Also this issue: Swimming Pool The self-reflexive Swimming Pool brings Franèois Ozon face-to-face with himself. -Sam Adams Screen Picks -Sam Adams New Shorts: The League Of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Pirates Of The Caribbean: The Curse Of The Black Pearl Continuing Shorts Repertory Film Showtimes

July 10-16, 2003

movies

Levity

MANUAL LABOR: Billy Bob Thornton as Levity’s repentant convict.

The solemn Levity finds danger in the past.

by Cindy Fuchs

Memory is a tricky business. So are movies that mess with it. In Levity, Manual Jordan (Billy Bob Thornton) is an ex-con, released against his will after serving 22 years for the murder of a 16-year-old convenience-store clerk named Abner Easley (played in flashbacks by Geoffrey Wigdor). Manual can’t stop thinking about what he did, but he remembers it in ways that suit his needs, that is, to feel guilt and pain, to pay for what he’s done.

"What I remember most from before was people's voices," Manual says in his introductory voiceover. "Floating on the wind and laughing, like everyone was in on something, like it all mattered somehow." Manual isn't feeling very "in on" anything, to the point that he resists when the parole board commutes his life sentence to time served. To punish himself (and seek redemption), Manual returns to the unnamed city (shot in Montreal) where he committed his sin, and starts watching Abner's sister, Adele (Holly Hunter). She soon spots him, as he's a striking misfit, lanky and sunken-eyed, with gray hair drooping to his shoulders. Um, yes, he admits, and can he carry her grocery bags?

As awkward as he is, Manual has incredible good luck. When he stops by the convenience store where he killed Abner, a parking-lot pay phone rings, and on the other end is Miles Evans (Morgan Freeman). This godsend runs a community center, where he preaches the gospel to kids in exchange for parking spaces near a hot dance club. Hired to park cars, Manual meets Sofia (Kirsten Dunst), wealthy club kid and generally miserable addict. Self-confident even in her self-loathing, Sofia stands up to the kids at the center, recognizing that their woo-wooing isn't as threatening as they seem to think it is. Impressed, they invite white girl to hang out and play pool down at the center.

Sofia is similarly instructive for Manual, who scolds her for squandering her life. (He's especially upset when she can't remember him after he drives her home one night, memory being a crucial route to morality, for him.) But she soon has him recalling for her what happened, and voilà, he sees that she's not just a selfish child, but a reflection, in her snotty, privileged way, of him.

This twisting of memory and desire leads to Adele's teenage son, also named Abner (Luke Robertson), involved in "gang violence." This bit of business is sketchy, an unimaginative shortcut to predictable crisis. Even more unfortunately, Levity uses Miles as a means to the white guy's self-understanding. As righteous as he appears in his lectures to the club kids (who scrape their shoes and look at their fingers while he's talking, itching to be on their way), Miles has his own troubling memory. Recalling his recent turn as God in Bruce Almighty, Freeman here looks like a Magical Negro -- not a memory that needs to be dredged up again.

Levity

Written and directed by Ed Solomon

A Sony Classics release

Opens Friday at Ritz East