Six Weeks
Sweet but not sugary tale of people caring about people
A kind politician, a rich businesswoman and a grown-up 12-year-old pack all the love and fun they can into one short season in SIX WEEKS, an elegant, uplifting drama that is just right for the yuletide.
Patrick Dalton (Dudley Moore of 10 and ARTHUR) is a California congressional candidate whose weapons are honesty and humor rather than rhetoric. Young Niki (Katherine Healy) is so impressed by his personality and ideals that she gives up her dream of dancing in “The Nutcracker” in order to help get Dalton elected.
Dalton is likewise taken by Niki’s precocious maturity and charm. His friendliness is interpreted by Niki’s rich mother, Charlotte (Mary Tyler Moore of ORDINARY PEOPLE), as a ploy for campaign funds. But even though Dalton’s coffers are low, his integrity is not. When Charlotte puts the inveigling shoe on the other foot by offering a huge donation in exchange for more attention to her daughter, Dalton refuses on principle.
What does prompt him to spend more time with Niki—to the neglect of his own family—is the knowledge that Niki is dying. Niki doesn’t want pity and she doesn’t get it, not even from herself. What she does get is affection from a busy man who, as she has recently done, gave up the arts for politics when “something exploded outside and the (piano) teacher didn’t even look up, didn’t even notice that people needed help…”
People caring about people is the theme of this luminous tragedy. Its main artistic ingredient is finesse.
Stories that kill off a main character and stories built around a child are frequently nothing but slush: premeditated pokes in the tear ducts or choking globs of sugary cuteness. This movie is not of that ilk. SIX WEEKS earns our emotion with strong believable acting and an avoidance of easy methods.
In his most serious role to date, Dudley Moore lets out just enough comic power to make Dalton winsome as well as caring. The vulnerability Moore reveals in interviews—though it’s evident even in his clowning roles—works to good effect here through a fellow feeling that seems sincere and through his trouble-tired mien.
Mary Tyler Moore played a neurotic mom in her last movie, but here she is completely likable and shows again that she is adept at drama as well as comedy.
The crucial role and probably the one that was hardest to cast is that of Niki. Niki had to be heart-winningly sweet yet mature enough to have political ideals and a philosophy about dying without regret. She had to have childish exuberance and cultured grace. Finally, she had to know her ballet.
After sifting through thousands of aspirants the producers found Katherine Healy, a 12-year-old New York ballerina who, in her movie debut, makes the extraordinary Niki come true. Healy fills the bill seemingly without pretending, supplying the radiant strength of the movie and offering Hollywood an uncommonly gifted new star.
SIX WEEKS has a fairy tale glamour that is fitting in a story about a girl who, like the character she wants to play in “The Nutcracker,” has had a charmed life. For the sake of this glamour certain complicating details are buffed out: for example, the frenzy of candidacy. The realistic texture of the movie is in the interweaving of lives, in the crossing of loyalties and the twining of affections.
Fine writing, acting and filming is rounded off with a gentle music-box score—composed and performed by Dudley Moore—and a smooth edit. SIX WEEKS is a graceful, gripping, happy tragedy, a movie that deserves a long run.1
[ Image: Pasted Graphic.tiff ]
1. Published in the “Washington Missourian” December 22, 1982