March 5, 1993 | As director, star and co-screenwriter of Mac, the immensely satisfying drama that won the Camera d’Or prize at last year’s Cannes Film Festival, John Turturro scores, if not a home run, then a very impressive round-the-bases triple.
His film is a splendidly acted, richly detailed and deeply felt piece of work, offering a view of post-World War II American life that is at once clear-eyed and romantic, celebratory and melancholy.
Mac is Turturro’s first effort as a feature filmmaker, and it’s no small measure of his self-assurance that he presents his most stylistically audacious scene at the very beginning.
In a working-class neighborhood of Queens, N.Y., circa 1954, a large Italian-American family has gathered for the funeral of Papa Vitelli (Joe Paparone), an immigrant carpenter. The old man’s three sons — Mac (Turturro), the oldest; Vico (Michael Badalucco) and Bruno (Carl Capotorto) — draw near their father’s coffin, lost in their memories of his words and deeds.
Suddenly, the old man sits up. Every bit as irascible in death as he was in life, he immediately begins to complain about the shoddy craftsmen of the coffin. (“I wanna know who built this box!” he rages.) Then, his anger spent, he lies down again, resuming his eternal slumber.
Amazingly, none of this seems to shock Papa Vitelli’s sons. But, then again, maybe they’re so used to his exacting demands and angry complaints, it doesn’t seem at all odd to them that even death would not keep him quiet and complacent.
The rest of Mac is a great deal more naturalistic — except for a few moments of inspired comic exaggeration, such as the scene where Bruno has a brief, passionate and entirely silent encounter with a woman he meets on a bus. But Papa Vitelli’s spirit lingers on, in the person of his eldest son.
Mac, like his father, is a quick-tempered perfectionist who rails against shortcuts. He assumes his father’s credo as his own: “There’s only two ways to do something — my way, and the right way. And they are both the same!”
Mac’s pride and stubbornness are both a source of his strength and a burden to his friends and family. He bristles when his boss, a tight-fisted contractor named Polowksi (Olek Krupa), complains that Mac’s approach to carpentry is cost-ineffective. So Mac convinces his brothers to join him in forming their own company, to take advantage of the booming post-war economy.
The business venture, not surprisingly, does not go smoothly. For one thing, Mac purchases land for home sites before learning how close the tract is to a mental hospital and, worse, a smelly cow pasture. For another, Mac can’t (or won’t) understand how little commitment his brothers have to Papa Vitelli’s work ethic. Bruno and Vico are eager to chuck tradition and savor the exotic delights of life beyond Queens. Chief among those delights: Oona (a winning cameo by Ellen Barkin), an artist’s model and genuine hipster.
Mac, which Turturro co-wrote with playwright Brandon Cole, is dedicated to Turturro’s own father, Nicolas R. Turturro, an Italian-American carpenter who passed away in 1988. The film is not, strictly speaking, a biography, but it gains additional power and persuasiveness by being the work of someone with firsthand knowledge of real-life people and events. By being so specific in his choices of period detail and character idiosyncrasy, Turturro gives Mac a universal quality, greatly enhancing its depiction of an already-distant America that survives only in memory — and, more often than not, through rose-colored and highly selective memory.
Turturro gives himself a terrific, multifaceted role, and skillfully directs himself in a fine performance. His character, by its very nature, dominates the film, but Turturro is generous enough to give ample screen time to other cast members.
The standout among the supporting players is Katherine Borowitz, who is married to Turturro in real life, and plays Alice, Mac’s patient, supportive, and equally strong-willed wife.
In one of the movie’s very best scenes, Alice is the one who brokers the deal when Mac tries to raise money by selling his truck. For once in his life — maybe the only time in his life — Mac is smart enough to keep quiet while someone else does the talking.
