S.KRAUSE

Krause, wo ist die Maus?

The comment from February 22 reads:

The question is with regard to musical soul and the Brahms requiem, but the question “Where is the mouse?” reminds me, rather, of Ladyhawke, that highly enjoyable albeit tad schizophrenic early Matthew Broderick movie.

Schizophrenic or rather multiple-personality (see, I'm using pop-culture notions of mental illness as metaphors rather than the clinical definitions ... bad me) because Broderick switches between a faux-British / European accent and something plainly American and because the movie can't decide whether it wants to be a medieval epic love story or a (post)modern reinterpretation of the Middle Ages (the rock soundtrack, Rutger's helmet-cam).

I love this movie, even with the soundtrack. Rarely has Michelle Pfeiffer been so good in a movie, perhaps because she does so little. This is post-Bladerunner Rutger, but already we see that his career as a Hollywood leading man or star is not going to materialize.

Back to the mouse.

Early in the movie Broderick, Phillipe “The Mouse” Gaston, sits rotting in a jail; he's a thief who has stolen once too often, and the authorities plan on making an example of him, but before they can haul him from his cell he finds a way out through the sewers, and when the bad-guy-of-the-moment visits the cell and demands to know where Phillipe has gone, the crazy cellmate responds: “The Mouse? He left our house. No mouse today, he's run away. To ease the pain, he ... he's down the drain. ”

This movie is also a somewhat early role for Alfred Molina, Raiders of the Lost Ark being his other high-profile early movie credit.

—March 1 2007

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