Cinema: Watery Grave

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THE WORLD ACCORDING TO GARP

Directed by George Roy Hill

Screenplay by Steve Tesich

The world according to Novelist John Irving is a dangerous place, the individual's position in it much more fragile than he imagines it to be. For the characters in The World According to Garp, the problem is that ironies both bitter and brutal keep gusting up out of nowhere and knocking them down. Out of this basic and by no means original insight, Irving crafted a bestseller and something more. His hero, T.S. Garp, that wise and foolish, gentle and fierce writer-wrestler has become a sort of postmodernist Everyman, and his often deadly adventures on the bleak bat lefields of the contemporary war between the sexes have given the book an almost mythic coloration for many readers.

Making a movie out of a novel in which there is a strong emotional stake is never easy, and, indeed, it requires almost reckless courage to undertake the task. Unfortunately for Director George Roy Hill and Writer Steve Tesich, their recklessness seems to have deserted them once the deals were made and they set to work. They have not tampered greatly with Irving's plot or his people. What is missing from the movie is any attempt to discover a cinematic language that compares with the language of the novel. Where the book jumped, the movie plods; where the novelist came upon his themes in the course of rich exploration, the movie marches up and confronts them with all the subtlety of a morning-talk-show host. It is hard to recall any recent movie, of whatever literary lineage, that is as dully literal and unadventurous as this one.

Robin Williams' Garp is strictly from Ork; he appears to be visiting his role rather than inhabiting it. Even John Lithgow, who plays Roberta Muldoon, the transsexualized onetime tight end, fails to give his usual gifted portrayal of an eccentric. Only Glenn Close, as Carp's mother, a feminist heroine, escapes from the bland rhythms of the film to cut a few strongly individualized capers of her own.

In the book, one of Garp's sons mistakes a warning about an undertow where he goes swimming and comes to believe that a giant frog, an "undertoad," menaces him. It becomes a symbol for all the hidden dangers of modern life. The film never locates its undertoad and thus never confronts the true subject of the book. It is all just body surfing on a placid pond. —By Richard Schickel