Grand Canyon (Lawrence Kasdan, 1991)

Life is an unpredictable adventure in which our own wills are just one of one of many forces conspiring to shape us and steer our course. Lawrence Kasdan's Grand Canyon is a beautifully crafted celebration of the process.

Released in 1991, the film most definitely bears the hallmarks of its era, especially in James Newton Howard's distinctly eighties, but surprisingly catchy score. The story interweaves several smaller narratives of lives converging in modern LA, in a way that prefigures the more complex Magnolia (PT Anderson, 1999) - but then, by the time Magnolia was made, didn't everything have to be cleverer and more sophisticated? Not to put down Magnolia, a film I love; but Grand Canyon is from an earlier period when narratives were simpler.

The movie opens at a basketball game, an ironic setting in which the coming together of black athletes with white spectators belies the racial divisions that exist on the streets outside. On the way home, Mack (Kevin Kline) takes a short cut through a run-down neighbourhood rather than battle traffic. Predictably (this is where Howard's score falls down), his car stalls, and he finds himself stuck in hostile streets waiting for a tow-truck. Owner of the truck is Simon (Danny Glover), who arrives just in time to save Mack from a gun-wielding teenage gang. This meeting is the first of a trail of coincidences that propel the characters' lives: Mack's friend, Davis (Steve Martin), a director of violent Hollywood movies, is robbed at gunpoint and shot in the leg; Mack's wife, Claire (Mary McDonnell), finds an abandoned baby while out jogging.

Mack and Simon strike up an unlikely friendship when Mack insists on going back to find Simon and thank him. These two performances are the finest of the film, although it must be said this is an ensemble effort, in which there really is no weak link.

The Grand Canyon is a double metaphor for the characters' formation and for the gulf of race and class that separates the two main characters, although it is the former element that Kasdan presses. Does he push it too hard? I don't know. If it was heavyhanded, I was willing to overlook it, for in every other respect I felt this was such a heartfelt, moving picture, put together with much love and care and personal attention. Kasdan isn't a slave to realism, and freely delves into fantasy at some points, a sensibility that I enjoyed.

My rating? * * * * * (4/5)