Urban legend comes to life in creepy documentary set on Staten Island
CROPSEY (Joshua Zeman & Barbara Brancaccio, 2008)
IFC Center
323 Sixth Ave. at Third St.
June 4-10
212-924-7771
www.ifccenter.com/films/cropsey
www.cropseylegend.com
When we were kids, one of our friends delighted in telling us over and over the story of Cropsey, a supposedly invented child-murdering creep who threatened all children everywhere. (We still think of the monster every time we pass by the Cropsey Ave. exit on the Belt Parkway.) Directors Joshua Zeman and Barbara Brancaccio go in search of the real Cropsey in a fascinating documentary that brings to frightening life the scary urban legend. In 1987, Jennifer Schweiger, a thirteen-year-old girl with Down syndrome, disappeared in Staten Island not far from the abandoned Willowbrook Mental Institution, a horrific place where unheard-of abuses had been detailed by a young reporter named Geraldo Rivera fifteen years earlier. The community, led by such activists as Donna Cutugno, came together to try to find Jennifer’s body while the police focused on Andre Rand as the possible perpetrator. Rand refused to say anything as the cops also sought to link him to other area disappearances, including that of Holly Ann Hughes in 1981. Through archival news footage, recent interviews with many of the primary figures involved in the case, and attempts at a face-to-face meeting with Rand, codirectors Zeman and Brancaccio reveal a dark side of humanity that still has devastating effects on a tight-knit Staten Island neighborhood in desperate need of closure.
After hard-luck fisherman Syracuse (a decidedly unglamorous Colin Farrell) raises his net to find out he has caught a woman (Alicja Bachleda) from the bottom of the sea, his life takes a dramatic shift in Neil Jordan’s wonderful fairy tale, ONDINE. Syracuse, also known disaffectionately as Circus for his checkered past, resuscitates the beautiful woman, who appears to have lost her memory and later chooses the name Ondine, which means “little wave.” Syracuse brings Ondine fishing with him, and when she sings her strange, haunting song, he catches more lobster and salmon than he ever has before. But his wheelchair-bound daughter, Annie (Alison Barry), who needs a new kidney, thinks than Ondine might be more than just good luck; she believes that Ondine is a selkie, a supposedly mythological sea creature who can live on land for seven years before having to return to her watery home. But when a mysterious stranger suddenly shows up in town, everyone is forced to reevaluate their changing lives. Gorgeously shot by master cinematographer Christopher Doyle (IN THE MOOD FOR LOVE) in the coastal village of Castletownbere and along Poulin Harbor, ONDINE is a compelling story that easily could have turned into treacly melodrama but manages to keep surprising up to the very end. Farrell is excellent as the uneducated, simple, but lovable Syracuse who, when not fishing or taking his daughter to her weekly dialysis treatment, shares his tale with the town priest (Stephen Rea) in some very funny scenes. Jordan (MONA LISA, THE CRYING GAME), who has a house in Castletownbere, has made a fairy tale audiences can really believe in with ONDINE, which features a lush soundtrack by Sigur Rós’s Kjartan Sveinsson that accompanies the lush locations.
