Rating summary

Movie		3.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		0.5
Overall		3.0

Five Corners Blu-ray Movie Review

There Are Places I Remember

Reviewed by Michael Reuben February 27, 2013

According to a story reported at IMDb, Five Corners came about when actor-turned-director Tony Bill was auditioning actors for another project (possibly Untamed Heart, which Bill directed some years later). Many arrived with audition pieces from the plays of John Patrick Shanley. Bill was sufficiently intrigued by the dialogue to contact the playwright about a movie script. The resulting film was set in Shanley's native Bronx, just like the Oscar-nominated Doubt, which Shanley wrote and directed 21 years later. Five Corners is a messier, more youthful, less polished film. It was Shanley's first produced script, but in a quirk of timing, the independently produced film was held back from American screens until after the release of his second, MGM's 1987 hit Moonstruck. The latter won three Oscars, including one for Shanley's original screenplay.

The most obvious reason to watch Five Corners today is the presence of leads Jodie Foster, Tim Robbins and John Turturro, all of whom were on the cusp of major careers. The usual criticism of the film is that the plot is a mess that "spiral[s] out of control". I respectfully disagree. The script for Five Corners is tightly structured with the precision of the practiced dramatist that Shanley already was when Hollywood came calling. It's the abrupt shifts in tone that throw so many viewers, but if you're attuned to Shanley's peculiar frequency, those shifts are not unexpected.

Shanley has often said that he's bored by people who make sense, and that's how he writes characters. It's a risky approach, and it doesn't always succeed, on either the stage or the screen, but when it does, the results are unique. Anyone familiar with Shanley's notion of character should not be surprised that his most successful work to date celebrated the tentative and uncertain state of mind embodied by "doubt". Five Corners, based on memories from Shanley's youth, is filled with characters who don't make sense, know it and ultimately don't care. They're just trying to get through difficulties as each of them confronts their own personal challenges on entering adulthood in a particular place and era.

Presumably because Five Corners was produced by Handmade Films, the production company co-founded by former Beatle George Harrison, director Bill was able to secure rights to "In My Life" from Rubber Soul, which opens and closes the film. There is no better way to mark the story as a personal memoir. The film is set in late October 1964, in the waning days of the Johnson/Goldwater presidential campaign, of which signs are everywhere. The title refers to writer Shanley's old neighborhood in the Bronx, where all the key characters live.

The main story line concerns the release from prison of a disturbed man from Five Corners named Heinz Sabantino (Turturro) after serving a sentence for the assault and attempted rape of Linda Glascow (Foster), a neighbor who helps her father run the local pet store. Linda's boyfriend, Jamie (Todd Graff), tried to aid her but was permanently injured and now walks with a limp. Another local man, Harry Fitzgerald (Robbins), a cop's son, rescued Linda by smashing a pitcher of beer over Heinz's head, leaving a huge gash of a scar. Heinz now wears the scar as a badge of honor.

With Heinz headed home to his ditzy mom (Rose Gregorio), Linda breaks up with Jamie and seeks out Harry for protection. But Harry is no longer the same man. Once a brawler, he has embraced non-violence, even going so far as to name his huge dog, a St. Bernard, after the Buddha. The cause of this transformation is explained in a memorable speech midway through the film. When Linda arrives at Harry's home, he is preparing to depart for Mississippi to work in the civil rights movement, much to the dismay of his worried mother (Kathleen Chalfant). (The bodies of three young civil rights volunteers, Goodman, Schwerner and Chaney, had only recently been found in Mississippi, after months of searching.) Harry tells Linda he can't help her.

These serious matters are intercut with a farcial subplot in a narrative strategy that Shanley would probably say he borrowed from Shakespeare. Sal (Carl Capotorto) is driving around Five Points with his girl, Melanie (Elizabeth Berridge), and her friend, Brita (Cathryn de Prume), in the back seat. They treat him like a chauffeur while they get high on pills and glue. Disgusted, Sal pulls over and hands them off to two acquaintances, Castro (Rodney Harvey) and Willie (Daniel Jenkins), who proceed to show the girls a good time for the night and into the next day.

Castro and Willie have the day off from school, they explain, because their algebra teacher was shot down by an unseen assailant with a bow and arrow. The scene occurs early in the film, and it's played for laughs, as is the ensuing police investigation, in which two detectives agree that Indians couldn't have committed the crime, because they all moved out of The Bronx years ago. (As one detective puts it: "The neighborhood changed.") When the girls don't call home, their mothers send a sheepish Sal to find them. As silly and unrelated as these secondary plots may seem, they are an essential part of the fabric of Five Corners. You just have to be patient until all the story lines knit together.

The part of Heinz Sabantino was the biggest role John Turturro had played on film to date, and it's Turturro's warped intensity (which the Coen Bros. would shortly exploit in such films as Miller's Crossing and Barton Fink) that makes Five Corners a memorable if not entirely logical experience. Shanley's script and Bill's direction are designed to create the sensation that dire peril has invaded Five Corners and to provide Harry with a High Noon-style moral dilemma. But Shanley never tries to explain the violence of Heinz's actions or the depth of his twisted passions, although a few hints are dropped along the way. All we know for sure is that a troubled child of Five Corners has returned home, and he's fully surrendered to his inner demons, imperiling Linda and confronting Harry with a hard choice.

Five Corners Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Director Tony Bill was an established player in the studio system, but he also understood the practicalities of independent film. He hired a professional cinematographer, Fred Murphy (Hoosiers), to shoot Five Corners, but the film's look reflects the limitations of its shoestring budget.

None of Image Entertainment's Blu-rays of releases by Handmade Films has been especially impressive, but Five Corners is distinguished by having been taken from a source without major damage, speckles, scratches or wear-and-tear. The image on this 1080p, AVC-encoded Blu-ray has the soft, grainy texture of a faster, cheaper film stock from the era, but there's a reasonable amount of detail to be seen when the lighting is sufficient. Grainophobes will complain, but those who understand that some movies just look this way will appreciate that the grain hasn't been artificially reduced by digital filtering.

The color palette is naturalistic, with occasionally stronger colors reserved for specific environments (e.g., the blue water at the local fountain, which is a key location). In general, though, Five Corners is a dusty urban environment where strong colors are not the norm. Black levels are generally good, although there's very little in the way of true black in this environment, because even at night some illumination always exists. With few extras and only one audio option, the 94-minute film compresses comfortably onto a BD-25.

Five Corners Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

Five Corners' functional stereo track is presented in PCM 2.0, which does justice to both Shanley's dialogue and James Newton Howard's score. Even with an advanced surround decoding system, there is little in the way of a surround field. This is a basic stereo mix, where the sound effects remain primarily in the front.

Five Corners Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Other Handmade Film Favorites (480i; 1.33:1; 35:57): The trailers are not listed separately but can only be played as a group. However, there are chapter markers.
• A Private Function
• Bellman and True
• Bullshot Crummond
• Checking Out
• Cold Dog Soup
• Five Corners
• The Lonely Passion of Judith Hearne
• Mona Lisa
• Privates on Parade
• Scrubbers
• The Long Good Friday
• The Missionary
• Time Bandits
• Track 29
• Water
• Withnail and I

Five Corners Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Perhaps the best compliment that can be given Five Corners is that it feels like a recently made independent film, if one can imagine it with unknown faces and digital video. There's something primal and essential in how Shanley recreated these memories from his youth. One of the film's most refreshing touches is the complete absence of a "writer" character—the typical coming-of-age character sitting aside from the action, scribbling in a notebook or drawing on a sketch pad, who is an obvious stand-in for the author and will go on to "tell the story". You don't find those characters in a story by Shanley. After all, he already knows himself. The people who interest him are the ones he doesn't know. Recommended, as long as you understand what you're getting into.