A Walk on the Moon
USA 1998
Reviewed by Nina Caplan
Synopsis
Our synopses give away the plot in full, including surprise twists.
New York, 1969. Pearl and Marty Kantrowitz, with Marty's mother Lilian, take their kids - teenage Alison and young son Daniel - up to the Catskills resort where they spend every summer. Marty returns to his job as television repairman during the week, leaving Pearl to get on with the rebellious Alison and simmer over the 60s excitements she has missed because of her early marriage. When Marty gets stuck in the city, Pearl starts an affair with free-spirited resort employee Walker Jerome. Meanwhile, a boy called Ross becomes Alison's first boyfriend.
Lilian challenges Pearl about her infidelity and reminds her of Marty's sacrifices - he jettisoned science studies when she got pregnant - so she breaks with Walker. But when Marty can't bypass the Woodstock festival blockades, she goes to Woodstock with Walker, where Alison - there with Ross - spots her. Summoned by his mother, Marty confronts Pearl. She confesses her infidelity and Marty drives off enraged, returning unsuccessfully to snatch Daniel. An upset Alison suggests sex to Ross, running off in tearful rage when he counsels against it. She fights with her mother. Pearl visits Walker, who asks her to come away with him. They return to camp to find Daniel covered in wasp stings which Walker soothes. A bitter Marty arrives. When he leaves, Pearl bids goodbye to Walker. Alison makes up with Ross. Marty returns again, charmed by Pearl's present of a microscope, and they move towards a tentative reconciliation.
Review
Just as the mock-quotidian title suggests, this affectionate comedy examines seemingly banal actions (infidelity, teenage rebellion) taking place in extraordinary times whose consequences, like the moon landing itself, are more significant than the actions themselves. 60s housewife Pearl is desperate to launch into the sexual experimentation of the times while her television-repairman husband Marty has sublimated his intellectual curiosity to the immediate needs of a family with two children to feed. While his career and her life have both fossilised, hippies occupy a parallel world: hitching on the highway as the luggage-laden Kantrowitzes drive out to their Catskills resort; wading naked into the resort's lake to the ineffectual, uncomprehending hostility of the residents. Resort employee Walker Jerome has a backwards name suggestive of freedom despite the unglamorous trappings of his campervan. He offers Pearl liberation in a tight tie-dye t-shirt, his wooden face and vacant smile making him a perfect recipient for her fantasies.
Teen actor cum debut director Tony Goldwyn (grandson of Sam Goldwyn) resists the temptation to mock Pearl's stolid, well-intentioned husband. Marty hides his feelings behind a jokey exterior but, unlike Walker, he has feelings to hide. Like the New York Jewish community summering in time-honoured fashion in the Catskills, his deceptively easy-going ethos is enclosed in moral barbed wire. He'll accept anything that doesn't threaten the family, but he sees his wife's infidelity as a reversal of the natural order.
It isn't just Marty who is marked by Pearl's discontent. Their mannered, graceless daughter Alison (prevented, by Anna Paquin's sensitive performance from degenerating into a caricatured adolescent) bears the brunt of her mother's hopes, but also of her envy, enjoying the liberating adolescence Pearl was deprived of. Pearl and Walker's affair parallels Alison and Ross' more innocent relations, but the competition between mother and daughter sizzles: Pearl's moués and mannerisms are a prettier, leaner version of Alison's, who is equally desperate to escape the passivity that comes with obedience. We voyeuristically watch the community watching the moonlandings and Pearl and Walker having colourful sex in the grey lunar light; Goldwyn slyly intercuts the enthusiastic applause for the astronauts with the couple's rather different performance. From this washed-out beginning, everything brightens progressively, peaking in the slow-motion hedonism and sunlit bodypaint of Woodstock. This time, the nominal voyeur is Alison, whose reaction - suggesting sex to Ross - only narrowly escapes repeating history after the shock of watching her mother try to escape it. The film is better at groups than at individuals: the Catskills community is lovingly drawn, the family unit convincing, but the personal dramas don't always bypass cliché. There are too many heartfelt sentences beginning with "Sometimes..." and the excellent 60s soundtrack is drowned out by the clunk of set-pieces slotting into place.
Credits
- Producers
- Dustin Hoffman
- Tony Goldwyn
- Jay Cohen
- Neil Koenigsberg
- Lee Gottsegen
- Murray Schisgal
- Screenplay
- Pamela Gray
- Director of Photography
- Anthony Richmond
- Editor
- Dana Congdon
- Production Designer
- Dan Leigh
- Music
- Mason Daring
- ©????
- Production Companies
- A Punch Production in association with Village Roadshow Pictures/Groucho Film Partnership
- Executive Producers
- Graham Burke
- Greg Coote
- Co-producer
- Josette Perrotta
- Associate Producers
- Lemore Syvan
- Laura Gherardi
- Production Executive
- Jason Zelin
- Production Co-ordinator
- Danielle Boucher
- Production Managers
- Michel Chauvin
- NY Crew, 2nd Unit:
- Melissa Marr
- Unit Managers
- Jean-Yves Dolbec
- NY Crew, 2nd Unit:
- John Chamberlin
- Location Managers
- Catherine Dawe
- NY Crew, 2nd Unit:
- Alex Cohn
- Assistant Directors
- Pedro Gandol
- Louise Evangeline Renault
- Jean-Sébastien Lord
- Julie Coulombe
- Philippe Morin
- Antoine Saito
- Script Supervisor
- France Lachapelle
- Casting
- Billy Hopkins
- Suzanne Smith
- Kerry Barden
- Ann Goulder
- Canada:
- Vera Miller
- Montréal:
- Elite Productions
- Director of Photography
- NY Crew, 2nd Unit:
- Oliver Bokelberg
- Camera Operators
- Robert Stecko
- Additional:
- François Daignault
- Robert Guertin
- Steadicam Operator
- François Daignault
- Digital Effects & Animation
- C.O.R.E Digital Effects
- Visual Effects Supervisor
- Animation Director:
- Bob Munroe
- Effects Production Manager:
- Lisa Bechard
- Effects Production Co-ordinator:
- Lisa Wyse
- Effects Technical Director:
- Ralph Sevazlian
Animator:- Kelvin Kanagaraj
- Digital Paint Artists:
- Nick Hsieh
- Alex Busby
- Systems Administrators:
- Costa Roussakis
- Jesse Bradstreet
- Special Effects
- Antonio Vidosa
- Louis Craig
- Graphic Designer
- Carl Lessard
- Art Director
- Gilles Aird
- Draftsman
- Peter Stratford
- Costume Designer
- Jess Goldstein
- Key Make-up Artist
- Lizane Lasalle
- Key Hairstylist
- Bob Pritchett
- Titles/Opticals
- John Alagna
- The Effects House
- Musicians
- Guitar:
- Duke Levine
- Clarinet:
- Billy Novick
- Keyboards:
- Kenny White
- Bass:
- Paul Bryan
- Drums:
- Ken Wittman
- Harp:
- Deborah Henson-Conant
- Synthesizer:
- Shane Koss
- Orchestration
- Martin Brody
- Dana Brayton
- Billy Novick
- Music Supervisor
- Stephan R. Goldman
- Music Co-ordinator
- Vicki Arckoff
- Music Editor
- Patrick Mullins
- Music Engineers
- Dave Shacter
- Michael Golub
- Music Mixer
- Dave Shacter
- Soundtrack
- "More/Ti guardero nel cuore" by Marcello Ciorciolini, Norman Newell, Nino Oliviero, Riz Ortolani, performed by Bobby Darin; "The Name Game" by Lincoln Chase, Shirley Elliston; "Danke schoen" by Kurt Schwabach, Milt Gabler, Bert Kaempfert, performed by Wayne Newton; "Wishin' & Hopin'" by Burt Bacharach, Hal David, performed by Dusty Springfield; "Ripple", "Uncle John's Band" by Jerry Garcia, Robert Hunter, performed by Grateful Dead; "For Your Love" by Ed Townsend; "Sunlight" by Jesse Colin Young, performed by The Youngbloods; "Summertime" by George Gershwin, Ira Gershwin, DuBose Heyward, performed by Big Brother & The Holding Company; "What's New Pussy Cat" by Burt Bacharach, Hal David, performed by Tom Jones; "Today" by Marty
- Balin, Paul Kantner, performed by Jefferson Airplane; "Embryonic Journey" by Jorma
Kaukonen, performed by Jefferson Airplane; "Kiss of Fire" by Lester Allen, Robert Hill, Angel Villoldo, performed by Georgia Gibbs; "Cactus Tree" by/performed by Joni Mitchell; "Who Knows Where the Time Goes" by Sandy Denny, performed by Judy Collins; "Strangers in the Night" by Bert Kaempfert, Eddie Snyder, Charles Singleton, performed by Wayne Newton; "Freedom" by/performed by Richie Havens; "The Fish Cheer and I Feel Like I'm Fixin' to Die Rag" by Joe McDonald, performed by Country Joe McDonald; "Subterranean Homesick Blues" by/performed by Bob Dylan; "White Bird" by David LaFlamme, Linda LaFlamme, performed by It's A Beautiful Day; "The Israelites" by Desmond Dekker; "When You're Smiling the Whole World Smiles with You" by Mark Fisher, Joe Goodwin, Larry Shay, performed by Dean Martin; "Follow" by Jerry Merrick, performed by Richie Havens - Sound Mixer
- Claude La Haye
- Re-recording Mixer
- Dominick Tavella
- Audio Post Co-ordinator
- Danielle Capawanna
- Supervising Sound Editor
- Jeffrey Stern
- Dialogue Editor
- Sylvia Jessica Menno
- Effects Editor
- Jeffrey Stern
- ADR
- Supervising Editor:
- Lisa J. Levine
- LA, Editor:
- Victoria Sampson
- Foley
- Artists:
- Brian Vancho
- Ryan Collison
- Engineer:
- Georges Lara
- Editor:
- Louis Bertini
- Technical Adviser
- Larry Gray
- Stunt Co-ordinators
- Minor Mustain
- Dave McKeown
Cast- Diane Lane
- Pearl Kantrowitz
- Viggo Mortensen
- Walker Jerome
- Liev Schreiber
- Marty Kantrowitz
- Anna Paquin
- Alison Kantrowitz
- Tovah Feldshuh
- Lilian Kantrowitz
- Bobby Boriello
- Daniel Kantrowitz
- Stewart Bick
- Neil Leiberman
- Jess Platt
- Herb Fogler
- Mahee Paiment
- Mrs Dymbort
- Star Jasper
- Rhonda Leiberman
- Ellen David
- Eleanor Gelfand
- Lisa Bronwyn Moore
- Norma Fogler
- Vicky Barkoff
- Selma Levitsky
- Tamar Kozlov
- Wendy Green
- Lisa Jakub
- Myra Naidell
- Joseph Perrino
- Ross Epstein
- Jesse Lavendel
- Carl Applebaum
- James Liboiron
- Jeffrey Fogler
- Howard Rosenstein
- Sheldon Dymbort
- Mal Z. Lawrence
- comedian
- Joel Miller
- Sid Shapiro
- Bill Brownstein
- Sam Gesser
- customers
- [uncredited]
- Julie Kavner
- voice of camp's social director
- Certificate
- 15
- Distributor
- Miracle Communications
- 9,665 feet
- 107 minutes 23 seconds
- Dolby
- Colour by
- Technicolor East Coast