![]() And yet, like Arquette, when the time comes to fully unleash the emotions… Robards just can’t reach the pitch the film is aiming for. Some of the best scenes are the ones where the camera plonks itself down close to his face, looking as it does like a leather football that has had the stuffing kicked out of it, teeth bared like a rabid dog. He’s a passionate sceptic and a drunk, dripping with self-loathing and afraid of the idea his daughter and late wife’s power might be real because that would make him even more of a fraud. ![]() ![]() Walt’s a complete cynic who knows Martha is a fake, just as he knew her mother was a fraud, and either of them suggesting otherwise sends him into a rage. We often look at her, we rarely look with her.Īs Walt, Jason Robards ( Once Upon a Time in the West) relishes the meatiest part. She’s also the sort of movie-woman whose underwear drawer contains only lingerie, letting you know she’s a woman seen through the male gaze. The fault for this lies with the screenplay although Martha drives the story the nature of it relies on her being a figure of mystery rather than a real person. This slight remove, this failure to let the audience into her perspective, is why it’s a good performance from Arquette but not a great one. She never seems horrified by the realisation she can actually commune with the dead and, in fact, Arquette plays her as though she’s always suspected she had this power and that’s why she feels so bitter about having to fake it night after night. Asked why she reasons “this way men lie with me and not to me.” Martha’s a difficult character to get a handle on. Her cynicism is given physical expression by her habit of having one-night stands with men she meets on their travels. Rosanna Arquette ( Desperately Seeking Susan) plays Martha as someone who’s turned cynical because of her father’s insistence at twisting people’s faith into “a variety act”. That’s nonsense, her father tells her, but that night things take a disturbing turn when the audience member’s spouse is gunned down in his home. But Martha explains it was different this time and she really was receiving messages from beyond. After the show, Walt forces her to apologise to the woman and chastises her for continuing the act when she knew she was wrong. Undeterred, Martha presses on, describing the gory details of her husband’s violent death at the hands of an assassin. But her husband isn’t dead, the confused woman explains. While on stage one evening, Martha gets a message from a woman in the audience’s husband. Walt used to run the scam with Martha’s mother until her death, but that’s a time father and daughter don’t speak about now… because, shortly before her death, Martha’s mother started to believe her powers were real. They’re good at it, too, making enough money to retire in a few years. She sits on church stages in a flowing white gown, telling audiences the afterlife is nothing but rainbows and clouds, and then proceeds to relay messages for those that have passed over. Martha Travis (Rosanna Arquette) and her father, Walter (Jason Robards), earn their money travelling around the Bible Belt of America running a classic medium scam.
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