‘One From The Heart: Reprise’ 4K UHD (Blu-ray review)

Lionsgate

Sooner or later, the check always comes due.

The Godfather, The Conversation, The Godfather Part II, and Apocalypse Now were all stone cold classics recognized in their moment and revered to this day and it is no wonder after such a run that an artist as expansive and operatic as Francis Ford Coppola would be convinced that if his instincts had won so many battles against conventional wisdom and square conglomerate executives that his instincts were all that were required.

He conceptualized a highly stylized cinematic odyssey through the trials and tribulations of modern love with the visual flair of European art deco and a soundtrack from Tom Waits.

Hollywood balked, and so he self-financed and the result is One From the Heart.

One From the Heart has recently been retouched by Coppola, as a number of his films have been before 4K release, and it seems mainly that he’s given the film a trim from 107 to 93 minutes.

It is a film that was always first sold on its visual fearlessness and it has never looked more striking– it is perhaps the only neon memory play in the history of American cinema. The audio, likewise, has been retouched and remixed and both the musical numbers and the Waits soundtrack has never been more rich and full.

There’s a temptation to anoint this film a lost classic on style alone, and that temptation (much like the ones the characters in the film face) only gets more seductive by comparison to how little personality seems to be present in commercial filmmaking these days.

That would be a disservice to the reader, though. One From the Heart remains the same baffling misfire it was upon release and despite this tighter edit, and improved production value it is not significantly improved because the core problem of the film: that it claims to look at the state of modern romantic love but has nothing to offer but platitudes, as it reduces people and desires to slick production values. It is thirty million dollars (back when that was a lot) chronicling the adventures of gas in a tube.

Fredric Forrest and Terri Garr, two wonderful actors, play a nebbish pair of bickering lovers in Las Vegas during what can be described as a relationship funk. On one magical evening both are introduced to people who represent the height of their romantic fantasies (Raul Julia and Nastassja Kinski) and who take them on a surreal night on the town as our two “normal” people have to decide whether to return to comfortable reality or submit to the fantasy and let it run away with them.

Everything that could have made this work– quiet stillness and longing, reading the humanity in the actors, and some texture for the actors is missing. It’s like watching a couple of acquaintances decide if they’re going to divorce one another through binoculars when all of the sudden an opera company spontaneously starts performing Tosca in between you and them. Neither the content nor the spectacle is well served by the marriage of the two. Julia actually gets a few moments of power, as if by sheer force of will, but the rest of the cast (even Harry Dean Stanton) is just swallowed up.

Extras are plentiful with commentary, several featuretes and trailer; along with a Blu-ray of the original cut which features alternate featurettes, rehearsal footage, alternate music cues from Tom Waits, press conference, trailers, and more.

One From the Heart isn’t good, but it is instructive both on a technical level and on the very deepest level: The play’s the thing…as the old prince from Denmark tells us, the story is why we’re here and any kind of excellence you can bring to the story is welcome…so long as it exists in service to the story.

Here, the cart has been pushed before the horse by a master driver and it’s a useful reminder to us all about why films work.

Not recommended. An instructive mistake.