Absolute masterpieces don't come down the pike very often. To the best of my recollection, this is one of them. It was voted one of the 20 greatest films of all time by the critics and filmmakers who voted in 2002's British Film Institute's SIGHT AND SOUND poll. Film lovers have been extolling its legend for decades, and now a fresh print with newly translated subtitles, courtesy of Rialto Pictures, is starting to make its way around the big-city art houses.

I'm figuring some of the readers of this column have never heard of it. I'm asking them along with everyone else to please make an effort to see this film if it happens to play in their vicinity over the next several weeks.

BALTHAZAR just finished a run at Manhattan's Film Forum, and it'll play at West L.A.'s Nuart theatre December 12-18. San Francisco's Castro will be playing it sometime early next year, I'm told. I presume other cities with art/repertory houses -- Seattle, Chicago, Atlanta -- will get it eventually.

The Criterion Collection people will be putting it out on DVD late next year. They don't have it on their work schedule for the first four months of '04, I'm told, but they'll be getting around to it.

BALTHAZAR "is the supreme masterpiece by one of the greatest of 20th-century filmmakers," Hoberman wrote in the same piece. "Bringing together all [of] Bresson's highly developed ideas about acting, sound, and editing, as well as grace, redemption, and human nature, BALTHAZAR is understated and majestic, sensuous and ascetic, ridiculous and sublime."

Bresson wasn't into manipulating audiences. He began as a painter and was very conscious of unity and precision. He was into pruning down and purifying his films. He would never fake anything. He's known for austere camerawork (he always used the same 50mm lens, which most closely replicates how the world seems to the naked eye), eschewing theatricality, and making sure his actors never gave "performances."

Bresson's best-known classics besides BALTHAZAR are DIARY OF A COUNTRY PRIEST and PICKPOCKET. My second favorite Bresson is L'ARGENT ('83), his final film, made at the age of 81. Bresson died four years ago at age 98. If you're curious, check out this Bresson website: http://frenchfilms.topcities.com/nf_rbresson.html.

Strangely Tolerable

THE HUMAN STAIN (Miramax, opening today) has been an odd case for me. I've seen it twice now, and although it doesn't add up as a satisfying whole no matter how you slice it, the pieces -- performances, dialogue, photography, production design -- are obviously first-rate and rendered with some finesse. The end result, even though the film sorta kinda sucks, is that you don't feel badly burned.

You can tell right away this is a polished, upscale melodrama from an accomplished director (Robert Benton) and a crew of top-grade people. It may be an oddly neutered thing in the final analysis, but there's something to be said for films that hold your interest because of the obvious pedigree of the work involved, and especially because the actors' work feels solid and true.

STAIN doesn't hang together when you try sorting it out on the way home, which is why most of the critics are killing it. But there are bad movies that make you cringe in your seat from the get-go, and there are bad (or mostly bad) movies -- this one, at least -- that are nonetheless intriguing and generally pleasurable to sit through.

The big underlying problem is that the script, based on the novel by Phillip Roth and adapted by Nicholas Meyer, tells two stories involving the lead character that don't have much to do with each other.

Coleman Silk (well played by Anthony Hopkins) is a cultivated college professor who loses his job because (and this is so ridiculous I'm having trouble taking it seriously, even in an ultra-p.c. context) he refers in class to a pair of absent students as "spooks." He is soon after fired by the college because the students in question are African American, despite his protestations that he didn't know this when he used the term, which primarily means "ghosts."

The irony is that Silk is a light-skinned, heavily closeted African-American. Several flashbacks showing a college-aged Silk (Wentworth Miller, a highly charismatic actor with great presence) dealing with family, identity and inter-racial sexuality in the 1940s explain why Silk has chosen to submerge his racial identity.

But you're still left shaking your head at Silk's inability to reveal his history, even when the "spooks" issue threatens to ruin his life. I just can't see why he wouldn't play that card.

The other story is about Silk's affair with Faunia Farely (Nicole Kidman), an angry, defensive, deeply wounded woman in her early 30s. Swimming in the passion rapids with a woman four decades younger touches a primal nerve in Coleman. It leaves him determined to keep things going with Faunia despite a distinct possibility his life could be in danger from her psychotic ex-husband, Lester (Ed Harris), who's incorrigibly enraged for his own reasons and is constantly prowling around in his pickup truck.

Observing this sexual drama from a slight distance is Silk's newfound friend, a blocked writer named Nathan Zuckerman (Gary Sinise). Zuckerman -- Roth's literary alter ego - doesn't do anything except watch and listen and provide some voice-over narration. He has a tense and portentous conversation at the end with Lester, the details of which I won't divulge but it doesn't kill, trust me.

The two stories don't feed into or nurture each other in any way I could detect, and after a while you being to wonder what the fuck is going on.

But Hopkins is such a fine and passionate actor, and Kidman, Sinise, Miller, Harris and everyone else (this is an extremely well-cast film) deliver with spunk and conviction. And there are great feelings of freshness and novelty in two nude scenes with Kidman and Jacinda Barrett, who plays Silk's girlfriend in the 1940s section.

Meyer's screenplay has a down-to-it, well-chiselled quality. Jean-Yves Escoffier's photography is beautifully composed. Rachel Portman's score is subdued but highly emotional. And there's a great impromptu dancing scene between Hopkins and Sinise in the first third that's an absolute pleasure.

Bottom line: I would rather sit through something like THE HUMAN STAIN than some heavily praised, highly nutritional, dead boring movie like...well, use your own references.

Goon Squad

Five or six obnoxious GenXers in their late 20 or early 30s -- sales types, I presumed, because one of them was talking about his golf game -- sat down in front of me at a screening of Vadim Perlman's HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG (DreamWorks, 12.26) a couple of nights ago at the Pacific Design Center.

Their presence didn't ruin the film (which hasn't weakened at all since I saw it a couple of weeks ago), but it made me realize how infrequently I come up against boorish yuppie jerks. Call me a snob, but I'm always hanging with journalists or other low-key types who've managed to pick up the social basics, and I'm just not accustomed to people whose non-inebriated social behavior is a problem in and of itself.

I knew right away they weren't journalists or industry types because (a) they didn't look like writers (too preppy, hair too short) and (b) they were so fucking loud. Their indifference to the fact that everyone in the screening room was thinking the same disparaging thoughts about them was amazing. I had to restrain myself from asking the golf guy what kind of clubs he uses. The guy sitting right in front of me collapsed into his chair and sent it smashing into my knees. Then he started rocking back and forth like a three year old.

Have you ever noticed that people of any sort of real accomplishment or inner depth never raise their voices in any kind of social setting? They're always soft-spoken. Michael Corleone, Kevin Smith, Vladimir Putin....right down the line.

Of course, people always talk louder when they're part of a group, but why do people go out in packs like this? Is it some kind of social insecurity, safety-in-numbers thing? Is there anyone else out there who despises people who go to restaurants in big groups and start shrieking with laughter after they've had a glass of wine or two? These are the people I am four-square against in life. These are the people who think young, who go for the gusto, who drink Pepsi Cola and go on tube-rafting trips in Utah and Colorado.

It's interesting that I've devoted six graphs to these guys rather than the film, but...

Down to Business

HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG is still a heartbreaking middle-class American tragedy. It's like one of those hydraulic nail-driving devices. You sit in your seat, the lights go down, the movie starts up and thonnnk.

If the once-presumed heavy hitter Oscar contenders keep toppling over like bowling pins as they have over the past few days (ALAMO yanked, DANCES WITH SAMURAI good but not good enough, COLD MOUNTAIN either boring or brilliant but either way problematic), this relatively small-scale drama could end up as one of the five Best Picture nominees, which would obviously boost interest among moviegoers.

Sir Ben Kingsley's performance as a former Iranian Colonel and family man is still masterful, immaculate, and devastating. Jennifer Connelly's as a depressed divorcee whose alcoholism (an alcoholic is an alcoholic, whether they're drinking or not) takes her down a tragic path, is easily her best work -- a performance that's fuller and far riskier than her Oscar-winning performance in A BEAUTIFUL MIND.

And poor Ron Eldard plays a dimwitted racist cop named Lester so convincingly that his career might suffer a bit because of it. (It's silly, of course, but when an actor plays a truly sickening character really well, some of us come away thinking he may be that person on some level.)

The film's lesson about racial attitudes in this country, particularly as they affect Middle Eastern immigrants, couldn't be more full of real-life echoes. The more I think about it (and particularly about Lester), the more I'm seeing it in part as a slam against rural American provincialism. The feelings this film is likely to engender when and if it plays in Middle Eastern countries will not be pretty.

And yet the prevailing atmosphere in HOUSE OF SAND AND FOG is one of compassion and positivism. It basically says that when bad things happen to us, they happen not because of fate or the stars but flaws of our own making. And yet each character with a problem of any kind is given a balancing characteristic or two. Nobody is all just one color or mood. Not even Lester. It's a movie with its head and its heart in the right places.

Anderson Aquatic

"I enjoyed your comments on Wes Anderson and THE LIFE AQUATIC. It's great to see a critic giving Anderson the full praise that he deserves. I cannot wait until it comes out.

"I'm especially glad you commented on Wes and his use of costume design, which is obviously very important to him. What I love is that none of what his characters wear 'fits', in much the same way that his characters don't seem to fit in the world around them.

"Max, Dignan, Anthony, and the other Anderson characters are all a bit out of place, trying hard to fit in, but aren't quite sure how. In that same way, the suits are cut in a fashion that emulates prep kids who have outgrown their blazers but are totally unaware of this fact and continue to wear them anyways. And who wears a velvet suit in public?

"To me, these uniforms also help you visualize characters instantly in your mind. With some movie characters I think of lines they have said, but when someone says 'Max Fisher' I think green velvet, and 'Dignan' I think terrycloth shirt and white pants.

"I once ordered a blazer made by Wes Anderson's personal tailor, Vahram, in New York. In the weeks leading up to it, I found myself slipping into a Anderson-like reality. I would constantly draw pictures in a small leather-bound moleskin notebook of my blazer. How many buttons will it have? Single or double breasted? How many inside pockets? What fabric, color, lining? It was a fantastic experience and now I understand the joys of dark green velvet jackets.

"It's good to see Wes paying such attention to an area of filmmaking that is overlooked by most. He is my favorite filmmaker, and I cannot wait to see how his style develops." -- Matt Morris

Cruise and Villainy

"In response to your two cents on Michael Mann's COLLATERAL, I'm taking an exception to your assessment that this will be Tom Cruise's first role as an out-and-out bad guy. Have you seen COCKTAIL? Would you not classify him as a villain in, say, INTERVIEW WITH THE VAMPIRE?

"From his early violent bad seeds in TAPS and THE OUTSIDERS, to the mostly unsympathetic asses in THE COLOR OF MONEY, RAIN MAN, and MAGNOLIA, Cruise has at the very least played his share of antiheroes. I suppose you find too much gray, however, in these roles to classify him as the traditional Darth Vader bad guy. But even Darth Vader finds Charlie-Babbitt-like redemption in JEDI." -- Mark Frenden, Chicago.

Wells to Frenden: Put it this way -- this is the first time he's played a no-redemption, no-going-back, slug-in-the-brainpan, blood-spattered, totally sociopathic killer.

Commander Missed It?

"As you've mentioned the box-office prospects of MASTER AND COMMANDER and have now seen the film itself, do you think that Fox's pulling of its release from summer and pushing it into the late fall looks even more boneheaded in this light?

"Instead of having what would have been the only adult-level action film out in the marketplace during a simply abysmal summer season (when a boring piffle like PIRATES OF THE CGI gets past the $300M mark, there's a definite dearth of choice), Fox is tossing its filmgoer challenging epic into the middle of a tempest of high-end, high on the want-to-see list movies.

"LORD OF THE RINGS: RETURN OF THE KING is pretty much $300 million in the bank at this point and MATRIX REVOLUTIONS, CAT IN THE HAT and either ELF or HAUNTED MANSION will in all probability see north of $200 million (with no Harry Potter film this year, CAT will probably rake in $300M from the kiddies).

"Not to mention the more mature audience being divided up by the likes of LOVE ACTUALLY, 21 GRAMS, SHATTERED GLASS and THE MISSING. With the exception of RETURN OF THE KING, these are all November releases and leaves out the wide releases of GOTHIKA and TIMELINE which are wildcards considering the rest.

"I think had they kept to the original release date, MASTER AND COMMANDER would now be sitting in the company of NEMO, Neo and Captain Sparrow as the summer's big dogs. Instead, I fear it's being thrown to the wolves and won't see much action (perhaps, say, $75 million domestic) until it hits the home video market. Thoughts?" -- Steve Coppock

Wells to Coppock: I don't like to think about this. I find it scary and depressing that this film might hit the ceiling. I'm holding to the time-honored view that if a film is really special and has that special something, it will find a big audience. You may be right, but I feel hopeful nonetheless.

Not This Time

"I feel this huge disappointment over your decision to remove Russell Crowe's name from your predicted list of Best Actor Nominees for Oscars 2004. You said in your MASTER AND COMMANDER review that Crowe 'delivers an extremely charismatic, wonderfully commanding lead performance" and "never been quite this dashing or charming in a purely alpha sense, and that should count for something."

"Count for something, but not for an Oscar nomination, you mean? I'm confused. I guess I won't do justice for myself either, since I haven't watched this movie, not until November 27th in Singapore. FYI, I'm a die-hard fan of the Aubrey/Maturin adventures and almost finish book #20. They're awesome! I couldn't get enough! -- Susilawati, Jakarta, Indonesia

Wells to Susilawati: Crowe's performance does count for something -- likability, sexiness. He's very winning, but it's not an Oscar-level performance. It isn't written that way, and it's not that kind of part.

Penn at the Peak

"Your prediction that Sean Penn will be taking home an Oscar next March is right on the money. Penn is in an interesting position. Although he's been critical of the Academy for many years, he is still highly regarded by its members, as evidenced by the fact that they continually nominate him for Best Actor. In that respect he's not too dissimilar from Woody Allen, a filmmaker whose best works always get nominated, even if the man himself prefers to spend Oscar night in a jazz club playing clarinet.-- Mark Bendiksen

" I'm not as high on Penn's performance in 21 GRAMS (or the movie overall) as you are, but I'm surprised you didn't mention one potential hitch in Penn's Oscar chances, which is that he's given two acclaimed, high-profile lead performances in two big Oscar contending films. Especially if he doesn't campaign for one in particular, there's a good chance he will split the vote, either in the nomination process (a lot of votes for both films, but not enough for either one to put it in the final five) or the final voting (he gets nominated twice, winds up becoming his own spoiler).

"I agree that Penn's overdue for an Oscar, so I'm hoping that he winds up getting nominated for just one of these two performances. My preference would be for MYSTIC RIVER, because I actually like that film, but I could live with him winning for 21 GRAMS, despite my reservations about the film in general. " -- Bilge Ebiri

"Good for you, Jeffrey, for recognizing the brilliance of this exceptional actor. I anxiously await the release of 21 GRAMS because I saw MYSTIC RIVER last weekend, and am still haunted by it. When I think about it (which has been too often, to tell the truth) it is Sean Penn's face (and, sometimes, Tim Robbins) that I see. I still think Penn was robbed the Oscar for DEAD MAN WALKING -- no performance moved me more that year -- and though many critics pooh-poohed it, his I AM SAM performance still resonates.

"Penn is never less than interesting, even in films that don't come together, like SHE' SO LOVELY and THE WEIGHT OF WATER Shit, I even tolerated WE'RE NO ANGELS because of him. I am hoping that he's made peace with the tortured soul thing he was going through for years and that he looks good up there when he accepts his well deserved Best Actor award this year. You know, if there is a God in heaven. And if you get any of those 'Penn is an Anti-American/Traitor' bullshit responses, please don't waste your space to print them. " -- Rod Durham, Tallahassee, FL