What kind of movie — what genre of movie — is this, anyway? It starts out as a classical but lurid mystery thriller; then wanders off on a search for a shared border between horror/fantasy and honest-to-God religious art; then takes a final superhuman broad jump into the purview of the love story. It does all this with a minimum of stylistic fuss (minimum for Nicolas Roeg, anyway); the task in itself is sufficiently daring and attention-getting. And if the ending is seen as going too far, it won't be so much because of a lack of faith in the Almighty as because of a lack of faith in the artistic arsenal of analogy, metaphor, dream imagery, symbolism. This ending is moving as only the authentically poetic can be moving — untranslatably and unparaphraseably. It is moving not only (or mainly) for the fineness of its sentiment, but for its completion and revelation of a previously concealed design. After all, comprehending the logic and beauty of a design is the nearest aesthetic equivalent — nearest aesthetic analogue — to feeling the presence of the divine. With Theresa Russell, Mark Harmon, James Russo, Will Patton, Richard Bradford. (1992) — Duncan Shepherd
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