Adapted from the widely heralded but unread Peter Mathiessen novel, HectorBabenco's "At Play in the Fields of the Lord" has the feel of being severalchapters lifted from a Joseph Conrad-inspired genealogical expedition by JamesA. Michener titled "Amazonia." Some of us would argue that he already wrotesomething close -- "Hawaii." And the 1966 movie of it comes to mind as "AtPlay" proceeds to lay its episodic groundwork: Tom Berenger as a Rafer Hoxworthwith an ethnic consciousness; John Lithgow as the black and Aidan Quinn as thewhite version of Abner Hale; and Kathy Bates as the fattened-up ancestor ofAbner and his wife Jerusha. While nothing in Mathiessen's or Babenco's versionsof the perils of White God Redemption is all that new -- it's still the sameold White Man rape of supposedly unGodly cultures for religious power andcommercial gain -- there's a twist here that keeps you interested: an AmericanIndian (in the movie, Berenger) literally dropping down from the skies tobecome the Amazon Indians' Kisu Mu -- the Thunder Spirit. It's Gabriel GarciaMarquez's "Old Man With Enormous Wing" darkened and without the magic. What keeps the movie from becoming better than it turns out is itsobviousness: just about everything -- from corrupt police to machetes asbribes, from bells subtly tolling in the background to epidemics -- isham-radioed in, even before the principals turn theirs on. And though we knowthat the heat, insects and various illnesses while filming hampered production,some of the actors just aren't delivering. They appear to have given in to theclimate -- they're sluggish, dehydrated, missing beats in their line readings;the general tone, except for Berenger and sometimes Quinn, is, "Let's get thisover with asap." Hindering Babenco may have been his lack of knowledge aboutBates and Lithgow -- that they need directors who stay on top of them, keepingthem from going flaccid, preventing them from reciting their lines on a parwith sloppy e-mail; when you hear Lithgow reading from a letter, you'll knowwhat I mean. As a converter for the Lord, Quinn is miscast -- Bates calls him"a regular little four-eyed Jesus" -- and he doesn't have anything resembling abelievable married relationship with Bates; you wonder what's the matter withhim that he got stuck with her. Come climax, however, he's the turmoil ofreligious confusion, the bearer of delayed honor and the eventual tragicsacrifice that the fields of this Lord demand. It's Berenger's performance the movie has to rest on; if you can accept theconvenient mechanism that on one ordinary day he lands his plane down in theAmazon and finds his need to re-establish his roots suddenly mushrooming andtherefore has to parachute backyard into his linkable origins to save "hispeople" from white man's exploitation, then you'll be fairly engrossed. If youdon't, then nothing he does will matter. (You'll find yourself hoping thatBates does one of her "goes bananas" numbers, and you won't be toodisappointed.) What he has to do many other actors wouldn't, but that he keepsholding his backpack (?) over his privates can drive you crazy -- not becauseyou don't get to see his measure but because it gets so damned distracting. Butnot paralyzing; Berenger is soon given an Indian brief and from that moment on,he becomes so assimilated into the tribe that he's like camouflage. (The makeupand hair design by Jaque Monteiro.) His native look has one comic bit -- whenhe's peeking at a nude Daryl Hannah. Babenco's direction of the Indians is awonder and rarely have I seen actors in group sequences avoid the camera withthis much diligence; these actors have a no nonsense approach to their dutiesand in some moments -- when, for example, the flu strikes -- what they achievein unison appears so real that you keep having to remind yourself that thesepeople coughing and trying to rub away the chills are performers. Photographed by Lauro Escorel, this Amazon is safer than what we've seen inother movies: no snakes (except a dead one), no infestations of ants or othercreepy crawlers; it's a habitable environment. Concentrated doses of the junglearen't beautiful after a while -- the greenery and earth floor blunt the sensesthrough prolonged exposure -- but there are aerial shots by Stan McClain thatshowcase the region and the best come when Berenger flies toward a waterfall.The lulling mist from the falls is breathtaking in its panoramic delicacy andenhanced by the almost classical music by Zbigniew Preisner. If you can getpast the first forty minutes, you should be able to go all the way. You'll wishit had a stronger narrative push, and that the action was speedier, but, givenWaco and other martyrs, it's a useful refresher course: all of us need to bereminded about the charlatans who pass themselves off as messengers of God.
