[ThisWeek] The World's Fastest Indian at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

[thisweek at kenworthy.org]

This week at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...

The World¹s Fastest Indian (PG-13)
Thursday, Friday & Saturday, June 8, 9 & 10
7:00 PM
Sunday, June 11
4:05 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult, $2/child 12 or younger
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies
(See Review below)
* * *

Next week at the Kenworthy-

Summer Matinee series begins!
Dreamer (PG)
Wednesday, June 14
1:00 PM
$4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger

Friends With Money (R)
Thursday, Friday & Saturday, June 15, 16, & 17
7:00 PM
Sunday, June 18
4:45 & 7:00 PM
$5/adult
KFS pass accepted for Sunday movies
* * *

Also in June at the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre...


Cheaper by the Dozen 2 (PG)
June 21, 1:00 PM

Thank You For Smoking (R)
June 22-24, 7:00 PM
June 25, 4:45 & 7:00 PM

Wallace & Gromit: The Curse of the Were-Rabbit (G)
June 28, 1:00 PM

Coming in July: Hoot; Nanny McPhee; Ice Age: The Meltdown

Regular movie prices:  $5/adult, $2/child 12 or younger
Wednesday matinee prices: $4/adult, $1/child 12 or younger
KFS series pass prices:  $30/10 films, $75/30 films.  KFS pass good only for
Sunday movies.

For more information on movies, events, rental rates, and/or to download a
schedule, visit our website at www.kenworthy.org
* * *

This week¹s review-

The World¹s Fastest Indian

Directed by Roger Donaldson
Starring Anthony Hopkins
Rated PG-13 for brief language, drug use and a sexual reference.
Running Time: 2 hours, 7 minutes


As reviewed by Roger Ebert writing for the Chicago Sun-Times

"The World's Fastest Indian" is a movie about an old coot and his
motorcycle, yes, but it is also about a kind of heroism that has gone out of
style. Burt Munro is a codger in his 60s who lives in Invercargill, New
Zealand, takes nitro pills for his heart condition, and has spent years
tinkering with a 1920 Indian motorcycle. His neighbors wish he would take a
break once in a while to mow the grass.

By 1967, Burt thinks the Indian may be about ready to travel to the
Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah and take part in the annual Speed Week. This
project involves fund-raising in Invercargill, and a long journey that takes
him overland in America, where he meets among others an accommodating widow
who takes him to visit her husband's grave. In Bonneville, where millionaire
drivers are sponsored by big corporations, no one has ever seen anyone like
Burt or anything like his ancient machine.

He should have registered weeks ago, but the officials lack the heart to
turn him away. They are amazed when they inspect his machine. No braking
chute? No brakes? "Where's your fire suit?" Can that be a cork on his gas
tank? There is no tread on his tires. Is that mechanical part a -- kitchen
hinge?

Why do they allow this man to risk his life in defiance of every safety
standard at Bonneville? I think it is because Burt loves his motorcycle, and
cannot believe she would harm him; the steadfastness of his trust seduces
them. When Burt discusses his motorcycle, which he rhymes with Popsicle, he
gets into theories he must have pondered long into the night in his garage
in New Zealand: "The center of pressure is behind the center of gravity," he
explains, as if that explained anything. Or maybe it does. With Burt, you
can never be sure.

This is one of Anthony Hopkins' most endearing, least showy performances.
The man who created Hannibal Lecter and Richard Nixon is concerned here with
the precise behavior of a quiet, introverted man who is simultaneously
obsessed and a little muddled. It's as if his fellow racing drivers have
been visited by a traveler from the dawn of their sport, when guys tinkered
with their machines in the tool shed and roared up and down country roads.
Burt Munro is a man for whom the world seems brand-new: He is amazed to
enter a restaurant and see, for the first time in his life, a menu with
photographs.

Burt Munro was a real man, and the film is based on fact. Roger Donaldson,
the movie's writer and director, grew up in New Zealand, where Munro was a
folk hero. He wrote the first draft of this script in 1979, after a 1971
documentary, and then life took him to Hollywood and to big-budget thrillers
like "No Way Out," and now at last he has returned to tell the story of a
hero of his youth.

It is also the story of certain New Zealand characteristics, among which is
self-effacing modesty. Burt Munro would think it unseemly to call attention
to himself, although he is happy for his Indian to get attention. (Before
one race, he pops a nitro pill into the gas tank and as he swallows the
second, he explains, "one for myself and one for the old girl.") In an era
of showboat sports superstars, how strange to see old Burt challenge one of
the most durable records in racing and then actually be embarrassed by the
attention.

Read no further if you do not want to know how Burt does at Bonneville,
although perhaps you have already guessed that "The World's Fastest Indian"
is not about the second-fastest Indian. Yes, in 1967 Burt coaxed the Indian
to 201.85 mph, even as a muffler was burning the flesh on his leg. That set
a record in the category of "streamlined motorcycles under 1000 cc." It is a
record, the film assures us, that still stands to this day. Burt returned
nine times to Bonneville, becoming a hero, although deflecting attention
with his diffidence, his shyness, his way of talking about the Indian
instead of about himself. We are reminded that when Lindbergh flew the
Spirit of St. Louis across the Atlantic, he titled his autobiography We --
so that it also included his airplane. That's how Burt feels about the old
girl. 


As reviewed by Mick LaSalle writing for the San Francisco Chronicle

"The World's Fastest Indian" might be the world's worst title for a
charming, slice-of-life biopic starring Anthony Hopkins. What does it mean?
Does Hopkins play an Indian? Does he run a lot? Both are unpromising
prospects. In fact, he plays a New Zealand motorcycle enthusiast, a
real-life fellow by the name of Burt Munro (1899-1978), who at the age of 68
broke the land-speed record at the Bonneville Salt Flats in Utah.

The "Indian" of the title refers to the brand of motorcycle he drove, a 1920
Indian that he tinkered with in his garage for many years, turning it into a
combination rocket/junk heap/death trap/glory of the age.

All this makes "The World's Fastest Indian" qualify as a kind of sports
movie, and to a degree it benefits from the usual sports-movie excitement:
The sheer spectacle, the will-he-do-it, the can-he-do-it, the rooting
interest, the kick of racing in general. But the movie's real appeal runs
deeper than that, just as the narrative approach of Roger Donaldson, who
wrote and directed, is more ambitious. Donaldson takes Munro's story and
turns it into a whimsical voyage and return saga, the odyssey of a man, pure
in heart, across a troubled America.

The focus is not so much on Munro's accomplishments as it is on his
personality, which is made vivid in Hopkins' performance. He plays Munro as
a scattered man, an eccentric not quite in tune with his fellows, isolated
somewhat by his own peculiar brilliance and by some hearing loss. He's a
fascinating character, seemingly going through life encased in a protective
vagueness, yet casually demonstrating a laser-like acuity at select moments.
He might be a genius, but to his credit, he doesn't seem to know it.

A movie like this can only start in first gear. Burt is an old man who
putters in his garage all day, waking up the neighbors, letting his lawn go
to seed, collecting junk in his backyard, a likable crank. He seems like a
fellow near the finish line. He has angina attacks and has to carry around a
bottle of nitroglycerin pills. He has a lifelong dream of going to the Salt
Flats and really letting his motorcycle rip, but it doesn't seem realistic.
It's not realistic -- they don't make movies about realistic people.

"The World's Fastest Indian" is as much about the getting there as it is
about what Burt does after he arrives. Burt encounters all kinds of people
from Los Angeles to Bonneville, and somewhere, midway, the lovely thing
happens: The movie takes on a magical quality. In one scene, he stumbles
into a romantic interlude with a farmwoman his own age. In another, he walks
into bars and strikes up conversation with anyone he sees. Donaldson finds a
pleasant, measured rhythm and makes a viewer feel as if it would be quite
all right to watch Burt's journey for hours and hours. He is, after all, the
only unself-conscious man in America, and we look upon him in the same way
as most people do in the movie, with bemusement, at first, then fascination,
and then affection.

It's wise on Donaldson's part to show that not everyone is susceptible to
Burt's eccentric charm. Some people feel threatened by his purity, some are
callously amused by it, some are sour and unreachable. Donaldson depicts the
America of the mid-1960s as a place of burgeoning anxiety, a stewpot of
ugliness and sweetness and leftover innocence. Burt, an instinctive
egalitarian who sees everyone as of equal value, serves as a human Rorschach
test. People react to him in accordance with their own individual character
and degree of mental health, while he remains contented and unchanged


As reviewed by Marc Savlov writing for the Austin (Texas) Chronicle

Anthony Hopkins loses himself so deeply to the role of lovable Burt Munro
that all thoughts of Hannibal Lecter are banished from frame one. Munro is
prone to peeing on his lemon tree in order not to waste his ³natural
fertilizer² and spouting Methuselean aphorisms that would have made ³The
Remains of the Day¹s² butler¹s poor head explode. Simply put, this is one of
the finest and most transformative pieces of acting I¹ve seen in a coot¹s
age, and one that outweighs the story¹s many side trips into what, in the
realm of lesser actors, would surely have descended into a treacly mire.

Heading out from his New Zealand work shed (where he also sleeps) to race at
Utah¹s famed Bonneville Salt Flats, amiable Burt encounters a steady stream
of oddball characters, all of whom bend over backward to assist the ailing
golden-ager in the realization of his dream. There¹s the black transvestite
night clerk (Chris Williams) he meets up with in ³Hollyweird²; not one, but
two randy widowers (Annie Whittle, Diane Ladd) whom he beds along the way; a
genuine American Indian (Saginaw Grant) who offers him ³powdered dog balls²
as a cure for his prostate problems; and a helpful Los Angelean used-car
salesman (!) played to the hilt by Paul Rodriguez.

Various obstacles to Burt¹s eventual triumph are scattered throughout the
film, but nothing short of Armageddon is able to dampen heroic Burt¹s
infectious good cheer. His unstoppable can-do pluck is so archetypically
American in spirit that it¹s a wonder he¹s a Kiwi and not some dust bowl
refugee on the downside of greatness, but then again American
self-mythologizing surely isn¹t what it used to be. National pride aside,
this fluffy outsider meringue is downright impossible not to swallow.


Film reviews researched and edited by Peter Haggart
* * *

Take a seat!  We mean that literally.  The Kenworthy is offering you the
opportunity to purchase one of a limited number of theater chairs in the
main auditorium.  Your gift will entitle you to an engraved, brass name
plate mounted on the back of the seat of your choice (based upon
availability).  One individual or business name per seat, please.

This naming opportunity, back by popular demand, is available for a donation
of $500 per chair.  You may purchase a chair in two installments of $250
over two years, or in three installments of $200 over three years.

Your gift will assist with the ongoing operation and renovation of the
Kenworthy Theater and fulfillment of our mission to be Moscow's premiere,
historic, downtown, community performing arts venue and cinematic art house.

For information about the Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre, call Julie
Ketchum, Executive Director, at 208-882-4127.
* * *

Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre
508 S. Main Street, Moscow, Idaho
208-882-4127
Sign up for this weekly email on events and movies at the Kenworthy by
logging onto our website
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~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
PAMELA PALMER, Volunteer
Mailto:ppalmer at moscow.com
Film and Events Committee
Kenworthy Performing Arts Centre

http://www.kenworthy.org
To speak with a KPAC staff member,
call (208) 882-4127
Mailto:kpac at moscow.com
~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

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