character is unhappy, zoom! If they're giving an endless tragic speech, as a fortune-teller/brothel madam does at the beginning, zoom! It's zoom in for this and zoom in for that, zooming down from above, zooming up from below. There was more zooming around than a typical Superman film. A strange episode at the beginning was supposed to be a dream sequence but there was so much zooming around and strange symbolism I didn't understand it was a dream or what it meant.
Which brings us to silly problem number six: the gold medal goes to the symbolism! Yes, this film is so chock full of symbolism applied with a sledgehammer I started forgetting why I care about the story! Explosions, candles and clocks get about as much screen time as the characters in "Eureka"! They also seemed to be overt homages to Orson Wells' "Citizen Kane" referring to the exploding crystal snow globe after Kane says "Rosebud". Explosions run rampant at the beginning of the film in the arctic, including a horrid blast-your-brains-out suicide which served no purpose at all. Later it's clocks and candles. And of course all the symbols are zoomed into again from all angles imaginable. Particularly, towards the last half of the film, we're zooming to clocks! Is the filmmaker running out of footage? Candles are also everywhere. People even walk around with candles as if we're in a bad Hammer Film from the 1950's!
The film is essentially a cinematic mess. For all the zooming and symbols, I couldn't get a hold of the characters. Hackman who often plays very resolved characters seemed strangely ambiguous. For a guy who has everything, he seemed to be in a real rut! Hauer is little better. He's won Theresa Russell, the most attractive character in the film, and even he doesn't seem very happy about it. Actually, Russell's character was the only one who was reasonably well-defined. But even she can't save this odd mess of a movie. Sadly it wasn't quite so bad that it was good. Essentially everything which should never be in a movie, and more.