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The emotional high point comes when Wiggen, groping for the meaning of it all, finally comes up with an explanation that satisfies Pearson and probably ought to satisfy everyone else too: "Everybody knows everybody is dying. That's why people are as good as they are to people." This line, like everything else in this extraordinarily well-made film, is thrown away quick y and casually. But the line, and the movie, reverberate in the memory — not like a slowly, portentously banged drum, but like the crack of a bat drill ing a clean single through the visitors' infield on a sweet summer's day in a more innocent time. · Richard Schickel