Music Box
Director: Costa-Gavras
Year Released: 1989
Rating: 2.0
A skilled attorney (a quivering Jessica Lange) rushes to her immigrant father's defense when accusations arise that he committed war crimes during World War II; she's loyal to Pop (Armin Mueller-Stahl) in the beginning, but turns on him when it becomes clear he's guilty. There are some excellent ideas in there, somewhere - can we ever really know about our parents' pasts? how should we handle the information we do find out? what is our responsibility towards protecting our parents' good names? - but then it skirts the gray area and reduces it to a black and white issue (the ending is deeply unsatisfying and hard to take). The courtroom scenes lack pizzazz but Lange's character's visible fragility is a movie in itself: every moment she looks like she's about ready to collapse.
