Voyager

Racing from engineering assignment to assignment, Max Faber (Sam Shepard) runs away from emotional commitment and fervently practices his religion--Technology. By chance, Faber becomes plane-mates with Herbert Henke (Dieter Kirchlechner), the brother of a long-lost school-chum from Germany, Joachim Henke (August Zirner). After a plane crash forces them to land in the desert, the rigid Max decides to join Herbert on a fraternal visit, only to discover that Joachim has hanged himself. In flashbacks, viewers discover that Max impregnated Hannah (Barbara Sukowa), who grew so weary of his insensitivity that she married Joachim on the rebound.

Before long, tactless Max has brushed off another woman in New York, and the globe-trotter boards an ocean liner for France. On the waves, the insular Max comes to passionate life under the tutelage of a teenager, Sabeth (Julie Delpy). She represents pure feeling, you see, and even persuades Mr. No-nonsense to waste his time at the Louvre. Unable to break away from her, Max even proposes marriage while on an auto trip to Greece. While their love rages, Max learns a shocking secret just before Sabeth gets bitten by a snake and injures her head on a rock. Stunned, as his head swims with deja vu, Max realizes he has been sleeping with his own daughter. By the time ex-love Hannah enters the scene, this dysfunctional family is hit with Sabeth's death. Doomed to loneliness, Max wanders the globe once more.

While powerful metaphors for the search for existential identity and the bittersweet curse of sexual longing may leap off the pages of Max Frisch's Homo Faber, VOYAGER's source material, these themes scream at viewers in over-elaboration onscreen. After his versions of SWANN'S WAY and THE HANDMAID'S TALE, Schlondorff can be considered a major embalmer of difficult-to-transfer novels. Nor is the literal-minded director aided by stoic star Sam Shepard who's best at playing on-the-edge action types but who seems mighty befuddled by having to suggest interior states. When he reads the book's soul-searching lines as narration, his thin voice turns eloquence to mush.

But not all blame can be placed on the unpersuasive direction and static acting. One grows weary of the sexist notion that some middle-aged closet-romantic can only be saved by the sexual ministrations of a wise-beyond-her-years nymphet. This young blend of beauty and brains is a pin-up girl for the Camus calendar, the Existentialist's wet dream. Watching Shepard and Delpy failing to strike sparks while they bare their souls, one is less likely to be shocked by the incest gambit because their love-making seems so essentially chaste and austere anyway.

All the passion seems to have gone into the lush, memorable cinematography (including striking sepia tones for flashbacks). Maybe the novel's profundities are shallow anyway--using incest to symbolize a chracter's stunted spiritual growth may carry symbol-mindedness too far. Over-long and half-baked, this odyssey of a repressive sputters to a foregone conclusion. Moral: do you know where your chlldren are? (Sexual situations.) leave a comment