Highlights

Uri Caine

Tues.-Sun., June 22-27

Fronting six bands over six nights at the Village Vanguard, pianist/composer Uri Caine rolls out a concentrated retro of recent intrigues for the JVC Jazz Festival. Improvised overlays mirror classical structures, with a septet playing (and playing with) Mahler on Wednesday, and then an octet for Bach on Saturday. Caine's trios range from standards and electric funk to laptop-accompanied forays to the format's outer bounds.

Caine cut his chops playing with jazz greats Hank Mobley and Philly Joe Jones, and is frequently at the piano bench for Dave Douglas and Don Byron projects. His Vanguard week as front man opened Tuesday with "Bach to Boogie Woogie," moving on to Wednesday's Mahler update/upheaval and then Caine's electric band on Thursday. "Blue Wail" features guest sax Greg Osby on Friday; then it's back to Bach for the big group's "Goldberg Variations" on Saturday, with Caine's unaccompanied trio (with Drew Gress and Ben Perowsky) wrapping things up on Sunday.

"For our version of Bach," Caine said in a phone interview, "we parallel how he constructed variations on the harmonic chord progressions of a song. At the same time that we're playing, we're improvising, while if he writes a gigue, I can write a mambo." In a skewed bow to the famous Lutheran, Caine's "Goldberg Variations" chucks a dose of Klezmer into "Luther's Nightmare."

"Bedrock" finds the piano trio in drum 'n' bass territory, exploring how "you can use those grooves and samples as a basis for improvisation." The CD, on Winter & Winter, is one of a string of Caine releases that prompted Vanguard owner Lorraine Gordon to make his week at the club a showcase for his interests.

"I really appreciate her being open to things like Bedrock and Goldberg, in a hallowed place like the Vanguard," Caine said of Gordon. "The important thing for me is to experiment with the music—and to have fun." Proof's in the pudding: When Caine did a solo set at the recent Improvise! Fest marathon, he had the audience—and the piano itself—rollicking along with his limber and lyrical associations.

Village Vanguard, 178 7th Ave. S. (W. 11th St.), 212-255-4037, 9, $30.

Alan Lockwood

Rock's Role (After Ryoanji)

Through Sat., June 26

Treble

Through sun., August 1

John Cage's transliterations of the Zen rock garden at Ryoanji involve musical equivalents for the empty space of sand and the rock structures. For curator Ron Kuivila's Rock's Role (After Ryoanji) at Art in General, sound artists respond to Cage's work with sand pieces, another two with rock pieces, with Kuivila's tweaked SuperCollider opensource audio synthesis program blending and meshing them in space.

"The sand works are discrete sounds with irregular pulses," said Art in General's Jennifer Gootman, "while the rocks are glissandi, or events that happen," including the billiard-ball knocks of Bernhard Gal. "The nature of the exhibit is constantly changing; when in the space, you hear sounds from the various pieces but you can't necessarily tell whose they are. Kuivila's programming embraces them in a way that realizes Buddhist concepts of multi-centeredness and multi-connection."

"There's audible change over spans of five minutes or so, but no beginning and no end," Gootman continues. "It's novel for a sound art exhibit, where each piece is typically isolated with headphones or soundproofing. Rock's Role mixes and intermingles all of them." The $5 CD functions as the exhibit's catalog and features an essay by Kuivila.

Sound art makes another big splash in curator Regine Basha's Treble at SculptureCenter, a few blocks from PS1 in Long Island City. In Basha's approach, the sound mix ranges even farther, in some cases straight out of earshot. Large drawings and handwritten descriptions by Max Neuhaus posit specific and evocative sound environments including a corner in Times Square, while Joseph Beuys' soundless blackboard eraser rings as true as ever. An epoxy and paint twig of blue blossoms extends from one of SculptureCenter's bare brick walls, and a neon-illuminated drumkit suspends over the pierced cave of a geodesic dome, to further peak the earflaps.

Other pieces sound constantly: Steve Roden's sliced wine bottles line the long basement passage, a tiny humming speaker cone in each; Terry Nauheim's floppy 78s are filed for random spinning on portable record players; an inner sanctum with a rock salt floor and wood benches plays Andrea Ray's tease on breathing; and Stephen Vitiello's subsonic drivers throb and pulsate up by the former trolley repair factory's front wall.

Out in the courtyard and before the building, waves of sound and loops of text dominate, but it's Basha's curatorial premise that intrigues most promisingly: sound art has outgrown its day as niche genre, and exists now in functional collaboration with the fields of drawing, sculpture and architecture.

"I am particularly excited with the way some of the artists have utilized the architectural spaces of the SculptureCenter building," director Mary Ceruti wrote in an email. "It's become an integral component of their installations. The language of sculpture continually evolves, and Regine's exhibition highlights the ways in which artists are working with sound as a sculptural material."

Art in General, 79 Walker St. (betw. B'way & Lafayette St.), 212-219-0473, Tues.-Sat 12-6, free.

SculptureCenter, 44-19 Purves St. (betw. 43rd & 44th Sts.), Long Island City, 718-361-1750, Thurs.-Mon. 11-6, $5 sugg. don.

Alan Lockwood

Jumpers

Through Aug. 22

Plato had it right. Philosophy is a mind-trip out of darkness, a gothic vacation for those who thought they had something better to do than drugs. So it's comforting when the curtain opens on Jumpers to see a beautiful Art Deco moon, a sliver that's half paper mâché, half silly green-cheese, gleaming through a hole at the back of the stage—old familiar light at the end of the tunnel. In a lovely, senseless confusion, a woman in a late Jazz-age shimmer frock rolls out on a revolving dais, singing badly as only a broken diva can sing. Then a scantily clad woman whizzes by the moon on a trapeze, losing bits of clothing as she goes. And, by god, has she got great breasts.

Sensible to start a play about the existence of God with proof of the beauty of creation. But they should have stayed with the breasts.

Simon Russell Beale, who plays the lead, has been touted as the great British actor that America has not yet discovered. Well, here's your chance, because this revival of Jumpers is about Simon Russell Beale making speeches. With soliloquies, less is more. Unfortunately, the director, David Leveaux, didn't cut enough. Jumpers lacks the philosophical/psychological tension of Rosencranz and Guildenstern Are Dead, a play that places its characters in Plato's Cave, then seals off the entrance. Jumpers never really marries philosophy to drama, and we're left with too much nattering.

Beale plays George, a philosophy professor married to Dorothy, the diva, who's his former student (Essie Davis). During the confusion at the beginning, another philosophy professor is shot dead. (For some reason, the other philosophers are acrobats in orange jump suits.) An Inspector Bones (Nicholas Woodeson) shows up to question Dorothy, but he is a raving fan and ridiculously keen on getting her off the hook. At one point he dons an apron and cooks for her.

Meanwhile Archie, George's boss (Nicky Henson) is treating Dorothy because she's lost her sweet will to sing. I wish I could report that Archie's psycho-sexual experiments were titillating or naughty, but they weren't. More like a cross between NEA performance art and a video installation. If Esse Davis were not so glorious, they would have been flat-out boring.

George isn't suspicious. George isn't particularly upset about his wife. He's there to prove the existence of God. This is why the play should have stuck with naked breasts. Simon Russell Beale is a marvelous actor, at once schlubby and sharp, but during his second long philosophical speech (I think there are about seven), boredom creeps onstage and proceeds to make lousy faces at the audience for the rest of the night.

Dorothy is scrumptious as butter, but George never has sex with her. He won't shut up. He never gets laid, and he accidentally kills his own pet rabbit. And then he accidentally stomps on his pet turtle.

Jumpers is camp. Camp can survive God, nostalgia and tasteful decor, but it cannot survive boredom. The show is slick, beautiful. Esse Davis is magnificent—as wondrous in her body as iced champagne in July. The secretary who never speaks (Eliza Lumley) offers incredible commentary with her looks. You come away from Jumpers thinking "Ah... I've seen Broadway. This is good Broadway..." but feel nothing. The only moving things about the performance, aside from the sets, are Esse Davis' gorgeous weltschmertz ending, and the sad, stupid fact that Simon Russell Beale's character never gets laid.

Brooks Atkinson Theater, 256 W. 47th St. (betw. B'way & 8th Ave.), 212-307-4100, Tues.-Sat., 8; Weds. & Sat., 2; Sun., 3; $60-$95.

Laurel Maury

Star Trash

Through Fri., July 16

An Ethiopian walks up to a small green man and says, "Martian, I've imagined life in rich countries so many times. You've got a good view up there. Tell me what it's like." The Martian scratches his antennae, then picks up a candy bar wrapper from the floor. "See this? In rich countries this piece of garbage sells for..." he pauses for dramatic effect, "six thousand dollars."

Strange as this might seem to any member of the third world, if you were to stroll down Wooster St. to the Star Trash store, you would find just that. Not just piles of garbage, but photography prints of celebrity garbage—with $6000 price tags attached. Parisian paparazzi Bruno Mouron and Pascal Rostain sifted through everything from crushed cigarette packs to dated cheese to bring us their exhibit Star Trash. Each celebrity's garbage is arranged methodically, against a 47-by-31-foot velvet backdrop. To date, eight celebrities (who remain anonymous) have bought back their own trash.

Mouron and Pascal bring celebrity obsession to dizzying heights. From their treasure troves, we know Sharon Stone eats pears in cans; Arnold Schwarzenegger smokes Cuban cigars; and Halle Berry jogs a lot. The idea of analyzing consumer patterns through trash has certainly been done before. In this exhibit of mass-produced waste, pop culture fanatics can find echoes of their beloved Warhol days.

You'd think it might get démodé, or, dare I say, even boring to stare at a plastic bottle of Cascade or to know that celebs do, in fact, use toilet paper. But, standing alongside Charlize Theron's trash, one bystander even called it "eclectic," while another said it was difficult to give his impressions of Jay Leno's garbage because he didn't know if the items were "collected from one bin or more."

The opening-night crowd at Le Bernardin ran in the same milieu as those whose trash they were admiring: a mix of New York socialites, paparazzi and doctored, well-kempt women. So it's difficult to accept the photographers' description of their work as "a mix of sociological study and journalistic investigation." That may become true only when Mouron and Pascal repeat the process in China, India and Africa. Another way to truly capture human social behavior would be to contrast the trash of America's rich with its poor. The audience would surely be different.

Star Trash, 28 Wooster St. (Grand St.), free.

Alison Ogden

Bare Jr.

Weds. & Sat., June 23 & 26

"Some of us have no business getting near a stage," says Bobby Bare Jr. He's talking about second-generation Nashville acts, but you usually have to be a Southerner to suffer through the worst of those. Bare's one of the best. His band—billed as Bare Jr.—endured an underheard major-label stint that could've united NASCAR enthusiasts and Phish fans. Stepping back from his ambitious rock vision, Bare spent the past few years creating bizarre beauty for the indie Bloodshot label. From the End of Your Leash is the second album credited to Bobby Bare Jr.'s Young Criminals' Starvation League, and it's a surprising mix of delicate pop and catchy humble soul—as he discussed from his home in Nashville.

So who was the better act: Bare Jr. or Hege V? I have no idea what you're talking about.

Hege V was the son of George Hamilton IV. He used the name for this primal country-Goth act back in the mid-80s. Wow. I know every rock person in Nashville, and nobody's ever mentioned that to me. I don't know how I missed that. Back in '84, I was going to school at Belmont College on Music Row. I was way into the rock scene. That was a great time for live music. There'd be a line around the block for bands every night. It's not that way now. Nashville's the worst city for live music attendance.

New York City isn't thriving either. I was living at 14th and B last summer, writing the songs for this album. It seemed to always be either somebody selling out the Bowery Ballroom, or nobody going to see bands. I never saw anybody who was just kind of getting into the crowd. But I loved it there. I felt completely at home. I thought I'd just disappear, but every two blocks, I'd see people I knew.

Are you surprised that you wrote such a soulful pop album? I dunno. I did the heavy thing already. That started with Bare Jr., when they dangled that whole idea of making rock records out to us. I still try to make rock records, I guess. We're a lot heavier live. We're quiet in the quiet parts, but the loud parts are a lot louder. The former lead guitarist for Jesus Lizard is our guitarist now. He loves all those country licks.

You still have to be the poppiest act on the Bloodshot label. I always say making records is like putting on your clothes and make-up and doing your hair in a dark room with no mirror. Until you have someone to bounce it off of, you have no idea what you've done.

But you're happy with what you're recording? Well, I like to tour a lot more now. The thing about making records, you don't get to choose your fans. I've got more common ground with the tastes of my audience now. You can get some ridiculous rock fans when you're opening for the Black Crowes. I've just always liked a lot more indie rock, and listened to bands like the Smiths. I've always listened to lots of Ministry—but if I try to do Ministry, it doesn't sound as good.

How did you end up back in Nashville? I got married, and we have a baby on the way…

What about touring? That's how I was raised, with my dad being gone gone—but never for more than a month, and when he was home, he was home all the time. It wasn't just for an hour each morning and night. It'd be, like, "Let's go fishing for a week." My mother sure thought it was a crime: "I'm stuck here and your dad is out running around, doing shows…" But me, I don't remember ever having to miss my dad.

Weds. at Maxwell's, 1039 Washington St. (11th St.), Hoboken, 201-653-1703, 8:30, $8; Sat. at Mercury Lounge, 217 E. Houston St. (betw. Ludlow & Essex Sts.), 212-260-4700, 9, $12.

J.R. Taylor

Tomasz Stanko

Weds., June 23

Where the rubber Euro-trumpet meets the road: That's where Polish free-jazz brass man Tomasz Stanko stands proudest. Inspired as much by American avant-axman Ornette Coleman as he is by his homeland's honcho of noirish neo-bop, pianist/soundtrack composer Krzysztof Komeda (the latter with whom Stanko famously collaborated throughout the 1960s), the trumpeter has an eerie iridescent beauty in every breath he blows. There's a resigned elegiac melodicism to his long, languid notes, a dusky heaving cloudiness that inhabits the wide-open spaciousness of his compositions and the critically intuitive interaction (for our purposes) of his quartet.

Yet that shy, sighing esthetic and the head-hanging ambience can't stop Stanko and his ensemble (pianist Marcin Wasilewski, drummer Michal Miskiewicz, double-bassist Slawomir Kurkiewicz) from dancing. In this respect, Stanko and Quartet's best work, the full, moist Suspended Night, the laconic suite that is Soul of Things, are most reminiscent of Miles' weariest but wondrous moments. The use of curved air, the fragile nature of Stanko's forbidden colors—these late-night nuances and dark tones conjure Miles ascending each of his Seven Steps. While Stanko finds the brio in the breeze, his Quartet's a willing bunch, whiling away the chapters of Soul of Things as if engrossed in a long slow screw.

Merkin Concert Hall at Kaufman Center, 129 W. 67th St. (betw. B'way & Amsterdam Ave.), 212-362-8060, 8, $30.

A.D. Amorosi

Iron & Wine

Fri. & Sat., June 25 & 26

Depressing? What isn't depressing? Last Monday I found myself crying while watching Monk. Depression is a relative thing. So then it's silly to imagine whether or not Samuel Beam—the sad singing/writing centerpiece of Iron & Wine—is depressing or simply bleakly and moistly comic. Foggier than Smog and more apt to kill himself than Elliot Smith, Beam has a creaky Floridian voice and writes cheap forlorn texts with a wry dryness to them—like Carson McCullers soaked in vinegar.

On Iron & Wine's first CD, The Creek Drank the Cradle, and his second airier (but still dank) Our Endless Numbered Days, Beam sprays his intimate longings softly onto the breaky-achy folksiness of "Radio War" and the weary "Each Coming Night." There are politicized blues and atmospherically American numbers that are as heavy-handed as they come, but Beam's subtlety as a melodicist, lyricist and singer comes through clearest on songs of longing, for instance, the pedal-steel soliloquy of "Sunset Soon Forgotten."

Though he always seems to be on a yearning hunt for love, Beam's is the most sexless esthetic since Throbbing Gristle first put the pedals on the metal. Yet that doesn't stop him from the spun-soft "Sodom, South Georgia" or cozying up to sister, Sara, for harmony vocal support. And now I'm uncomfortable and crying. What time is Monk on again?

Bowery Ballroom, 6 Delancey St. (betw. Bowery & Chrystie St.), 212-533-2111, 9, $14.

A.D. Amorosi

Dizzee Rascal

Tues., June 29

If the Streets' Mike Skinner is a cross between Kenneth Tynan and Ian Dury, his opening act, Dizzee Rascal, is the black Shawn Ryder—a theatrical rapper whose dramatic license has upped the ante for hiphop orators internationally. Listless existence and educated éclat don't work when it comes to Rascal's takes on East London-style license, love and romance. Rather than just focus on active nights-out ideals—or even Skinner's heroic zero-ness—Rascal is a cracked actor, a shattered voice with graceful, frightened pronunciations that have been mastered and trained at RADA. When those same voices, conjured from within, are raised in passion and anger atop startling beats and sizzling productions more giggly than wriggling, his ridiculous rhymes become the slang-teachings and baleful boastings that have lifted garage from blips and brusque basslines into grand theater.

Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800, 8, $25, $20 adv.

A.D. Amorosi

Incubus/Sparta

Fri., June 25

Any form of maturation in the alt-metal stakes is tricky. Unless you're an already-recalcitrant grouch-hag like Maynard James Keenan from Tool and A Perfect Circle—a man old before his time—evolving is shockingly akin to watching John Hughes or Kevin Smith struggle with adult themes. Or the entirety of Fred Durst's career.

How then to explain angry Brandon Boyd and his angsty Incubus—they that metal-marauded and freak-funked with the best of the Bizkit crowd for 1997's S.C.I.E.N.C.E. and 1999's Make Yourself—going from black-and-white to Technicolor for this year's release, Crow Left of the Murder? Incubus provide space-pop textures and warm-windy colors to their newly swinging, oddly prog-jazz proceedings, and Boyd makes with the crooning. Less preachy than Korn's Jonathan Davis and less annoying than Keenan, a pissy Boyd wafts through lyrics geared for an election year: aware 'n' prepared socio-consciousness with an irked, sweet quality.

Opening is Sparta, an equally wide-ranging metal mess whose members have gone in the opposite direction from that of which Boyd now seems capable. Meaning, no longer is Paul Hinojos doing the lonesome poli-sci stuff he started with. Now he's playing shards and slabs of Edge-like guitars and letting singer Jim Ward moan and rant through existentialist poems on their new CD, Porcelain.

Madison Square Garden, 2 Penn Plaza (32nd St.), 212-465-MSG1, 8, $45.

A.D. Amorosi

Lou Reed/Nellie McKay

Weds., June 23

Nothing about Lou Reed has ever scared me. Not the fact that during his past lives, he probably shot more heroin and meth than your kids will eat gummi bears. Not the fact that he used to simulate drug injection onstage. Not the fact that he was the subject of a PBS documentary. Not the fact that he's made his share of lousy records or that he's devoted whole albums to Edgar Allan Poe and made more live albums than I've made typographical errors. What finally scared me about Lou Reed was that he posed for the cover of some kung fu magazine last year. That's freaky.

Kidding aside, even Reed at his worst is more intriguing than most artists at their finest; that his noisiest (Metal Machine Music) has delirious moments of intrigue; that most will know the recently deceased Robert Quine because of his work with Reed on The Blue Mask and New Sensations; that unlike most old-rock cretins he probably won't reform his first-ever band (again); that unlike most elder artists (ahem, Neil Young and the Rolling Stones), his new work manages to be something worth hearing and enjoying, so much so that even when he does another live record, he manages to make that too an equally challenging listen.

Twenty-year-old pianist/singer Nellie McKay—the spiritual daughter of Moe Tucker, with the literacy of Reed and the weirdness of Annie Ross—hasn't been around long enough to scare anyone. But her debut, Get Away from Me, is a nice start toward making herself into a happy horror.

Carnegie Hall, 157 W. 57th St. (7th Ave.), 212-247-7800, 7:30, $8, $30-$75.

A.D. Amorosi

J.J. Cale

Thurs., June 24

Even Tony Joe White went disco, but J.J. Cale has remained stolidly bluesy during his long career as a reclusive backwoods wonder—even if he did emerge from the swamps of Oklahoma. Songs like "Cocaine" and "After Midnight" still became FM staples, and even Poco managed to sound manly with a Cale composition. Through it all, Cale has recorded whenever and whatever he felt like, now emerging from his home in the California desert with To Tulsa and Back. This week's show isn't exactly a rare appearance, but Cale's stubborn enough to make us wonder if it'll ever happen again.

You've disappeared for years at a time. Is that strategy, or do you just get disgusted with the music business?

I don't know why I haven't made more records. This is my fourteenth one here. I'm a songwriter, and it takes a long time writing songs. That can be a long-term process. Sometimes they come real quick. The record company would have liked to have seen more sometimes, but 14 records seems like a lot to me.

You've also never been in a hurry to promote yourself. Is it irritating to talk to people like me?

The people I work with have been on my case about that. Everybody wants to work, work, work. I like to work, but I like to take it easy. I don't tour that much. Fourteen records in 30 years. I come from the old days when you cut singles. Then an album comes out. I haven't had to promote a record in eight years. It's not as bad as I seemed to think it was. There's a redundancy to it. There's never a conversation. It's all about me, me, me. You don't learn anything when you're talking about yourself.

Do you care much about being remembered as a songwriter?

I was basically a guitar player, and then a studio engineer. I got into songwriting for money. They've really gotten out there. It surprised me. It's good for my ego, getting other people to cut my songs. It's generally improved on my home demos. I've still got a passion for recording studio equipment. It's really helped me to basically change all my songs from becoming the same thing. Sometimes engineering can really pick up a mediocre song.

You're also one of the few guitar gods who's made his name from rhythm guitar.

That's basically what I am, a rhythm player. You don't write songs to play solos. Rhythm is where it is for the kind of music I play. I throw in a solo for my own entertainment sometime, but everyone wants to play lead guitar—or noodly guitar, or single-string guitar. That's maybe the most fun, but rhythm guitar means you have to know phrasing. It's always in the background, but it's been a big influence in pop music.

You've always looked sharp over the years, but nobody thinks of you as any kind of classic cool.

When I started to get a little bit of fame, I knew I wanted a low profile. For many years, I avoided photographs. Not on purpose, and not to establish mystery, but because I played guitar for a lot of famous people when I was young. See, I'm not an entertainer. I'm really a background person. Because I had to sing my own songs, that put me out front a little bit.

You've noted that the new album probably doesn't have a player on it under the age of 60. Are you surprised to still be in the studio at your age?

I had no idea I'd still be doing music at this age. I guess it's because I never got really big enough to peak and quit. Now I'm on the level of a cult artist. I had no idea my stuff would ever sell to the general public, and a lot of it really didn't. Other people sold a lot more of my songs than I ever did. Now my songs are a lot more famous than I am.

Irving Plaza, 17 Irving Pl. (15th St.), 212-777-6800 8, $25.

J.R. Taylor

Premiere Brazil!

Presented by MoMA

Weds.-Tues., June 23-29

According to director Carlos Diegues, God is a healthy-looking man in his 60s. He carries a slight paunch but is otherwise vigorous in appearance. He wears a sky-blue shirt and matching pants, and carries a white canvas backpack and umbrella wherever He goes. His beard is white, but is more Don Johnson stubble than the flowing mane of Michelangelo. God is also, as the title points out, Brazilian.

Diegues' God Is Brazilian is yet another entry in the heavenly emissary genre, whereby God's messenger comes down to Earth to improve the sorry lot of mankind. The twist here is that the emissary is the big boss Himself, and He does not appear out of sympathy for His creations. Rather, He is looking forward to a long-anticipated vacation drifting aimlessly about the cosmos, and needs to track down a saint to oversee the steady functioning of His business while He's gone. God enlists the aid of a nebbish helper named Taoca (Wagner Moura) to accompany him on his quest, which takes them all over the rural Brazilian northeast. This travelogue film has a serious bone to pick with the head honcho, deeming Him a deity whose great love for all mankind does not allow Him to care about individual humans.

I have a bone to pick with this film as well. Its great love for its admittedly clever conceit does not allow much room for significant commentary on contemporary Brazil or its inhabitants. It's a travel film with nowhere to go.

"Premiere Brazil!" flubs the opportunity to capitalize on the success of recent Brazilian films like City of God, Bus 174 and Carandiru. It's not that the films in the series are terrible; they just cannot match the immediacy and vibrancy of the above hits. Silvio Tendler's documentary Glauber the Movie, Labyrinth of Brazil is a portrait of Cinema Novo pioneer Glauber Rocha, whose untimely death in 1981 left Brazilian filmmaking without its foremost practitioner. Glauber communicates some of its subject's passionate inquisitiveness, but is lacking as a serious study of Rocha's cinematic oeuvre.

Roberto Berliner's documentary Born to Be Blind, which will receive a one-week run at Film Forum, follows three blind sisters who sing for a living on the streets of Campina Grande, in the country's northeast. The film follows them from poverty to unexpected success as roots-music performers (they share a stage with Brazilian musical legend Gilberto Gil) and back again. Born to Be Blind provides an insight into what happens when the cameras fade and fame retreats to the shadows. As with Wim Wenders' Buena Vista Social Club, it also offers a glimpse at a group of musicians whose unexpected commercial success comes late in life. Like the Cuban musicians of Wenders' film, their success is a result of an audience desperate for realism in a marketplace of increasingly prefabricated commercial fluff. The three sisters are presented with compassion and integrity, but our understanding of them does not increase much by film's end. They are, and remain, ciphers—simple, suffering, impoverished women who turn their lifelong struggles into music.

Film Forum, 209 W. Houston St. (betw. 6th Ave. & Varick St.), 212-727-8110, call for times, $10.

Saul Austerlitz

Father and Son

Directed by Alexander Sokurov

The sound of labored, painful breathing, a tubercular wheeze just short of a death rattle, can only mean one thing: a new Alexander Sokurov film. The Russian filmmaker, self-appointed heir to the throne of Andrei Tarkovsky, inhabits a mysterious zone located somewhere between life and death, between health and illness, and his latest work, Father and Son, is a continuation of these themes.

A father and son (played by Andrey Schetinin and Aleksey Nejmyshev) live together in a ramshackle apartment in an unnamed city meant to suggest St. Petersburg. Home for the weekend from his military school, the son returns to his father, whose muscular vigor belies the implication that he is terminally ill. Relentlessly opaque, like the X-rays that serve as a recurring motif, Father and Son attempts to hang significant symbolic value on its meager, bare-bones plot, and is mostly unsuccessful. Father and Son owes a great deal to Sokurov's previous films The Second Circle (1990) and Mother and Son (1997) in its exploration of familial bonds and the ever-closer presence of death, but its closer parent is the overhyped one-shot oddity Russian Ark; both films share a noble theoretical framework, imperfectly executed.

Sokurov has always been an expert stylist, and Father and Son is no exception. The reddish-golden glow of light in many of the interior scenes is lovely, and his evocation of unusual architectural and urban spaces is striking. The problem here is that all this care has been expended for an empty husk of a film, full of pseudo-insight into the human condition. As one character accuses another in the film, "Those aren't your words, nor your ideas." The father-son dynamic depicted here is oddly erotic in nature, characterized by long, wordless stares into each other's eyes, and repeated beefcake shots of the father's sculpted torso. In the film's opening scene, two male bodies hug and cuddle, leaving a distinct impression of the pair as lovers before they are established as father and son. The sexual confusion, and the recurring discussion of fatherly love as crucifying, leaves Father and Son's exploration of this dynamic, as universal a theme as there is, oddly muddled. For a filmmaker as enthralled with Tarkovsky as Sokurov, he appears to have neglected what made Tarkovsky's metaphysical speculations so compelling: their grounding in immediately recognizable human hopes and fears.

Regardless of all its maunderings about fathers and sons, Father and Son takes place in a never-never land divorced from the shock of recognition affected by the presence of mundane daily life onscreen. Sokurov's mise en scène is bare, the better to focus attention on the familial dynamic; what he doesn't realize is that it is entirely empty of human concern.

Cinema Village, 22 E. 12th St. (betw. University Pl. & 5th Ave.), 212-924-3363, call for times, $10.

Saul Austerlitz