Why Showtime's `Blackbird' Soars For Laura Dern

HOLLYWOOD - Laura Dern has a hard time watching her latest movie, "Down Came a Blackbird," airing at 8 p.m. Sunday on Showtime.

One of her co-stars in the riveting drama about victims of political torture is Raul Julia, who died of a stroke a week after filming ended last October.

"I miss him terribly," Dern says softly. "It was a beautiful, incredible, extraordinary fated experience to have had that opportunity to be with him the last weeks of his life. I love him. He was a beautiful man. We talked a lot about life and death and what's important in life. To have those conversations with him and work with him on an emotional and close piece was a lucky opportunity."

In "Blackbird," Dern plays Helen, a hotshot reporter in a South American country with her photographer boyfriend (Jay O. Sanders) to do a story about a rebel leader. They both are arrested by the country's secret police.

A year later, a released Helen works and operates in a trance. She's still mourning the death of her boyfriend, killed by the police. Helen then suggests to her editor doing a story on Anna Lenke (Vanessa Redgrave), a survivor of a World War II concentration camp. Lenke operates a clinic for people trying to heal the physical and emotional wounds of politically motivated torture.

Lenke recognizes the symptoms of torture survival in Helen and invites her to the clinic as a patient. Helen denies she's a victim, but enters the clinic under the guise of writing an article. At the clinic, she meets several other victims of torture, including Tomas Ramirez (Julia), an intellectual and former professor who harbors a dark secret.

Dern, Julia and Redgrave are all nominated for CableAce Awards (to be announced in January) for their work in the film. Dern, who received a 1991 best actress Oscar nomination for "Rambling Rose," also is an executive producer of "Down Came a Blackbird." (The title refers to a favorite nursery rhyme of Dern's character).

"My producing capacity was more or less being part of it early enough to bring the rest of the cast together, to throw ourselves into as much research as we had time for before we started, to meet as many people who had been through it and knew about it," Dern explains. "And getting Amnesty International to tell us everything they knew and be supportive of the film, which they have been."

The actress acknowledges that a film about victims of political torture is a difficult watch. "It's a really tough subject matter to take on in film when people don't know about it," she says. "We forget these people are in pain and don't have a place to go."

Not only did Dern read articles about political torture, she also saw video of victims from Haiti and Bosnia. "Most people don't want to talk about (it)," Dern says. "The best information I got was from a couple of different therapists."

The clinic depicted in the film is actually based on the first one ever created in Copenhagen, Denmark, by a woman, who, like Lenke, was a victim of torture. "The main place in America that is now running one is in Minneapolis," Dern says.