Ragtime

E.L. Doctorow's sprawling novel intertwining factual and fictional characters in a dissection of the dark underbelly of Americana circa 1906 has been truncated and condensed in Milos Forman's 1981 film (in the interesting 18-minute making-of "Remembering Ragtime," the director says that Doctorow was willing to adapt the book for a 10-hour miniseries, but not a feature-length film). Nominated for eight Oscars, the sumptuous looking Ragtime follows a handful of interlinking stories: including the murder of architect Stanford White (Norman Mailer) by Harry Thaw (Robert Joy in a role originally set to star Jack Nicholson) over White's earlier romantic affair with Thaw's wife Evelyn Nesbit (Elizabeth McGovern, in an Oscar-nominated performance); and a young street artist's (Mandy Patinkin) rise to become a filmmaker. But the main story follows the slow burn to incendiary rage in a black pianist named Coalhouse Walker Jr. (Oscar-nominated Howard E. Rollins Jr.), who is the victim of a foul racist stunt (involving excrement on the seat of Walker's new Model T) and whose pursuit of justice only leads to more injustice until he launches a series of what would today be called terrorist attacks against bigoted white America (Forman acknowledges that the film could not have been made in the current political climate). Linking all of these disparate characters and tales are an unnamed upper-class family (James Olson as Father, Mary Steenburgen as Mother, and Brad Dourif as Younger Brother) who are gradually torn apart by the various events depicted in the film. Featuring early performances by Samuel L. Jackson, Jeff Daniels, and Fran Drescher (as well as the final performance by James Cagney, after a 20-year break from movies), and a sparkling soundtrack by Randy Newman, Ragtime is not in the same class as Forman's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest or Amadeus, but it remains a fascinating and beautifully filmed curio with a hot bright kernel of anger at its center over the contradiction between American ideals and practice. Boasting a fine widescreen transfer and Dolby Digital 5.1 and mono sound, DVD extras on Ragtime include the aforementioned "making-of" and a 10-minute deleted scene with the character of Emma Goldman. Recommended. (R. Pitman)