Customer Reviews

Substance of Fire [VHS]

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The Substance Of Fire is a powerful, profoundly upsetting investigation into the effects of the Holocaust on the lives of a present day New York City family. Although decades have elapsed since Isaac Geldhart escaped the persecution and slaughter as a small child, the recent death of his beloved wife triggers an ineluctable slide into willful self-destruction and resultant victimhood. His loss, it would seem, creates the internal conditions for symbolic reenactment of the childhood trauma. His three children, already struggling with the generational effects of having a father who is a survivor, must now cope with the emotional detritus thus created as well as their own grief over their mother's passing. The context for this poignant, intensely disturbing scenario is the publishing house Isaac operates with his eldest son, Aaron. The other two children are passive shareholders in the once lucrative business which is progressively being run into the ground by their father; a man who is increasingly obsessed with taking on authors whose work is mostly esoteric, commercially unviable, and concerned with morbid themes of death and destruction (like the title Water On Fire which is devoted to the Hiroshima Holocaust). As the film begins Isaac has become fixated on bringing to life a financially unpromising four volume study devoted to the Nazi medical experiments of Dr. Joseph Mengles, written by a friend and concentration camp survivor. Not only is Isaac committed to publishing a work which clearly has no market, he is determined to bring it out in a fabulously expensive hand sewn version printed to perfection on the finest paper known to mankind. Aaron, meanwhile, is about to sign an author of a potentially bestselling novel which might have the salutary effect of saving the business from what looks to be certain bankruptcy. Isaac refuses to allow his son to publish what he considers rubbish and the stage is set for a family confrontation that threatens to turn everything upside down in the lives of these four vulnerable, all too sympathetic characters. What ensues is the stuff of great tragedy and pathos. The cast of this wonderfully nuanced, beautifully written film is superb. Timothy Hutton, as the youngest son who already in life has faced the rigors of surviving a potentially fatal disease, turns in a performance that repeatedly pierced my heart. Having been cared for by Isaac during the worst of his illness, he now volunteers to care for his father during his own fall from grace and good health. And both Sarah Jessica Parker and Tony Goldwyn, as they portray Isaac's other children, are sensational. Ron Rifkin as Isaac is the center of gravity of this film, however. He carries the burden of his past as well as an exigent need for atonement with astonishing strength until he ultimately breaks down and begins to spill his suppressed misery into the lives of his children whom he cherishes yet cannot really love. But redemption is never totally out of reach, the film suggests, as ultimately The Substance Of Fire provides the viewer with a shred of hope about the most hopeless of human situations.

In the 1990's,The Manhattan Theatre Club and Playwright's Horizon of New York City workshopped a wonderful and potent play by aspiring writer Jon Robin Baitz entitled SUBSTANCE OF FIRE. I had the chance to see this new "work-in-progress- play" by a young aspirant and loved it!I often wondered what became of the play.There was so much that was said!

To my delight Baitz adapted his own stage play for the screen and the result was a still compelling and slightly reworked version that, though still seemingly a work that could be "tightened", contained all of the drama and angst that I saw on stage.

SUBSTANCE OF FIRE is a potentially marvelous film, character-rich with truly superb performances by the entire cast,no exceptions.You will know these people when you are finished. The film concerns itself with a Jewish holocaust survivor,Isaac Geldhart( an amazing Ron Rifkin) and his three grown children. Geldhart has for years run a successful publishing firm that in the last six years has failed to have a best-seller.The oldest son,Aaron, an aspiring author himself sees a new vision for the firm to publish what sells. Isaac sees this as total compromise and will not "sell out." The other two siblings Sarah ( Sarah Jessica Parker) and the youngest Martin (Timothy Hutton) agree that the father needs to change his views or face ruining the family business. The three children combine their stock shares together in order to gain Aaron control of the firm. This starts a terrible all out war with Isaac who starts a rival firm that will publish only the most expensive and socially conscious works of "true art." These works, as important as they might be, simply do not sell, whereas Aaron's firm prospers.The family is also confronted with the oncoming dementia of Isaac and Martin's reoccurance of Hodgkin's Disease. This is where the play faltered, and this is still where the screenplay stumbles. But, having said that, the acting by all of the principle players is positively stellar. Rifkin,Goldwyn,Parker,Hutton and even Eric Bogosian, Roger Rees and stage star Debra Monk really breathe great depth of emotion into each of their characters for high drama about a family whose loyalties and love are stretched to the limit.

Acting-wise, this is truly a first rate film. The screenplay still needs more focus,especially in the second part of the film.There is so much wonderful raw material in this film.This, though, does not take away from the overall powerful work and subject matter of commercialism and family dynamics.

Jon Robin Baitz didnot fade away as a writer,though, as he wrote for WEST WING and the current ABC series BROTHERS AND SISTERS.SUBSTANCE OF FIRE gives the viewer an excellent opportunity to see a younger work of art by a writer who succeeded on many levels in later years.

The Substance of Fire (Daniel Sullivan, 1996)

The Substance of Fire gives us a fantastic cast and an even better premise, and then does very little with either. This is terribly unfortunate, because done right, this could have been one of filmdom's great moments.

Isaac Geldhart (Ron Rifkin, lately of Pulse) is the head of a small publishing house. His wife has recently died, and he's not handling it well. The press specializes in heavy academic nonfiction, the kind of thing that sells a handful of copies to libraries at best. Isaac's son Aaron (The Last Samurai's Tony Goldwyn), who also works for the company, has recently discovered a writer whose novel, he feels, would be the kind of surefire bestseller that would bring in some revenue and allow the press to go forward with Isaac's pet project, a multi-volume history of the Nazi medical experiments written by Isaac's friend and fellow Camp inmate Louis Foukold (Ronny Graham). Isaac blows up, and as a result, Aaron tries to enlist his siblings Martin (Timothy Hutton) and Sarah (Sarah Jessica Parker) into having Isaac declared mentally incompetent so they can take over and save the business from financial ruin.

The is, obviously, a character-driven story, and to be sure there are characters aplenty. Most of them are correctly cast, and a few give pitch-perfect performances, notably Rifkin and Graham. The problem is that they're shouting into the void; the story keeps trying to go somewhere and keeps getting headed off at the pass. Sullivan is an exceptional stage director (just witness Proof), but not all of us can be David Mamet, making the transition flawlessly. This, unfortunately, but be looked upon as a failed experiment. **

I generally like Tony Goldwyn; but in this, he simply fills a role. The rest of the cast is convincing, though unappealing - except for Ron Rifkin as fine book publisher Isaac Geldhart, a survivor of the Holocaust, who is now risking everything to publish an extremely expensive book about this tragedy, much to the chagrin of his profit-conscious son, Aaron (Goldwyn). The rest of his neglected and dysfunctional family are highlighted by Timothy Hutton as his unhealthy, landscape architect son, Martin - the only member who seems genuinely unselfish. Sarah Jessica Parker plays the immature, hedonist daughter Sarah.

While the inside look at the world of book publishing is interesting, it doesn't satisfy enough to offset the uneven plot and totally dislikable characters. Granted, there are some strong performances (Rifkin and Hutton in particular). But who wants to sit for two hours watching excellent actors flesh out totally despicable characters? Only Isaac's secretary seems in any way likable or goodhearted. And the ending is anything but satisfying. One wonders why this excellent cast was wasted on such an unhappy vehicle.

Waitsel Smith

This play-adaptation begins as an interesting family drama. The main character is a holocoust survivor who publishes "serious books" with limited commercial potential. Although the business had been moderately successful, it is now in serious financial difficulty , and his children try to convince him to save the business by publishing a book which has great commercial potential. ..., he refuses and pushes ahead with his current project which is a book on Nazi medical experiments.

So far, this is an interesting conflict between an idealistic, headstrong father, and his more practical children who don't want their inheritance to go down the tubes. Unfortunately, at this point the basic story changes and the father develops a mental disorder (perhaps early signs of senility ). The focus is now on the children and their attempts to shield their father from humiliation and see that he is cared for. This focus on the children is dull, because only the father in this film is a well-developed interesting character; and the introduction of mental illness aborts the initial story conflict. The film seems like two short stories; an interesting one at the beginning, and a dull one in the second half.