Yeah !! Faulkner is still a rare class of his very own, the most important American Great Novelist ( with maybe only Melville ) , still there has been NOBODY else after him in the USA, oh yes I can motivate my passion for him, he's my favorite USA-writer and in my top 3 of international writers, and I always wondered WHY no filmmaker ever tried to translate his 'writing' ( one B-film I remember, and not bad, but too SMALL ) I mean, liberalistic capitalism is INVENTED by the USA, its greatest stories are to be found here and nowhere else but did any artist try?? ? !! I've waited for years for a epic film about the greedy new yuppies of Faulkner's Snopes, but nobody even tried just until after decades of stasis finally comes Anderson and D.D.Lewis magnus opus: YES, my Faulkner finally on the big screen and how great it is , it's not officially about Snopes or based on any Faulkner , but genetically the very same and the only depiction of Snope-mentality we have till now, bravo Anderson, finally a true USA- masterpiece since 30 or 40 years ( since Apocalypse Now ) ! Well then , this Roeg film is the totally overlooked older brother of TWBBlood, same theme, the individual search for gold/money , and he has own Snopes around him : R.Hauer and M.Rourke play it terrificly .Roeg's greatest masterpiece is my favorite of his films and since years on a steady number 2 of my 'final'list ( with others like A.Rubjlev and Eclisse). I'm actually glad so many people don't care for it or don't ( try to) understand it, so it remains 'totally mine' and I won't make publicity ........See it if you like, or don't......probably you will NOT like it at ALL, it has everything to look like a big piece of small kitsh. Theresa Russel's overplaying ( I so adore this actress ...) and the 'weird murder' ( in reality it was weirder ) and an abbondance of cabbala, voodoo, alchemist symbols ( the butterfly brooche !!)in every corner of the film whether in words,designs, or clothes ,it will make you SCREAM, unless you know some about the alchemy of human soul, and its question "what gold am I looking for?".Oh ...it's also VERY static, theatrical, slow, very clumsy unrealistic dialogues , you'll feel almost ashamed to watch. Conclusion: AVOID IT. My Roeg's list : 1: Eureka 2: The Man W F On Earth 3: Walkabout 4: Performance 5: Insignificance + Bad Timing ( Theresa's masterpieece ) 6: Don't Look Now ( very overrated )

Young filmmakers, take notice. "Eureka" is a case study in bad filmmaking which could be used in filmmaking and/or film appreciation classes. The premise could have worked all right if the script had had about a half dozen additional rewrites and if the many cinematic tricks had been pared down. The story-line itself seems like it was recycled by out-of-work screenwriters dumped from "Days of Our Lives", barring the opening sequence. Part of the problem is the film throws more symbolism at the viewer than all of Orson Wells' films combined which we'll explore later. The scenes are also so overly directed the resulting cinematic experience seems more like a desperate film student trying to "prove" he is the next Orson Wells or Fritz Lang rather than allowing the characters and the scenes to tell the story.In the 1920's Jack McCann (Gene Hackman) is a gold prospector in the arctic who finally hits it rich. He doesn't just become rich, but purportedly becomes the richest man in the world, so tally up silly problem number one. (If you examine history, almost no one became the richest person in the world from gold prospecting.) Fast-forward to the 1940's, McCann now owns an island in the Caribbean. He has a daughter Tracy McCann (Theresa Russell) who has given her heart to an emotional walking soap opera, Claude Maillot Van Horn (Rutger Hauer). Of course, Claude and Jack can't stand each other, although when we first meet Tracy, I thought she had had an affair with Jack, not that she was his daughter! Tally up silly problem number two. (They actually talk about having been in Paris, similar to Humphrey Bogart and Ingrid Bergman in "Casablanca"!) Hackman for about the next hour rants and raves about Hauer groping his daughter: tally up silly problem number three. For being the richest man since John D. Rockefeller, he seems unable to control these people! Couldn't he just hire some hit-men and off this irritant? At the same time, two Italian mafia-types played by Joe Pesci and Mickey Roarke are trying to finagle Hackman into starting a casino in Miami. Several times I couldn't hear what they were saying, but, more importantly, I didn't really care! Tally up silly problem number four.Silly problem number five gets the silver medal: the shots. The shots were too innovative for their own good. Zooming in on characters when they do something "strange" or become emotional occurs ad infinitum. If a character is unhappy, zoom! If they're giving an endless tragic speech, as a fortune-teller/brothel madam does at the beginning, zoom! It's zoom in for this and zoom in for that, zooming down from above, zooming up from below. There was more zooming around than a typical Superman film. A strange episode at the beginning was supposed to be a dream sequence but there was so much zooming around and strange symbolism I didn't understand it was a dream or what it meant.Which brings us to silly problem number six: the gold medal goes to the symbolism! Yes, this film is so chock full of symbolism applied with a sledgehammer I started forgetting why I care about the story! Explosions, candles and clocks get about as much screen time as the characters in "Eureka"! They also seemed to be overt homages to Orson Wells' "Citizen Kane" referring to the exploding crystal snow globe after Kane says "Rosebud". Explosions run rampant at the beginning of the film in the arctic, including a horrid blast-your-brains-out suicide which served no purpose at all. Later it's clocks and candles. And of course all the symbols are zoomed into again from all angles imaginable. Particularly, towards the last half of the film, we're zooming to clocks! Is the filmmaker running out of footage? Candles are also everywhere. People even walk around with candles as if we're in a bad Hammer Film from the 1950's! The film is essentially a cinematic mess. For all the zooming and symbols, I couldn't get a hold of the characters. Hackman who often plays very resolved characters seemed strangely ambiguous. For a guy who has everything, he seemed to be in a real rut! Hauer is little better. He's won Theresa Russell, the most attractive character in the film, and even he doesn't seem very happy about it. Actually, Russell's character was the only one who was reasonably well-defined. But even she can't save this odd mess of a movie. Sadly it wasn't quite so bad that it was good. Essentially everything which should never be in a movie, and more.

Rarely has a film had so much potential, that goes unrealized. Gene Hackman and his gold discovery is beautifully photographed, yet so unlikely and unrealistic, that it seems surreal. From the moment things shift to the island, the movie plays like a beautiful montage, with story continuity only an afterthought. It becomes merely a series of images strung together with philosophical messages, huge time jumps, flashbacks, and metaphysical nonsense. Yet, the images of ultra violence, nudity, snow, gold flakes, and the Victorian splendor, will linger long after the movie ends. From that standpoint at least some of "Eureka"s potential is realized, but not enough to grab the greatness that was within grasp. - MERK

Nicholas Roeg's career, which spanned the seventies with one fascinating moody, atmospheric eye-opener after another (ie "Performance", "The Man who Fell to Earth" and "Don't Look Now"), seemed to be annihilated with this release. It is such an oddity, distributers didn't release it until 1986, once Hauer and Rourke were stars. This symbollic film about what drives a man finds Hackman reaching his lifelong goal too early in life- locating a motherload of gold. 30 years later in the Miami of the fifties, he's a bored millionaire, waiting to die. Following his brutal, no nauseating murder, the focus switches over to his son-in-law (Hauer) whose state of being is reminiscent of his younger self. Hauer's plight during the home stretch is pretty intense, even though it becomes a courtroom drama. A flawed, but unforgettable film with a great cast and token Roeg-esgue sex scenes.