Fire Down Below

Many is the cultural wasteland known by Béla Bartók and Alan Lomax as something else altogether. The spirit of such men informs the picture, which indeed has no other purpose.

Kentucky coal mines are sent barrels of radioactive waste. There are a few dollars in it. “World music” isn’t much of a market, anyway.

Rafelson’s equable diffusion of technique informs the direction, which cites with learning and polish Eastwood’s The Bridges of Madison County (in reference to the photographic exhibition, The Family of Man), reproduces the finale of Spielberg’s Duel, easily notes Griffith’s Broken Blossoms, effectively parodies more or less the Bodega Bay gas station in Hitchcock’s The Birds, and savors the jest of retribution in Thompson’s Kinjite: Forbidden Subjects.