The Heart Is a Lonely Hunter

CARSON McCULLERS should have left her first novel untitled. Its story of a deaf-mute who becomes a confessor for an odd assortment of searching, lost human beings has in my opinion been generally overrated. Her book is good, but it hardly lives up to the promise of its haunting, haiku-like title -- The Heart is a Lonely Hunter.

The film version has taken the relationship between John Singer (Alan Arkin), the deaf-mute who unites the five disparate subplots of the novel, and a young girl named Mick (Sondra Locke), and made it the central theme of the movie. Curiously, although we now see more of Singer, he has become a guardian angel rather than the guiding light he was in the novel. One no longer has the feeling that his presence is essential in the lives of most of the characters. He now just hovers about at a distance. Singer's tragedy--the fact that he never really becomes a part of his friends' lives--is clearer. But the resulting film has no structural focus.

As John Singer, Arkin is perfect. You see how his mind works in hesitant little jumps. In his previous roles (The Russians Are Coming, Wait Until Dark, Inspector Clouseau), Arkin has proven himself America's answer to Peter Sellers. Although he relies heavily on gestures and body movements, he now goes beyond mere mimicry. You sense a depth in Singer. Arkin regains the use of his voice in his next film, Catch-22, and one hopes it will continue his development as an actor.

Sondra Locke, in her first movie, warrants the added attention the screenplay gives her part. When she tells her younger brother, who has pooled his money with his friends to buy fireworks, "Your syndicate is like Communism," she sounds just like the girl your roommate met from Ole Miss. Her boyish profile complements her naivete. Even her seduction scene--watch her shoulder cringe as she surrenders herself to her new boyfriend--seems right.

HOWEVER, when the director, Robert Ellis Miller, turns to the other subplots, he mangles them. The black doctor's relationship with his establishment daughter--one of the book's most perceptive delineations--plays like a Black Power version of Secret Storm. Its climactic carnival scene is as baroque as the conclusion of Sinatra's Some Came Running. Stacy Keach, of MacBird, is left with nothing to do. His character, a thirties radical in the novel, has been reduced to a drunken bum (someone was afraid to dirty their camera in politics). And Singer's mute friend is grossly overplayed. I don't object to the elimination of these characters--that is the film's perogative--but I must take issue with such cardboard remains.

For over two hours the film--which was shot in Selma, Alabama--winds its desultory course. When the camera leaves Arkin, it doesn't seem to know who to follow next. The scenes are logical, but ill-timed. You get the feeling the camera arrives on the set at just the wrong moment. All sense of time is lost. It is the acting of Arkin and Locke which finally manages, against all odds, to establish some sort of mood.

For the most part, this film is like a Rorschach test. The viewer is forced to relate its elements to each other in his own way. One major reviewer went so far as to claim it a parable on the death of God.

The Heart is a Lonely Hunter is more like a poem surrounded by a pageant. The purists will undoubtedly charge it with infidelity to the book. It's a shame more liberties weren't taken.