The emerald forest.

THE ANTHROPOLOGIST Claude Levi-Strauss warns us neither to take "for granted the 'rightness' or naturalness' of our own customs" nor to attribute to so-called primitive societies "absolute merits such as no society can claim to possess" (Tristes Tropiques). Whereas past filmmakers used to commit the former error, the current crop of liveral cineastes blissfully opts for the latter. In The Emerald Forest, John Boorman fiercely espouses the cause of the Indians of the Amazon rain forests, who have dwindled from several million to 200,000, and whose majestic forests teeming with rare species of animals and birds are being encroached on with alarming speed. Though I am in total sympathy with preserving the people, fauna, and flora of the Amazon basin, I can also see why Brazil would build such a hydroelectric dam as is being constructed in the movie under the supervision of an American engineer, Bill Markham.

When members of the Invisible People, as the tribe calls itself, abduct Markham's small son, Tommy, the father vows to find the boy, and after a decade's search does so. Tomme, as he is now called, is the adopted son of Wanadi, the chieftain/shaman of the IP, and the two save Bill from another tribe, the Fierce People, who are hunting him for sport. The boy has turned Bill into Dadde, his internalized father, while considering Wanadi his real one. Markham has many unusual experiences among the Indians, and he and Tomme become close again but Tomme, naked and painted like the rest of the IP, will not return to Belem, the city that for Bill is civilization, but for the Indians part of the Lost World.

Later, when the FP, made homeless by the dam-builders, attack the IP, they kill many and abduct the young women, including Tomme's bride, Kachiri, and sell them to some white slave traders (who run a somewhat improbable brothel in the middle of the forest) in exchange for automatic rifles. When the Ip come to reclaim their women, their spears and arrows and bravery are no match for the FP, armed with the weapons of the Termite Men, as the whites are scornfully called. Wanadi is killed by Jacareh, teh FP's evil chief, and Tomme and a friend set out for Belem to find Dadde. Miraculously, they do, and with Dadde's help, they lay waste the slave traders, their customers, and a good many FP, then rescue their women, who happily doff the gladrags inflicted on them. Tomme's, who is now chief of the IP, stays with them, and using his shaman's powers summons up torrential rains to destroy the dam, the very thing Markham, turned Luddite, is about to do. The dam bursts, though it's not clear whether through magic, Markham, or the screenwriter; anyhow, Tomme, and Kachiri and a number of other young couples among the IP will enjoy at least a temporary respite. The eagle, who is Tomme's mystic spirit, soars again over endless expanses of emerald forest.

Boorman is a gifted action director, but he lacks the corollary requisite: the ability to couple with lucid, persuasive story-telling. On a film such as Deliverance, he had the help of James Dickey as writer; on Point Blank, with which he made his name, a fresh visual style and canny use of shocking violence got him past the murky, confused plot. But with a poor scenarist such as William Goodhart, Boorman's moony religiosity takes over, resulting in the utter chaos of Exorcist II: The Heretic. Similar problems besett Zardoz and Excalibur, with mysticism and cloudy metaphysics getting in the way of the action.

In emerald Forest, which the scenarist Rospo Pallenberg loosely based on a newspaper story of such an Amazonian kidnapping, good and bad elements, insight and cliche, observed reality and sentimental fantasy, moving scenes and outlandish claptrap, anthropology and drug-culture profundities mingle in a way that is only intermittently boring but never genuine art. Well, there are a few touching moments instinct with authenticity. So the first meeting of Bill and his son in the wilderness, surrounded by mortal enemies and natural wonders: Facing each other as potential killers, they are stopped by a dim sense of kinship through blood and, beyond that, through humanity. So, too, Tomme's nocturnal scaling of the skyscraper where his father, mother, and sister live, and the silent, wrenching embrace of mother and son, both of whom realize that their long-delayed reunion merely augurs an almost immediate, and this time irreversible, parting.

There are also numerous enjoyable tributes to nature, as when the literally superhuman work of ants is observed in extreme closeup through microcinematography. And the film's induction and leitmotif--the eagle overflying the seemingly perennial, immutable rain forest--is initially majestic and highly suggestive. But it also reveals two of Boorman's characteristic weaknesss. Thus the bird is not allowed to be merely a symbol, but must also take on occult significance. "Many a young man probably wishes he had the wings of an eagle," Brahms wrote to Clara Schumann (August 12, 1855), "and may even imagine he has them." But Tomme is the eagle: When in ritual fashion a drug (peyote?) is shot up both his nostrils with a blowpipe that you think would puncture his brain, he goes into a trance in which he becomes the eagle (Bill, similarly shot up, turns into a jaguar), and it is in this aquiline persona that he manages to ferret (or eagle) out his family's urban domicile. That's rather too windy stuff for me. And then we get too many shots of that damned eagle through the film, including some closeups in which he seems to be yawning. I certainly was.

There is much confusion, even as to teh geographic relationship of the film's various locales, with distances shrinking or stretching according to exigencies of plotting and directing. It is not even clear from the movie (as it is from the press kit) that the Fierce People have been deprived of their lands by the dam-builders and are taking this out on the Invisible People. This makes scant sense: The FP live in readily rebuildable huts and have lost no special possessions; there is still plenty of virgin forest to provide them with equivalent food and shelter. They seem to be bloodthirsty merely to supply the kind of plot element the Apaches or Sioux provided in our old, unrecronstructed Westerns. Again, when Wanadi teaches Tomme how to hunt, poisoned darts are used to bag the animals easily; why are these weapons never used in combat or self-defense? Why is courtship among the Indians shown in a romanticized, Westernized form (with a couple of mild hints of polygamy thrown in) despite all those anthropologists acting as technical advisors? But a technical credit such as "Tribe choreography by Jose Possi" does not inspire confidence. When Bill and Tomme ride down a waterfall and emerge safe and sound, how come none of the pursuing FP dares duplicate this feat? And many more incredibilities and inconsistencies.

I repeat, narrative logic, or any other kind, is not Boorman's strong suit. But credit must be given him for shooting on location under difficult conditions, for gaining the confidence of the Xingu Indians, among whom he stayed for several months, for getting some terrific nature footage with the able assistance of his cinematographer (Philippe Rousselot), for eliciting winning performances from Powers Boothe and Meg Fosters as the Markhams, and from assorted Brazilians and others (no actual Indians), notably the stunning Filipino actress Tetchie Agbayani, who plays the Number Three wife Wanadi hospitably offers Markham, but whom he, epic chastity, spurns. Felicitous, above all, was the casting of Boorman's son, Charley, as Tomme: He proves both charming and believable in a demanding role. Fascinating, too, is the music by Junior Homrich assisted by Brian Gascoigne; to these untutored ears it sounds mightily Amazonian. Besides entertining, the film also calls attention to a serious problem: It makes armchair conservationists and humanitarians of us all. To make us implement these noble stirrings is beyond any movie's power.

TWO NEW super-Westerns have given rise to speculation that this bosolescent genre may have a renaissance. Actually, both films are trash. Pale Rider, starring and directed by Clint Eastwood, has our hero appear in response to 14-year-old Megan's prayer for a miracle after some varmints shoot her dog. Eastwood is referred to as either the Stranger or the Preacher (he sometimes affects a clerical collar), but these are strong, albeit contradictory, indications that he is either Death or Jesus Christ. Just as Megan reads, in almost total darkness (Burce Surtees, the cinematogrpaher, has a mania for underlighting), the relevant passage from Revelation, Eastwood rides along, as pale as his pale horse and considerably more emaciated. Yet there is powereful evidence that he has been shot to death (seven cicatrized bullet holes in his back are lovingly dwelth on by the camera) and resurrected; as he goes about his business of liquidating villains, one exclaims, with portentous ambiguity, "Jesus!"

I might add that this Christ figure turns down the amorous advances of Megan (well played by Sydney Penny), but does have a quickie with her mother (badly played by Carrie Snodgress), whom he then turns over to her faithful long-time suitor (decently played by Michael Moriarty). As he finally rides off toward snowy peaks, the mountains echo with the bereft Megan's outcry for him. If this sounds like shameless plagiarism of Shane, rest assured that the entire movie falls somewhere between an hommage to it and a ripoff. Call yourself Pale Rider till you're blue in the face, bei mir bist du shane.

As for Silverado, directed and co-written by Lawrence Kasdan (Body Heat, The Big Chill), with any number of lesser Kasdans collaborating on the script or playing bit parts, it is one of thise cinematheque Westerns where almost everything is a clone of characters or scenes from countless other Westerns. However, a strictly Now sensibility has been superimposed in mentality and language, with people, for example, calling one another arseholes. Silverado is mostly about male bonding and liberal sentiments, with one of the four-man band of superheroes a black (Danny Glover), and the saloon keeper a female dwarf (Linda Hunt). There is even a Jewish gambler (Jeff Goldblum), who has a black grilfriend, but despite this (in the film's one surprise), he proves a villain. There are a few good effects amid the cliches, solid performances from Scott Glenn and Brian Dennehy (and poor ones from Kevin Kline and especially, Rosanna Arquette), and terrific camera work by John Bailey. Rapturous rumblings notwithstanding, it's all bluster on the Western front.