tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-21185749014869830932024-03-19T01:48:30.981-07:00Mr. Peel's Sardine LiqueurDeciphering the Code of Cinema From the Center of Los Feliz by Peter AvellinoMr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.comBlogger713125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-60860890895207156332023-03-21T21:31:00.003-07:002023-03-21T21:39:33.205-07:00Making Things Move<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPmh3EkLokpMbQjQ2xu41hsP7kDiUby6etDA0Hmfez8GialCrdJyMili5BrVu8vxrI7bTZBP5mGr-JKnXrGXYGuuLFM_ld4BgohPXQ3iK7QZML8apXGC97MVpxugSmEJsnDyD0dxNgsmSjACXezh6MedL_6wPrc18omWpxrRoo0bUx91fTsoMEU6DYxg/s930/ModernProblems7.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="641" data-original-width="930" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgPmh3EkLokpMbQjQ2xu41hsP7kDiUby6etDA0Hmfez8GialCrdJyMili5BrVu8vxrI7bTZBP5mGr-JKnXrGXYGuuLFM_ld4BgohPXQ3iK7QZML8apXGC97MVpxugSmEJsnDyD0dxNgsmSjACXezh6MedL_6wPrc18omWpxrRoo0bUx91fTsoMEU6DYxg/s400/ModernProblems7.jpg"/></a></div>
We all have regrets. Like this one time at a party I met Mary Kay Place and didn’t ask her about MODERN PROBLEMS. But certain memories stay with you. It’s a long time ago now but I was in the second row at the New Beverly for the packed 2008 screening of Joe Dante’s legendary THE MOVIE ORGY, directly behind several well-known people in the front which of course included Quentin Tarantino, some years before he completely took over the place. I don’t know what they were talking about but it could have been just about anything and all I know is that at one point Tarantino was heard by me to exclaim, “I love MODERN PROBLEMS!” in case you were wondering how he felt about that particular Chevy Chase vehicle I sometimes wonder about. And the existence of MODERN PROBLEMS has long seemed like some sort of private joke between me and, well, I’m not really sure. Maybe LexG and other people who remember MODERN PROBLEMS. The film actually did pretty well when it opened on Christmas Day 1981 but not many other people ever seemed to like it, let alone love it. Chevy himself has always been dismissive, although a near-fatal electrocution he suffered on the set might have understandably soured him on the whole thing. The film was directed by Ken Shapiro, who he had a history with going back to his pre-SNL days of the Channel One Theater and THE GROOVE TUBE but after this they never worked together again and Shapiro never made another movie. If I bother to think about MODERN PROBLEMS for more than a minute the whole thing feels stranger and stranger, possibly a darker satire begun by various National Lampoon-related personnel as an R-rated comedy that was later smoothed down to a PG which meant a kid like me could have gone to see it. Revisiting the movie now makes me think I maybe shouldn’t have been allowed anyway since there are enough remnants of that more adult tone still in there. And though it’s never as funny as I’d like, enough random laughs come through to make me watch it again once in a while even as I wonder why I’m watching it again. Why am I watching it again, anyway? These are the riddles of MODERN PROBLEMS.
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Max Fiedler (Chevy Chase) is an air traffic controller living in Manhattan dealing with all the stresses of his life, including his girlfriend Darcy (Patti D’Arbanville) suddenly picking up and moving out with no notice. Driving home one night he finds himself behind a tanker truck which spills a mysterious green sludge onto his car and, not knowing that the truck is actually carrying nuclear waste, Max suddenly finds himself imbued with telekinetic powers to move objects and make things happen at his choosing. Attempting to get Darcy back into his life, the two of them head for a weekend outing at a house belonging to old friend Brian (Brian Doyle-Murray) who now lives with Max’s ex-wife Lorraine (Mary Kay Place) but things are soon tested by the arrival of self-help author Mark Winslow (Dabney Coleman) who makes no secret of the contempt he displays towards Max and his own interest in Darcy with Max beginning to lose it, finally making no secret about what sort of powers he has.
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Apparently director Ken Shapiro described MODERN PROBLEMS (I’m guessing in the press materials) as “CARRIE meets ANNIE HALL” which isn’t a bad pitch and sounds like it could have been one of the fake movies made by the Woody Allen character in STARDUST MEMORIES. Written by Shapiro & Tom Sherohman & Arthur Sellers, tonally it’s a film that falls somewhere between the R-rated approach of ANIMAL HOUSE and the more kid friendly MEATBALLS, a stopover before GHOSTBUSTERS made things acceptable for all, post-John Belushi and all that drug humor. Somewhere in there is the grubby sexism of the National Lampoon fuck-the-world nastiness that was the forte of some of these people and maybe it needed Harold Ramis to figure out the right sort of balance when he directed Chevy in the first VACATION a few years later bringing an almost nostalgic, as well as therapeutic, approach to the sacred cows being satirized while still pausing for the fate of the dog that Clark Griswold forgets to untie from the car. The bones at the heart of MODERN PROBLEMS feel like the story of people (well, men) who grew up in the 60s trying to figure out what to do once they get to be 35 and the ‘80s begin, terrified by how fast things are changing but especially by women who have their own thoughts and the other men who might be showing an interest in that. Which is a more adult concept than gaining superpowers but it’s a fair guess that the studio wanted the potential wackiness of Chevy becoming imbued with telekinesis to be the draw so someone like me could see it and since SUPER FUZZ hadn’t turned up on HBO yet what else were they supposed to do?
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So MODERN PROBLEMS doesn’t feel made entirely without thought, even while it plays like the director wanted things to be as broad as possible at every conceivable moment. At least it’s weird, although this means there’s not much in the way of a consistent tone with a few of the supporting performances containing bits of interesting characterizations up against the lead role played by Chevy that never feels completely formed. One line blatantly tries to sell us on his hapless likability as if forced to by studio notes when his friendly ex-wife Mary Kay Place calls him, “a prince who thinks he’s a frog.” But he just seems like a drag a lot of the time, the film resisting making him the smarmy Chevy of Weekend Update and CADDYSHACK in favor of a regular guy who can say all the right things to a mannequin that he can’t say when his girlfriend is actually in the room but they can’t make him likable. He’s kind of a jerk but the film doesn’t come up with enough ways to make him an interestingly flawed jerk so all that’s left is his insecurity even if you’d think that the portrayal of what would now be thought of as toxicity could maybe even add to the satire. With everything that’s going on around him so much of the time, Chevy is kind of left glaring at it all.
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There is an idea somewhere in all this of a guy who has to confront his own self-hatred before finally being able to open up himself to the love of his girlfriend but the focus is really more on the next big comic setpiece. The Vincent Canby review in the New York Times mentions “four short but hilarious sequences” sprinkled throughout and I could probably guess at what they are (sadly, Canby isn’t around anymore to confirm), like the brief stop in traffic during the opening credits where everything seems to go wrong which isn’t bad in a silent movie way or maybe the early scene at a restaurant, also played without dialogue, when Max catches the eye of a woman who it turns out is on a date followed by a chain reaction of other people catching the eye of someone at another table. It’s not badly done even if the blocking of the people at the other tables doesn’t feel quite so elegant but it does present this world where everyone doesn’t just want to be with another person, they want to be another person entirely and Max can’t even admit that to himself. All this feels like it’s going for a point, along with the portrayal of the word of bitter, exhausted air traffic controllers which conceivably represents all of society falling apart while still never very well developed.
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Scattered in among the various elements like the annoying would-be romantic rival Barry played by Mitch Kreindel (maybe best known for trying to pick up Peter Sellers’ Chauncey Gardner at the embassy party in BEING THERE) or pieces of dialogue like when Brian says that Mark Winslow is “always one step ahead of the Village Voice”, the film seems to want to spend more time on Max getting acquainted with his newfound powers and one imagines Ivan Reitman taking mental notes while watching it on how to adjust the tone when making a PG supernatural comedy. More random are possibly some of those other short but hilarious sequences which Canby was referring to, like Chevy causing chaos at the ballet (the ballet star is named Stolichnaya, ha ha) or maybe even be causing Barry to suffer a horrendous, and gory, nosebleed at a restaurant, which is actually much more unpleasant than I ever thought at the time and something that probably wouldn’t have been done just a few years later, even if the guy is going after Max’s girl and from the film’s point of view kinda sorta deserves what’s coming to him—he also reminds me of someone so maybe I’m projecting just a little, but we don’t need to go into that. Some of this is at least in the ballpark of funny if not actually funny, among several ideas that are half-formed like the sight gag of the first look at the beach house which isn’t that good a joke anyway but then the film is still stuck with it.
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Max is allegedly the nice, normal guy but he’s miserable, up against the supporting characters who are everything he’s not. Girlfriend Darcy just wants to live a normal life, to love him and maintain her own career at the same time but he doesn’t know how to communicate with her and even when he uses his new powers to pleasure her in bed (another reminder of how I saw this PG movie at a certain young age) he’s still unfulfilled by the whole thing. Ex-wife Lorraine wants to avoid negativity and is excited to try something new, old friend Brian is able to laugh at his sexual misfortune in Vietnam and Dabney Coleman’s Mark Winslow, a prick right from his first line of dialogue, is all about taking everything for himself, a self-help author whose selfishly hostile approach seems designed to turn people against each other. On the other hand, he’s the one who gets the line, “Life sucks so why not be a schmuck?” which really doesn’t seem like all that bad a philosophy to maintain at certain times.
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All of this leads to the final half-hour where everyone meets up at Brian’s beach house and Max starts to crack up giving us the long dinner scene where Max finally shows everyone his powers with things becoming more about the complicated special effects than the jokes but it still feels like not very much happens even if, in fairness, the film does give us a look at Dabney Coleman’s ass. The idea of an EXORCIST spoof only about battling one’s own demons isn’t bad but it still feels a little rushed through with Chevy’s possessed nature in the last third meaning that it doesn’t feel like he’s even present much of the time and a few of the characters just drop out of the movie entirely. Of course, it all leads to the climactic drug humor involving “voodoo powder” plus Chevy’s “I LIKE IT!” declaration that everyone seems to remember and when you think about it, if this isn’t cinematic immortality what is?
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The homophobia of the leather bar/book party and casual racism in the portrayal of Nell Carter’s live-in Haitian housekeeper Dorita is all worth pointing out although a brief kitchen scene with Carter, Mary Kay Place and Patti D’Arbanville likely qualifies the film as passing the Bechdel Test, if we’re keeping track of such things. Maybe it’s an issue of energy in the way some of these short sequences, as Vincent Canby referred to them, just abruptly happen with no time given to building to anything so it’s like the film is missing a big setpiece in contrast to all the smaller setpieces. Whether or not MODERN PROBLEMS should be called good, it still fascinates in a certain nasty, sleazy way and considering how many people refer to this as one of the worst comedies of Chevy’s career/SNL alum history/all time, I guess my feeling would be that there’s almost something perversely comforting about it by now. Even the “Gonna Get It Next Time” theme by The Tubes that plays over the credits is still pretty catchy and the way it gets worked into Dominic Frontiere’s score helps it stick in one’s brain for the next forty-plus years. It’s a better film than FLETCH LIVES, at the very least. In the end, MODERN PROBLEMS is only 92 minutes so all this is over with pretty quick but also, maybe more importantly, separated from all these years after seeing it as a kid a few of its problems are more relatable than I ever expected.
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This is still fairly early in the Chevy Chase movie star run and much as I like FOUL PLAY or SEEMS LIKE OLD TIMES not to mention CADDYSHACK I’d argue that there isn’t a really sharp cinematic characterization from him until the first crack at Clark Griswold in 1983. There’s something in his look at the time as he wreaks that brings the right sort of madness to the moment where he wreaks havoc but when things need to be momentarily normal it’s like he doesn’t always know how to portray such a simple moment. Up against all that, Patti D’Arbanville (never mind the Andy Warhol background or relationships with the likes of Cat Stevens and Don Johnson, her film & TV career feels like the definition of random) displays a sweetness and even perceptibility at times even if the part is basically The Conflicted Girlfriend. Maybe she’s no Beverly D’Angelo as these things go but she still brings to it whatever emotional stakes the movie actually has. Mary Kay Place, from that party once upon a time, is always an engaging presence somehow creating a fully fleshed character out of not much at all, plus Brian Doyle Murray gets a few moments as well; the shot when he continues to cut his food as someone hovers above them at dinner even gets me to laugh out loud.
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But it’s still not much of a surprise that the whole thing is stolen by the great Dabney Coleman who gives the funniest performance that is so good he even manages to perfectly time the moment near the end when he gets by a wave right after turning around as he marches out to the ocean. He has some of the best dialogue too, making the material feel stronger than it is with one particularly good scene when he recites a list of his favorite things out on the beach with a pronunciation of the name “Martin Scorsese” for the ages, maybe the single best moment of the entire film.
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In the parlance of our times I suppose parts of MODERN PROBLEMS qualify as problematic, not that there’s any point in spending too long on such things. It’s unavoidable that Christmas 1981 feels like a long time ago now, for lots of reasons. The Belushi-Aykroyd NEIGHBORS was also playing then and did slightly better business but they both feel like a couple of the stranger SNL-connected product to ever get out there. It is an odd product of its era, down to the strange coincidence of being about an air traffic controller came out just a few months after Reagan fired the air traffic controllers when they went on strike so even the film couldn’t anticipate what sort of problems the modern ‘80s were going to include. Ken Shapiro died in 2017 having moved to Las Cruces some years before. Chevy is still Chevy, or at least he appeared to be the last time I checked his Instagram account. Also worth pointing out is how much used DVDs of this film out there seem to be going for so presumably someone else is still watching this thing. Maybe Tarantino can write about his love for it in his next book. For now, I guess the only thing to do is figure out a way to move on past all those regrets from long ago, some of them more substantial than having to do with people I met at parties. Of course, some of those problems are more modern, and painful, than others.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-22049407094427785882023-02-16T18:26:00.006-08:002023-02-16T18:47:57.674-08:00As Far As You Can<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrebZumaqdrlf-Pnuc2__dkU8PUgzdWk1inZEHrPKQPu6Zkiejj4rElH1RA8rmPKFfsSVK_H3tED_QymS0_vBhZyxys_rxyItqVYCgpjfMSsABKsCX12U2JXKdasg6EM0ZB54biFN9X2ZB3UHVU5LnWwgwM1Sbz-xNPe48pvt9RBO2wvUNRyrgciMbog/s510/ItsMyTurn1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="333" data-original-width="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjrebZumaqdrlf-Pnuc2__dkU8PUgzdWk1inZEHrPKQPu6Zkiejj4rElH1RA8rmPKFfsSVK_H3tED_QymS0_vBhZyxys_rxyItqVYCgpjfMSsABKsCX12U2JXKdasg6EM0ZB54biFN9X2ZB3UHVU5LnWwgwM1Sbz-xNPe48pvt9RBO2wvUNRyrgciMbog/s400/ItsMyTurn1.jpg"/></a></div>
Until shortly before I wrote about it some years back, I’m not sure I’d even heard of Claudia Weill’s <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2015/10/she-is-on-her-side.html">GIRLFRIENDS</a> but the cult seems to have grown since that time which likely comes from airings on TCM which is where I first saw it, rep screenings at places like the New Beverly in L.A. and Metrograph in New York, a Criterion Blu-ray loaded with special features as well as every time someone on Film Twitter discovers Stanley Kubrick was a big fan. This newfound rep is well deserved, since GIRLFRIENDS is a wonderfully insightful look at female friendship and having to sometimes keep going on your own that still feels relatable forty-five years after it was released. See it if you haven’t. So far there hasn’t been the same level of appreciation for IT’S MY TURN, the one and only other feature directed by Claudia Weill which followed in 1980 and is probably now best known for giving the world the adult contemporary staple that is the Diana Ross song of the same name. In the years following, Weill continued to work in television and theater along with teaching at various universities but there haven’t been any other features, which seems at least partly due to a horrible experience with producer Ray Stark on this film, as discussed by her in the 2021 Vanity Fair article <a href="https://archive.vanityfair.com/article/2021/3/promising-young-women">“Promising Young Women”</a>. This of course is unfortunate for all sorts of reasons, not the least that it would have been nice to get more films along the lines of GIRLFRIENDS if on a larger scale and while IT’S MY TURN never becomes as effective as that debut, it does display its own kind of potential in a lightly enjoyable way that now plays as an early version of the sort of thing the likes of Nicole Holofcener would go on to do. The difference is this one was made by a big studio and produced by people who would maybe be more at home with, say, a plot driven script of the sort someone like Ray Stark was probably used to. As a result, the film that came out of this feels like it’s fighting against any semblance of high concept in the story line and maybe plays as most comfortable when it’s in no rush whatsoever. Running only about ninety minutes, the film never quite surpasses the feeling of being a little too slight but is still quietly satisfying in a modest, hopeful way.
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Mathematics professor Kate Gunzinger (Jill Clayburgh) has reached a crossroads in her life, with a stable but not exactly passionate relationship with divorcee Homer (Charles Grodin) but when she travels to New York for a weekend for a job interview and to attend the wedding of her father she meets the son of his new wife, ex-ball player Ben Lewin (Michael Douglas). The two of them hit it off immediately but with so much of each of their own lives in flux Kate has to quickly decide if leaving the unrewarding stability of Homer is worth trying to make something with Ben work.
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IT'S MY TURN is uneven, not to mention uneventful, a little too much of the time with a tone that never becomes consistent enough to settle down in but it’s always pleasant with a performance by Jill Clayburgh that holds much of it together by sheer force. The screenplay is by Eleanor Bergstein who later went on to write DIRTY DANCING which makes it easy to wonder how much autobiography can be found in both to pair them together. It’s a film loaded with character beats and dialogue that always seems to be searching for layers but the most effective and comfortable moments that come out of Weill’s direction seem to be when it simply breathes, just willing to linger on a close-up of Jill Clayburgh and do nothing else. Her innate relatability always has just the right effect and the actress was phenomenal at infusing tangible life into deceptively small character moments although when she has to go for more broadly comical bits here of the stumbling in her heels variety it can look like she’s trying too hard, causing the film to seem uncertain about its own tone as well. “Why are your clothes so dumb?” Michael Douglas asks her in one scene out of nowhere, referring to all those scarves she drops even in the opening shot and you can see in her eyes how upset this makes her as well as getting her to wonder why she makes things like that more complicated than she needs to. The film has a casual approach and it makes the people around her believable but it doesn’t always keep them complete fleshed out beyond those moments where they suddenly make sense, leading to dialogue that sometimes feels straining for the answer of what the scene is supposed to be about. The right elements are there and it maintains a lightly enjoyable, springtime vibe but still feels like an idea that isn’t completely formed yet.
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In spite of such drawbacks, the film is so modest that it hardly seems like the sort of thing worth getting upset over but some of the critical response when it was released in October 1980 comes off as a little too nasty for something so small and sincere. The Razzie nomination for Worst Screenplay barely even seems worth acknowledging while Roger Ebert just seems mildly annoyed by the whole thing in his two star review and he’s not even wrong about everything he says but there is the feeling of going slightly overboard with the criticisms. All this aside, IT’S MY TURN plays like a charmingly low-key character piece that wants to be a commercial romantic comedy but the plot doesn’t quite have to juice to get it there. It’s a light piece of work, with a bouncy score by Patrick Williams (many film & TV credits, including for USED CARS and HERO AT LARGE around this period) that feels like it would be right at home as the theme to an MTM sitcom of the time but in this context feels like it’s straining a little too hard for a certain tone. There’s potential in the setup that maybe lacks a real narrative spine to go with the character approach and feminist thematic focus, so while there’s always a believably honest sense of inner life to the main character it still feels like something is missing.
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Still, it has Jill Clayburgh so maybe not much more is needed. At the very least it’s always her movie, letting the actress own the screen as someone you want to follow while hoping Kate makes the right choice. Michael Douglas, during the period when he was still getting his movie star sea legs by playing supporting to female leads in films like this, THE CHINA SYNDROME, COMA and even <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2014/05/like-shooting-star.html">ROMANCING THE STONE</a>, matches up well with her playing someone equally at sea in his own life—we don't know the full extent until near the end—looking for something that makes him feel as good as when he played ball. He brings a welcome energy and you can always feel Douglas trying to make the scenes work, as if trying to needle Clayburgh in character to add chemistry to their relationship. This is especially spotlighted during a stretch of the film that goes on for roughly ten minutes with the two of them in her hotel room, doing little more than flirting, kissing, talking, bickering, then agreeing to table things and the patience the film displays at times is admirable with a flow to how these moments are just allowed to happen. If it had kept this going for much of the running time, maybe even turning that one night into the entire film like the Richard Linklater BEFORE series did much later on, instead of getting bogged down in side issues and characters who get introduced then disappear, it might have been something really special. Some of those scenes end practically before they’ve even begun, abruptly cut short before there can be any real emotional effect, making one wonder why the film bothered with them at all unless it was simply to get the movie to feature length. It’s the inner workings of the chemistry between Clayburgh and Douglas that the movie feels like it wants to explore, one which is worth exploring with a tension to it all as he challenges her but it still feels effortless and could likely support the entire movie if it wanted to spend that much time with them.
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It does make sense that the main character in a film who is a math professor would be meant to represent some sort of metaphor for how all those complex equations related to how screwed up their life is, that no matter how expert they are in mapping these things out they’re still going to be groping in the dark like everyone else when it comes to actual life. An early shot of Clayburgh traversing an overly complicated garage layout just to get home to the loft she shares with Homer work perfectly as a symbol for how much she’s making her life a little more complicated than they need to be, just like how much mater on she keeps offering more suggestions on how she and Douglas can rearrange their flights home, always looking for the logic and numbers more than anything that emotionally makes sense. All of this feels like it’s trying to tie into the questions of how can a woman have it all in the feminist discussions of the time, the inherent awkwardness in these relationships, especially when she brings up the question of how many people are really in the bed she’s sharing with Douglas. When the film is willing to stay with them, in no rush to get anywhere else, it has a life. The lack of effort apparent in their chemistry matches up nicely with the scenes she shares with Charles Grodin, playing it charming but charming in the style of someone on cruise control, who doesn’t need to try any harder beyond making the unwanted jokes before going back to his own stuff, never wanting things to get too serious since that would cause everything to change, all coming out of the realization that a lot of space in a relationship isn’t the most fulfilling thing.
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Among the prominent New York locations that appear (Marshall Brickman’s <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2013/09/an-infinite-number-of-truths.html">SIMON</a> can be spotted playing at Cinema II across the street from Bloomingdale’s) is an extended sequence set at Yankee Stadium where Ben takes Kate to what turns out to be an Old Timer’s Day featuring the likes of Mickey Mantle, Roger Maris and Whitey Ford among many others which would likely be a treat for any longtime New Yorker/Yankee/baseball fan--according to imdb, filmed at the actual old-timers day on June 21, 1980 when I was likely across town being taken to see the Broadway musical BARNUM for my birthday. The ex-ballplayer played by Michael Douglas is right there alongside them, of course still looking pretty young and trim (a shoulder injury ended Ben’s career, so we’re told). Kate asks someone how old you have to be to be an Old Timer and she’s told, “Not old. Just finished,” which is a little on the nose but still a reminder of how you have to decide if you want to be finished or not. The sequence goes on much longer than necessary since it doesn’t really serve any real purpose past a certain point—again, it feels like stretching things out to get to the 90-minute mark—but it does tie into the overall theme of Ben being someone who was forced to give up his career but still has to live the rest of his life. It all doesn’t necessarily have to be etched in stone for Kate who still has the power to change things. What’s missing is a way to somehow firm down the concept beyond various scenes that serve as little more than casual get-togethers and dinners where people get acquainted. In spite of what the basic logline sounds like it might be it never becomes a movie centered around a wedding or even the weirdness of two kids of an older married couple falling for each other. “I love you, sis,” is a pretty good line that goes by fast so the whole thing is basically a nonissue and even when the actual ceremony comes the sequence is over with pretty quick. The film is more about the chemistry that quickly develops and the question of whether their lives will allow it to keep going. Through all this, moments of sensitivity stick out even if they don’t feel quite connected to the whole, like Steven Hill and Beverly Garland excusing themselves from their wedding when she sees he’s feeling tired, a small moment where something goes unspoken that becomes much more effective than all the conversations whether it’s not entirely clear what dialogue is specifically referring to and what we’re supposed to take from it.
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So, in the end, what does IT’S MY TURN have? It has Jill Clayburgh, during that brief moment in time when ‘Jill Clayburgh movie’ qualified as a subgenre and her inherent likability is what carries it, the vulnerability she displays is what makes us root for her. It also offers a glimpse at the potential Claudia Weill displayed as the ‘70s turned into the ‘80s but there wasn’t going to be much of a place for this kind of movie for the next few years but she always seems focused on bringing a sensitivity to things, one series of silent looks between various characters displaying more sensitivity than all of those longer dialogue scenes. It even gives us a look at more relaxed versions of Michael Douglas and Charles Grodin than they got to do at other points through the years. The result may be too vague to fully connect so IT’S MY TURN feels mild and maybe a little small in the end, one of those films where just as it feels like things are beginning to build so they can pay off, that’s when the end credits roll. But it does contain an earnestness in the way it explores someone facing the need for change in their lives even when they don’t realize that’s what they need, the way Charles Grodin’s Homer is perfectly happy to remain in a cruise control status. People in your life are going to make changes, even if you’re not ready. And, by the way, you should too especially if you feel like you’ve been settling. Through all this it’s hard not to have the feeling that this film is compromised in a way that at least diluted the intended effect; in the Vanity Fair article Weill talks about a shadow cut being prepared at the same time without her knowledge during the editing process so it’s hard to know how compromised the release version might be. Of course, it’s always possible that the script wasn’t strong enough or Weill’s lack of experience working on a studio film was a factor but the lack of consistency makes it easier to believe in the possibility of things being messed with, whether by Ray Stark or the studio. Having said this, all we can really go on is the final film which has more than enough to defend it at least partway. It’s about that point in your life where you suddenly find yourself asking, “Is it over? Am I done? Is anything else going to happen to me or is it all set? Can I still do something to change things?” That’s one thing you realize. People in your life are going to make changes, even if you’re not ready and, by the way, you should too. Especially if it feels like you’ve been settling.
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The material may not be there in the way it was for Jill Clayburgh in some of her best films like <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2021/10/ever-since-you-left.html">AN UNMARRIED WOMAN</a> and <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2021/02/questions-we-cant-ask.html">STARTING OVER</a> but even during moments where the plot seems to be straining to explain her feels she always feels so relatable that it elevates things closer to where it needs to be. Even when a scene doesn’t quite click what’s always most important is that sense of yearning in her eyes. Some of Michael Douglas’ character almost is played between the lines or in asides meant to explain him a little too easily, how he is looking for something to care about now since baseball is no longer there, while Charles Grodin in a more relaxed mode than he often is paints a fleshed out portrayal of someone who simply wants to be comfortable. The always dependable Steven Hill and Beverly Garland aren’t quite around as much as you’d expect them to be but they bring some added gravitas to the family relations. There’s also early appearances by Daniel Stern (like in the previous year’s STARTING OVER, playing a student in a classroom) and the recently departed Charles Kimborough (also briefly in, what do you know, STARTING OVER) plus Dianne (spelled Diane) Weist in her first film, introduced as a close friend and is allowed to make a nice impression but not much more than that, really one moment where she offers some boilerplate advice then that’s about it.
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Based on the two movies we got it’s hard not to wonder what other films made by Weill might have been, something that combined the best of GIRLFRIENDS with the slicker production values of the second film and seeing that she placed PHANTOM THREAD on her recent top ten Sight & Sound list makes me wish even more that we’d gotten a streak of romantic comedies from her through the years. Plus according to Wikipedia she’s from Scarsdale so that makes me even more willing to defend her. To get back to the Ray Stark angle, in his recent book CINEMA SPECULATION Quentin Tarantino refers to him as “one of the town’s biggest bullies, and he was responsible for mangling more films than an El Paso drive-in movie projector” so one assumes he’s heard a few stories about the producer who died in 2004. Maybe some of them were even about this movie. Tarantino also refers to GIRLFRIENDS briefly in his book as part of a list of key titles of the era’s ‘New York low-budget aesthetic’ he would encounter during his formative years and a Claudia Weill double bill was part of the schedule at the New Beverly Cinema a few years back during a month devoted to female directors with IT’S MY TURN shown in 16mm, apparently the only print that was available. I was there that night and so was, among others, a certain Oscar nominated writer-director of a popular mystery franchise. The film doesn’t even seem to have done all that bad at the 1980 box office (taking in more than STARDUST MEMORIES, less than OH, GOD! BOOK II) but only that song has really survived in pop culture which makes sense considering how tough it is to get it out of your head. More recently the film has turned up on Tubi where a lot of buried and forgotten Columbia titles can be found. In the end, what IT’S MY TURN has along with the lead performance and sheer display of potential is that small glimmer of hope that can be found it those odd weekends when someone unexpectedly appears. Sometimes the answer is simpler than you realize. And that’s when the real work begins, if you’re lucky. Which doesn’t always happen. Hopefully it does. These days I'm trying to remember that.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com1tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-61724459587689360222022-11-19T15:33:00.002-08:002022-11-19T17:36:43.258-08:00The Roads Are Straight <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaCbJbmv1XV_zF0EiLN62AiOAgX0MOudCiCboAyzpg5QeTTH1klSn-Zp_kmCbBxO1UtDWV3-PjsTHGm_UrHP67iuCaZxRd3APA0B11zIAf4f3Y9Y-5-56SP8-_5k_Egvz9juKyWZqBKRobjB3juVUelDTKFsX3CV5gkhv21XPuiOC-sNSJqSjG1rQ14g/s600/TwoLane16.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="450" data-original-width="600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhaCbJbmv1XV_zF0EiLN62AiOAgX0MOudCiCboAyzpg5QeTTH1klSn-Zp_kmCbBxO1UtDWV3-PjsTHGm_UrHP67iuCaZxRd3APA0B11zIAf4f3Y9Y-5-56SP8-_5k_Egvz9juKyWZqBKRobjB3juVUelDTKFsX3CV5gkhv21XPuiOC-sNSJqSjG1rQ14g/s400/TwoLane16.jpg"/></a></div>
Thinking about movement right now. What I’m doing. How much has happened and what hasn’t and what causes me to feel like I’m still in the same place. I’m thinking about a lot of things these days, there just haven’t been any realizations, at least none I want to share here. Because things have changed. Maybe they’ve changed too fast. And, whether you like it or not, feelings fade away but there’s a lot I don’t want to get into right now. Even the thought of going to the movies doesn’t do very much for me these days which may be my inner snob waiting for the Arclight or Vista to come back. At least there’s still the New Beverly, a place that I’ve been going to long enough by now that I’ll even see things I’ve already seen there for the sheer pleasure of the experience. My first ever viewing of Monte Hellman’s TWO-LANE BLACKTOP happened there long ago, paired with <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2010/03/one-day-you-wonder-why-youre-doing.html">CISCO PIKE</a> which at a certain point became another one of my obsessions. Soon after the place reopened in 2021 post-lockdown there was another viewing of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, this time paired with COCKFIGHTER which also was directed by Monte Hellman and starred Warren Oates. But deep down I was there to see TWO-LANE BLACKTOP again. It’s a film I still think about and seeing it after a year of being stuck at home was a reminder of what it can be like to get lost in such a movie when it’s there in front of you, to dream of being that free along with the limitations of that freedom which eventually become clear as they always do. Hitting the road without a care of where I’m going still sounds nice but it’s not going to happen right now. Maybe watching this film late at night, because this is a perfect film to put on late at night, helps me do it in my dreams. But where do I go next? Is there an answer? Maybe I’m searching for that too. Searching for why I still do certain things.
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Monte Hellman directed TWO-LANE BLACKTOP which has long been famous, or infamous, as the movie Esquire put on the cover not long before it was released in July 1971, nominating it as ‘the movie of the year’ as if trying to will it into becoming the next big thing and even published the entire screenplay inside. None of this helped the film when it opened and didn’t do much business—several good reviews are excerpted on Wikipedia so it wasn’t a total rejection—but interest grew through the years and by the time the belated video release came along in 1999, apparently delayed due to pesky music rights, the cult was there waiting. This is a film that feels like it was made for people who are willing to wait. Even though this emerged during the post-<a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2018/09/all-walks-of-life.html">EASY RIDER</a> period the film still manages to feel outside of the time it was likely meant to capitalize on while still fully a part of that, more about people drifting away from the mainstream than heading towards the counterculture who may have been attracted to it. And even though I wasn’t around at the time to speak to how all this might have felt, right now when TWO-LANE BLACKTOP plays the reaction I always have feels like the real deal as I drift along like these people in my own form of isolation. Only, like I already said, I’m not going anywhere right now.
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The Driver (James Taylor) and The Mechanic (Dennis Wilson) are driving through the country east from California in a modified ’55 Chevy, picking up money from street racing. At a certain point they pick up The Girl (Laurie Bird) who is allegedly hitchhiking but just settles down in their car with her duffel bag not saying a word. After passing by the talkative G.T.O. (Warren Oates) a few times in his own fast car which is of course a G.T.O., they agree to a bet: race to Washington DC for pink slips to see who’s faster with The Girl still along for the ride and the two in the Chevy even willingly stop when G.T.O. needs to have some work done on his own car. But as the race goes on and signs of darkness begin to appear, it becomes less clear just what the prize of their race really is.
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Driving can be about getting lost in what’s in front of you while staying focused on the road, the horizon. Getting away from somewhere, even if you’re going nowhere. When I think about driving long distances it’s never the music heard in all those montages that comes to mind. It’s the wind, the silence, the sound of the engine and the hope for what may come around the next turn. TWO-LANE BLACKTOP has this feeling, caught somewhere between semi-documentary realism and some vague memory of a dream I had long ago, somehow finding just the right way to take its visuals and turn them into a new kind of poetry. The shots, the moments, the glances, even the non-actor awkwardness of some of the line readings so if you get into the rhythm of the piece, willing to sit back and just listen, the right effect can hit, helped by a script (screenplay by Rudolph Wurlitzer and Will Corry, story by Will Corry) which is sparse yet tight in its look at the days when so much out there still felt empty.
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The two leads in that ’55 Chevy, known to us only as The Driver and The Mechanic, barely speak unless it’s about the car, The Driver not even bothering to answer questions unless they’re being asked by somebody who knows what they’re talking about. The Mechanic is maybe a little more friendly and forthcoming with The Girl left wondering why nobody answers her questions. When she mentions how she wishes they were still back in Santa Fe nobody says anything at all but it makes perfect sense since these guys never want to be back anywhere. G.T.O., along with his stylish sweaters that seem to change supernaturally, talks and talks over and over again, looking for someone who will listen to all the stories he tells about a past he’s creating in his own head. Somehow I suspect there might even be some truth in all these crazy lies he spins out that might lead to the secret of where he really comes from but we never find out.
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At times it all feels as blank as the characters whose names we never know, letting us fill in all those blanks however we want. Names would tell us too much about them anyway. All we need to know is what we know, all we need to know is who they are inside those cars. Even while James Taylor and Dennis Wilson stare straight ahead barely exchanging a word the personalities of The Driver and The Mechanic still bubble up a little letting us see signs of some hostility that might be coming between them, the more easygoing nature of The Mechanic sometimes making itself known when The Driver isn’t around to cool things off, only a few words about how the car sounds as a reminder that they’re practically in the middle of one long test drive across the country. But placed up against them Warren Oates as G.T.O. feels like the opposite of that blank even if we never learn a single thing about him that we can believe. There’s nothing like Warren Oates on the screen, there’s nothing like the sight of his smile, letting us get sucked into that charm while still tempted to keep our distance. And there are few sights ever seen in a film as serene as Oates just standing at a gas station, drinking a Coke, in no rush to get anywhere in the world and the calm that comes from the film as it pauses for this, just like it pauses for all sorts of things around these people to let us sit still and take in that quiet. It’s perfect for a film about the things you do and you know why you do them, you just can’t put it into words. If you could, you’d have to stop.
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Maybe as far as Universal goes this was an attempt to make a road movie of the moment, with famous musicians helping aim it at the youth market and, who knows, maybe they thought Monte Hellman just might be the next big thing but what it becomes both reflects back on certain films of the past—maybe by Antonioni, maybe by Bresson, it doesn’t matter—while still very much a part of what the future to come in ‘70s cinema. But what all this becomes really is its own thing, as individual as any of these characters. The way Hellman and cinematographer Jack Deerson view the four leads through the Techniscope frame makes them look like immortals forever moving through the Zen state the film achieves, even if they never quite do it for themselves. They stick to the country roads as if they have no choice, the cities out there always talked about in the abstract as someplace they might go, they could go, as if crossing those borders would be an end to all this. Instead they stay out there, passing through Santa Fe which appears to be bustling during the day but is hardly a big place and, like I imagine about many of the stops in the film, still looks pretty much the same after all these years, a reminder how during some of my visits I’ve even seen the occasional girl on the street there asking for change who looks like she could be out of this film. Thinking about that, I give them some change. Ironically for a film with a delayed video release due to music rights, so much of it is quiet and wants to be quiet, James Taylor insisting the radio be turned off because “it gets in the way”, Laurie Bird quietly singing something like “Satisfaction” to herself and the tape deck of relaxing tunes Warren Oates has ready for whatever any passenger wants to hear.
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G.T.O. himself suggests Washington DC when asked where they should race to—he even says the name unlike anyone ever has—and one of my favorite moments of performance is the pause Oates makes after making that suggestion as if he needs to think about what he just said for a second. The feeling of the road out there becomes a necessary part of the texture and there’s no sign of Route 66 neon kitsch, it all has a natural feel as if the celluloid itself is somehow connected with all those earth colors, all those places that have blended in with the land. As for the actual races, they’re barely brushed past and the only thing I get from them is how The Driver always wins and that’s it. The cockiness they display feels like they’re pulling a scam on whoever they’re racing but maybe The Driver really is just the best there is. The only opponent who gets any attention is played by screenwriter Rudolph Wurlitzer, last seen in a bar getting chewed out by his girlfriend but if the fight is because he just lost all his money or something else, we never know. Taylor’s driver gives him a look at least acknowledging something but there’s no camaraderie. By the end, The Driver is taking bigger risks with what he’s betting which would have to lead to a bad end at some point. Or maybe it never ends.
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The people on the road play as a reminder of a time when hitchhiking was much more of a thing, or at least so I’m told. The Girl is barely even seen trying to thumb any rides, she just gets into her various modes of transportation as if her presence in them is pre-ordained. G.T.O.’s statement that he’s been picking up ‘one fantasy after another’ is one of those pieces of enigmatic dialogue that really sticks with me, maybe because I’m not quite sure what he’s getting at with that guy who may be freshly escaped from the mental facility or Harry Dean Stanton’s cowboy who’s looking to be a little too friendly. Maybe G.T.O. is just looking for the right real person to tell his stories to, just the right one to make a connection with. The residents of the small towns they pass are just as suspicious of them not because they’re hippies but likely because they’re from somewhere else, presumably any of the big cities. That small, desolate Oklahoma town which seemingly contains nothing but empty buildings with windows to stare through is just something to escape from especially when the people there start to wake up, almost like a reverse horror movie.
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But that town is just a brief stopover. It’s the movement that makes TWO-LANE BLACKTOP what it is and it’s not always an easy movie to find your way into but the way falling into those rhythms becomes so hypnotic makes it one of those films that make me always trying to figure out what it is, knowing that I’m connecting with it somehow. There’s no point in spending much time on EASY RIDER comparisons since they have such different goals, although it interests me that the characters in both films travel west to east, going the opposite you’d expect a cross-country movie to go. What we think of as the world of the time isn’t much of a factor and the reminders we get of that are never very positive with The Girl’s brief mention of the Zodiac Killer and the closest to an appearance by an actual hippie, not counting how the guys are mistaken for them, is the one guy G.T.O. picks up who turns out to be the most nihilistic presence in the film, seeing no point to anything since we’ve only got 30 to 40 years. The scene cuts out fast, one of a few points when it’s like the film has decided to just get to the next scene, but it not only makes me think about the reality of the people in this movie who didn’t make it anywhere near that long but how the clock is running out faster than G.T.O. realizes. Giving a ride to an old woman and silent little girl heading to a cemetery is one more reminder of the dead end he refuses to acknowledge. The hippie says he believes his story but couldn’t care less. The old woman doesn’t hear a single word he says, even if it’s the one thing he tells a passenger that tries to make himself seem like a swell guy. Self-mythologizing only gets you so far.
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All this raises the question of how much actual meaning there is in dialogue we know is a lie but the cryptic nature of so much of the dialogue means that every line feels like it could be enigmatic even if it isn’t anyway. Maybe it’s G.T.O. trying to tell himself something to avoid saying the truth. And so much is also found in those silences, coming from two guys who know each other and don’t talk as opposed to the one guy who’s by himself and only wants to talk. No matter who she’s with The Girl seems like the girl she is but the few times she smiles she seems like a different person. By a certain point she seems older and more knowing, or maybe that’s when she just decides she doesn’t want to be caught between the guys in these cars, between anyone. She doesn’t want to go somewhere, she just wants to keep going. When she’s alone with The Mechanic they can actually laugh, play music and talk, maybe even take some pleasure in the coming dawn when the sun rises. The vibe gets more intense when The Driver gets her for a few minutes, their scenes veering between chemistry and veiled hostility that they’re not clicking the way each of them want to. Attempting to show her how to drive of course becomes a love scene as if he doesn’t know how to make it anything else and when he decides not to bother it can’t help but recall how John Wayne quickly gives up on showing James Caan how to shoot in EL DORADO, that late Howard Hawks display of his code of professionalism turning into the way The Driver and Mechanic live by their own code which isn’t quite Hawksian, their energy not quite always the same even as they are clearly always determined to get the job done. It’s just the job is one of never stopping. And The Girl doesn’t get to be part of that.
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They never really become a threesome which means the addition of G.T.O. doesn’t turn them into a foursome either. For a few minutes in almost total darkness somewhere in the middle of nowhere they seem to gel but even that sense of camaraderie is brief, never going past tentative. “Here we are out here on the road,” G.T.O. says as if he’s looking for a bonding session and The Driver seems to humor him for a few seconds. It would be nice to think they speak the same language but they really don’t at all, not the way Driver barely talks and definitely the way he doesn’t want to listen, never speaking the same language except when they talk to The Girl about the places they could go. They at least agree on how they want to avoid the people in those small towns, G.T.O. the one who calms down the situation with one local while waiting for his hamburger and Alka-Seltzer and for a brief moment he not only talks his way out of trouble for them, that tale he spins for the local becoming his own fantasy of what he probably wishes they could be. It only makes sense for them out there on the road until it doesn’t, until the reminders of the world start to become impossible to ignore and as it goes on those signs of hostility and death seem to get darker each time I rewatch the film. Maybe this prefigures an end they’re going to face long after the credits have rolled. They each want to possess The Girl in their own way but in the end she doesn’t even want that bag she’s been spending the movie lugging from one car to the next, finally shedding it like an unwanted skin as if realizing her true self will be possessing nothing at all and having no one possess her. She doesn’t want to be defined by anything or any of them, she just wants to be somewhere else entirely away from any of them, the only place she can be herself. Whatever her name is.
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The way they are, sticking to themselves, is the only way it can be. And The Driver, who maybe could try being a little less of a prick, can’t keep on brooding that way forever just as The Mechanic isn’t always going to hold back his own true feelings, the way Dennis Wilson plays certain moments as slightly wounded sticking out more and more. G.T.O. is never more truthful (probably) then when he’s talking to The Girl while she’s sleeping, speculating about the life they could have in Arizona that would keep him from going “into orbit”, for once spinning a lie out of a possible future that won’t happen, not a past we can only wonder about. That light cocktail music in the early morning hour, maybe this is what G.T.O. really wants to listen to and maybe it’s still playing in his head as he quietly jokes about “champagne, caviar, chicken sandwiches under glass” before settling on his eggs over light. They’re all trying to convince themselves of something right up until the final shot, as close as the film will ever get to an end but, come to think of it, there wasn’t really a beginning either. They were all just there and the ending is one the film itself eventually forces literally since these characters will never allow it themselves. “Those satisfactions are permanent,” G.T.O. says in his last scene to the soldier he picks up, to himself, to no one, after spinning one more story and he knows he’s going to be out there a while longer.
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That meeting point of the arthouse and the grindhouse is a reminder of how Monte Hellman’s involvement with the start of Quentin Tarantino’s career, serving as executive producer on RESERVOIR DOGS, makes perfect sense. But there is so much confidence found in each shot that categorization doesn’t matter. The film is whatever you want it to be. Speaking of which, even more than EASY RIDER one comparison that comes to mind is VANISHING POINT which opened earlier the same year then much later on was eventually more or less deified in DEATH PROOF. I’ve watched that film several times over the years and, yes, the car chase stuff is impressive and, yes, I like Barry Newman but each rewatch makes it feel like a movie that’s trying too hard to say something while saying nothing at all. TWO-LANE BLACKTOP in every ounce of the texture found in every moment always seems pure. “You can never go fast enough,” says The Driver, one of the few things he seems to say willingly, and maybe there once was a time when I would say that you can never see enough films but all this makes me ask why I’m still writing since there are days lately when I honestly can’t find the answer. Maybe some of it is about realizing what you’ve lost, or never got, as if trying to drive further away from that feeling. After many viewings I still don’t know why they keep driving, just like I still don’t know why I’m writing about all these movies. Maybe because I haven’t gotten to the last one yet and maybe I could say you can never see enough films. Then there are the days when I think about what I’ve lost and maybe the writing is my own way of driving further away from that feeling. Or maybe I’m just trying to find it again. After many viewings of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP, not to mention countless other films, I still don’t know why I do this, I still don’t know why I’m writing about them. Maybe the answer is always the same. Maybe what The Driver really means is that you can never go far enough. And maybe you can never go back to where you were. But that doesn’t mean there’s going to be anywhere else either.
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The performances may not always matter but their faces do, along with the way they interact with each other or even just by themselves so what we get from them is ingrained in the rawness of it all. And the performances do matter even if so much of the time they stay in their own heads anyway, which means the few times James Taylor actually seems to look at Dennis Wilson it causes a jolt to the senses. The very nature of the way Taylor plays The Driver as Taylor gives next to nothing to anyone else he interacts with except for maybe when he talks with Wurlitzer putting on an act and changing his demeanor in an instant. Against this Dennis Wilson plays everything with an affable nature as someone who mostly seems interested in nothing but getting under the hood to check out what sort of condition his car, anyone’s car is in, his small chuckles shared with no one and even talking about straining his neck the same way he talks about problems with the car. When the mood starts to turn you can sense in his movement how much The Mechanic is holding back on what he’s thinking, getting even quieter than he already was. Inhabiting The Girl with an impenetrable quality that fascinates on every viewing, Laurie Bird can’t really be called a natural actor since she’s not an actor at all (she was also in Hellman’s COCKFIGHTER and, more surprisingly, played Paul Simon’s girlfriend in ANNIE HALL and that’s it for film credits) but there is something in how she carries herself and often just focuses her eyes on someone, never quite seeming like the same person from scene to scene. Which is the way people sometimes are which makes her that much more real and never just The Girl of their dreams each of these guys might want her to be. It helps us remember all the little things she does as we realize in the end that maybe we never understood anything about her at all. Reflected against the three of them, it’s Warren Oates who provides the real sense of personality, star power and, especially, humanity that exists here, making you want to just listen to his stories about where he's been, never mind how true any of it is or how much we ever know about him. The more he talks, the more of an enigma he becomes, more than any of the others maybe because we’re still searching for whatever truth can be found in there. It’s an unforgettable performance that is tough to shake, haunting in the pain you suspect is behind the glory of that smile, wondering just how far he’s gone to try to get away from wherever he once was.
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A lot has happened, nothing much has happened at all. Some people are gone. Monte Hellman died in 2021. Several of the people in front of the camera already passed away some years back--Laurie Bird took her own life in 1979, Warren Oates had a heart attack in 1982, Dennis Wilson drowned in 1983. Of course, James Taylor is still going strong. One other interesting name in the credits is associate producer Gary Kurtz who died back in 2018 and his involvement interests me since he went on to be co-producer of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, a film not only also largely about driving in a way that reflects off each other but one that used the very same ’55 Chevy, that time driven by Harrison Ford’s Bob Falfa. Which means there’s some DNA of TWO-LANE BLACKTOP passed down to AMERICAN GRAFFITI, which means that some passed down to STAR WARS, possibly most strongly felt in the sense of movement brought to it by George Lucas and maybe Kurtz as well, that sense of going forward, of an unmistakable aesthetic where every single shot and cut builds up into that feeling of forward motion that irrevocably leads you somewhere far away from the starting point and you couldn’t go back even if you wanted to. Only one of these movies turned out to be the beginning of a future we still have to deal with but up against all of that TWO-LANE BLACKTOP is a film I always want to get lost in, get lost with, especially on those late nights. That feeling is one reminder of why I still want to go to the movies and get lost in those images in front of me, hoping for images that I want to get lost in. It’s a high I’m forever chasing, looking for the next film that I can’t shake, even while I still wonder what I’m trying to say with all this. It’s like a feeling of forever searching for the names of the people we never got to know because of the lives we chose to lead. And then on to the next film, the next race. There’s no choice. Everything else is far away.
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Let’s back up a little. Recently, thanks to a few of the streaming services out there I was able to watch FIVE EASY PIECES, THE LAST DETAIL and THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS all close together. Two directed by Bob Rafelson, one by Hal Ashby, all starring Jack Nicholson, making me think about the creative forces behind these films and how they helped turn the actor into the icon he quickly became. But wait, that’s not the place to begin. Earlier in the summer, while visiting Santa Fe for a week, I sat outside each night to watch the sunset while reading Matthew Specktor’s excellent ALWAYS CRASHING IN THE SAME CAR, a series of personal essays which ties in his own life and history through the stories of various figures with their own L.A. connections. These names included Tuesday Weld, Frank and Eleanor Perry, Carole Eastman, Hal Ashby and others so for a short time each night looking out at that spectacular New Mexico view, the L.A. past got seared into my brain which meant for a few moments it was like I’d never really left. And with screenwriter Carole Eastman comes thinking of director Bob Rafelson leading back once again to that masterpiece FIVE EASY PIECES they made with Jack Nicholson.
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But to go back much further in my own history all this gets me thinking about MAN TROUBLE, a now forgotten comedy the three made together much later on but also one of the first films I ever saw in L.A. back then, my first time at the glorious Village Theater in Westwood. The theater was too good for that film. With over 1,300 seats, it was certainly too big at least for the amount of people who showed up that night. While this marked the end of the collaboration between these three key figures of ‘70s cinema it all came at the beginning of my own L.A. story so, as usual, I missed out on the cool stuff and was far too young to grasp the significance of this so had no real appreciation for how notable this reunion really was. As a film, MAN TROUBLE is, well, not very good. Maybe this is putting it mildly. The film contains promising elements, certainly starting with the people who made it along with a cast that should very well make it bulletproof but almost nothing about the movie clicks and it never develops any consistent tone or rhythm plus for an alleged comedy it contains very little in the way of actual laughs or even charm. There’s a kernel of an idea even in the title, of a woman dealing with all the men in her life and the realizations these conflicts lead her to, but the film never seems to do much of anything with that. Something about it stays with me and I’ll get to the reasons for that eventually but right now all we have is the film, one that does little else beyond serve as a misbegotten latter day collaboration between some very talented people and as a memory from a time in my life that also now feels very long ago.
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Classical singer Joan Spruance (Ellen Barkin) has just split with her conductor husband when her apartment is burglarized. Understandably nervous that someone is stalking her, she takes advantage of her sister Andy (Beverly D’Angelo) going out of town to stay at her house and for protection hires a guard dog from a service run by Harry Bliss (Jack Nicholson), currently dealing with a bad marriage. Harry and Joan hit it off, helped by his not mentioning that he’s married, but during all this Joan still deals with threatening phone calls, the strange disappearance of her sister and the realization that a figure the papers have dubbed the Westside Slasher might now be after her as well.
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Even looking at it now FIVE EASY PIECES is a remarkable film, a character study that digs deep into the persona that is Bobby Dupea as played by Jack Nicholson and his intense self-loathing, backed up by the phenomenal Karen Black as the girlfriend he treats so terribly. Rafelson provides an intense focus to it all with his direction and the script by Carole Eastman is so incisive in its portrayal of such alienation that its strongest moments, such as the legendary diner scene with the side order of toast being insisted on, never really leave you. Back in those days the writer often went by the pseudonym Adrien (or Adrian) Joyce, with other prominent credits during this period including the screenplay for Jerry Schatzberg’s PUZZLE OF A DOWNFALL CHILD as well as the ‘English dialogue’ for what remains one of my very favorite films, Jacques Demy’s <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2008/06/dreaming.html">MODEL SHOP</a>. But it’s FIVE EASY PIECES that she’s known for which among other things plays now as one of the definitive portrayals of the onscreen Jack Nicholson persona and all the possibilities of what could really be done in a movie found in the glory days of ‘70s cinema. MAN TROUBLE doesn’t really have much to do with any of those things and even after several recent viewings part of me is still trying to clarify just what it is beyond an attempt at a light, goofy comedy that contains traces of what could be a more intricate character piece if you peer close enough, made by people who are probably more at home with much darker material. At the very least there’s a specificity to the dialogue at times that helps it seem like it’s coming from a personal place, at least on an observational level for the screenwriter, along with a certain low-concept vibe to the setup which at times approaches being charming in a zero stakes way.
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This comes especially when the two leads are first sizing each other up while spending an evening out at Yamashiro getting drunk on sake so it’s tempting to say that a movie doesn’t need much more than Jack Nicholson and Ellen Barkin flirting with one another. For a brief stretch Jack feels dialed in to the moment, Barkin gives off that bashful smile of hers and for a few minutes all we have to do is watch them be charming so there’s nothing wrong with any of this. The dialogue allows them to circle each other, wondering if any of this is a good idea, while we know all too well the secrets hanging in the air so there’s a pleasure to them just hanging out and eventually hooking up. Somewhere in all this is a character piece which unfortunately has to give way to a plot that becomes sillier and more nonsensical as it goes on, or maybe it should be referred to as several plots since there’s a few, spending long, baffling stretches on things like blackmail and other secrets being kept to the point that it would be appropriate to ask what any of this is really about, particularly a lengthy hospital sequence in the second hour where some of all this comes together, but not really.
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This was Eastman’s first screenplay credit since 1975’s THE FORTUNE which also starred Jack (and Warren too) and was directed by Mike Nichols, a screwball farce that to this day hasn’t been seen by many people and it’s a handsome, expensive looking production that never comes together, maybe notable now because of the production design along with an austerity that was a part of the Mike Nichols approach of the time but that’s about it. MAN TROUBLE is also in the screwball vein although never as ambitious but the pieces never click. Maybe Bob Rafelson wasn’t the right director for this sort of material and much of the time there’s a sense of flailing about a little too broadly, like an overly serious person trying extra hard to prove how funny they really are with an overall feeling to the performances that everyone needs to calm down a little. There are enough odd quirks that feel like if you squint you can make out the general tone it’s going for, like Veronica Cartwright as Joan’s best friend spending much of the movie on crutches with a cast on her leg, apparently due to a lawyer falling on her while sunbathing, and the actress doesn’t even do very much in the film but makes an impression solely by being Veronica Cartwright since this is the sort of movie where certain people are in the movie because, well, they just are. There’s also a certain nudnick nature to the dialogue which at times feels like it’s scrambling around in the dark searching for punchlines which it at least an attempt at approaching a certain irritating charm but while all this gives the script a unique flavor the film barely seems to catch any of it. In his book Matthew Specktor comments on Eastman’s proclivity for odd character names through her films and there is a certain pleasure to monikers like Harry Bliss, Joan Spruance, Redmond Layls and Helen Dextra but it makes me wish there was more to each of them beyond that. It’s an issue of tone and the film never seems to find it, feeling so low on tension that at times the looseness makes it feel like a bunch of friends getting together to make a movie on a whim, the way Jack’s old pal Harry Dean Stanton turns up playing the wealthy boyfriend of Joan’s sister in a role I’m not sure he’s totally right for but, in fairness, it’s not like we want to complain when Harry Dean Stanton turns up in any movie.
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Jack is top billed and these days especially it’s hard to complain about a film starring Jack Nicholson but his presence does help diminish the idea of a film being about women’s problems with men, like in the title of the thing. Ellen Barkin makes sense as the lead, a woman who has always tried to use her own intellectualism to talk her way around the inevitable flirting and avoid what she refers to as ‘conflictual situations’ as if trying to rationalize everything in her life only to finally discover that it never made any difference, surrounded by men like the ex-husband played by David Clennon, the nice guy always getting the brush off played by Michael McKean (two more examples of how this should be a film made even better by its cast but that’s not the way it goes) and the new guy in her life who doesn’t even bother to mention that he’s married. It makes all the more sense that she wouldn’t want to be like her self-absorbed, man hungry sister played by Beverly D’Angelo, the sort of person ready to automatically act unimpressed by anyone who dares speak to her. Separate from all this is Harry’s wife Adele played by Lauren Tom who gets one of the big running gags of the film in how he insists on calling her ‘Iwo Jima’, a joke that might not go over so well these days but none of their scenes develop into anything beyond the hostility so any reason why they ever got married, even a comical one, is just left hanging there. Tom, who just a year later had one of the lead roles in THE JOY LUCK CLUB, does manage to give the performance some dignity but there’s still not much to it beyond wondering why any of these scenes felt like a good idea.
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It's a comedy from the people who made FIVE EASY PIECES that opens with an animated title sequence which isn’t necessarily a bad sign in itself but it does say something about how maybe these were the wrong creative types to make this sort of movie. When Twentieth-Century Fox released it in July 1992 they didn’t even bother screening it for critics. It stands to reason that Nicholson was demonstrating loyalty to his old colleagues Rafelson and Eastman, and he presumably received whatever his fee was at the time, but the question was why this movie go made and not some of the other unproduced projects mentioned in Specktor’s book. Various stars and directors were attached to the project over the years and in some frank quotes to the Los Angeles Times shortly before release the normally reclusive Eastman insisted that this was never designed to be a reunion and seemed aware that maybe it shouldn’t have been saying, “Bob and I would kiss each other if we ran into each other on the street, but we probably shouldn’t make a movie again,” which suggests there were conflicts on this production that goes beyond anything she would give a quote on. So it’s a valid question why Rafelson chose to make this beyond commercial reasons or just an excuse to work with old pals since his earlier films never really demonstrate much in the way of broad comedy or farce. Time and again there are attempts at laughs which may not have been much on the page but even though you can tell what the joke is supposed to be it still gets fumbled in the timing, one more reminder that Rafelson just isn’t a director for this type of humor, even when it’s a joke that isn’t all that good to begin with. There’s never any real sense of flow to the pacing and with some abruptness at various points in the narrative the film ultimately feels sliced down to roughly 98 minutes to get it over with as fast as possible, which includes rolling the end credits before the final sequence has ended. Also not helping is a score by the legendary Georges Delerue, who died four months before the film’s release, which tries so hard to be ‘funny’ that it takes a tone which is already a little too broad and heightened to start with then pushes it up beyond any reasonable point.
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Something like FIVE EASY PIECES or THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS (not written by Eastman, but just go with it) felt like films that were made by people who had to make them. MAN TROUBLE feels like it was made by people who decided to make…something. And there’s nothing wrong with making a film that doesn’t want to be earth shattering. But it’s hard to find ideas here beyond the broad feminist strokes that would have allowed it to work. Harry shows Joan how to train her dog, she frets about while in the house alone late at night, they hit it off then they don’t but time and again while watching MAN TROUBLE you could ask, what is the point of a given scene? What is the conflict? What is any of this really about? Part of the movie can just be taken as a lark, looking at the way the two sexes deal with each other in a world where ads for slasher movies with women getting hacked up apparently play on TV all the time, but that’s not a good enough answer plus it also comes with a few straight suspense scenes like where Barkin gets terrorized by the stalker coming at her with an ax. Any thematic intents aside, in the middle of such a light tone it feels wildly out of place so once again just raises the question of what the overall tone is supposed to be, another indication that maybe this was a film being made by people who weren’t agreeing on things. It’s hard not to read more into what all this could have been—in addition to focusing more on the women it could have asked the question, what is the Jack Nicholson persona in the 90s? How does that relate to who women are at that point in time? Can he treat them any better than the way he treated Karen Black back in 1970? So help me, in the Me Too era this wouldn’t be a bad idea for a remake, not that there’s much value in the IP. Maybe at its heart is an old school, screwball ‘dog plays matchmaker’ sort of thing but even the dog, much as the characters gets attached to him, never has much presence either.
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In my mind it’s like all through the career of Bob Rafelson, from his early Nicholson films (including EASY RIDER which he produced) all the way to the likes of BLACK WIDOW and MOUTAINS OF THE MOON that came later, he explores character through genre and are about people so lost they end up wandering, possibly going too far in the end. There’s no wandering in MAN TROUBLE. Everyone is already where they want to be, right Los Angeles, with one key location right in the heart of Hollywood down the block from Miceli’s (now I want to go over and get their chicken parm). At one point Jack Nicholson even references the main house as being up on Mulholland Drive, a reminder that for all I know he lives right around the corner from where the scene in question was being shot. A few years later, Rafelson reteamed with Nicholson one more time on BLOOD AND WINE which is an enjoyable nasty, if minor, neo-noir that didn’t do much business and didn’t get much of a release by Fox Searchlight even though you’d think the presence of Jack Nicholson would have gotten them to put in a little effort. MAN TROUBLE was a high-profile flop in the middle of summer while BLOOD AND WINE just sort of slipped out unnoticed but it’s definitely worth seeking out if you haven’t seen it. Carole Eastman didn’t write that one but the most interesting similarity is how it also features a Jack Nicholson character in a bitter, loveless marriage (Judy Davis in BLOOD AND WINE is portrayed as more sympathetic than Lauren Tom in MAN TROUBLE, whatever that’s worth) which makes me think of Bob Rafelson’s first wife, Toby Carr Rafelson, who worked behind the scenes with him in a way possibly similar to the Peter Bogdanovich-Polly Platt dynamic during what can really be called his strongest period, FIVE EASY PIECES, THE KING OF MARVIN GARDENS and STAY HUNGRY. Her other credits include working as production designer on Martin Scorsese’s ALICE DOESN’T LIVE HERE ANYMORE as well as Jack Nicholson’s directorial effort GOIN’ SOUTH. So the similarity between the films along with wondering about this history raises questions that MAN TROUBLE is not really substantial enough to answer, even as Joan comes to the conclusion that she doesn’t need to please any of the men in her life and never did. Or maybe these questions don’t even need to be asked. It’s just MAN TROUBLE, after all, which is just a reminder that we were robbed of the promise of what once sounded like a potentially delightful Jack Nicholson-Ellen Barkin romantic comedy, a movie that is, or should be, about finding ways of being intimate through trust and truth. At least, I think that’s what it wants to be.
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If it’s a question of tone than part of it has to be the way the actors are directed and how they all go together. There’s an argument to be made that the films where Jack Nicholson sports a mustache (THE LAST DETAIL, THE BORDER, <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2011/05/old-enough-to-remember.html">THE PLEDGE</a>) have a little more edge to them, somehow preventing him from falling back on his usual tics but this film doesn’t do much to help that theory. Still, you watch him for a few isolated minutes here you might think it’s a better movie than it is, the way he always seems ready to dive in and look like a crazy person if need be with undeniable glimmers of that sharp coming timing when you least expect it. There are also such glimmers in Ellen Barkin, at her best here when she’s relaxed but at times feeling like she’s not getting the right direction. Revisiting THE BIG EASY recently was a reminder that Ellen Barkin in that film is one of the reasons the motion picture camera was invented in the first place and getting her in another romantic comedy should be flawless but the film around her doesn’t offer the support that she needs. Beverly D’Angelo, another personal favorite now and always, has moments but they seem isolated, never giving her enough of a chance to take over a scene the way her character seems to want to. Maybe the film just needed more of those moments and figure out how to use them, like the way everything stops to let Harry Dean Stanton’s lawyer played by Saul Rubinek compliment Barkin on the time her saw her perform the Battle Hymn of the Republic at the Hollywood Bowl and when he begins singing it himself it feels like the sort of effortless digression the movie could use more of. Paul Mazursky turns up too and, like a number of other actors in the film who maybe aren’t always seen at their best, at the very least it’s nice to have him around for a few minutes.
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But to go all the way back to 1992 once again, MAN TROUBLE somehow managed to play for two whole weeks at the Village (23 years after EASY RIDER opened there, which likely interests no one but me). The theater is miraculously still open, although Westwood mostly feels like a ghost town these days when I get over there; the exclusive run of LICORICE PIZZA in 70mm late last year was a nice reminder of how cool it once was to go to the movies in the area. But, and here is where my own memory kicks into place, walking out of the theater that night long ago I fell into a brief conversation with a woman who said she was friends with Carole Eastman and felt so bad about how the film we’d just seen had turned out. I’m not sure any reply I made was that interesting but the very idea of chatting with someone at an L.A. theater who knew the screenwriter was then such a new concept to me and there’s no more to the story than that but to this day I can’t help but wonder, who was this woman? How well did she actually know Carole Eastman? She seemed interesting in our brief talk and for all I know is a name I would now recognize. It would be funny if it turned out to actually be her, going out incognito to see her own movie, but somehow I suspect this wasn’t the case. This is all a long time ago but enough time has passed that I feel bad for the people who made it too. So I’m left wondering about a lot of things, including the writer who is a key figure in the mythology of such an important period in Hollywood history but still remains such a figure of mystery. Matthew Specktor doesn’t spend much time on MAN TROUBLE in his book and it’s not like there’s any reason for him to but after reading it I was compelled to order a used DVD of the film for a long overdue revisit. The day the disc arrived, July 23rd of this year, Bob Rafelson died and may he RIP. It didn’t seem right to put that one on right away so I watched FIVE EASY PIECES first, then followed it with MAN TROUBLE which makes for one hell of a double bill, let me tell you. Does any of this matter? Does MAN TROUBLE matter? Does any of the past thirty years since I saw MAN TROUBLE matter? It feels like an important memory, in ways I can’t even explain, all attached to what is a totally forgettable movie. And yet, I’m forced to remember it. I’m forced to remember all of it. I’m not sure any of this matters at all but as long as I’m still thinking about it I suppose it does. Just like these movies still do. Just like my life.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-37340424008939751272022-08-07T12:35:00.003-07:002022-08-11T19:55:46.792-07:00Probability and Outcome<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb--Utb0GL-keRdsoZeGS7HLAH1pZPXlasAEa8xtfwmQgo8xWVhVMDv9WEqCekQumtX2hfoAWWbsrEbaxXbF51Yqntuy5KT9dANC480uZPN__PFfESIQH4j8UQKTT4YpPcEL9uQ8HkdJZChbBjIW-GOq6yu-sVnWoS3FTXH2BCgIDoVLxhcdqKzwksdw/s1200/HeavenCanWait1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="821" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhb--Utb0GL-keRdsoZeGS7HLAH1pZPXlasAEa8xtfwmQgo8xWVhVMDv9WEqCekQumtX2hfoAWWbsrEbaxXbF51Yqntuy5KT9dANC480uZPN__PFfESIQH4j8UQKTT4YpPcEL9uQ8HkdJZChbBjIW-GOq6yu-sVnWoS3FTXH2BCgIDoVLxhcdqKzwksdw/s400/HeavenCanWait1.jpg"/></a></div>
Right now, I’m searching for signs of something good in the world. For one thing, there’s this friend of mine who always reports back whenever he sees Warren Beatty out having dinner at sushi places around town which always makes me happy to hear. It feels important to still have Warren Beatty somewhere in Hollywood, after all, even if he’s not going to make another movie at this point. Probably. I mean, you never know, right? Not knowing, after all, can be the definitive answer to what helps fuel an obsession and the feeling of obsession is a key part of certain Warren Beatty films, as well as a key part of his persona and our own attraction to those films. It becomes part of their power. This can even be felt in some of the films he didn’t direct, at least not officially, and helps connect them to one another whether thematically, politically or even emotionally. A line can certainly be drawn from his John McCabe of Robert Altman’s <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2018/01/until-people-stop-dying.html">McCABE & MRS. MILLER</a> to the hairdresser George Roundy he played in SHAMPOO, each man with big dreams but little follow through or awareness of how business (and, by extension, the world) really works. You could also go from McCabe building the town of Presbyterian Church to Bugsy Siegel intent on realizing his dream of Las Vegas and their ultimate fates. Even his John Reed and Diane Keaton’s Louise Bryant in REDS as seen in that early montage of creativity and expression during their early Greenwich Village days together is practically replicated in the flashback of Beatty’s Lyle Rogers and Dustin Hoffman’s Chuck Clarke beginning their collaboration in the early scenes of Elaine May’s ISHTAR, which itself leads to an encounter with world politics that attempts to destroy them. This is all for starters and the tone may be different in the films but there’s something about the feeling in them which stays the same, to pursue a dream to the point of obsession. What is life without a little obsession, after all? Beatty himself tends to be cagey about such things in the few interviews he’s given so, like many things in life, we’re forced to figure it out for ourselves.
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As a matter of full disclosure, when it comes to one of Warren Beatty’s biggest hits I’ve always been somewhat of an agnostic. 1978’s HEAVEN CAN WAIT, which he co-directed with Buck Henry, has long seemed like something of an outlier to me as the rare Warren Beatty film that was ‘just’ a commercial romantic comedy, a big star vehicle meant to be a big star vehicle. It’s enjoyable, but that’s about all I took from it. Maybe this is a roundabout way of simply saying that except for the resonance of the final moments I felt less of a connection to this one and it didn’t seem to have much to do with any of the others. Simply put, I couldn’t locate the obsession. A remake of 1941’s HERE COMES MR. JORDAN (directed by Alexander Hall, starring Robert Montgomery, Evelyn Keyes and Claude Rains), it’s a slick fantasy-comedy which isn’t all that different plotwise from the film it’s based on beyond substituting football for boxing and while certainly entertaining, there didn’t seem to be much more to it than that. Maybe I just felt lost in all that ‘70s gauze of the cinematography and bounciness of the Dave Grusin score so it always felt like there was a distance. As it sometimes happens, things change. The film played at the TCL Chinese during the 2022 Turner Classic Movie Film Festival earlier this year with Beatty in attendance so I had to be there. And at a certain point during the screening that night the film started to finally click, even if it wasn’t in the expected way. This is a star vehicle, yes, and one that is very much a product of 1978 when it was one of the top grossing films of the year (opening in June, it took the place of STAR WARS at the Chinese and played for a not bad 14 weeks), along with the likes of GREASE, JAWS 2 and EVERY WHICH WAY BUT LOOSE. But it has something that almost none of the others in the top ten of that year have, an awareness of how little certain things matter in life which can lead to a realization of what really does. And when that occurs, an obsession can finally take hold so now when placed alongside those other films, suddenly it all begins to make sense.
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After working his way back from a knee injury, Los Angeles Rams quarterback Joe Pendleton (Warren Beatty) is poised to start again for the team looking ahead to a Super Bowl victory. But his hopes are dashed with an accident while he is out riding his bicycle kills him and sends him to a way station taking off for heaven. His refusal to get onboard forces his escort (Buck Henry) to bring in Mr. Jordan (James Mason), leading to the determination that the escort messed up by removing him from his body a few seconds earlier than he should have from an accident that he would have survived. Searching for a new body since the old one has been cremated, Pendleton and Mr. Jordan arrive at the home of billionaire Leo Farnsworth, an industrialist in the process of being murdered by his wife Julia (Dyan Cannon) and personal private executive secretary Tony Abbott (Charles Grodin) who are both having an affair. Joe shows no interest in Farnsworth until he encounters Betty Logan (Julie Christie), an activist there to protest a power plant Farnsworth’s company is about to build which will decimate her hometown. Agreeing that this is only temporary, Joe takes over Farnsworth’s body, determined to help Betty but he quickly falls in love with her, making him prepared to stick around in Farnsworth’s body which gets him to convince trusted Rams trainer Max Corkle (Jack Warden) that he has what it takes to join back up with the team and help them win the Super Bowl.
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Forgetting for a moment my slight prejudice going into this screening, HEAVEN CAN WAIT is a breeze of a film. Every moment remains pure pleasure, a light fantasy-comedy with finely honed characterizations that carry it along seemingly effortlessly but always with a current underneath to add weight to this breezy story. The commitment everyone brings to the comedy gives things an added intensity, aided by dialogue that contains more intelligence, wit and in the long run more meaning than it would otherwise. The movie never transcends what this genre is at the center but it does let the emotion creep in until the end result suddenly resonates more than you would ever have expected and even when this feels restricted by the plot points that have to take place it feels ready to use it all to its full advantage. In a very simple sense, the film does so much right. On a surface level, all of this is true but it’s in the details where HEAVEN CAN WAIT feels most resonant, letting you sometimes dig for the extra layers.
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But to also break part of the plot down even more succinctly: A wealthy man surrounded by employees forced to deal with his madness that has seemingly appeared out of nowhere. This could be HEAVEN CAN WAIT, this could be <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2015/05/all-same-color.html">BULWORTH</a>. Maybe some of it is even part of <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2017/04/not-just-in-hollywood.html">RULES DON’T APPLY</a>. In the case of this particular film it’s almost a sidebar of the main storyline (screenplay by Elaine May and Warren Beatty, based on a play by Harry Segall) which, as far as we can tell for a long time, is primarily about Joe Pendleton’s determination to get to the Super Bowl. It’s all he really cares about at first and this is so important to Joe that he barely seems to think about the greater issue of, you know, his life having ended. Entering Farnsworth’s body does something about the way he sees things even if his motivation primarily comes from his very first look at Julie Christie. Who could blame him, of course, but what this does is set Joe on the right path to actually accomplishing something in this other body that would be good for the world. So while everything he’s saying and realizing makes perfect sense to us, the people around him are simply baffled, suddenly forced to deal with a Howard Hughes suddenly going full Bulworth, if you will.
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We never meet Leo Farnsworth and never see what he looks like but everything about him is completely absurd. His oversized mansion, his clothes, the way his servants dote on him, the possibility that he has looked into purchasing Haiti. Of course, these days all this makes him even more believable. When Joe takes over Farnsworth’s body, this puts him in the unique position not to care about any of this so when he begins questioning all these business practices and speaks out about doing better the fact that he’s making sense leads the people close to him to only one conclusion, that he must be totally crazy. Maybe the world is forced to pay more attention to how awful wealthy people are these days but it’s hard not to think about the BULWORTH similarities, another movie about a powerful man going off the rails by speaking the truth which even shares a slightly similar murder plotline, but even if that’s not quite the main thrust of HEAVEN CAN WAIT the message still gets across. When Joe-as-Farnsworth publicly announces at a board meeting that he’s putting a stop to the plant that will destroy Julie Christie’s small English hometown, it becomes secondary to the real point of the scene which becomes the big speech he makes to the increasingly baffled board of directors about how they’re going to have to spend more money in the future to do things right. The money doesn’t matter and they’ll get it back anyway, what happens based on what they’re doing is what does. Thinking about the long game instead of the quick win that these businessmen only care about, Joe is about focus, his mind always on training as he drinks those health shakes, his body ready to take as much pain during that scrimmage as necessary to prove himself, and he’s been so focused on that he’s realizing what’s going on around him for the first time even though he isn’t himself anymore. That bouncy Dave Grusin music doesn’t even come in for the first few minutes as if to indicate how the determination in Joe’s head doesn’t have space for anything else. In doing all this he’s simply applying what he knows to all this just as he plays the one tune on that soprano saxophone repeatedly, not because he’s any good at it but as a Zen sort of centering thing.
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The movie feels centered too and it has that seventies naturalism in the air to set it apart from the film blanc stylings of the original, right from the opening shot looking down on things that could be Mr. Jordan’s point of view as he waits for Joe to arrive and even the relatively simple visual layout of the way station where Joe is first brought has a simple elegance that goes perfect with the approach. The pleasures of HEAVEN CAN WAIT are numerous but come especially from the extra sharp wit in all that dialogue which presumably can be at least partly attributed to Elaine May, if not Beatty, but then again maybe Buck Henry, who knows? Every moment of Charles Grodin and Dyan Cannon bickering is priceless and Grodin’s “No, before. Outside. But she relives it,” about someone just having seen a mouse sounds like a line written by Elaine May if there ever was one but, whoever was responsible, this is a moment that belongs in the Smithsonian. And everyone is good in this movie, bringing to their parts an intensity that balances with the lighthearted nature to the storytelling. For that matter, so much of the comedy particularly the bedroom stuff may be nothing new but it’s still done so expertly thanks to the shrewd playing by the actors who know just what the timing needs to be for the laughs. It always feels like Beatty is fixated on the logic of it all as much as possible, whether the depiction of the way station Joe arrives in or to account for Joe still seeing himself in the mirror and not whatever Farnsworth looks like, always looking to talk things out so the plot makes as much sense as it needs to, along with using the idea of probability and outcome to break the plot down for Max in the same way.
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Through it all is the issue of what the film has an interest in spending time on. The longest film that Beatty has ever made is REDS which, at 195 minutes, was always meant to be an epic anyway. Many of the other films he produced or directed don’t even hit the two-hour mark and HEAVEN CAN WAIT moves like a rocket at a trim 101 minutes, even if it is seven minutes longer than HERE COMES MR. JORDAN. And it doesn’t need to be longer than that, it always has a purpose so each moment counts, pacing that feels like the equivalent of Joe racing from one part of the giant mansion to another while still getting all the necessary plot points in. At a certain point it’s almost like the film becomes about the very act of watching Warren Beatty run. But it still finds a way to pause for moments of weight and lyricism like Joe emerging from that well, Mr. Jordan waiting to lead him on, so once again it’s the Dave Grusin score which makes this moment all the more resonant, providing the lyricism felt when these dreams appear to be snatched away from Joe. The speed picks up even more for the last twenty minutes where it’s as if the only things in the movie are either necessary story points or business by the actors that Beatty likes too much to cut so if Vincent Gardenia’s investigating police lieutenant had any long expository speeches they were dropped because, well, who cares? What it doesn’t do is spend more time on stuff than it needs to so the resolution of the murder investigation and the Super Bowl victory all go by so fast you could almost sneeze and miss them. It’s the emotion the film dwells on that becomes important, even as Joe in his new body as the quarterback apparently both throws the winning play and scores the touchdown which is a pretty neat trick, you have to admit. Just as it took its time earlier on for certain moments with Julie Christie and Jack Warden, the final moments pause to just hold on Jack Warden realizing that Joe is really gone, sitting there and holding his instrument. And the final scene with that way Julie Christie looks at him, that connection found in the eyes once and for all, knowing and not knowing all at once is all that we need to understand.
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In spite of all this, for much of the time the inherently lightweight nature of the material can’t be avoided which maybe has something to do with my mental block to the film for such a long time, wondering why Beatty had been attracted to this sort of thing. But it knows how to find just the right moments that pop which shows that he found a way to connect with it and really say something about the transient nature of it all. In this film made by the Gulf & Western subsidiary Paramount, he saw the way such conglomerates were beginning to swallow things up, asking why such people exist in the world and what they really care about, anticipating his next film REDS or even the way Rogers & Clarke of ISHTAR deal with being marked for death by those in power and at times HEAVEN CAN WAIT is just as political, just as aware of what the ultra-wealthy are doing to the world during this present day we’re living through where an entire political party is about nothing more than hate and ugliness and attaining power, solely about making this world a worse place for people. The totem of that saxophone is the one thing Joe carries with him, a symbol of his spirit and in the end is left with the one person who will remember any of this. Football seems to be all about being the best to him but when it comes to that instrument it’s done just for the pure pleasure of doing it so it doesn’t matter how lousy he is. It only matters that he plays it. “I’ve got poetry in me,” John McCabe famously mutters to himself in his movie and through the soprano saxophone which turns into the totem of the film representing him (Beatty’s Howard Hughes in RULES DON’T APPLY plays an alto, which is close enough) is like Joe Pendleton’s poetry that he can’t express otherwise, even when alone with Julie Christie.
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We think of Warren Beatty as this legendary movie star, hugely successful for decades and living at the top of the world somewhere up on Mulholland but every main character he plays in his films has only so much power in the long run just like any of us do. Sometimes they die, sometimes it’s a more spiritual death as they become irrelevant to the world around them. Sometimes the connection with a woman in his life gets made, sometimes it’s cut short. The ultimate question of this movie, or just about any Warren Beatty movie, seems to be asking how are you going to live your life? What do you want to achieve and leave behind in the end? Do you only care about money or really doing something to enrich yourself and others? This is the rare Warren Beatty film that isn’t about sex much at all even as a metaphor, so in that sense it really is an anomaly, and the main characters never even kiss which makes sense at the end since the two people in question have just met, or so they think. Instead it’s a connection, one that the characters played by Warren Beatty and Julie Christie in SHAMPOO couldn’t make in the end. “We’re not dead yet, that’s the only thing that’s too late,” he tells her on that hilltop in Beverly Hills, a few moments before watching her drive off with Jack Warden in the final shot. The ending of HEAVEN CAN WAIT seems to find a way around that idea, giving Joe Pendleton a rebirth he never knows about from a life he no longer remembers. “There’s nothing to be afraid of,” becomes a key phrase that gets repeated and becomes the lynchpin for the whole film, maybe for all of Beatty’s films, so the message is simply look someone in the eyes to see what’s in there and we get to see the two leads of this film go off together, not afraid. Which is all that really matters. The rest of the world is just a bunch of people worried about ‘profits’, to use the famous line in REDS. All this may be written, as Mr. Jordan infuriatingly keeps saying, but our own arrival date—like 2025, the date Joe was originally supposed to die—is closer than we think. So don’t be afraid, which is something I’ve been wishing lately that I’d remembered on a few occasions in my own life. HEAVEN CAN WAIT was nominated for nine Oscars, winning only for Art Direction, and it may never be the Beatty film I return to the most, not the way I’ve watched the likes of SHAMPOO almost compulsively at times, but right now along with a new appreciation of all that dialogue I’ve found the yearning in it. The drive of obsession becomes clear.
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Coming midway between the releases of SHAMPOO and REDS, this is Warren Beatty at his movie star prime with all the confidence in the world and expert comic timing to every response he makes. The authority he brings to that tone lets the story build so when he fights with Mr. Jordan about Betty you can feel how this is all no longer clinical to him and it gives the film all that feeling. That emotion is felt every time he looks at Julie Christie and if you believe the various Peter Biskind books covering Beatty that say Christie had no interest in doing this but when you compare this to other roles she had played in the ten years leading up to this there’s not much to see since she’s basically The Girl. We’re meant to fall in love with her just as Joe does and that’s exactly what happens. But Christie brings such gravity and intelligence to every scene she’s in that it makes her role, and the entire film, work. She makes it all matter. That emotional feeling matches up nicely with the calm provided by James Mason, always smiling at Joe, always understanding towards him when he can’t anymore even if he can’t say why. What Mason does allows us to see what Mr. Jordan is doing, letting Joe make the decisions but still taking him along for what we know has to be. Buck Henry’s own coming timing with every ounce of his disbelief up against them is perfect but it’s the pairing of Charles Grodin and Dyan Cannon that provides some of the biggest laughs, Cannon appropriately a force of nature in every moment she's onscreen but the deadpan provided by Grodin is equally priceless as he tries to piece together what the hell is going on, offering some of the greatest pleasures to pick out in the corners of the frame. It’s the people around him as they react, even some in small roles, who also bring that weight to it, the likes of Joseph Maher and Hamilton Camp as a few of the servants backing up Beatty while getting laughs of their own and Beatty’s own double take at Camp’s servant stifling a laugh at one point is an awesome thing to see. But through all this it’s Jack Warden who becomes the real heart of the film right from the start, playing the only person who really knew Joe and knows what’s being lost. It leads to not just the joy coming from his expert coming timing but also the most truly emotional moments in the entire film all the way up to the last time we see him. As the years go by this becomes one of the actor’s most endearing performances of his long career.
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Warren Beatty has made so relatively few films over his long career that it’s hard not to think of each of them as being part of some sort of strange overall narrative personal to him even if there are some where we have to dig to find the meaning. Whether I feel the need to look into DICK TRACY or LOVE AFFAIR next, who’s to say. In search of that meaning in HEAVEN CAN WAIT, the post-film discussion with Ben Mankiewicz that night in the Chinese at the TCM Classic Film Festival didn’t really shed light on very much but it makes me wish for the chance to talk with him where he wouldn’t have to be on the record about anything and simply hearing him refer to McCABE & MRS. MILLER as “an interesting movie…for several reasons” makes me wish for a lengthy elaboration of some kind. There was also talk of wanting the likes of Muhammad Ali and Cary Grant to star early on, probing how the football scenes where he gets knocked to the ground were shot, faking the Super Bowl during an actual Rams game as well as if he would ever write a memoir. When the subject of Julie Christie was brought up he simply answered, “Are you delving into my personal life?” You can watch the whole thing <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SWS8ET1_hHk">here</a> and, I swear, I’m pretty sure I can be heard cheering in the crowd at the end although I’m not claiming that he answers all these questions. I didn’t expect him to. But there’s always the hope that I’ll see him at some tiny sushi place in a strip mall one of these days but even if this happens I promise I won’t bother him. As the two leads walk off into the darkness at the end of HEAVEN CAN WAIT we know that their story isn’t over, just like in our own lives we sometimes keep walking and if we say that one meaningful thing maybe a certain someone will walk with us. Maybe that idea is just a dream, but maybe it’s all we can do. One other question Ben Mankiewicz asked Warren Beatty was if he plans to make another movie. The answer, of course, was, “I don’t know.” Sometimes that’s the best response for anything in this world. Especially when deep down we already know what the answer is.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-7477422773059706712022-06-16T15:09:00.002-07:002022-06-16T18:45:10.060-07:00More Important Than Power<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-0nRLJMgZLVfzYcwSUu-DEnISA73ryyRmcH_T4iAy85dH0WQGfFzukrEby8o_TduAFzLlXO_Xce7JAmksadAm4hD7bsooARiY_s1r0u_w4hqPd-inL3mhk4jKlbGcpPgV6bboqLZeTDZaSkUDmHDx6VH9x469o1q_1efwUQ3KIHgsDBiPXgyQUb3Tw/s3500/ReporttotheCom1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="2280" data-original-width="3500" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEiD-0nRLJMgZLVfzYcwSUu-DEnISA73ryyRmcH_T4iAy85dH0WQGfFzukrEby8o_TduAFzLlXO_Xce7JAmksadAm4hD7bsooARiY_s1r0u_w4hqPd-inL3mhk4jKlbGcpPgV6bboqLZeTDZaSkUDmHDx6VH9x469o1q_1efwUQ3KIHgsDBiPXgyQUb3Tw/s400/ReporttotheCom1.jpg"/></a></div>
Films of the ‘70s are often filled with so much darkness and cynicism that it can be almost impossible not to romanticize them out of proportion. Sometimes that’s just the sort of thing I need to watch late at night, maybe now more than ever. In that scrappy, old-school, shot-on-celluloid way those films put us right in there in the middle of what the mood was and the best of them can reflect those times in a way that feels like it would be impossible to do now. Even genre films of that time manage to face the uncertainty in the air head on and that’s why they remain potent today, whether classics like THE FRENCH CONNECTION, or less reputable titles along the lines of DEATH WISH as well as some that have achieved latter day appreciation such as the great NIGHT MOVES or THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, but there are others that have continued to slip through the cracks. Maybe that’s also part of what I’m looking for late at night when I put these things on. Even the ones that have happy endings, and there aren’t many of them, can be upsetting. In a strange way that uncertainty helps get me to sleep, as a reminder that things haven’t changed very much.
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There’s also something about films released around 1974-75 that can feel like they reflect a society nearing the breaking point during the time of Watergate as if to see how far they could go in reflecting that cynicism in the air. Even JAWS, which turned up in the summer of ’75 and famously changed everything, offers the aura of conspiracy and cover-up to balance out the brilliance of its popcorn thrills. Released earlier that year, REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER is all about conspiracy and cover-up leading to the individual damage that irrevocably causes, and even if it doesn’t live up to the best cop films of the era still has moments that contain a punch in its look at the intensity of city life in the mid ‘70s. This isn’t a very well-known film now and the file folder nature of the title could be the reason or maybe it didn’t make enough of an impression when it was new but maybe it’s also missing something that makes it stand out from the crowd, the way even something like the strictly so-so THE SEVEN-UPS still contains one of the best car chases ever smack in the middle. In fairness, REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER has a few particularly memorable sequences but maybe the most interesting aspects are found after digging a little further into it, some of them documentary in nature even when the action kicks into gear along with some sharp character work throughout. Plus the film definitely offers the feel of what it was really like to stand on a Manhattan street corner back in the ‘70s, a reminder of how messed up things were in those days and maybe how messed up they are now too, more than I want to think about sometimes. It’s also interesting because of what it focuses on and what it doesn’t. The right decisions don’t always get made, after all. That’s the way it was then, that’s the way it is now.
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The shooting death of a female NYPD undercover officer has the commissioner insist on an official investigation with a full report to be delivered to him without any cover-up. The case focuses on Detective Bo Lockley (Michael Moriarty) who as seen in flashbacks has recently begun his job at the NYPD as an undercover detective. The son of a former detective, it immediately becomes clear how wrong he is for the job while he is shown around the Times Square area by his partner, the much more seasoned Richard ‘Crunch’ Blackstone (Yaphet Kotto). What Lockley doesn’t know is that one of the young girls he spots out on the street is ambitious undercover cop Patty Butler (Susan Blakely) going by the name Chicklet out on the street, with a particular interest in a heroin dealer named Stick (Tony King) and looking to move in with him to get closer to his operation. But when the department has Bo look for Chicklet as a missing person to keep her cover going without being told who she really is, the two worlds collide, leading to the disaster we know is coming.
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The flashback structure of REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER that largely makes up the first half lends a complexity to the storytelling but even when things feel unclear or a little too familiar after so many other ‘70s cop movies there is often an energy and sense of seriousness to the approach. The film was directed by Milton Katselas whose other films include 1972’s BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE but he also worked on the stage, with credits that include the original off-Broadway production of Edward Albee’s THE ZOO STORY and later was a somewhat renowned acting teacher who founded the Beverly Hills Playhouse. Maybe appropriate for a theater director, here he often seems largely interested in both behavior and the physical presence of people in relation to each other, along with at times making a close study of people’s faces as they absorb information the very point of certain scenes. BUTTERFLIES ARE FREE was an adaptation of a Broadway play he also directed, largely set in a single apartment, and there’s a similarity felt to the blocking here during certain interiors like in crowded squad rooms that feels covered in a standard, if not restrictive, way as if some of these scenes would be played exactly the same on the stage but at times feels too constricted within the frame.
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In comparison, some of the location shooting in the heart of Times Square features handheld camerawork that is downright aggressive at times (cinematography by Mario Tosi who also shot CARRIE and THE STUNT MAN, as well as the KOJAK pilot THE MARCUS-NELSON MURDERS), as if parts were ghost-directed on the run by Larry Cohen or somebody else who knew how to shoot in the middle of crowds and traffic without anyone realizing. Other scenes, particularly one foot chase that moves from the roof of the Winter Garden Theatre down into Broadway traffic, feature crowds of people in full view on both sides of the street presumably watching the filming since they couldn’t close off the street entirely, but it still helps add to the immediacy and verisimilitude of shots, giving the impression of a city so crowded that it’s practically about to burst. It may not be the point but the visual is so intense that it’s not even a bad thing. This comes a year before TAXI DRIVER which shot in some of the same locations but unlike that film which through its brilliance shows us all the depravity through Travis Bickle’s eyes this one puts us right down there in the middle of the sidewalk, not quite documentary style but still very intense in its more straightforward way, with handheld camerawork that gives it a much more frenetic feel as if someone might knock us over and take our wallet at any moment. It’s a look at a New York that appears to always be on the brink with enough great footage of Times Square that makes me dream of hanging out at the Howard Johnson’s for a while but there’s also glimpses at some of the movies that were playing—CLAUDINE and BLAZING SADDLES are prominently spotted on marquees in a number of shots along with THE GREAT GATSBY which also has two separate giant ads overhead; looking up release dates I’m guessing the location filming happened around April-May 1974. All of this is completely incidental to the actual film, of course, but it’s a good indication of how naturalistic parts of this film are yet still totally alien to what we think of as New York these days. It would be too dismissive to say that one of the most appealing things about this film is the look at the way Times Square was but it’s hard not to dwell on it a little.
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With a screenplay by Abby Mann and Ernest Tidyman based on the novel by James Mills, the fairly complex flashback structure of the first half makes it a little difficult to keep track of things but maybe it’s the sense of familiarity how some of this feels like ‘just another cop movie’ that’s the bigger issue. The focus is more or less on Michael Moriarty’s new undercover detective Bo Lockley who enters the movie frazzled and never entirely settles down making it hard not to imagine the part played in more of a low-key Pacino mode. It’s tough to take at times but to his credit the actor never makes it about vanity or turning this into a star role, as if the body language coming from the performance is saying that even he’s not quite sure what he’s doing in this movie. His backstory comes with guilt over a brother who died in Vietnam and a father, never seen, who was once on the force but it never quite registers as much as it should and neither does talk of how he’s meant to be a modern cop placed out there on the streets by the department, contrasted with his older, wiser partner played by Yaphet Kotto who has no compunctions of smacking down a pimp right out there on the street. There’s just enough of the pairing to make me wish there was more, each talking around the other and not hearing what they’re saying but some sort of mutual admiration thing happening between the two regardless. In a way Moriarty’s performance comes off as so unhinged and out of place that it becomes the very point so Kotto looking at him in disbelief that response makes perfect sense.
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All of this is well-played by the actors but just a little too familiar at times which means when the narrative moves over to the undercover cop Chicklet played by Susan Blakely, the switch hits the film like a shot of adrenaline. Right away there’s an additional energy and she’s a stronger, more compelling character. Blakely isn’t the lead of the film and the way the story plays out unfortunately she can’t be but it’s hard not to wish there could be more of her. She knows what she’s doing and why, a woman with clear-cut motivation as well as a cop who just wants to do her job and under the most dangerous circumstances imaginable if necessary. Maybe there isn’t much more to it beyond a sense of pure and total ambition but she has agency and is one of the few characters in the film who never seems conflicted. She wants to do the job no one else wants to do and she wants to do it better than anyone which means the men around her are all completely baffled by this independent woman. Even after everything has gone wrong though no fault of her own they still can’t think of portraying Butler as anything more than a girl who might have been caught between two guys, using her to cover their own ass. It’s a drawback of the film that in the end she feels more like a plot device than a character but Blakely brings enough to the performance to help overcome this, revealing multiple layers particularly in those moments when she’s suddenly forced to drop the act so we know she’s not kidding around. Even the way she’s framed at times with the color red lighting her face that signifies the danger she’s seeking out becomes one of the films most striking visual flourishes, setting her apart from all the other cops who are unwilling to take this sort of chance. It’s a character at once unknowable and more than anyone else in the film a figure of strength even if she has her own seemingly unfathomable reasons.
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The skeezy, dirty vibe feels grounded in a way that sets it apart from the delirium of TAXI DRIVER and the the investigation plotline of the middle section offers tangents that pop up frequently including a sequence with Richard Gere, in what appears to be his first film role, playing a confident pimp that gets in Lockley’s way as well as a completely unrecognizable appearance by the great Bob (credited as “Robert”) Balaban as a homeless double amputee who wheels himself around, leading to an extended scene where he wheels himself out into traffic tailing someone in a cab that looks genuinely dangerous in a few shots; this is one of those places where the plot beats don’t quite add up but it’s still fascinating to watch. The nightclub scene where Lockley tracks down Chicklet also has a propulsive nature with the Vernon Birch’s “Changes (Messin’ with My Mind)” on the soundtrack that gives an ominous feel. It’s in some of these moments that helps REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER stand out with a unique approach that always adds to the seriousness.
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That feeling largely holds throughout but the film possibly needs more juice when the points are being made and some of the energy coming from that camerawork out on the streets could maybe have been applied to the interiors as well. At least some of this is grounded by the strength of Yaphet Kotto’s presence and though the script’s reason for why Crunch is so fond and protective of Lockley never feels fully developed beyond once knowing his father the actor sells it even if he disappears a little too long from the middle section. Between the close quarters interrogations probing the coverup plotline and all the Times Square footage it feels like the directorial approach wants to be the illegitimate child of a Lumet procedural (SERPICO is spotted on another marquee in Times Square) and Friedkin intensity but can’t find the middle ground so there’s a level of energy missing that doesn’t quite connect the two tones. The big foot chase through the streets with Moriarty pursuing Tony King clad in nothing but his underwear which finally ends in a Saks Fifth Avenue elevator is exciting, faulty geography aside, and, once again all the signs of New York life around them is definitely part of that. But the blaxploitation-type funk riffs in the Elmer Bernstein score feel like they’re in the wrong movie, ignoring the weight of the moment and another sign that the film is not quite hitting what the grounded mood should be.
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Much of the final third is made up of the standoff between cop and drug dealer, trapped together in a Saks elevator which is effectively filmed to emphasize the close quarters aspect. The suspense is presented as soberly as possible with no TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE wisecracks to be found, instead focusing on the big speech by Tony King as Stick which lays it all out. “It’s them and us,” is the big statement he makes, that the two of them trapped there together places them against all the cops on “their own side” who are really in charge. This is pretty much the only part of the film where this character so many people have been talking about gets any substantial dialogue and he’s given more strength to his actions than the nominal lead gets here, another reminder that this is a film without a typical hero which is both admirable and yet keeps the audience at a certain distance; to use our modern-day parlance it’s not really a movie with an identifiable lead for us to latch onto. Moriarty’s character is too unstable, Kotto is too cynical, Blakely too out on a limb for the men in charge to know what to do with. In the middle of all this it’s the drug dealer (along with indications that he’s some sort of black militant gun runner which are never made clear), who in other films would be portrayed as more of an outright bad guy, is the one who seems the most level-headed of anyone one of the most daring ideas in the entire film. Naturally, there’s only one thing the cops in charge know to do with someone like that.
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The plot feels overly dense and a little undernourished all at once but still runs on too long in the second half with the department store standoff’s tension diffusing past a certain point. The flashback structure (presumably taken after the book which I haven’t read but apparently told its fictional story in the form of police reports and interview transcripts detailing the case) feels necessary in order to lay things out in a clear and concise fashion but it also causes what is likely the most dramatic event of the film to be brushed over quick so the tragedy is barely registered in the moment it occurs. All the men around Blakely’s Pat Butler seem to be intimidated by this woman, her commander talking more about her good looks than anything else, and even Lockley can’t quite explain why he was so determined to rescue her. But the film seems more intent on the overall nature of the Watergate-era cover-up which is at the heart of it, the cops in charge willing to give Bo up as a sacrificial lamb, even when he still has no idea what really happened, and when the right decision does get made near the end it’s too late. The way the plot is laid out forces the aftermath to wind down rather than build to a real dramatic conclusion so the last few scenes sputter out as the investigation fizzles. In a nutshell, stuff gets fucked up thanks to people who are trying to cover their own asses and there’s nothing anybody can do. There’s been no real point to any of it and nothing can even really come up the titular report since it would cause too much of a stir. When the end finally comes, the shock doesn’t register as much as it should and it feels like all we can do is shrug. It feels like the movie does too. That’s how defeated the final moment is. There aren’t any answers left for it to offer so maybe the somewhat sensationalistic credit in the end crawl (which seems to use the GODFATHER font, oddly enough) acknowledging “all the men and women of the New York City Police Department whose names cannot be revealed” says all that it needs to.
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But through all that messaging are standout moments that stick in the brain afterwards. There’s a skill to the direction that lets the tension build in individual moments like Susan Blakely facing the camera/interviewer so sure in what she’s doing, Michael Moriarty tapping on the glass of the phone booth as she makes a call, Bob Balaban desperately holding onto the back of the taxicab, the close quarters feel of that elevator. These are the moments that tell the story in a way that hold the suspense together even if the larger details get somewhat lost in the moment. REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER frustrates but it’s still fascinating in what it presents whether the character detail or the look at the city at that point in time and it has moments that are even better than that, a well-made film that has the courage of its convictions even when things get somewhat muddled. Frankly, anyone who is always looking for that other ‘70s movie would want to see this for the genre for the tone, for its look at dirty old fun city New York. It’s a cynical worldview that has aged in a way that makes sense. Those in power can do whatever they want which we knew all along. In the end, it’s not about making a difference or even being the one in charge. It’s just about filing the paperwork to move onto the next thing.
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At times Michael Moriarty (do not, under any circumstances, take a drink every time he says “Chicklet”) seems genuinely unhinged and the very idea of underplaying a moment has never occurred to him but his strongest work comes near the end when his confusion becomes palpable during official questioning and he realizes that no one is going to help him, as if the actor has been in his own world the whole time and is just now realizing what movie he’s in with that jittery method thing feeling more like the actor responding to the more confident stylings of all the other actors he’s playing scenes with. This includes Yaphet Kotto who plays each moment totally confident with his body language which doesn’t ignore the cruelty he’s capable of but just the way he walks brings a lived-in feel to his every movement. Susan Blakely is particularly effective as the undercover cop so much of the plot swirls around, showing several sides of her character at once. Her performance is as fearless as her character, making me wish the plot could somehow revolve around her more, or at the least getting me to imagine the nonexistent movie where she gets to be the lead.
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Playing The Stick, Tony King doesn’t have a long list of credits (formerly of the Buffalo Bills but also in films like SHAFT and SHARKY’S MACHINE; later he joined the Nation of Islam and changed his name to Malik Farrakhan) but he’s imposing in just the right ways particularly during his scenes with Moriarty. He is the one who gets the film's big speech, after all, and for these few minutes it all just about comes together. It’s particularly amazing to watch Bob Balaban as the legless Joey Egan, not just because he’s totally unlike any other performance by him but he seems downright possessed at times, a madness present in his eyes that for whatever reason makes helping Lockley the most important thing in the world when he’s asked. Richard Gere offers some nasty cockiness as the pimp who gets on Lockley’s bad side while even the middle management cops played by the likes of Hector Elizondo and Michael McGuire (lots of credits but maybe most recognizable as Sumner Sloan, the professor who abandons Shelley Long’s Diane Chambers in the pilot of CHEERS) are well drawn in their own levels of pettiness. The likes of William Devane (just like in McCABE & MRS. MILLER, he’s a lawyer who turns up for one scene during the last half hour), Stephen Elliott as the titular commissioner (he was later the police chief in BEVERLY HILLS COP but also played the commissioner in the previous year’s DEATH WISH) and Vic Tayback are in there as well. And, let’s face it, this is exactly the sort of movie that needs Vic Tayback’s sweaty combover.
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At one point Bo Lockley recalls his father telling him that responsibility is more important than power but this is a film where almost no one takes responsibility, or at least not the people who need to. All of this seems very familiar in the world we live in right now. Maybe one of the more surprising things about REPORT TO THE COMMISSIONER is the PG rating complete with language that includes the n-word, plenty of violence and even some brief, if distant, nudity. But things were different in the ‘70s. And this is a film that’s worth seeing, so here’s a look at the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YTWaB74-7Og">trailer</a>. There are echoes of neo-noir found in all this fatalism but it also feels like a natural part of the ‘70s weariness. And now, in 2022, the theme of cops fucking up, especially the ones in charge, seems more timely than ever. But this is just one of those things I’m looking for late at night. At least films like this don’t pretend things are better than they are. And that’s one way to get to sleep.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-1629602445439779962022-05-10T21:19:00.002-07:002022-05-10T21:23:46.441-07:00This Empty Place Inside<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5db-8UEFZwvaurNqYh_ceQRkn28f8Z2U-ghhOzST5cTaPMFBUO7G-o6ime5Z0iz5Szb3L4VRBwREyZdtGuz5TDwI4WruuhRFsbhXgo-BBmXTaw3dY6M8nAyjLWyicpR0o9rZumn_mg-UvO3HUTXVjGRnQf62TadWQP-RTKBVyxJx9mcsFN0uTIIuLA/s1000/FabulousBaker4.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="650" data-original-width="1000" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhI5db-8UEFZwvaurNqYh_ceQRkn28f8Z2U-ghhOzST5cTaPMFBUO7G-o6ime5Z0iz5Szb3L4VRBwREyZdtGuz5TDwI4WruuhRFsbhXgo-BBmXTaw3dY6M8nAyjLWyicpR0o9rZumn_mg-UvO3HUTXVjGRnQf62TadWQP-RTKBVyxJx9mcsFN0uTIIuLA/s400/FabulousBaker4.jpg"/></a></div>
It’s been some time now, but I still miss those late nights. The vibe of sitting at a bar, waiting for the next drink, taking in the mood all around me as the music plays. It’s not the drinking that I miss so much anymore—I’m six years sober by now and ok with leaving that behind—but the process of getting that drink and having it set down in front of me, whether the next martini at the Dresden (RIP to Marty of Marty & Elayne) or some elaborate concoction while crammed into Tiki Ti. Those late hours can be both the best and the worst time to think about those things you shouldn’t be spending too much time thinking about anymore. Thinking about all the wrong things you said, thinking about all the right things you never said. Maybe even the ways you’ll continue to screw things up as time goes on. But eventually you go to sleep. The mood never lasts and even those nights have to end.
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While looking for things to watch during the isolation of the past few years I’ve found myself revisiting films unseen by me for decades and finding some of those that I’d long forgotten about strangely comforting. Which explains how one night I wound up on THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS, the sort of film that I liked well enough when it was released back in the fall of 1989 but didn’t think about much beyond that. My loss, as it turns out. Which means that returning to the film so many years later makes me wonder what the hell I was thinking, so now I’m just regretting how it never fell into that regular rotation of DVDs I’ve watched way too many times. In some ways, it’s a film I’ve been looking for. At its very best this is a beautifully honed character piece, one that luxuriates in its mood and atmosphere, always giving life to the snap found in that razor sharp dialogue. Sitting here in 2022 it’s almost difficult to believe this was once a normal movie that opened in theaters and people actually went to on a Saturday night, all another reminder that we didn’t know how good we had it. In fairness, the film didn’t do much better than ok at the time but it did receive enough attention to get four Oscar nominations including Michelle Pfeiffer for Best Actress. And she should have won. Looking at the film now, it’s not just a reminder of what was normally found in movie theaters back then also but how much smaller dreams could once be. It’s about people who aren’t striving for the big time so much as simply trying to achieve just a little bit more with what they’re good at and hopefully making a connection with someone else who feels just as lost. It’s a film about adults facing adult problems, dealing with family and relationships and sex and regret and all the smoke hanging in the air along with those dreams that might evaporate quickly if you don’t do something about it fast. It’s not the sort of film that gets a cult; just people who remember it fondly. If only more people remembered it. We don’t get many of these movies anymore and it doesn’t seem like we will again anytime soon, but right now it’s like the idea of a film that achieves what this one does means more to me than ever.
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Piano-playing brothers Jack and Frank Baker (Jeff Bridges and Beau Bridges) have been working a lounge act called The Fabulous Baker Boys for years in Seattle but when bookings begin to dry up Frank gets the idea of adding a singer to bring something new to the act. Their auditions of multiple singers with no talent finally leads them to the tough-talking Susie Diamond (Michelle Pfeiffer), a former escort who shows up late but impresses them with her voice and turns out to be exactly what they’re looking for. Her talents provide a boost to the act eventually resulting in a stint at a resort hotel for New Years’ Eve but the attraction also grows between Susie and Jack, who spends much of his time smoking cigarettes while brooding and secretly playing after hours in jazz clubs where he can pursue playing the way he really wants to. And as things develop between the two of them, the tension within the group becomes impossible to avoid.
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For a film that struck me as comfort food upon first revisiting, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS does come with a slightly bitter taste. It’s a smooth movie in every possible way and at times feels like some of the best of what a commercial entertainment used to be, a film always looking to showcase the style found in these people and it has that style too. But it’s also a beautifully crafted character piece, providing wonderful roles for all three leads, a product of the ‘80s which combines sharp dialogue that could almost come out of the ‘40s with the feel of a ‘70s character piece, that sultry vibe in the air always mixing with the tension until no one has any idea what else to do with it. Written and directed by Steve Kloves, only twenty-nine when it was released, this is a film always willing to take the time to hold on the faces of these people as they get to know each other, always more interested in character than plot, always willing to wait for what the three of them have to say to each other as they talk around their feelings bubbling under the surface and flowing in a completely natural way. It doesn’t need a bigger plot than what it has and the actors work so well together that the chemistry between each of them becomes the plot, every scene clicking along together beautifully as if keeping in time with the music they perform every night.
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The glamour is part of it but so is the bitterness coming off of Jeff Bridges’ performance as Jack which is always felt as he lingers on the edges of scenes to avoid saying how he really feels, mired in the self-hatred he has long since succumbed to and pushing away anyone who tries to get closer. He barely even responds, “I can carry a tune,” when Susie tells him how good he is but deep down he already knows it. It’s what makes him hate this silly act he does with his brother every night with those twinkling of the ivories through renditions of “The Girl From Ipanema” that are just a little too cheerful so he slinks into late-night jazz clubs by himself looking for something really he wants to play. When Susie turns up as they desperately look for a singer to join the act, she’s someone else who can find the soul in the music, a soul that Jack is looking for beyond anything he does with Frank but doesn’t even realize it. He remembers every date the act has ever played and hates it—boy, do I understand this—not needing all the tchotchkes and shot glasses that his brother, the businessman of the pair, hangs onto as mementoes. Frank is about the act more than the music, always looking to keep everyone happy. All Jack seems to want is a reason to love this again and Susie is the one who brings a genuine feeling to the act it never had.
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That look on Michelle Pfeiffer’s face when she knows they’re going to let her audition no matter how late she was gets her to own the movie right away, just like Susie knows she owns them with her voice. She gets the music, the rare person who actually paid attention to the lyrics in order to let that voice bursting out of her tough girl exterior. Through all this, the dialogue written by Kloves displays a sharpness that keeps the characters active and alive but on the flipside of those lighter moments so much of the tension between Jack and Frank feels unspoken, as if by casting these two actual brothers we didn’t need more dialogue to explain things. It works beautifully, the familiarity always there whether it’s Frank chewing Jack out for missing a cue or just certain looks they give each other so when they finally have their big fight you can see it in their eyes what’s been held back for so many years. Frank is the responsible one and keeps everything going, seeing that as part of his job no matter how phony it gets as he tries to ignore his own flop sweat, slightly dorky but it’s all in service of the business of the act and trying to keep their bookers happy. He never pays attention to how much nobody else cares, so intent on making sure that everyone hits their cues that he doesn’t try to be any better. Susie Diamond knows that this is just a second rate lounge act, after all, but with that voice she knows that it can be bigger, even if just a little bit. Right from the start it’s clear that she’s got that voice. She’s got that thing. She’s got something Frank never even thought about before.
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And she tries to get the act to aim higher whether in not playing the same stuff every night or realizing there could be some more money made out of this, as if it never occurred to them until she showed up and that shot at just a little more success surprises even them. The snap to the dialogue adds to the tension but Kloves also definitely knows how to use the camera, at times in subtly effective and intelligent ways during the silences that come in between. That scene out on the hotel terrace at the resort hotel is a beautiful example of how the movie is simply willing to linger in the moment, Frank stopping when he hears “Moonglow” playing and talking about how he’s never kissed his wife on New Year’s Eve, Jack off by himself on the side but you can still see the affection he has for his brother in his face. For this one night, these three people make sense together and the way the camera gazes at them is loving and inquisitive, letting us find who the characters are just by looking into their faces.
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Even after all these years, the film is mostly remembered for the image of slinky Michelle Pfeiffer on that piano, accompanied by Jeff Bridges as she slowly, seductively makes her way through a rendition of “Makin’ Whoopee” and, in fairness, this is entirely justified. Pfeiffer is electric in this sequence, bringing a sensuality to the moment that shows just how much these two characters go perfectly together thanks to that music in a way they never can otherwise. The character work always comes through when she performs to growing crowds during the early montage of her performing “Can’t Take My Eyes Off Of You” so this is Susie doing the singing and showing how fearless she is, not Michelle Pfeiffer the Movie Star. But it’s also the camerawork by the great Michael Ballhaus completing the undeniable feel of old-school elegance—he received one of the Academy Award nominations, deservedly so, likely for these scenes—with the way that camera swings around during the New Years’ Eve show becoming part of that joint seduction between the two everything the films has been building towards, Jack and Susie as one up on that stage for that one night.
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Getting lost in the chemistry between Jeff Bridges and Michelle Pfeiffer during moments like this makes me think about how much films with this kind of sexual tension are missed in this day and age. I don’t even miss bars late at night as much. But even back then they rarely felt this potent, a sheer feeling of attraction between two people who are doing everything they can to not follow through on it and when they do give in there isn’t anything else quite like it. What with things like the new season of Karina Longworth’s You Must Remember This podcast I’m clearly not the only person noticing how much the very idea of this has been lost in films over the past few years, this sense of feeling and connection through sheer chemistry that goes beyond words. And the film knows that it doesn’t need those words, even when going for the laughs found in their tension during a sequence where the two of them are in the hotel suite trying to avoid all this, the story moves at a brisk clip throughout containing very little fat—William Steinnkamp, the film’s editor, was also nominated—but that sense of pace allows for the breathing room which lets the entire movie stop for that one scene between the two of them coming after the big New Years’ show, talking about stuff but really about how they’re out of reasons to not let this happen. When it finally does, there’s very little else to say in order to describe this feeling beyond the realization that there have been few things in the history of cinema sexier than Michelle Pfeiffer’s back.
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Even the Dave Grusin score, the last of the four Oscar nominations, adds to this mood and though it may be common to associate that composer with the easy listening vibe found in his scores to certain films directed by Sydney Pollack (executive producer on this which is likely not a coincidence) here it always provides an added boost of energy even if the jazz that Jack really wants to play seems mostly be represented by that mellow Grusin sound which I’m sure some purist would object to and maybe they’d be right. But it’s a sound that feels just right to set the mood at the start while Jack walks through the streets of Seattle during the opening credits, wearing that wrinkly tux as night falls. The freeform nature of the theme keeps it playing in my head while thinking about this film and it’s also one more random thing that I miss in movies nowadays, the process of showing a character walk from one place to another, settling into this world but in this case it’s also a reminder of how much this film is about mood and how it can attach to us, our own private themes endlessly playing in hour heads long after we’ve ever given up on shaking them.
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Of course, that feeling can only take you so far, just like those nights can only go on for so long, just like the things Jack doesn’t say to Susie, just like the way the tension between him and Frank eventually explodes by what he does say. At one point she objects to how many times she has to sing that lounge standard “Feelings”, making the fairly valid point how it’s a song that no one needs to ever hear again. But when she really does sing it, presumably against her wishes, at the point things are going sour you can hear in her voice both how much hates it as well as how the song, this silly and shallow song, has gotten into her and somewhere in the depths of all that shallowness the real feelings she’s going through begin to emerge. The moment goes by fast but Pfeiffer is remarkable in it, a transcendent display of all the thoughts going through her as she navigates these treacly lyrics. It’s also a reason why Susie is so good at what she does. And, like Jack, she just doesn’t want the reminder.
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I’m still a little stuck on just how young Steve Kloves was at the time, coming five years after his first writing credit for 1984’s RACING WITH THE MOON. He directed one more film after this, 1993’s FLESH AND BONE, wrote the screenplay for 2000’s great WONDER BOYS then took off to script multiple Harry Potter films and he’s spent a good amount of time in that world ever since. THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS was his directorial debut and while it may not always live up to the adventurous visual style found in some of its best moments it definitely feels assured and the work of a filmmaker who always knows what he wants to get out of scenes, saving up for those key moments when the feelings will really matter. The formula is felt at times, what with the likable pre-teen girl neighbor Nina played by Ellie Raab who appears via the fire escape as well as his loyal dog, each there to presumably remind the audience he’s not a complete lowlife. But they still work as reminders of him looking for any connection he can still find that isn’t his brother and is desperately trying to hold onto even as he completely neglects both of them in various ways, like how he never bothered to teach Nina anything other than the opening of “Jingle Bells” on the piano. It’s all just one more reminder that Jack can’t fully commit to anything, even a conversation. This film is one of those cases where a star like Jeff Bridges smiles more in the production stills than he ever does in the movie but the moodiness in his eyes is always a reminder of how much he’s trying to dig himself out of that hole before it’s too late.
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It’s the sort of film you want to go on for just a little while longer, to have the good times between the three linger just a bit more and it’s not too hard to imagine a TV spinoff that lets this happen. But the pacing seems just right the way it is so even the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray play like they were dropped more to keep the film to a running time under two hours than a case of scenes that didn’t work. It also seems to know that the good times don’t always linger, no matter how many good feelings are exchanged late at night. Things move fast. Susie even tells Jack how it can be the easiest thing in the world to get used to your own misery, to crawl into that empty place inside, as she puts it. Brooding melancholy will only get you so far, after all, no matter how much you want to climb in to wrap yourself up in that loneliness. In the end, THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS is a film that has those moments when you feel close to getting what you were groping toward, maybe without realizing and really showing just how good you can be at that one thing and maybe you shouldn’t forget that. It holds on the affection felt towards the three of them, no matter how fucked up each of them are in their own way, just like any of us are, just like I am. It doesn’t judge the three main characters but it clearly wants them to figure a few things out. Even the last scene doesn’t have more dialogue than it should, just enough to make what’s being said the start of an ongoing conversation between two people who are still feeling tentative about it all, as tentative as things can get and still feel like some semblance of a happy ending. The chemistry is there just as it always was but, for the moment, there’s no need to rush. The spark between them is still there even as the sun is out. So maybe there’s something to the light of day, after all.
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Part of the film’s beauty is how it just lets these movie stars be movie stars, giving each of them material that lets them show just how good they really are. Jeff Bridges displays such confidence in his silence along with his body language, knowing that he doesn’t need to say anything more to get the point across. Even as much as he digs into Jack’s self-hatred, there’s still a charm to him that makes it easy to see why Susie might be drawn to him and in his silence we can see through his eyes how much he’s fighting to still care about certain things. Michelle Pfeiffer is spectacularly good in every scene, sharp with the dialogue and cool with the appeal until she can’t hold in her real feelings any longer so she can tell Jack what no one else has been able to. So much can be seen in her face, sometimes in just one tiny little look, through every one of her scenes that has a wonderful effect whether she’s holding back or letting it all out, she’s someone who couldn’t like if she wanted to, it’s all right there. I’m not sure Beau Bridges had gotten a part this good in years and it’s one of his best performances, balancing the desperation of Frank to be liked with how much he stays on them to keep the act together. He’s never going to be as cool as them and in that is where his strength comes from, trying to keep up with that attitude and letting them know that he’s not totally unaware of it all.
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Much of the film is just the three leads along with the charming Ellie Raab as Jack’s young friend Nina who he claims he doesn’t take care of along with a brief appearance by the now-familiar Xander Berkeley as one of the nasty bookers the brothers have to deal with. But the other actor who really deserves special mention is Jennifer Tilly as Monica Moran, the first girl to audition for the Baker Boys at the start and in one scene gives us the most Jennifer Tilly performance ever that turns into something else next time we see her that even at just two short scenes, with her own special billing in the end credits, I’m tempted to say it’s the best role she ever had. Tilly is perfectly cast here with a screen presence that would be just as right in the classic Hollywood era as the three leads, getting a close-up here that she didn’t get in her first scene so the character isn’t quite the comic figure she once was, serving as the catalyst for Jack to force himself to look at someone like her for the first time and the moment forces him to make that change more than anyone else has and she’s just the right screen presence to do it.
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Things do change and it’s unavoidable. We may not like it, we may not be happy about what goes away, but they do change and they have to. Maybe we need to force that change, to get things a little closer to where we want them to be. There’s always another girl, as Jack dismissively says to Susie. By the end, he realizes that sometimes there isn’t. That you already met her. There’s a kind of optimism found somewhere in there. But this is also a reminder of the films we don’t get anymore and while writing all this I sent the trailer to a friend who doesn’t care about movies very much, certainly not what gets released these days, and she texted back, now this is something I’d go to the theater to see! But right now it seems like all we can do is remember that we once got movies like this. Now suddenly, all these years later, this feels like what I want movies to be. At least some of them. THE FABULOUS BAKER BOYS is just the right movie for those nights where in your mind that smoke continues to hang in the air, like the memories of how close we once came.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-83862733903984995232022-04-06T18:30:00.001-07:002022-04-06T18:30:40.144-07:00No Deceit In The Cauliflower<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6dJGkQHAHDovl4AoETzAzQKq1jtkJ2_iVHLou7VYnWHld_fSSSi7aPNbzXiN0YX3CfLklEfNGxJ_lDeATisNPW5YObgXUHGWDW9Xjgkcnl_N1-wfaxZUQAD0NgnM1NRc2itAJZ9BM2xTgxc2c7sv8Jcwh7NHWMrERR-tE3GSKNILDiPxRIMiExQeCg/s720/HeartbreakKid1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="400" data-original-width="720" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgO6dJGkQHAHDovl4AoETzAzQKq1jtkJ2_iVHLou7VYnWHld_fSSSi7aPNbzXiN0YX3CfLklEfNGxJ_lDeATisNPW5YObgXUHGWDW9Xjgkcnl_N1-wfaxZUQAD0NgnM1NRc2itAJZ9BM2xTgxc2c7sv8Jcwh7NHWMrERR-tE3GSKNILDiPxRIMiExQeCg/s400/HeartbreakKid1.jpg"/></a></div>
Let’s try this again. Not like anything is ever going to make sense. The truth is that most of my life I’ve known either New York or Los Angeles, not that I have any idea where else I’m supposed to go. My one and only trip to Minnesota was for a wedding where during the reception I found myself gravitating towards one particular side of the family, specifically the other New York Jews who had also traveled to be there. No matter how nice everyone else was, that was where I felt comfortable, that was where I felt I belonged. Of course, we spend so much of life trying to figure out where we belong and if certain people were ever really meant to be part of our lives at all. Sometimes the answers to those questions are more obvious than we want to admit. Maybe this is something we eventually learn, maybe we never learn a damn thing. We’re still going to fuck things up, of course. We are who we are.
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Which brings us to THE HEARTBREAK KID, original version. Not “Elaine May’s THE HEARTBREAK KID” according to the credits, but we’ll get to that. The cult around the great Elaine May remains strong these days, at least in the world of Film Twitter, and interest surrounding the four films she directed seems to have grown with the reputations of <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2017/07/kneeling-on-broken-glass.html">A NEW LEAF</a>, <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2015/12/not-in-that-direction.html">MIKEY AND NICKY</a> and <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2009/04/here-on-spec.html">ISHTAR</a> growing stronger, all of them remarkable in their own ways in spite of the now legendary postproduction issues each went through. So in one sense, her second film THE HEARTBREAK KID feels like an outlier. Whether it’s her best is a pointless debate—ask me on different days, I’ll give you different answers—but the argument could be made that its narrative spine does hold together better than any of them so it all flows together without some of the jagged rhythms contained in those others. The death last year of star Charles Grodin also served as a reminder of the fearlessness in his work here, not only cementing what would become his screen persona for all time but helping to make this a seamless fusion of performance and film.
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THE HEARTBREAK KID received two Oscar nominations, always a little surprising for a comedy, but has sadly become difficult to see in recent years due to rights issues too dull to go into here. For now it can be found online in so-so quality at a certain site that starts with a Y and the audience response at a screening a few years ago proved that its edge hadn’t dulled. This is a film that can justifiably be called a comic masterwork but one that is also a profoundly uncomfortable experience, which wouldn’t be the case if there wasn’t any truth in there. People can be horrible, after all. Maybe if they weren’t, they wouldn’t be people. This is a film about the choices we make in what we pursue which can lead to us losing who we are, no matter how much we wanted it. It never feels daunted for a second in how far into the depths it’s willing to go for those laughs and in that sense remains a source of inspiration even if it’s a reminder about the choices that wind up leading us the wrong way.
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Newlywed Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin) takes off for Miami Beach with his bride Lila (Jeannie Berlin) on their honeymoon where almost as soon as they arrive he meets blonde beauty Kelly Corcoran (Cybill Shepherd) on the beach, becomes instantly smitten and uses the ideal excuse of Lila’s horrible sunburn to keep her in the hotel room as he gets to know Kelly better. He meets her parents Mr. and Mrs. Corcoran (Eddie Albert and Audra Lindley) and is then determined to end his marriage as soon as possible, even if it means pursuing Kelly all the way back to her home in Minnesota leaving behind everything he knew in life before. '
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Closing in on fifty years after it was released at the end of 1972, THE HEARTBREAK KID remains awe-inspiring like few other comedies I can think of, a high-wire act of cruelty and deadpan awkwardness done as light romantic comedy, with humor so deadly that the laughs hurt as they stick in your throat. The tone is unrelenting, going further beyond where you think it will go as it takes this premise and stretches it to see how far this feeling can go, beyond the point where you think it will break off and give you some relief, a moment that will make it all feel better and everyone can laugh. The lead character fearlessly lies and talks his way out of the situations he gets himself into until there’s no one around to call him on it but no matter how cruel the film becomes he always feels completely human in his determination, just horribly so, no matter how much emotional wreckage he causes thanks to his own selfishness. It’s hard not to shake the wish that the film is somehow going to give you a speck of relief but it remains committed to that goal as much as he is, completely unrelenting in that pursuit. Which makes it difficult to watch this film without wanting to flee the room at certain points but this is, of course, meant in the best possible way and its anti-comedy approach tricks you into thinking you know what it is, only to reveal that it’s about more than just the cruelty that it leads to.
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The title card at the start specifically reads “Neil Simon’s THE HEARTBREAK KID” and that writer is the one credited with the screenplay based on the Bruce Jay Friedman short story “A Change of Plan”, but the possessory credit stating ‘An Elaine May Film’ follows immediately as if to underline who is really responsible for the approach it takes, not to mention its view of humanity. It certainly doesn’t feel like any other Neil Simon movie from the period, films that vary in quality but all seem like part of the same assembly line with directors who are mostly tasked to keep everything in order as opposed to bringing a real point of view to the material. In his autobiography “It Would Be So Nice If You Weren’t Here” Grodin writes how it was decided during production that the Simon version of a scene would always be shot but May would also film more takes to add whatever embellishments or improvisations she wanted and the film would be put together around that. Simon agreed to this approach, then proceeded to vanish after several days of watching all this begin to take shape. The bones of a Simon narrative can be found in the structure if you squint hard enough but instead of focusing on the expertly timed wisecracks the approach it takes is in looking for the silences found within the reality of how these people might actually react to each other, as if it’s a main character who is looking for that snappy patter only to find everyone reacting to him as if they live in a normal world, in understandable disbelief to what they’re hearing. While some of Simon’s work is about the dichotomy between New York and what’s out there in the rest of the country, specifically California, this film takes aim at the differences between east coast and the white bread middle in the most cutting way possible. The wedding at the start feels strictly working class in how tiny and imperfect it is but this is also the single most joyous part of the film, the cries of ‘Mazeltov!’ coming from those New York Jews which gives the feeling that this is real life, these are their people, this is where the joy is found. When Lenny finds out that Kelly is from Minnesota his disbelieving “It’s so far from New York!” response is one that sounds like he never considered people might live anywhere else, that he comes from a place where ‘the element’ he was a part of is exactly what her father doesn’t like at their hotel which he remains undeterred by. “He hasn’t met you yet, but just from appearances he doesn’t like you,” Kelly tells him later on which almost seems to make him more determined to prove just how far he might be willing to go.
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Looking at her other films it becomes clear how much Elaine May loves the men in them through all their horribleness and desperation, but in the case of THE HEARTBREAK KID it feels more like her camera staring unblinking at what Lenny is doing, possibly in awe at what he’s trying to get away with. In fairness, it doesn’t really seem to like anyone else in the film either, except for maybe the extras at the opening wedding; the audience might develop sympathy for Lila, but clearly that’s not the film’s job. What exactly drives Lenny to do this is never explained as if it’s all some indefinable other thing that he’s going for, which never occurred to him until he finds himself out on the road actually interacting and sleeping with his new bride with that brief shot of him sitting across from her as she sleeps, staring, wondering who the hell this is and what he’s done. Through everything she does, her overly aggressive nature on the road, cutesy bed talk and even what she orders in a restaurant, by the time the road trip is done it’s like we’ve gotten a full short film detailing every aspect of their relationship. In fairness, maybe a double order of egg salad isn’t necessary and, sure, she could have listened to Lenny when he suggested she put suntan lotion on but it’s all still kind of endearing even when she’s a little much. Lila only wants him and what they have together, for the next 40 or 50 years as she puts it, already looking forward to when their coffins can sit side by side. Lenny only sees the things he’s suddenly learning about her, as if she’s messing with the perfection he wants to project and sell to people when he looks at himself in the mirror. His pursuit of Kelly the shiksa goddess to end all shiksa goddesses quickly begins to feel like he’s decided to have a staring contest with the entire world, even if it’s just out of spite to prove he can do this as if he’s starring in his very own romantic comedy about what a catch he is, maybe even one written by Neil Simon with a fun title like THE HEARTBREAK KID. All this is like a rationalization as if to search for motivation in the horrible lies he’s telling Lila but marriages in Elaine May films, not that there are many of them, always feel tenuous with the communication wires are always getting crossed as the husband shouts down the wife’s well-meaning intentions, keeping as much from them as possible, trying to avoid the trouble they’re getting into.
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Lenny is literally blinded by Kelly on first sight. It’s really the sun behind her that does this, of course, indicative of how he seems to misjudge everything right off the bat even though he remains blinded by her through every enigmatic answer she gives him to his questions, whether actually clever or not. But Lenny dives right in and when he tells Kelly that he’s all in it almost happens before we expect him to, coming up with lies so unbelievable to Lila that she has to accept them as truth in that agonizing silence when he finally gets into bed with her, knowing it will probably be for the last time. “Were you really in an accident, Lenny?” she asks after listening to the story about what happened to him that night, then after all his flailing the horrible silence just hangs there as she looks at him. Instead of keeping this going for an entire movie it simply rips the band aid off through a dinner sequence where he finally breaks the bad news that pushes everything past the boundaries of that agony, Grodin’s pauses become longer and longer, like an improv sketch that he’s been told to stretch out as far as conceivable as if desperately waiting for someone else to talk for him, that certain piece of pecan pie he’s been talking about for so long giving him an excuse to put it off a little longer, groping towards finally giving her the news and when he does still won’t let her get away, telling her all the good that’s going to come out of this and still trying to sell it to her. It’s all made even more brutal by how when it finally gets to the moment of truth the scene is only half over, on one hand unbelievably cruel towards Lila but also forcing us to pay attention to her response while Lenny keeps talking. Any other film with a shred of mercy would likely cut away but any other film wouldn’t pay such close attention to what’s really going on.
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This long, horrific, mesmerizing, painfully funny scene is one of the key moments in the film’s structure which can be broken down into several points of negotiation that Lenny must traverse, deadly and heartless but always human, viciously so. Earthy, sexy, funny and agonizing all at once, of course Lila isn’t a bad person. There would hardly be any point in watching the film if she was and the whole point is that she’s not portrayed as a shrew or some sort of nonentity. Her immaturity makes her feel like she’s a little girl in an adult body, needing both her parents help to walk down the aisle at her own wedding, probably never having been away from them for too long. Which makes her helpless up against what Lenny assumes is the cool sophisticated quality that Cybill Shepherd’s Kelly projects, even if she’s just as much of a pampered little girl in her own way. Lila is discarded and has to be, by both the film and Lenny, but it demands we pay attention to her in those giant close-ups when she’s still around, in some ways getting just as annoyed as he is and it is painful but so much of the humor comes out of how much that pain is felt. How much he remains blinded.
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Elaine May’s direction is all about focusing on these elements so we feel every excruciating moment, those giant close-ups that make Lenny speechless or when it’s him and another person facing off in the frame, on what Lenny is confronted with and how he’s choosing to handle each moment. It’s not so much about the specifics of composition but director of photography Owen Roizman, at this point somewhere in between shooting THE FRENCH CONNECTION and THE EXORCIST for William Friedkin, adds to the intensity by often cramming Charles Grodin into as tight a frame as possible, to force him in there and make us keep watching so we can’t escape from the shot any more than he can. After all, this film is probably about as upsetting as THE EXORCIST in the end. The stylistic extremes displayed by May’s former partner Mike Nichols in directing THE GRADUATE don’t seem to interest her as much but the people do, so in this context it becomes very clear that Jeannie Berlin eating that double egg salad sandwich is Cinema. Even the main theme sung by Bill Dean is more a piece of early 70s easy listening that sticks in your brain whether you like it or not than something by Simon & Garfunkel that seems intrinsically a part of the film, the peppy tone going ideally against the darkness along with those recurring lyrics of “Close to You” running through Lenny’s head. The directorial approach is blunt instead of elegant, a point of view of the world—of both worlds in this film—which forces us to look at it through that prism. It’s an unrelenting sort of pain felt particularly in that one long unbroken shot of Grodin ‘laying out his cards’ has he faces Eddie Albert, with Cybill Shepherd and Audra Lindley in the middle reacting, is as good as anything and so brave in that display of how long it’s willing to wait for the explosion.
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The two films can be compared to each other for a variety of reasons and maybe even the weakest stretch of THE GRADUATE when Benjamin follows Elaine up to Berkeley matches up with the weakest stretch here, when Lenny turns up in Minnesota and is forced to suddenly find ways to impress Kelly who at first tells him little more than, “Gee, I’m really flattered,” while on the way to English Lit to win her over (his impersonation of a Justice Department narcotics officer feels half developed and is likely the weakest moment in the film but I’m hardly the first to point out how it looks forward to the Litmus Configuration scene in MIDNIGHT RUN), turning a wisp of an image into someone forced to display some kind of motivation to her behavior, even if this film isn’t about giving us the satisfaction of actual reason which most of the time people in real life don’t do either. The scene where Lenny confronts Kelly in his car feels like they’ve never spoken before and in some ways they haven’t so it makes sense that there’s almost nothing to say about their relationship because there really isn’t one. All he has is the pursuit and when finally alone with Kelly she has him play a game where they stand naked close to each other without touching it’s as if she’s instigating him into a life of no meaningful contact with another human ever again. Even when she talks about how positive Lenny is just like her father, who never seems all that warm and encouraging a person, we never know if she means a word of it and even that ultimately means nothing.
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Interestingly, in his book Charles Grodin mentions that he got along great with Jeannie Berlin during filming but didn’t get to know Shepherd at all and, whether intentionally or not, this worked out perfectly for their utter lack of chemistry, two people with absolutely nothing of substance to say to each other. Kelly is every bit the vision that early ‘70s Cybill Shepherd would be but also a blank magazine cover of beauty with little beyond her own private jokes, daring Lenny to keep talking until she loses interest, always looking like she’s about to crack up for her own reasons. The character isn’t even seen during the final seconds of the film, in one sense surprising since it has always seemed like everything was about her, but in truth it never really was and by this point she doesn’t even matter. Eddie Albert as her father barely seems to look at her through the entire movie, certainly not during the great laying out of the cards scene. The showdown over her as a commodity between the two men is the real confrontation things have been building to, this film’s own version of Benjamin Braddock endlessly driving up and down the state of California, and feels like those other Elaine May films about two men sitting across from each other when the real truth comes out. “There’s no deceit in the cauliflower” is an all-timer, spoken during Lenny’s soliloquy about the honesty found in their simple Midwestern dinner, but gets made even funnier by Kelly’s outraged father repeating it back to him in disbelief, outraged he’s being forced to actually sit down and talk to this guy with the ‘New York head’ who he hates so much.
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Grodin also wrote about men coming up to him to say how much they identified with his character, looking up to him for snagging the beautiful blonde, which he found unnerving. He’s right, of course, but there are plenty of things to identify with here, just not the sort of things you go up to the star to eagerly share with them. Which is the point, since if there wasn’t anything in there to identify with then it wouldn’t get under our skin the way it does. The final moment sidesteps going for an expected punchline in favor of a quiet realization by the main character, a salesman with nothing left to sell, a life that he’s left behind and can’t return to. The simplicity of the line “I was ten” which isn’t really spoken to anyone as he sits there on that couch at the end faced with what he’s done and what he can’t return to lands in the most brutal way possible which is what the ending has to be. The plasticity of love has been around him though the whole movie, from the songs sung by him and Lila on their road trip to what seems like the welcoming sights on Miami Beach and those are the things that surround us all, until it envelopes you while trying to resist it and suddenly there’s no way to tell the difference. The real thing, to use a line from a certain song, is what you sing with someone you want to be with, until suddenly it becomes something you hum to yourself when you’re alone. It’s an ending that gives this film life, all-encompassing self-loathing life.
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A crucial part of all that is how astoundingly good and unrelentingly fearless Charles Grodin is this role, seemingly not caring at all about what an audience was going to think about him. He never winks, he never makes you think that he’s judging this guy, he understands that if he doesn’t keep talking all this might collapse. Coming after smaller parts in ROSEMARY’S BABY and CATCH-22, here he both establishes what the Grodin screen persona will be for all time while also totally obliterating it. Maybe he was better in certain roles later on—as always, we come back to MIDNIGHT RUN—but there’s something pure in this. As Kelly, Cybill Shepherd takes a part which almost seems deliberately underwritten but while we may be paying attention to her beauty, makes it all about both what she’s saying or not saying at the same time, how serious is she ever about anything, really, but as if she’s ready to burst out laughing at any moment, as if daring the people around her to call her bluff on how far she thinks her adorableness will take her. The Oscar-nominated Eddie Albert is astounding, spending part of his screentime doing little more than seething as Grodin attempts to get in his good graces, waiting for that moment where he can lower the boom to this man that he clearly despises, with the always delightful Audra Lindley by his side trying to make things more pleasant. Jeannie Berlin, also Oscar-nominated as well as May’s daughter, is unforgettable as Lila, never looking for our sympathy as if both examining her from the outside and fully inhabiting her from the inside, bringing a cheerful, annoying innocence as she tells Lenny “I put cream on,” with that cream slathered all over her face. She says it with such unthinking hope that you want to take care of her and yet as part of how human, how horribly human, the movie is you can totally understand what Lenny is really thinking at that precise moment.
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Movies can remind us of ourselves, our own past and our own fuckups. Sometimes a little too much. They’re a part of our lives, after all, a reminder of all the Kellys and Lilas we’ve known. That doesn’t change. Nothing makes sense anymore, not what we want, not what we’re going to get and, these days, we’re still not sure where we belong. Once when briefly introduced to Jeannie Berlin her at a party, she gave me a look of total disinterest. Maybe I didn’t belong there either. After the wedding that begins THE HEARTBREAK KID, Lila keeps telling Lenny how they’re going to be together for the next 40 to 50 years, almost as long as Grodin himself was around after this movie. Makes you wonder how Lenny spent that time. I mean, what are the things we’re looking for in our lives when we decide we want to be with somebody. What do we really want, deep down? I if we know the answer, can we say it out loud or do we keep going over it in our minds, along with all those reminders of the way we fucked things up. Sometimes that doesn’t change and it likely won’t in the future, no matter how much we learn. Maybe you have to be from New York to understand. Maybe you just have to be able to remember certain things and know when you were wrong. Maybe we never know.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com5tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-49273770845150333222021-10-03T17:27:00.002-07:002021-10-10T14:22:28.100-07:00Ever Since You Left <div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5xL89cp_EijoyKyRAlYYej_qPWgfenmlOgGept6dKeqYGw4CKkr9qprVpvy4gZhsMCHQ-7yUR0o-B49YxC5ZzJYOusBzv4ceI_d9AtjUcXqolAQiCXt8TRJPFZ0qBv6w-rEKJxZuIA5RR/s718/UnmarriedW7.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="482" data-original-width="718" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh5xL89cp_EijoyKyRAlYYej_qPWgfenmlOgGept6dKeqYGw4CKkr9qprVpvy4gZhsMCHQ-7yUR0o-B49YxC5ZzJYOusBzv4ceI_d9AtjUcXqolAQiCXt8TRJPFZ0qBv6w-rEKJxZuIA5RR/s400/UnmarriedW7.jpg"/></a></div>
For months it’s been hard to avoid trying to think about new beginnings. Or maybe what I’m dwelling on are just the endings. Right now it’s tough to tell which is which. I’m trying to believe that somewhere in all this will be a new start for everything but, well, things happen. Of course, nothing has happened this past year, nothing except for a lot of stuff we’d rather forget. And the more time goes by, the greater is the awareness of how hard it can be to really know a person through all that, even when you think you do, even when you think you’ve been allowed to. Even when you want to hold onto that connection you thought was there only to realize it was just a mirage. Where do those people go? Somewhere in all this is an answer, we just have to figure out what it is for ourselves.
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But what is the past? The past is something we have to force ourselves to move on from, as much as we find ourselves stuck there. It always seemed like Paul Mazursky made films about what was going on around him but all that is the past now too. He’s been gone for over seven years by this point and there’s no one around making films like Paul Mazursky. Which is a damn shame, even if I don’t know who would go see those films if we had him. Times have changed. His BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE was about what was going on between people when it was made in the late 60s, even if the confusion felt by the characters still feels relatable, reminding me of all the bad decisions you can’t avoid. And AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, which he wrote and directed, feels like it was about the specific point in time when it was released in 1978. Starring the unforgettable Jill Clayburgh, this particular film is maybe not as breezily entertaining as BOB & CAROL but it feels more insightful, more open to the pain caused between men and women and, yes, it even feels like it has something more to do with right now and all that pain even if there isn’t a chance in hell of something like this being made these days. The fact that he was a man making this film about such a woman might also send up a red flag, even making me seriously think about how valid it is for me to be writing about it, and while it’s definitely a good thing there are more female directors working now it’s as if the distance he felt from the subject was part of what made him want to explore it. He wanted to understand the source of all that hurt and how to move past it, to understand what all these women are going through as they try to live in the world around them. This is what gets explored in the movie just as much as the idea of starting over (not to be confused with a <a href="http://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2021/02/questions-we-cant-ask.html">certain other Jill Clayburgh film</a>, of course) which feels like it means even more now that we’re all sort of trying to start over, trying to remember where those people went and why we’re doing any of this in the first place.
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Erica Benton (Jill Clayburgh) appears to live a charmed life on Manhattan’s Upper East Side with her husband Martin (Michael Murphy) and daughter Patti (Lisa Lucas) when one day on the street he announces between sobs that he is in love with another woman. Just like that Erica is unmarried, forced to accept what has happened with little idea of where her life will go next. Through dealing with friends and going into therapy her new life begins to take hold but she then meets famous painter Saul Kaplan (Alan Bates) and it takes no time for them to be drawn to each other. But this new romance means that Erica has to decide how much the new independence she has achieved really means to her and how much of her life she will decide to devote to this new man.
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At their very best, the films of Paul Mazursky display a desire to understand people, to show the way they change in the worlds they find themselves in and how their surroundings affect those choices. His success as a filmmaker went beyond the ‘70s—his two biggest box office hits came at the end of the ‘60s and later on in the ‘80s, after all—but his style fits perfectly with that decade, a period of time when a film was allowed to simply explore character, to understand what they do in the frame and how their own imperfections affect the choices they make more than any sort of plot designed to drive those actions. This approach is ideal for AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, a film which plays like the most confident of Mazursky’s career in how it’s willing to take time in exploring its main character, to fully delve into each moment so it always feels totally genuine, totally real. It’s never in a rush to get to a specific place, more interested in showing us who these characters are and not only how much what happens to Erica seemed inevitable but how she really does have the strength to move beyond it. The unhurried pace of a scene whether it’s Erica out at drinks with friends having drinks or having breakfast with her family gives us time to to know each of them, helping it all seem lived in and natural. Even that incessant sobbing as her husband finally makes his confession feels totally real in its own bullshit way and her own reaction she has to all this adds to it.
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Jill Clayburgh’s Erica is living a privileged life that seems full if not quite extraordinary, casually envied by her friends for having a husband who’s “the second best man in the five boroughs” before he breaks the news and later on someone even expresses surprise at her divorce by observing that she always seemed like “a normal person”. But she’s as special in her way as any of them are and in her private moments shows us this, the way she dances alone in her apartment as if to fantasize about the glorious life she only pretends to have. It’s a perfect role for this actress who had a magnetic screen presence which brought an intelligence and vibrancy as well as an earthbound realism to everything she does, one which demands that you never take what she has to offer for granted which is maybe one reason why Clayburgh is remembered for something like this and not a secondary role in SILVER STREAK since she’s clearly a woman with too much going on to simply be ‘the girl’ in an action-comedy. Just watching her face says everything as if Mazursky is continually realizing there wouldn’t be a movie if we didn’t have those moments to understand her more, the late night sequence where she cleans out evidence of her husband from the apartment they once shared particularly memorable just by the look on her face, her daughter emerging to study her and silently offer support. Each of the friends she has those periodic meetings to discuss all their problems seem just as complex as she is, particularly Kelly Bishop as one who pops her pills and talks about how set things are with her man friend but deeps down dreams of how pretty Rita Hayworth was, as if wishing it could really be as simple on the surface as she paints it. Even the people who quickly drift in and out of scenes make an impression like the brief appearance by Jill Eikenberry and Michael Tucker as a happily married couple looking at Erica offering sympathetic expressions to what goes unspoken. But Clayburgh remains at the center of every scene and it becomes clear that not only does Paul Mazursky like his main character, he’s also hoping that she makes the right decisions for herself.
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Spending too much time focusing on how dated a film may be inevitable but still only interests me so much, as if an excuse to refuse to engage with what a film is trying to do. But considering this is a film where Jill Clayburgh walks into a bar where Leo Sayer is heard on the jukebox it’s going to automatically be somewhat locked into a certain era so it’s unavoidable. The moments that touch on things that were in the air in the late ‘70s like a brief discussion about teen abortion as well as topical snatches of dialogue throughout (even STAR WARS, less than a year old at this point, is name dropped) that include a brief exchange about a new Lina Wertmuller film which says as much about the characters and the dynamic between men and women in this particular world as the famous Eric Rohmer joke in NIGHT MOVES. The upbeat score by Bill Conti is one other aspect which particularly locks the film into a specific point in time but I still find it infectious, showing off the New York skyline perfectly at the start while also adding momentum as Erica claws towards improving her life. The New York of AN UNMARRIED WOMAN takes place largely within either the Upper East Side apartment where Erica lives or the downtown art world she spends so much time in so it’s one that allows for all sorts of asides, particularly the dim sum sequence with Mazursky himself briefly taking center stage to order as much food as possible (memories of my own dim sum experiences in New York as a child are too dim but I wish they were like this). The scene is followed by a cab ride where Erica basically gets assaulted by her date played by Andrew Duncan, also in other films from the period like LOVING and SLAP SHOT, here looking like every inch the visual epitome of the slightly too desperate-midlife-bad combover single guy in the late ‘70s. The film’s view of this city that existed then bounces back and forth between the dirt of the decade and the good vibes, is dirty and romantic, dangerous and hopeful, whether it’s the upscale East Side or those empty streets down in Soho late at night which feel so evocative that there are all sorts of possibilities out there.
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Clayburgh still has to deal with all those men in every scene, Michael Murphy as her husband looking for approval while making his confession as if he’s a little boy desperately trying to weasel his way out of this without getting in trouble. He’s not so much a prick as just a putz who expects a pat on the back for actually speaking up, behavior that feels just as believable as Cliff Gorman’s Charlie, the artist acquaintance who drops the wisdom that “Food, work and sex” is all there is to life, coming off as kind of a jerk except for a few specific moments when only she’s around. The artist who she falls for played by Alan Bates is the one person who seems willing to look at her as an equal with a chemistry between the two that causes both of them to up their game. All this plays as more analytical in its view of the world than the broadly satirical vibe it feels like Mazursky is associated with a little too often, an approach that sometimes tilts towards comedy but is unable to stray too far from the harsh truth of it all and it’s possible this film successfully locates the balance between the two better than any other film he made. It’s easy to look for symbolism in things like that sneaker Martin tosses into the East River after stepping in dog shit as easily as he tosses away his wife but it feels like deep analysis isn’t what AN UNMARRIED WOMAN is about. Instead it’s just the writer-director telling this story, watching the characters as they vacillate between honesty and the lies, trying to somehow understand everything they do and why.
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Up against all that, the therapy sessions attended by Erica feel presented mostly at face value in their progressive ‘70s way, offering an intimate casualness that plays as an advancement from the vague hostility in how the process is presented in BOB & CAROL and the less comical approach with the very same therapist played by Donald F. Muhich in BLUME IN LOVE which feels even more desperately unsure about what the point of it all is (appropriately, Muhich also later played the dog psychiatrist in Mazursky’s DOWN AND OUT IN BEVERLY HILLS). But even in those cases the view of therapy isn’t just about going for the jokes and the way Clayburgh plays these scenes with Penelope Rusianoff, an actual therapist who got some notoriety out of the role, it seems like a valuable part of the path, indulgent and wandering in the way such a session would be, not the answer to everything but serving as one step in the process pointing towards what might help this intelligent person who has become unmoored. It gets Erica out there, leading to an encounter which for once in a movie is a woman engaging in totally healthy sex, looking to fuck with no reprisals for that behavior. A simple fade to black would make it seem more like a love scene, it’s also essential for us to see enough of the moment to understand how much this is about the sheer physicality between the two people to show exactly what Erica needs, just as important as the therapy and the movie is about her finding the way to do that.
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Always comfortable with its own pace, the film manages to avoid many of the expected clichés so there are no awkward moments where Erica runs into Martin and his new girlfriend, no montages of comically awkward blind dates. Even the mechanics of lawyers and divorces are ignored, as if Mazursky doesn’t have the patience for such things that for all we know are happening offscreen regardless. His direction always feels carefully considered, going for the awkward emotion of the moment, those little bits of business between the things that actually get spoken. Even individual shots never get as insistently elegant as the look at Clayburgh as Michael Murphy confesses which on the one hand feels like a relatively simple close-up but the choice to do it this way makes the moment transcendent, seeming like she goes through five or six full emotional journeys in the space of a minute. All throughout the camerawork is more about catching the right character beats than the elegance of the shot and more than ever being either an angry or hopeful film it tries to be an understanding one, simply observing them as if just doing that will help make it happen. It’s about the gradual progress, even down to how the confidence Erica begins to display while dealing with certain people late in the film which may not always be something certain people deserve but it feels healthy for her that she’s reached this point. How many moments the movie pauses for and within all that is the humanity.
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It feels downright daring how Alan Bates, basically the second lead of the film, doesn’t even turn up until two-thirds in which is another sign of how willing it is to take time before that happens, the initial glimpse of him seen against a white wall in a gallery as if he’s a work of art himself that Erica has manifested now that she’s ready for him. Bates is appropriately magnetic, excellent casting as someone coming in so late and seems fully fleshed out right away leading Erica into this relationship that feels mature in all the best ways, willing to engage with her and what she wants, revealing himself as someone who has likely slept around in the past but is willing to seriously think about making a total commitment. It’s also a performance where you can tell the actor knows full well the movie isn’t about him and he displays enough confidence to not be concerned about this. Even the big meeting between him and Erica’s daughter—a dynamic between all of them which offers an intriguing mirror to the relationships in THE GOODBYE GIRL, also set in New York and released in late ’77—defaults to him being willing to fade into the background as the tensions between the other two rise and he doesn’t even stick around for the key scene that follows, mother and daughter singing “Maybe I’m Amazed” at the piano, not caring if they’re slightly off key, the camera pulling back to reveal that Saul isn’t actually sitting in the chair nearby. The story isn’t about him, a reminder that sometimes people just drift through your life. Sometimes they stick around in that chair.
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Mazursky’s BOB & CAROL & TED & ALICE, from nine years earlier, still has a sense of youthful naïve hope but AN UNMARRIED WOMAN is more about adult pragmatism, accepting what you’ve become and what has to be while still leaving the door open for certain possibilities. Erica asks Martin if he fell out of love with “my body, my flesh,” as she puts it, “or me, Erica,” a sentence which has a surprisingly Cronenbergian flavor to it in this context but it also feels very much what Mazursky spends much of his time exploring thematically, the question of what makes a person a person, of trying to understand just how to live your life while barely understanding how you ever did it in the first place, how far does a relationship go beyond simple attraction and how much does any of this mean to the one who ends up hurt.
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But more than finding the right man, it’s a film also about the realization that trying to understand someone else, all those people who leave, isn’t as important in the end as trying to understand ourselves. Erica spends time talking with both the men in her life about how they’re going to spend the summer but the way things go it’s as if on a very basic level the film is about how the very mature decision to stay in Manhattan by yourself during those months, not looking for excuses to flee the life you’ve made, is maybe not so bad. A jar of pickled herring as a parting gift feels just as much a symbol as that giant painting Erica is given before she even realizes it, a gesture which causes the final moments to feel unresolved but also correct in that sense since to have her simply go off with a man would go against what the film is about, to have her confidentially stroll down the street after letting him go would be too easy. Instead she’s stuck with that enormous piece of art, trying to figure out how to get down the street with it, how to get through the next day. It still feels uplifting and that rousing Bill Conti music helps but she’s still one lone person in the crowd with just as many questions as she always will. She’s spent so much of her life afraid, which she even talks about with the therapist, but the end, at least, she’s no longer afraid. She’s the person she wants to be and, for now, has to be.
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Jill Clayburgh deserved more leading roles than she got but even if that had happened she still might not have gotten another one this good. Her entire performance is so raw and fearless, tracking her anger towards finding some sort of acceptance through her bravery, remarkable in each moment that gives the film its life making every second count. The big personality of Alan Bates is a match for that, displaying his magnetism even during those brief flickers where you know he had some major fights with the ex-wife he speaks of but also feeling like he’s really trying. Everyone in the cast brings layers to what at times are just a few scenes with Michael Murphy finding the hollow center in his character’s behavior to make him unable to see any other viewpoint while Cliff Gorman taps into the guy on the make that seems like most of what he is along with just enough intelligence to make the two sides to him totally believable. Lisa Lucas is quietly remarkable as Erica’s daughter along with strong work from Pat Quinn, Linda Miller and especially Kelly Bishop as her friends. Novella Nelson and Raymond J. Barry as the pair of artists who are a ‘definite item’ that Erica runs into at a bar are just two among so many vivid faces who make an impression in small roles throughout along with an uncredited David Rasche in what looks to be his first film appearance playing two short bits opposite Clayburgh at a singles bar.
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AN UNMARRIED WOMAN was a sizable hit upon being released in March 1978 plus it went on to receive Oscar nominations for Best Picture, Actress and Original Screenplay. But as many pieces of that decade eventually did, the film drifted away from pop culture but at least the Blu-ray is now available from Criterion. It deserves such recognition, a reminder of this great performance by Jill Clayburgh, a reminder of what Manhattan once looked like and a reminder of Paul Mazursky at his very best. His films aren’t all great, at the very least revisiting THE PICKLE recently was a reminder of that. But the best of them, like this one, still make me wish we had a few more. All this gets me back to thinking about the past year and what it has been, filled with thoughts of being alone, of understanding what it really means to be by yourself and wondering about how many others out there might be feeling this way. There is always the hope that this won’t last forever, but these days I’m not even sure what forever means anymore. Maybe, instead of beginnings or endings, what we’re looking forward to is simply life as it goes on, with nothing to do but search for that answer. And some sort of answer is going to come eventually, whether we like it or not.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-20679290569586683132021-05-31T22:24:00.001-07:002021-05-31T22:24:26.834-07:00Life In The Big City<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpjsOmq1CaZiOXNvz2S0MNZG38UQzXfZPqjhKJu40tKpTMxywgIMUa9gICYa9VziRMcTSUSFJON5chjhwCo1HW-q61ST4q1gnEqO4HBP9xz2XoP2a4dUiTFxTDBjrKSA1X8JGfDVLqZJl/s1024/RoboCop1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="578" data-original-width="1024" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgxpjsOmq1CaZiOXNvz2S0MNZG38UQzXfZPqjhKJu40tKpTMxywgIMUa9gICYa9VziRMcTSUSFJON5chjhwCo1HW-q61ST4q1gnEqO4HBP9xz2XoP2a4dUiTFxTDBjrKSA1X8JGfDVLqZJl/s400/RoboCop1.jpg"/></a></div>
Sometimes, when writing about one thing, it can be impossible to avoid thinking about another thing, which is what happened recently when writing about <a href="http://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2021/05/send-in-clones.html" target="_blank">JUDGE DREDD</a> and I mentioned that comparisons to ROBOCOP were inevitable. Based on a comic book that predates ROBOCOP by a number of years, JUDGE DREDD is enough of a mess that it’s possibly the more interesting film to write about. The thing is that ROBOCOP, a comic book movie not actually based on a comic book (even if parts of it maybe have been somewhat inspired by the original Judge Dredd), is pretty damn close to perfect. Once you get past that, it can be a question of what else there is to say? Still, there’s nothing wrong with trying.
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Of course, the future began at some point. We just didn’t know when it happened. Things changed as they always do, but we looked up one day and realized just how much had been altered with no chance of going back. My guess is it all started when E! put the Kardashians on. That seems likely. But while it was never made clear just how far into the future ROBOCOP was supposed to be set, that never mattered. It was all about the inevitable. The look at a future version of our world being swamped by corporate takeovers is certainly a part of that. But removed from its enormous success in the summer of ’87 and the faulty attempts by Orion Pictures to turn the concept into a franchise, this is essentially a pitch black satire about an individual trying to reassert his identity in a world being consumed by fascism. It shows people trapped within the oncoming horrors of the future in a message delivered during the inherent ugliness of the Reagan era, a time set on transforming them into just another product which, like everything, is expendable. Just another statistic.
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But looking at ROBOCOP now, in the future, makes it clear how little has really changed, as certain people way up in those glass towers look down below on all those statistics to decide who is still left to hurt. ROBOCOP was Dutch director Paul Verhoeven’s big introduction to the American market and it may still be his best English language film, as much as I worship a few of the others. It’s a portrait of America, showing what it has become with a filmmaking style so assured and unrelenting through every moment that the exhilaration becomes impossible to shake. It’s a film so invigorating through all that energy, thrusting us right in there as if it’s forcing us to become part of the narrative. This is a comic strip, yes, but it’s much more than that. Maybe it’s what our reality, our future, has really become by this point in time.
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In the future, crime in Detroit has spiraled out of control. No sooner has patrolman Alex Murphy (Peter Weller) begun his new assignment at the Metro West precinct, teaming with partner Anne Lewis (Nancy Allen), when he is brutally gunned down by a vicious gang led by the psychotic Clarence Boddicker (Kurtwood Smith). Meanwhile, at the all-powerful corporation OCP, which is preparing to begin construction on new futuristic Delta City, rising executive Bob Morton (Miguel Ferrer) takes advantage of a setback in development to unveil his new creation RoboCop, a new cyborg which takes part of a deceased policeman, in this case Murphy, and turns him into essentially a robotic supercop with several prime directives built into his programming. Murphy’s former partner is the only person who senses something familiar about him, while competing OCP exec Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) is ready to take advantage of Morton’s success and the new public hero for his own purposes.
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In many ways, ROBOCOP has essentially been burned into my soul by this point, just as much as certain other late ‘80s summer releases like <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-wheel-went-round.html" target="_blank">THE UNTOUCHABLES</a> and DIE HARD, each of them part of a memory that is growing dimmer, yet in my head they remain as powerful as ever. But it’s also a perfect example of a movie that has gained in stature through the years as the world has continued to change around me, so its meaning has only deepened, making it look harder into Murphy’s eyes to see how much everything has been taken away from him, and how much has been taken away from us. That sense of danger is always at the forefront even as the laughs come, and this is a pretty goddamn funny movie, with the way each scene plays out making it all feel like it could go either way at any moment. Every television is presumably tuned into the same comedy show, the one with the certain catchphrase you’ll never forget, as if this view of America is essentially one giant vicious sitcom anyway, one where the laughs come when people get hurt and they don’t realize this until it’s too late. The scene that shows just how dangerous this future really is occurs not down on the mean streets, but up in a sleek executive boardroom, and even though he’s barely seen, it’s very clear that the head of it all, Daniel O’Herlihy’s CEO, known only as The Old Man, is more dangerous and powerful than anyone. Both worlds are equally nasty. It’s just that the suits are much nicer in one of them.
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Written by Edward Neumeier and Michael Miner, ROBOCOP’s script is unapologetic in its look at what is to come with an unrelenting display of all that horror, and the way things are cleverly laid out means that there’s not a wasted beat in the movie, coming in at a lean 103 minutes with barely a chance to catch our breath. It would be easy to speculate how Paul Verhoeven took a script, which in other hands could have been just another piece of genre junk, to capitalize on THE TERMINATOR and not only made it bigger and more emotional but this would be dismissive of the phenomenal sense of craft everyone involved brings to the film, from the sharp and incisive wit of the script to the crisp excitement to the way cinematographer Jost Vacano shoots every scene to the physical creation of RoboCop himself in a suit (brilliantly designed and built by Rob Bottin) that completely sells the illusion of what Murphy has become, including the intricacies of the sound work every time he moves a muscle with the weight of the character always felt to help us believe everything he becomes.
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All of this is true, but much of how well it works also comes from the sense of sheer physicality brought to the film by the director in the way every moment is approached down to what would normally be simple dialogue scenes, the way Dick Jones and Bob Morton get in near each other during that men’s room encounter which gives it an unforgettable energy but there’s also the closeness of RoboCop and Lewis to readjust his targeting as those baby jars are blown away, as physically close as their relationship will ever get. There’s nothing subtle about this version of Detroit, one where everything is loud and garish, no one is really in charge, and even the lightning fast reporting of all the daily horrors seen in the newsbreaks scattered throughout, establishing the world and laying down some plot points, as the anchors move onto the next calamity with bright smiles (this film is what Leeza Gibbons should be forever known for) complete with breaking for a commercial before the movie is two minutes old and everything in the world outside of the technology is clearly breaking down. The science fiction elements are always compelling but it’s the deadliness of that arch feeling all around it in this ugly futuristic America that causes it to be more tangible, fulfilling all the requirements of the genre, but presented in a way that is so horrific the nominal lead has his hand blown off in the first twenty minutes. Naturally, everyone laughs. This is the future. This is what people are.
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Before he dies, we barely learn anything at all about Murphy beyond that he seems like a decent and normal guy and that he has a wife and kid, as seen in those flashes of his past life that are as epic and banal as any of ours. And then he’s gone. Paul Verhoeven has directed star vehicles during his American career. In <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2011/06/before-you-wake-up.html" target="_blank">TOTAL RECALL</a>, he used Arnold Schwarzenegger better than few other directors ever have and he made BASIC INSTINCT all about the glory of what Sharon Stone does in front of the camera in every possible way. But in ROBOCOP, the character called RoboCop becomes part of the very essence of the filmmaking. The way he/it carefully walks down a hallway almost becomes the visual style of the film’s fluidity, so every moving shot seems to go with the next, giving it an energy that comes from the way each of the characters walk and how it defines them, so every gesture is equally important. The way the film teases out our first real glimpses of the character as he arrives at the police station comprises one of those touches throughout that have something beyond what we were expecting, and that sheer sense of physicality gives every moment an extra jolt. On the surface, subtlety has nothing to do with what Verhoeven is doing and yet the director always knows to add in certain small moments that add to things, so even what he does with silent glances between people is something, reminding us that there’s always more going on, which keeps each of those characters alive and in our heads even when they’re not around.
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Things are pretty recognizable in this future, maybe most notably the city councilman who won’t accept that he lost his re-election which feels funnier and more terrifying now than ever before. The legendary “I’d buy that for a dollar” catchphrase is maybe dumber than just about anything on TV now, so it makes perfect sense that it’s a catchphrase in the world of the movie, too, because of course it is. The police are going on strike which is probably exactly what OCP would want anyway. In fairness, the ideas filtered through Verhoeven are sometimes more compelling than the action which is solid (with some second unit work apparently directed by Monte Hellman, RIP) but not as inspired as the parts that haven’t been seen before in other movies; the shootout in the drug factory is one of the least compelling sections since it’s ‘just’ pretty good action, for a few moments a scene about nothing but guys shooting at each other. What stands out in this film shows either the twisted humor in all the action beats, whether the vignettes of the title character’s first night out or the unexpected sense of emotion occurring in the gas station when he’s unexpectedly recognized scene that makes this special, something new. All of this coming together builds the story piece by piece, the onslaught of Robo being gunned down mirroring the killing of Murphy at the start, a character forever dying for our sins and feeling the pain of our ignorance. There are still reasons for him to fight back and the heart of the film is that power.
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The climax is set in an abandoned steel mill, just about the dullest possible setting for any movie but this one gets away with it, feeling appropriately medieval visually to go with the clanging sounds of the Basil Pouledoris score, as well as a counterpoint to the gleaming OCP skyscraper where things will really end a few minutes later. But that setting is also is beside the point. It’s really about everything that Robo has discovered about himself and the world around him, the feeling we get when he says to Clarence Boddicker, “I’m not arresting you anymore,” what this has all been emotionally building to. And the final minute or so of screentime, since this film doesn’t stick around any longer than it needs to beyond the last word we get to hear, is a work of beauty as well as the most gratifying payoff imaginable after everything that we, and the character, have been through. It really is one of the great endings. With Tim Burton’s BATMAN still two years in the future, superhero movies were barely a thing in ’87 (one week after this film was released, <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2008/08/its-as-it-always-was.html" target="_blank">SUPERMAN IV: THE QUEST FOR PEACE</a> opened and instantly died), but even at this early stage ROBOCOP uses itself to glorify the concept while also making clear the storytelling limitations inherent in the very concept of the superhero film; after all, it’s about a person who no longer exists, the emotions fighting to come through and he isn’t able to have sex which most likely in the Verhoeven world means you’ll never be a complete person. His programming, after all, gives him no real awareness of the trauma brought on by the sexual assault he prevents in one scene, the male organ he shoots off just one more obstacle to help him take down the bad guy.
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Except for a few (presumed) hookers hanging out at Bob Morton’s place doing coke with him, there’s not much of a sense of overt sex in the film anyway, but it’s always there if you want to find it, often in the nastiest ways whether the undercurrents of that men’s room scene between Jones and Morton or Boddicker leering at the OCP secretary, leaving his gum behind as a reminder. Only the quick flashes of Murphy’s wife saying she loves him feels like anything resembling normal behavior between two people who love each other. In a way, the film is about finding meaning in this future even without that. The power of the extra violence only seen in the unrated version (no real surprise that this film went through extensive haggling with the ratings board at the time) found on the various disc releases isn’t essential storywise, but the overall effect helps to provide a clearer look at this futuristic Detroit which makes the overall message that much stronger. This is what people are in this world. This is what humanity means to those in charge.
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The giant, lumbering robot ED-209 that Dick Jones presents to the board is clearly a product of this corporate world, a killing machine that blows away an innocent person turned into a joke by the end - a big, dumb, clumsy joke with the crying baby sounds perfectly encapsulates everything about the mindset behind it. Bob Morton’s idea that became RoboCop is the opposite in its effectiveness and of course that guy was no saint since he is the one who set Murphy up to be killed in the first place by placing him in that precinct. It’s the individual inside that has to fight its way out, even if maybe the one thing that hasn’t aged so well for this point in time is the film’s portrayal of ordinary cops as average, likable Joes that doesn’t quite match up with the way we’re thinking about them these days. But no film is perfect even if ROBOCOP comes close. All that fury brought to almost operatic heights by Basil Poledouris and his phenomenal score makes me want to stand up at the end even when I’m by myself. There’s not a boring shot in the entire film, not a single dull moment. The message it contains is as clear as it ever was and instead of fading the film is more powerful and, yes, emotional, than ever.
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On the surface, maybe it seems like a thankless role considering how he’s covered up for much of the film but the energy Peter Weller brings to that focus as the character is essential, as if he was cast for not only the shape of his chin but that haunted look in his eyes as much as every specific movement he makes to make the cyborg the believable creation that he is. This also matches up with the heroism and humor that Nancy Allen brings to Officer Anne Lewis, a reminder of a humanity that most of the rest of the world has left behind. It’s an unforgettable line-up of actors doing some of the best work of their careers as these scumbags in suits, Ronny Cox displaying the extreme arrogance of Dick Jones, Miguel Ferrer and the cockiness of Bob Morton as his new creation achieves success. Kurtwood Smith achieves instant immortality with his reading of the legendary line “Bitches leave” but the cackling viciousness found in his entire portrayal of Clarence Boddicker is unforgettable, matched with everything that Ray Wise, Jesse Goins and Paul McCrane bring to it as his crew. Robert DoQui finds the right amount of honorable fury as Sgt. Reed, the way Felton Perry as OCP exec Johnson walks says so much about the sort of corporate guy he’s playing and Daniel O’Herlihy as The Old Man in a grand total of two scenes remains a pitch perfect satirical vision of true corporate evil, one who you just know will never have to concern himself with anything going on where people are really going to get hurt.
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And one thing that’s for sure after everything we’ve been through in the past year, is that it’s tough to know if you’re still a person. Even after all that staring in the mirror, you’re still not sure. Isolation does that to you. Having no idea what the future holds does that to you. And all that’s left to do is to keep waiting for the answer. Funny thing is, the way ROBOCOP concludes, there’s no real character here to build a franchise around unless they were going to put the helmet back on him and return to the status quo. Of course, it didn’t stop them from trying and that’s exactly what they did. Coming three years later, Irvin Kershner’s ROBOCOP 2 is a big, messy, miscalculation, but seems to have a fanbase maybe because of how much of an extreme mess it is. No one seems to defend, or even much remember, Fred Dekker’s ROBOCOP 3, which was made without Peter Weller (who turned it down in favor of David Cronenberg’s NAKED LUNCH and you can hardly blame him), had a delayed release hobbled by the bankruptcy of Orion Pictures and was even saddled with a PG-13 rating. There was also a one-season TV show I never saw and a remake just a few years ago, or so I’m told. But I never think of any of these things as being ROBOCOP, a film that by itself remains a masterpiece of pop cinema. We don’t see anything like it anymore. The pain has been bled out of what these movies are just as much as the cinematic intelligence found in the stylization. Still, I suppose things could be worse. Watching the Republican debates back in 2016, I made a comment on social media that it wasn’t so much like ROBOCOP but ROBOCOP 2. Maybe the past few years really have been that badly put together. Real life, after all, doesn’t resemble finely honed satire. It resembles messy, unsubtle satire and more people actually get hurt because of it than you ever imagine. But ROBOCOP remains the great film that ROBOCOP is even if we’ve passed it by now. We just need to remember who we are and how we fit into this world. If all this still counts as a world.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-58154792561967498962021-05-29T21:16:00.002-07:002021-05-29T21:18:18.036-07:00The Intangibles Are Everything<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHYTQeMEFmji7nSJY3IOVxsSWUBHmZMw72Ng1lXPLAyOBQ001J5cipOyzIujOqbcx3TRFreG7-Gb3kZQNfHUTadWkUoVi-zk7IBSFmlycmsawjRBaeEzDOycPn2yD16rv-foL_eWgrFfAM/s1600/HowDoYouKnow1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="1066" data-original-width="1600" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjHYTQeMEFmji7nSJY3IOVxsSWUBHmZMw72Ng1lXPLAyOBQ001J5cipOyzIujOqbcx3TRFreG7-Gb3kZQNfHUTadWkUoVi-zk7IBSFmlycmsawjRBaeEzDOycPn2yD16rv-foL_eWgrFfAM/s400/HowDoYouKnow1.jpg"/></a></div>
Not sure how long ago it was but some years back, I spotted James L. Brooks in my neighborhood. At least, I thought I did. The guy looked like him. It’s impossible to be certain, but there’s no reason why he wouldn’t take a weekend drive over to Los Feliz with some people for lunch or whatever. While I know next to nothing about the man’s personal life or where he lives or any of that stuff, I just imagine it to be way over on the west side in somewhere like Santa Monica, Pacific Palisades, or up in Malibu, one of those places I only rarely venture to these days - the sort of place the characters in his film SPANGLISH lived is what I’m saying - maybe just going to and from the Fox lot to work on THE SIMPSONS. Of course, I have no idea if any of this is the case, but my point is that I sometimes wonder how much time he spends out in the real world to see how people actually behave these days. Los Feliz counts as the real world, right? I’m never sure anymore.
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Now having passed its tenth anniversary, HOW DO YOU KNOW is the last film to be written and directed by James L. Brooks. To date, at the very least, and technically there’s still the chance for another but a decade is a long time. Opening the week before Christmas 2010 the film died immediately, even with a reported $120 million spent on it and a cast that included Jack Nicholson in what is also his final film to date. It has its admirers out in the wilds of Film Twitter and, hey, I get why. It’s recognizable as a film by James L. Brooks and I’m willing to defend it to a certain extent on that basis in the way it explores the neuroses of its characters to their utmost depths as if this is the final statement on everything people in his films and TV shows have ever gone through. It’s a film that asks the question of how two people can be compatible and what to really do when faced with the impossible possibility of being together. But it’s also a film that seems to continually ask itself what sort of movie it is for much of the running time and what the story actually is, until it ends so it seems like the film has barely even started and all you’re left with is wondering what it was. How do you know when you’ve even seen a film, anyway? What are you really able to take from it?
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Professional softball player Lisa Jorgensen (Reese Witherspoon) is unknowingly on the verge of being left off the team’s roster for the coming year when she begins dating hotshot pitcher Matty Reynolds (Owen Wilson). After getting an awkward call from George Madison (Paul Rudd) to let her know that he won’t be calling to ask for a date after being set up by a friend of hers, George is served with a subpoena for corporate maleficence at the company he works at, run by his father Charles Madison (Jack Nicholson). With his life suddenly in shambles, he calls Lisa again to ask for that date but by the time they meet, Lisa has gotten news of being cut from the team. The dinner goes awkwardly but they soon run into each other again and Lisa is faced with the decision of which of these two men is the right person for her at this point in time, while George has to decide how much the possibility of this woman matters and what that means for his relationship with his father.
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The basic notion of two people on a blind date the day both of their lives have fallen apart is a promising kernel of an idea, meeting as they try to figure out where their lives are supposed to go now - asking should they fight what has happened or should they accept that ending and find a new way towards an actual, fulfilling life? How do you know, right? The thing is that I’m not entirely certain this is the idea the film wants to explore and it gets so fixated on the simple, Brooksian aspect of behavior with the separate inciting incidents done in such a way that it’s hard to really get invested in what has happened. The softball team setting feels promising, but it’s discarded almost instantly so we can barely understand what Lisa has lost. The corporate plotline is never clear enough to be all that interesting even when what’s behind it gets revealed. It’s hard to be sure what to focus on here, and while HOW DO YOU KNOW does have a story, it’s often tough to figure out just what that is as if the purpose of many scenes in the film is to figure out why they need to be in the film in the first place. Two of the leads who never actually meet live in the same building, which you’d think could have been established in a clever way but, just like all sorts of other possible connective tissue to get us acclimated to things, this never happens, so we’re left to find our own way from scene to scene. In a way, this is a narrative that wants to strip everything about the plot down, discarding several interesting characters in the early scenes who feel like they’re going to be prominent but then aren’t in order to focus on the main characters away from the worlds that they’ve gotten to know best. There’s an idea to that, but it still insists on dealing with various other elements without any clear idea of why it needs to focus on them.
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Having recently written about Brooks’s first theatrical screenplay <a href="http://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2021/02/questions-we-cant-ask.html" target="_blank">STARTING OVER</a>, this made me even more aware of the echoes found in HOW DO YOU KNOW as if he was mining the past for inspiration—the back and forth of a woman moving in with a guy she’s seeing, the rare (for films) occurrence of people using buses and even the proposal of two people having their first dinner together in silence. This film actually lets the idea play out during the date in question but even so, STARTING OVER always felt like part of a recognizable world within its own tone while this film never sheds a certain antiseptic feeling that makes it play like the whole thing was shot on a backlot even when it’s clearly filmed on location (the film is set in D.C.; parts were also shot in Philadelphia). The street scenes always look so clean, sparkly and oddly lifeless, everything constantly wet down to make them glisten without a drop of rain ever spotted. It turned up on Netflix for a period in 2020, and that continual, incessant brightness of every scene went perfectly with what has become the Netflix romantic comedy aesthetic in recent years, everything looking perfect and seemingly never part of any recognizable reality. Some of those films never seem to have any apparent goals beyond simply getting you to zone out, which at least can’t be said for HOW DO YOU KNOW, which has characters who spend much of the running time overthinking things to the breaking point. It beats the alternative these days, but it still never quite achieves a flow to allow each scene to go naturally from one moment to the next.
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Of course, this reality of behavior is all part of the Brooks approach going back to his sitcom days. Still, especially during the likes of TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, he seemed to revel in the messiness of day to day life and how people interact, driving each other crazier with each new decision of how they’re going to screw things up. The scripts of both that film and especially BROADCAST NEWS feel so finely honed, every moment matters so much, but here it becomes a continuous question of why people are behaving in a certain way and what all sorts of moments are even doing there. Even the opening scene, showing Lisa as a young girl discovering softball and how that gets boys to behave towards her, feels off and not establishing any particular themes that would justify it being there. A lot of time is spent with the characters played by Owen Wilson and Jack Nicholson as if to justify why they’re being played by such big stars when it’s not really needed, and the film never figures out the right way to resolve either one of them. Wilson as the womanizing hotshot millionaire ballplayer, with a closet filled with souvenir sweat suits for every woman who spends the night in his place, gets scenes on his own where he explores his feelings for Lisa but it never makes sense why he’s technically one of the leads. Jack Nicholson automatically becomes one of the leads due to his very presence but the scenes between him and Rudd, simmering with a presumed hostility coming from whatever the backstory is between them that we don’t hear about, don’t click enough to warrant so much time spent on that either and the bones of the conflict never feel genuine.
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There’s a certain push-pull to the plotting that feels familiar with Brooks—the going somewhere that gets interrupted like the Correspondents’ Dinner we never actually enter in BROADCAST NEWS, the trip to visit parents that never happens in AS GOOD AS IT GETS—but here the path it takes constantly seems to lead to dead ends that circle around and start over again, never really leading anywhere. If we needed to siphon the film down to the stuff that feels like it’s essential, I’m not even sure that the results would be what the film itself thinks is right. Maybe the scenes that were taken out needed to be left in. I’m reminded of Pauline Kael’s review of HEAVEN’S GATE, where she said finding stuff to cut from that 219 minute running time was easy. It was figuring out what to keep that was the problem. A movie withholding what it’s really about is one thing. This film feels like it spends much of the running time groping for an answer.
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In every way, Reese Witherspoon seems like ideal casting for a James L. Brooks heroine, the sight of the inspirational quotes that surround Lisa in her bathroom mirror that have resulted in nothing feeling like it crystalizes what is going on inside her, not a single one of them containing what she needs. But, too often, the film doesn’t know what to do with that inner conflict unless it wants to say that the opening flashback showing her as a girl means that she’s destined for a life of always getting knocked down by men and the softball thing never mattered anyway? One turning point for the character, silently realizing that she has no place anymore with the team she’s been cut from, is brushed over so quickly as if it was salvaged from footage meant to be used for something else. The things in the film that register happening within scenes often feel too isolated as if it barely matters that they’re in the film at all. A scene where she visits a psychiatrist played by Tony Shalhoub feels promising, but anything learned from it is dropped just as one bit where Owen Wilson loses his temper while trying to make a point. For a moment, the character actually seems human, but all we’re left with is that one brief glimpse of relatability.
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You can feel the film searching for those themes to focus on through all of that, and occasionally it comes within reach. Paul Rudd has a few moments, especially silent ones like the calm displayed by George after his first dinner (the pasta also looks appealing) with Lisa and even Reese Witherspoon’s abrasiveness, annoyed that the guy she’s with might actually be looking at her, sometimes makes total sense. The film at least knows to look for these quiet passages, like the way the camera follows behind her as she heads for their first dinner, but just as many such moments feel like the movie is just killing time. And when Brooks isn’t willing to let things stay quiet, the question of tone also becomes an issue, revealing how much he needs to get the actors to take it down a few notches. But at times, it comes close to feeling right, especially during the long hospital scene late in the film after George’s secretary, played by Kathryn Hahn, who’s getting all sorts of attention these days, who has given birth. The single funniest reaction of the entire film happens here, thanks to her, and it’s the one scene where everything makes sense. Even a joke involving Nicholson that feels shoehorned in works because it feels like it came organically out of the character’s feelings towards each other. Much of it involves Hahn’s boyfriend played by Lenny Venito (who’s just great here) coming in to propose to her and the mess that develops involving getting the moment on video almost seems to make sense of the entire film, turning it into a display of life improvising what once happened to try to make it even better. You could say that none of this feels like a part of the real world. Still, it is a part of the director’s world, as much as anything made by Howard Hawks after 1960 was, resulting in films that stripped the interests of the director to its essentials while also displaying an older filmmaker presenting what he still thinks of as the world out there. It almost doesn’t matter that it’s something else entirely. In this case, it’s the minutiae, the nervousness, the reasons for why they feel like they need to be together in the end. If anything, this is what HOW DO YOU KNOW has and what the story feels like it needs to be.
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At one point, Paul Rudd’s George states, “Optimism is sanity,” as a way of approaching what he hopes will be his relationship with Lisa, a curious restatement of the way Jack Nicholson’s character declares, “Cynicism is sanity,” early on as a way of protecting yourself in the world. The repetition in the phrasing is barely noticeable. At least, it took me several viewings, but maybe one of the things that the film is saying is that making the second choice can be the only way to connect with people, even if it means going against what you’ve known your entire life. And, if I’m going to be honest here, the things that connect are the things in the movie that I identify with almost against my will and don’t even feel entirely comfortable pointing out. Certain moments of the developing relationship between the two leads are scattered in there, when Reese Witherspoon gets a little too testy with Paul Rudd in ways that still seem genuine followed by the actual connection. The overall message seems to be that even when something perfect that you’ve already achieved in life gets fucked up, you can still find your way with help from the people around you who matter and care and want to understand who you really are, that one small adjustment George gets to tell her about when he finally has the courage. I have some affection towards HOW DO YOU KNOW and even find some of the messiness endearing since the idea of searching through all that clutter in life is something I can relate to, but whether that’s my own screwiness in trying to find value in a lesser James L. Brooks film or actual things found inside of the film, I’m still not sure.
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You can feel Reese Witherspoon and Paul Rudd trying to make this work, and occasionally between the two of them it does when they’re able to connect in the moment. Witherspoon balances out the uncertainty of the character in the broad sense with what the character is always ready to insist on without even being asked while Rudd is best when he’s just in the moment looking at someone, able to relax in just playing off someone. Even Owen Wilson clearly wants this to work even though his character, always willing to talk around the idea of how monogamous he is, never connects in a broad sense so he just falls back on the Owen Wilson vibe which never feels entirely correct. It’s the sort of curious energy that makes what Kathryn Hahn is doing all the better. She feels like the most human presence here no matter how big she plays it, a very emotional person getting more emotional without even trying. Deceptively simple reaction shots of her are astonishing. She’s the only person who seems to have a life that continues when she’s offscreen, a feeling that only grows when Lenny Venito makes his appearance as her boyfriend. We can only imagine the rest of this romantic comedy starring them that we’re only getting to see the climax of. A few other people like Mark-Linn Baker, Shelley Conn and Molly Price have roles that seem promising like they will be important but turn out to be briefer than expected. Maybe they were always small roles. Maybe the film got reworked so many times that that’s what they became. And then there’s a performance by Jack Nicholson which feels like he’s doing a favor for his old friend Jim Brooks with every scene playing a little as if he’s letting his glasses do most of his acting for him, with a standoffish vibe to the father-son storyline, but also maybe like he wanted to use it as an excuse that he just wasn’t feeling it anymore so why not simply bow out. It’s hard not to think about how this is his last movie after forty-plus years of stardom, but there’s nothing in the material to warrant reading too much into that.
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But it takes time for dreams to fade, like it or not. If we admit the truth to ourselves about what the reality is, that can help, but sometimes all we can do is fight through those feelings until there’s nothing left to fight anymore. Even if we believe that truth, even if we can look at ourselves in the mirror and admit it, it still isn’t an easy thing to face. Of course, it’s entirely possible that I didn’t really see James L. Brooks in my neighborhood that time, but that’s not the issue. This film, which opened the same day as TRON LEGACY, is mostly forgotten now except for likely being Jack Nicholson’s last, along with that reported $120 million budget, presumably made up from star salaries, reshoots and Brooks’s own indecisions. It’s very likely that we’re not going to get something else like it anytime soon. Maybe the thing about HOW DO YOU KNOW is that the film asks too many questions it doesn’t know the answer to instead of being willing to come out and say something, anything at all, which, come to think of it, is kind of like life, especially this past year. But at least it’s a film trying to improve itself in the search for whatever it’s supposed to be. In that sense, it’s honest. To find the answers in a movie like this, you sometimes have to dig for it. That’s kind of like life, too.
<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuRHqBOl1WMtNk_nzmT6Ew9U4H3BN0baS0lP1NkKW1gYKQeNdw3sGtxL43tf3CJxqodyK-lHffB_vi0hqvANji0KUWEaod75wJWRHk0ZPfacUMK3xCBfuLsk-NiKPPIi6bHaEecQ9pLT1n/s755/HowDoYouKnowP.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" height="400" data-original-height="755" data-original-width="510" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjuRHqBOl1WMtNk_nzmT6Ew9U4H3BN0baS0lP1NkKW1gYKQeNdw3sGtxL43tf3CJxqodyK-lHffB_vi0hqvANji0KUWEaod75wJWRHk0ZPfacUMK3xCBfuLsk-NiKPPIi6bHaEecQ9pLT1n/s400/HowDoYouKnowP.jpg"/></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-82661289559493760892021-05-27T20:08:00.003-07:002021-05-27T20:31:16.306-07:00Send In The Clones<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi21H4gm4BykKkdD6hUn9_DDQl2v6__LPS3-JUGNXOJDyQdNC6ngHO4W8bwpHvqlSMAA2FABzWdGfuieDNa8KymFu2UgqtplQFZsGMfuYcZVg2eUvGjd3SYWZKzKddf7AWZkWHGEfYrDbI0/s1200/JudgeDredd2.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="680" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi21H4gm4BykKkdD6hUn9_DDQl2v6__LPS3-JUGNXOJDyQdNC6ngHO4W8bwpHvqlSMAA2FABzWdGfuieDNa8KymFu2UgqtplQFZsGMfuYcZVg2eUvGjd3SYWZKzKddf7AWZkWHGEfYrDbI0/s400/JudgeDredd2.jpg"/></a></div>
Sooner or later, probably sooner, I’ll go back to the movies. It hasn’t happened yet, but it will. Not sure why I’m taking my time with the return but maybe it just has to feel right. I keep thinking about how the world is opening back up the but a place like the Cinerama Dome remains closed, part of the Arclight/Pacific announcement that the chain will be permanently closing, and we don’t know what’s going to happen to that place. After the past year anything is possible but I have to believe that the Dome isn’t going to go away. I have to believe that. The place means too much. To me, to other people, to this town and its history. This is the place that opened back in 1963 with the premiere of IT’S A MAD, MAD, MAD, MAD WORLD before running for 67 weeks, the place where I saw THE AGE OF INNOCENCE on opening day, the place where I saw <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2019/09/captive-on-carousel-of-time.html" target="_blank">ONCE UPON A TIME IN HOLLYWOOD</a> on opening day, the place where I saw <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2013/05/no-right-or-wrong-answers.html" target="_blank">THE MASTER</a> in 70mm twice on opening weekend each time in a packed house, the place where I saw the Sidney Lumet remake of GLORIA on opening weekend in a theater that was practically empty. There was also something else that I’ve been thinking about but I’ll get to that shortly and the very idea of this glorious place never reopening is simply unacceptable.
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Way back when I first started going there, the Dome was all by itself, next to nothing but a giant parking lot that I would traverse, having parked on the street to save money, on my way to see THE CABLE GUY or DONNIE BRASCO or whatever, knowing that something would take up that space eventually. Inside the actual theater it was a glorious place with that enormous curved screen enveloping you, making every film that played on it more special, more epic. Admittedly, not every movie worked on that screen with the curvature but when the right film was there it felt like there was no other place to see a movie that made any sense.
By 2002 the Arclight was up, becoming one giant complex so I grew to love that place too and together this became just about the best and most exciting place in Los Angeles to go to the movies with memories there over the past few decades that I will cherish. And through it all, the Cinerama Dome is the most special part. There’s nowhere else like it. Going over everything I’ve seen there through the years in my head—a reissue of EL CID was the first, not a bad way to start—one fond memory is for a film that never actually played there. It was some sort of advance screening, maybe for press and media but who knows, of the Sylvester Stallone JUDGE DREDD exactly two weeks before it opened in June 1995. Even at that late stage playing to a packed house the film was actually still unfinished with credits missing (opening or closing or maybe both, who can remember) as well as at least one big difference. Maybe it’s not all that good a movie but it is the sort of thing you want to see at the Cinerama Dome, the sort of reason the theater is there in the first place.
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It feels a little forgotten but JUDGE DREDD comes from a time before the comic book movie explosion so the people making it apparently felt the need to explain such a concept with a montage of Judge Dredd covers over the opening credits. Watching the sequence now makes me think of the Spider-Man segments back on THE ELECTRIC COMPANY but the film which follows isn’t quite as educational. It’s entertaining in an empty calorie sort of way but it’s also kind of a loud mess, lots going on in every scene but little of it sticks around long enough to make an impression, a giant sense of scale felt in the imagery while still playing like it was sliced down to around ninety minutes as if it knows we’ve got things to do and places to be which, in fairness, we probably did in 1995. As a completely honest admission, I remember liking the film that night. Maybe I was just younger, maybe it was the excitement of that advance screening. Seeing it again about a month later (at an AMC way down in Santa Monica, which was nowhere near as impressive) caused me to think that mayyyyyybe I’d overrated it slightly. But this happens to all of us. Revisiting JUDGE DREDD for the first time in some years it’s not that I think the film is all that good but there is a sense of scale to the jumble that it is which makes me feel a little nostalgic for the days before CGI took over everything. The film has actual sets, for one thing, so everything feels tangible and since the comic book formula hadn’t been cracked yet this gives the film a sense that at least it’s trying lots of different things to see what sticks. It’s got way more machine gun fire than anyone ever needs but there is a certain enjoyment to the mess at least in small increments. It also helped that my first viewing was at that particular theater. We were more innocent then. At least I was.
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There is a plot in JUDGE DREDD, but also a lot of noise surrounding it. Far in the future with the planet turning into a wasteland known by all as The Scorched Earth, much of humanity resides in what are now called Mega Cities with massive populations where the huge surge in crime has caused the traditional justice system to be replaced by street Judges, part cop but very much also judge, jury and sometimes executioner. The most famous and powerful is the feared Judge Dredd (Sylvester Stallone) who never has any doubts about the criminals he passes sentence on, living or dead. When a TV news reporter who has been investigating Dredd’s methods is killed he is arrested for the crime and with falsified evidence is quickly convicted, not knowing that one of the people behind this is the mysterious Rico (Armand Assante), who he shares a little known past with. Also in league with Rico is crooked Judge Griffin (Jurgen Prochnow) looking to replace Dredd’s mentor Chief Justice Fargo (Max von Sydow) and take over the Council of Judges. After being banished to a penal colony Dredd is able to escape with help from fellow convict Fergie (Rob Schneider) and once the two of them are back in the city they team up with Judge Hershey (Diane Lane), Dredd’s friend and defender at his trial, to track down who set him up in the first place and uncover the full extent of Rico’s ultimate plan.
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To get another admission out of the way, I have pretty much zero awareness of the Judge Dredd comic and even the better received DREDD reboot from a few years ago isn’t something that stuck with me beyond the fact that I was ok with it. Released by Hollywood Pictures, gone but still not forgotten, the 1995 version feels like it uses the comic book as mostly a jumping off point to make a the biggest sci-fi/action summer movie imaginable, sort of ROBOCOP set in a future that’s a cross between BLADE RUNNER and Tim Burton’s version of Gotham City (production design by Nigel Phelps, previously the art director of the 1989 BATMAN). But it’s also very much a Sylvester Stallone vehicle and in the end wants to be that most of all with the mask that always covers the main character in the comic (so I’m told) being removed about fifteen minutes in. The two words that come to mind when thinking of the film are Loud and Expensive, loud in terms of all the gunplay, expensive in terms of all the sets and special effects and star power. For a few minutes at the start when the film takes Fergie on his flight through the city during the opening credits the sense of scale is genuinely impressive giving it a feeling of excitement that primes us for the world to come it feels like it might be more than this. Looking at it now feels a little like a preview of the city planet Coruscant in the STAR WARS prequels and the overall look to the effects isn’t as advanced as it would be just a few years later but the heightened feel of the images brings a kick of excitement to the moment as if it’s getting primed for some other futuristic adventure instead of the one we’re actually about to see.
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Directed by Danny Cannon (who went on to direct I STILL KNOW WHAT YOU DID LAST SUMMER and lots of TV including the CSI pilot), there’s a lot of visual clutter which makes the look inconsistent but at least it’s active. And the cluttered writing credits (story by Michael De Luca and William Wisher, screenplay by William Wisher and Steven E. de Souza, from the comic book by John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra) are fitting for a story that’s pretty cluttered too, rushing through moments of breathless exposition, speechifying and imagery which gives the impression that the script went through many, many drafts to nail down the necessary story beats but in the end wants to pay more attention to coming up with all the one liners (“Who says politics is boring?” says the bad guy as he blows away the entire council or bad guy Joan Chen spitting “Bitch!” at good guy Diane Lane who replies, “Judge Bitch!”) instead of making the plot compelling.
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That kinetic feel now seems very much a piece of nineties would-be blockbusters with cinematography by Adrian Biddle (ALIENS, THELMA & LOUISE and later the 1999 THE MUMMY) that always gives it a fittingly epic feel but the pacing is so rushed, moving from one set piece and plot point to the next that the general feel is all over the place. The grandiose quality of the world’s gritty design has weight but it doesn’t match up to the goofier elements, especially the uniform on Stallone and the other Judges designed by Gianni Versace that feels so ridiculously stylized it doesn’t seem to have much to do with everything around it making me wonder if this film is one of the reasons why such costumes in later comic book movies, like in X-MEN just a few years later, decided to drain the comic book feel out of everything to make them seem more grounded and ‘real’. That wasn’t quite as big a deal back then and even though lack of reality isn’t the problem with JUDGE DREDD it still has too much going on to develop any sense of consistency, parts feeling out of a satirical comic book while others feel totally straight faced in a big action movie sort of way. The sense of scale is impressively big with a genuine sense of craftsmanship felt in all those giant sets and there’s a lot to appreciate in the design especially something like the giant ABC Warrior robot commandeered by Rico that is something that would definitely be CGI these days. It’s a silly concept the film doesn’t really do much with but just seeing it there actually able to interact with the actors is impressive all on its own.
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For Sylvester Stallone, this came in the middle of his mid-90s semi-resurgence, right between the sleazy fun of THE SPECIALIST from the previous fall and Richard Donner’s overlong ASSASSINS later that year. More than any other of his vehicles from the period, JUDGE DREDD feels like a concept where he doesn’t entirely belong no matter how much it was reworked to accommodate him. Maybe the basic concept shouldn’t have been a star vehicle for anyone, Stallone or not, but the plot still seems tailor made for his persona with the basic structure of being framed for murder, sent away, then escaping with buddy/sidekick and finding his way back for the big confrontation with the main bad guy never all that different from TANGO AND CASH (or being thrown into prison at the start of <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2011/03/so-much-for-seashells.html" target="_blank">DEMOLITION MAN</a>, or being let out of prison at the start of the second RAMBO or being in prison for all of LOCK UP), trying to squeeze the Stallone comeback narrative of so many of his films into a sci-fi/comic book world whether it belongs or not. Judge Dredd stands in the middle of the street during his first appearance bellowing “I AM THE LAW!” to the criminals above and it feels meant to be iconic or at least a spin on his first appearance in something like COBRA but it plays like he hasn’t been let in on the joke yet.
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There are ideas buried in the script to go with Dredd’s inner turmoil, especially getting him to learning what the idea of justice really is and how he pre-judges someone like Fergie without a second thought but they’re either the wrong ideas or they’re being placed into a movie that doesn’t have much use for them so if the character has even learned anything by the end the movie doesn’t bother to tell us, it just needs to reestablish him as the strongest force in this future dystopia, the one person who can be counted on to protect the innocent, or something, and prevent this futuristic fascist world from becoming…an even more fascist world, I guess. Much of the system he serves has been destroyed with a pretty high body count by the end but that barely seems to matter. Lest we forget, this film isn’t ROBOCOP, a film that was not only perfect but more than anything was ultimately about a person trying to recover his humanity in a futuristic hellscape. JUDGE DREDD has the hellscape but feels like it’s really about Stallone being Stallone, the special effects and all that machine gun fire. Even the massive production doesn’t always feel consistent with a few daytime sequences filmed on those enormous sets meant to represent Mega City with sunlight somehow getting in there, make them look like enormous sets and remind me how the likes of the more noirish BLADE RUNNER kept so much mystique by being set mostly at night.
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When Paul Verhoeven directed ROBOCOP, a film that didn’t have to depend on one single personality in the lead, he brought to it a deadly combination of the inner turmoil the lead character was going through with the nastiness of its satire and the collision of tones worked beautifully, making it a film that became even richer over no matter how many repeat viewings. JUDGE DREDD has an off kilter sense of humor around the edges of the thing; the roving gang of cannibals out in the Cursed Earth that attacks Dredd and Fergie makes it briefly feel like a Sam Peckinpah film in the post-apocalyptic sci-fi world as well as the street corners named after Abbott & Costello and Burns & Allen for reasons that I can’t imagine. Plus when Rico says, “Send in the clones,” to introduce the new army he’s creating, well, it’s nice to know that a futuristic bad guy has an appreciation for Stephen Sondheim. Stallone even seems ok with how appropriately ridiculous in the outfit but since he’s not in it much that doesn’t really matter. Having him run around without it so much of the time gives the feeling that the film takes so much of the goofiness of the concept seriously to the point that not much of it can be taken seriously at all and there’s never a reason to really care about anything.
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Judges are assassinated, Rico chomps on a cigar and kills a bunch of people, a plan involving clones to take over the city becomes clear, Dredd and Fergie outrun a fireball, there’s a chase on flying motorbikes with Rob Schneider joking that he has to clean his seat and it all goes by so fast you barely notice any of it. The movie spends so much time building up the clones that are seen briefly while coming to life then presumably burn up in the climactic explosions that quickly occur, or at least they’re just forgotten about. There’s enough striking imagery to suggest that Danny Cannon, not even thirty when he made this, has the right sort of directorial eye whether the husk of the Statue of Liberty where the climax takes place, Von Sydow setting out on the long walk into the Cursed Earth when he makes his greatest sacrifice or even just the way the shape of Stallone’s face goes with the mask in the few scenes he actually has it on. Not to mention the whole anamorphic vibe that always helps the thing seem appropriately enormous. Maybe that’s why it came to mind when I was thinking about the Cinerama Dome, a place that would be nothing without a film showing there, even a piece of junk like this. It’s a theater that was made for this sort of movie, even if it’s not very good and that sense of scale is felt in every scene. Hoping for that feeling is one of the reasons why we go to the movies to begin with. Or at least why we go to something like this even when we suspect it’s not going to live up to our dreams.
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I could also point out that in the year 2021 there’s not much use for a movie venerating a character like Judge Dredd, even in the service of a futuristic dystopia that needs saving. The plot is about teaching him what he hasn’t bothered to learn but in the end we know everything he does is for the greater good anyway. So post-1995, it feels like there’s not much to say about JUDGE DREDD. If anyone, like the writers, tried to make the film critical of the concept there’s not much of the idea left. Before he’s killed, Mitchell Ryan’s reporter points out that maybe the main council of judges should be dissolved which is exactly what happens indicating the film knows he’s right but that doesn’t seem like it matters either. It’s a film I have a fond memory of seeing under heightened circumstances but also a weird case where it isn’t very good, doesn’t have much to say and there isn’t even that much to say to defend it yet I don’t mind it all that much. It’s fast. It’s kinda fun. There’s a lot going on, enjoyable character actors, it’s a reminder of when movies actually built sets and even the early digital work still has a kick to it. It’s also kinda dumb and after watching it a few times for writing this I don’t feel too much need to revisit it again any time soon. To say it could have been called GENERIC 90S SCI-FI/ACTION MOVIE is a little harsh but it gets the point across that JUDGE DREDD never becomes its own unique thing.
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The cast seems into it, I’ll give it that. Sylvester Stallone is as committed to the role as he always is even if something like the running gag of his saying “I knew you’d say that” never really clicks. But he seems determined enough to go big which means that Armand Assante, especially in their scenes together, is more than happy to go even bigger so when he shouts “LAWWWW!!!!” right back at Stallone it’s like he’s throwing the entire theme of the movie in his face. In that sense, everyone seems to know what they’re there to do even if it’s not very much; Diane Lane is earnest and determined, Jurgen Prochnow is deadly serious, Max Von Sydow gets the big speech about the meaning of justice and is as distinguished as you’d expect, Joan Chen seems more than ready to play a bad guy except she doesn’t get to do much beyond that big fight with Lane during the climax. Even Rob Schneider brings the right sort of energy, I’m just not sure he needs to be here unless it’s to remind us that he co-starred with Stallone in DEMOLITION MAN (which is better, just for the record) but the main issue is that the movie can’t seem to decide if he’s the comic relief or an audience surrogate co-lead. A few familiar faces like James Remar playing a very James Remar role and Scott Wilson, bringing a nice spin to what feels like a Dennis Hopper part in his brief appearance as one of the cannibals, are uncredited for their small roles which adds to this eclectic feel of what the hell are these people doing in this movie while also giving the impression that maybe this plot could continue to spiral off into even more unexpected directions even if it barely has time to do it before the 95 minutes are up.
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My guess is the unfinished state of the film that night at the Cinerama Dome meant that the completion went way down to the wire before the film’s release on June 30, the same day APOLLO 13 opened. One additional sign of post-production issues could be that Jerry Goldsmith was set to do the music before dropping out for whatever reason, leaving behind only an enjoyably propulsive theme found in the film’s brief teaser trailer, a pretty tantalizing glimpse at what he would have done even if I don’t mind the absurd sense of majesty that Alan Silvestri brought to his crack at the final score. And, for the record, the big difference in the film that night, at least the one I remember, was that (spoiler for a different ending, I guess) the climax included the death of Rob Schneider’s Fergie after being mortally wounded by the giant ABC Warrior robot, pausing for a moment as Dredd leans down to say some final words to him followed Fergie saying, “You are the law…” and he keels over, dead. Pretty sure one of the first things I said to my friend after the movie was, “They killed off the comic relief?” Which I guess would be why the release print of the film cuts to him alive and cracking jokes while being led away on a stretcher, even if the final movie never bothers to pay off the plotline of Dredd refusing to apologize for wrongly judging him at the beginning. Considering how noisy the movie is, nobody probably cared.
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The story behind showing this version to the public mere days before release is something I’ve always been curious about. All this seems important somehow, at least to my own history of seeing films in this town. The Cinerama Dome is part of that, on this night and many others, a place that I dream of going back to and, in the end, this memory means as much as anything else I ever saw there. I miss going to the movies. I miss movies I used to go see. Even something like JUDGE DREDD. It’s not going to be what I see on my first visit back to the movies, or on that day somewhere in the future when I return to this particular theater, but I could still do a lot worse.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-12462725971338000812021-02-23T11:45:00.001-08:002021-02-23T11:45:15.899-08:00Questions We Can't Ask<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7vbYh2zxJq8xIa7QayxjCgp0DRM6ga9XJE-biTIg4aDUnYhWkW1oLtyAgQLCRBMceMuv82izyiadCu2Y-1N-B9JgG7CF1Yf1aja-Hoty1Oyz_gQzoFYov9Vhnj39TKFxoyT3p-TDyHVW/s1200/StartingOver1.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="952" data-original-width="1200" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjB7vbYh2zxJq8xIa7QayxjCgp0DRM6ga9XJE-biTIg4aDUnYhWkW1oLtyAgQLCRBMceMuv82izyiadCu2Y-1N-B9JgG7CF1Yf1aja-Hoty1Oyz_gQzoFYov9Vhnj39TKFxoyT3p-TDyHVW/s400/StartingOver1.jpg"/></a></div>
Change is inevitable, like it or not. Even now. Especially now. If we’ve learned one thing over the past year it’s that eventually everything goes away. People and place disappear, and there’s no going back to the way it was. So when it comes to the future, figuring out what to hold onto is never easy. And when it comes to the past, understanding how much certain things actually mattered can make little sense. If only I could have figured it all out sooner.
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The 1979 romantic comedy STARTING OVER is a reminder of this, a look at middle-aged angst and the struggle to hold onto some kind of hope, to not give into the way you think it has to be. A well-received box office hit at the time with a couple of Oscar nominations, for the most part it’s an enjoyable film with fairly sharp dialogue and well-drawn characterizations even if it does feel a little soft for this day and age. Looking at the film again recently it’s become the sort of ‘70s comfort food which has been nice to have around for late night viewings, maybe as some sort of primal return at this point in time to what I once thought adult life was supposed to be and maybe deep down still wish really was. Even watching the film now there are bits and pieces around the edges of the frame, department stores and the like, that provide a late ‘70s nostalgia rush of what the world looked like through my eyes back then that would be nice to live in for a few minutes. These days we wish for a lot of things.
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When Phil Potter (Burt Reynolds) splits with wife Jessica (Candice Bergen) after she has an affair he leaves New York and heads up to Boston, taking an apartment near welcoming brother Mickey (Charles Durning) and wife Marva (Frances Sternhagen). Setting up his new life which includes attending a church support group for divorced men, Phil finds himself at Mickey’s for dinner one night which turns out to be a setup with schoolteacher Marilyn Holmberg (Jill Clayburgh). After their extremely awkward introduction Phil displays his interest but wary of how recently he’s been separated Marilyn turns him down when he asks her out. He finally talks her into it and their relationship begins but just as it gets going Jessica, now achieving success as a songwriter, reenters the picture leaving Phil to decide which way he really wants his life to go.
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STARTING OVER was directed by Alan J. Pakula, more than several steps removed from his paranoia-infused trilogy of KLUTE, THE PARALLAX VIEW and ALL THE PRESIDENT’S MEN earlier in the decade, but it’s likely more notable now as the first feature screenplay by James L. Brooks, coming after a long stretch in television that most famously included being one of the creators of THE MARY TYLER MOORE SHOW. Looking back at the film over 40 years after it was released there are echoes here of the sitcom dating world that Brooks had already explored but it’s clearly intended to move things into a more grownup, therapeutic vein, ready to take advantage of the R rating even if the closest it comes to earning it is a couple of f-bombs. But when it does use them it’s memorable, especially during the unexpected meet cute between the two leads that plays a little as something that Brooks had dreamed of writing for Mary Richards all those years so with that along with a more relaxed pacing away from the sitcom world the film is able to take its time through the language used by the characters as they try to figure each other out. It’s done in a style that now feels like an early version of some of the films Brooks would later make whether TERMS OF ENDEARMENT or BROADCAST NEWS all the way up to his final film (to date) HOW DO YOU KNOW, with the neuroses of the characters always apparent but not as intentionally quirky as they would later become.
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As for Pakula’s directing style, he’s clearly working in a more relaxed key than what he’s famous for with a sense of control to the filmmaking that feels like he’s dipping his toe into an unfamiliar style while trying not to upset things too much. The year before this film he directed the western drama COMES A HORSEMAN (one of many first time viewings from this past year during quarantine) which has a certain Sydney Pollack quality to its romantic sweep but STARTING OVER is closer to the the ‘70s Neil Simon-Woody Allen vein while taking a quieter, more mannered approach to the material, taking its time with the one liners about the singles world and viewing that battle of the sexes through the insecurity everyone is fighting. Based on the novel by Dan Wakefield, the film is grounded and feels like part of the real world, or at least a relatively plausible late 70s romantic comedy real world, one where Phil Potter writes articles that appear in airline magazines for a living, which sounds like a movie job if there ever was one, and even if his ex-wife is in the process of becoming a successful singer-songwriter it still manages to feel somewhat relatable.
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This is also a mustache-free Burt Reynolds, clearly part of an attempt to branch out from car chases even toning down his laugh so the result is likely the most subdued performance the actor ever gave during his superstardom period or at least the most successful example of displaying a more sensitive side to that star persona. It’s not the only time he went clean shaven for a movie but here it feels like watching a man who has had his armor removed so it causes his entire body to droop, not quite knowing how to move himself anymore and he uses that for the character, uncertain how to sit down or at times even talk to another person. It’s felt in the way he seems to crumble in a few key moments when his charm doesn’t work, finding a love letter to his wife that includes the word ‘evermore’, and you can feel everything in him collapse. Those bastards probably always include the word ‘evermore’ in those letters. It’s a discomfort that is even felt in the divorced men’s church group he tries to connect with as they all talk around each other, fighting off the women’s group waiting for the next hour in the hall, the sense of fear of what’s out there coming from everyone always around.
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That body language matches up well with Jill Clayburgh, two years after she and Reynolds starred together in SEMI-TOUGH (another first time viewing during quarantine) and coming one year after her performance in Paul Mazursky’s AN UNMARRIED WOMAN the actress is perfect for Reynolds here in the way she’s ready to challenge him, playing what is in some ways an extension of that character while fighting against the heartbreak she figures is inevitable. In one scene Phil shows up at her place to find Marilyn essentially in the middle of a date with herself and there’s the feeling of a life fully lived off camera where she has fought to become her own person, a single woman with her own valid viewpoint that has nothing to do with what the male lead is going through, even determined to stay home in her glasses and robe rather than go out there and have the same bad night one more time.
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The fall-winter setting as photographed by Sven Nyquist takes the story through Thanksgiving and into the Christmas season giving the film an undeniable coziness, a feeling so prevalent that if this had been made during spring or summer it might have been a totally different movie. Shots only call themselves out on occasion, one moment circling around the despondent men in the support group the most impressively cinematic flourish of all, but the element that sticks out more than anything is the prevalent sense of quiet through the film, the way it holds on Phil’s nervousness or the half empty restaurants where the camerawork gradually becomes more intimate through the scene. This also includes the whisper Candice Bergen seems to speak in as the ex-wife whenever she shows up, the movie half-treating her newfound success as a joke, a bored, aimless woman who cheated on him and doesn’t want anything more than what she’s grabbed for herself. It’s as if the character got the idea to pursue music from a few viewings of ANNIE HALL but still wants to use him for her songs and, I suppose, the vaginal orgasm she proudly tells him about in one scene. But the film also knows how to use the intensity of Bergen’s very presence to let us believe how much Phil is drawn to her so she becomes more than just a running gag even as it builds to her big scene, likely the reason for her Oscar nomination, where she overdramatically belts out her latest song to her ex-husband’s astonishment. It’s one of the best moments of the film thanks to the fearlessness of that performance, not holding back and doing it all for him while still taking no notice of him in that moment at all, with the stunned look on Reynolds’ face making it just about the biggest, most rewarding laugh in the entire film.
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One scene at a nursery school shows Clayburgh’s Marilyn working there, showing her kids the best way to let out some anger and this is also a film about people who sometimes need to be reminded that they aren’t kids anymore while still trying to understand the best way to reveal their feelings. The look at the dating world is very much a product of that decade with the always welcome Mary Kay Place turning up ready to pounce on Reynolds as soon as she meets him for their blind date but unlike AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, which Roger Ebert seems to spend much of his review comparing this to, it doesn’t seem interested in making some all-purpose grand statement about the period or the singles world, let alone feminism, as much as just the individual insecurities of the various characters. Even with a valium joke that feels as late 70s as it gets and probably got the biggest laugh at the time, the focus is more on the inner workings of the characters, the things they are drawn to and what causes those neuroses. It’s not all that far removed from the world of Brooks’ TV work but it is an expansion of those themes with the extreme mellowness of the Marvin Hamlisch score that I can never quite get out of my head feeling like it’s from a lost MTM sitcom because of course it does and Marilyn hooking up late in the film with a basketball player also feels like something Mary Richards or Rhoda Morgenstern would have spent an entire episode on.
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But it really does feels like the first step in the direction that the films later directed by Brooks would take, the specific nature of all the quirks becoming more pronounced and comical later on. Maybe the biggest difference in the Pakula directing style is that this filmmaker seems inclined to underplay things at key moments and brings to it a sense of low key class that permeates the overall feeling, some of the most cutting dialogue in the film spoken no louder than a whisper. Other directors might have gone for a broader Neil Simon style but here the sense of quiet becomes so prevalent with the feelings playing as that much more intense; oddly, while watching Pakula’s THE PELICAN BRIEF recently for the first time in ages this very same type of whisper coming from the performances in a few scenes stood out to me but here it feels more surprising in looking for a way to find what the characters are holding back, what they’re afraid of and the dumb mistakes they’re always trying to keep from making yet again.
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Maybe that’s why some of the moments that always stick with me aren’t jokes so much as simple bits of behavior whether Clayburgh during some of the moments when she thinks no one is looking, the completely genuine warmth of Charles Durning, Reynolds sitting awkwardly at the start of his date with Mary Kay Place (“The place we’re going specializes in duck,” he tells her in a moment I always enjoy) or Bergen’s aside about a song while she’s in the middle of singing it. Since the characters are more than just types there’s an unpredictability to them that keeps the movie alive and it goes by in the blink of an eye even if the way it keeps the plot spinning longer than it needs to, whether plausible or not, becomes a little frustrating. If it has to be compared to AN UNMARRIED WOMAN, then I think of the clarity of the deadness in Jill Clayburgh’s face as Michael Murphy makes his confession to her, but STARTING OVER is more about talking its way through all that uncertainty so it’s not as angry, instead trying to look for that connection while afraid to find out if it’s actually going to be there.
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Things never stay the same, even if they should which is something we know now more than ever. In many ways STARTING OVER is a nice film about realizing that, moving away from the cynicism which might have been more apparent if the film had been made earlier in the decade to actually finding an answer to the question of why they need to change in the first place. Both sides are afraid. And, as the movie seems to think, it will never work if they’re not afraid. The trick is to face that fear and take the risk to be happy, not miserable, to refuse to let yourself stay at home forever, having dinner with yourself. By the time Brooks got to BROADCAST NEWS some years later, this formula be perfected, but the way it plays here still in development is rewarding in itself. It says something about the time it was made that the last line of the film isn’t so much a joke as a warm payoff to a crucial plot thread. It almost feels like that final moment, and maybe the rest of the film, needed something a little punchier to drive the point of it all home. But it’s still nice. That’s ok, too.
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If the film is in some ways a star vehicle for Burt Reynolds then it’s also about showing just how vulnerable he can be onscreen. He embraces that, fully invested in every moment while taking his insecurities and trying to find the likability in all that. The chemistry he shares with Jill Clayburgh is perfect for this, allowing him to carry each scene but also giving her the chance to take what he’s doing and make it even better, as if challenging the script just as much as her character is challenging him. Her moments are the most genuine in the film with a naturalism to those quirks and it makes everything between them matter that much more so we want it all to work out with them, even as we don’t know why he doesn’t automatically see that. The intensity of Candice Bergen’s ice queen mode mixed with her own awkwardness around Reynolds adds to what is happening between the two of them and gives her performance a gravity; even if she’s funny in a scene it’s never just a joke. It’s a terrific supporting cast with the always smiling face of Charles Durning, the way Frances Sternhagen spits out “Why? Because she doesn’t have large breasts?” when Phil hesitates on asking Marilyn out along with the intimidating energy that Mary Kay Place brings to her few scenes. Austin Pendleton, who appeared with Durning the very same year in THE MUPPET MOVIE, is the most memorable part of the support group playing someone who has married the same woman four times but Wallace Shawn and Jay O. Sanders are in there as well and Daniel Stern, the same year as BREAKING AWAY, appears briefly playing one of Phil’s students.
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On a personal level that feels extremely random, there are my own distant memories of when STARTING OVER was playing in theaters way back before I ever saw it even if they barely matter. I wasn’t old enough to see it at the time but I was also aware that I wasn’t old enough to see it yet something about the advertisements caused it to represent to my young mind what movies aimed at adults were supposed to be. The advertising campaign, including commercials that showed Burt Reynolds snapping Polaroids of a woman in the shower (probably the broadest moment in the whole movie), likely made an impression. This is what life is going to be like when you grow up, I must have thought. This is the way things are going to be. As you’d expect, this did not turn out to be the case. But since it’s a film partly about learning how to stop holding onto the past, thinking back to the past seems to matter somehow. And now I’m forced to face it as a film I’m watching now in the world of adults that really exists. And all the pain that comes with it. So much has changed in the past year and it’s not that I even wanted certain things to be the same but this was still a surprise. I’m not so sure what some of it is anymore, what it is about escaping to New England. Those answers never feel very clear.
In addition to Oscar nominations for Clayburgh and Bergen (sorry, Burt), the box office for STARTING OVER ranks among other 1979 hits such as MANHATTAN and THE IN-LAWS but now feels so forgotten that Pakula’s Wikipedia page doesn’t mention it outside of the filmography. It apparently even opened the same day as Blake Edwards’ “10”, that other film about white middle-aged dating angst which apparently was all anyone thought about back in the late ‘70s. This was a long time ago.
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Burt Reynolds followed up the success of this film with the likes of SMOKEY AND THE BANDIT II and THE CANNONBALL RUN, then a few years later famously turned down the chance to reunite with Brooks, making his directorial debut, when he was offered the role of Garrett Breedlove in TERMS OF ENDEARMENT to work with Hal Needham yet again on STROKER ACE, likely the worst career choice he ever made. Hell, it’s probably one of the worst career choices anyone in Hollywood ever made. We still love Burt anyway. After all, everyone has that time in their lives when they turn down TERMS OF ENDEARMENT, if you know what I mean. And sometimes we just need to forget the past and accept that everything changes. And try to be thankful you knew some of those people, some of those women, at all. Which may be the only hope these days of ever actually starting over.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-71055620860953615092020-10-21T21:42:00.003-07:002020-10-21T22:38:09.061-07:00Out Of Respect<div class="separator" style="clear: both;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3uDqqAL1XRDm7lKIHdAyKwGab_wmCjE6_vtzSwUbwDQjlmlVzsXPqgTXXbwqm8VD9LBxhgqf8lE3VV1uw7pc4JwjOJXze9QpqP4GVMPj8P_irQ1ZLMv8BdNSme-RZRqCnpyXiVFBfqrX/s775/Goodfellas4.jpg" style="display: block; padding: 1em 0; text-align: center; "><img alt="" border="0" width="400" data-original-height="525" data-original-width="775" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgr3uDqqAL1XRDm7lKIHdAyKwGab_wmCjE6_vtzSwUbwDQjlmlVzsXPqgTXXbwqm8VD9LBxhgqf8lE3VV1uw7pc4JwjOJXze9QpqP4GVMPj8P_irQ1ZLMv8BdNSme-RZRqCnpyXiVFBfqrX/s400/Goodfellas4.jpg"/></a></div>
Memories fade. Just like films do. But of course there are films, just like certain memories, that still matter to us no matter how much time goes by. Sometimes they mean even more. They remind us of where we came from and why we want to be who we are in the first place. And they remind us of who we never became, making us think of what we did with our lives, if we really belonged somewhere and all the ways we screwed up while flying too close to the sun. And there’s no way to get back without feeling that pain. In those memories are the films that mean the most to us, giving us what we want from them, our dreams, our fantasies, the life we aspire to, the joy of being whatever we wanted to be, even if it was the very worst version of ourselves. The hope that we belong. At the start of his documentary A PERSONAL JOURNEY WITH MARTIN SCORSESE THROUGH AMERICAN MOVIES, the director quotes Frank Capra saying, “Film is a disease. When it infects your bloodstream it takes over as the number one hormone. It plays Iago to your psyche. As with heroin, the antidote to film is more film.” Capra was right, of course, because through that sickness of film we get better each time we see a new one, then the next film infects us even more, grabbing on to those dreams. But film is also food, at least it is for me, and the very best films nourish us, make us feel richer inside. These are the films that mean the most of all as we desperately try to remember.
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Because as much as we might want to think that it doesn’t matter, facing the past is unavoidable. No matter how much we shouldn’t dwell on it we wind up going there, trying to understand what our past really was. One of my own personal flashbacks that feels like a dream now is the day back in May of ’89 when I saw Martin Scorsese shooting a few scenes from his new film, witnessing greatness happening in front of me. If you’ve seen that film, and of course you have, you assume the scenes in question take place out on Long Island in the Five Towns but they were actually being shot over in plain old New Rochelle in Westchester County, not far from where I lived in Scarsdale. The film didn’t have an official name at this point but since it was based on the Nicholas Pileggi book “Wiseguy” and there was an unrelated TV show with the same name, not to mention the recent Brian De Palma comedy WISE GUYS, it would likely be called something else. One crew member said the name was going to be “Made Men” but of course that changed by the time the film called GOODFELLAS came out a year and a few months and a lifetime later. But that night no one in the crowd watching knew this was going to be GOODFELLAS. That night it was just another movie, an idea that seems impossible now.
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GOODFELLAS is one of the most purely enjoyable, addictive films imaginable but even that doesn’t sound like high enough praise. Even saying that it’s one of the best films I’ve ever seen barely seems like enough but every single moment becomes its own drug, powerful enough to give me multiple rushes as I get sucked further and further into it over countless viewings. There’s a freedom to each moment which maybe means more right now than ever but that makes it even more powerful, an unrelenting energy that can’t be shaken. These are awful people, yes, but there’s a joy found in each shot, an excitement that keeps the camera moving to catch just the right snatch of conversation, the right glimpse of nasty behavior. The film never stops. I never want it to stop. If it ever stopped, it wouldn’t be GOODFELLAS. Based on the true story of Henry Hill (Ray Liotta) and the years spent in the mob alongside the likes of Jimmy Conway (Robert De Niro), Tommy De Vito (Joe Pesci), the boss Paulie Cicero (Paul Sorvino) and wife Karen (Lorraine Bracco), showing us how Henry rises in the ranks moving to bigger scores, getting thrown in jail and back out again until it all comes crashing down because of how he couldn’t stop, couldn’t stop the drugs, the fucking around, couldn’t stop thinking that this would never end. With a screenplay by Pileggi & Scorsese mixed together through all the improvisation and embellishments with editor Thelma Schoonmaker making every single moment explode as it all connects, the film catches the feel of being in that life like no other with a power that keeps it going, never letting us catch our breath and it gets us to understand the appeal of how beautiful it can be to say go fuck yourself to everyone, that this is my life and there’s nothing you can do to stop it.
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“It was when I met the world,” Henry Hill tells us in that neverending voiceover about his first encounter with Jimmy Conway and that’s what it was like seeing GOODFELLAS when it finally opened in September 1990, thirty years ago. Thirty years. Within its totally unapologetic look at this world is the feeling of total freedom coming from Scorsese in how it’s all filmed, an excitement as if this is one long musical number with lots of criminal activity and food mixed in. Right from the start just before a trunk is opened when Joe Pesci pulls out that enormous carving knife, courtesy of his mother as we later learn, the movement seemingly timed perfectly with the camera panning away unimpressed, not bothering to linger as if to say it’s just a knife, what do you care. Every movement in the film and cut and action down to the tiniest gestures by an actor counts just as much, everything feels absolutely real, every laugh is bigger than expected because of the absurdity of how real it is. Every shot is part of that whirlwind, the feeling of being at home in the Bamboo Lounge with everyone there greeting Henry, giving us a taste of that freedom we all want out of life. In that one shot Scorsese places us in Henry’s point of view moving through the place past everyone then before we realize what’s going on puts Ray Liotta there in the shot to haggle over those fur coats, a moment that places us both inside and outside of the action all at once, maybe one of the best examples of doing whatever he wants to make this film and it probably breaks some sort of rule but what the fuck are rules, anyway? It’s the freedom that it shows off in being able to observe yet bring us right in there, presenting every moment as a document not just of the mob world but the feeling of being inside of it with the people around you that you think are the ones you’re loyal to, but you can never be sure.
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Henry Hill knows this because he’s watching, always watching. That’s what he’s doing the first time he’s seen as a boy, when the film cuts right from the director’s credit to the close-up of his young eyes doing that watching, a reminder of whose eyes all this is about just as much Henry Hill, wanting to be nowhere else but across the street hanging out with those wise guys who seem to control the world. He grows up and watches when the deals are made, when the beatings happen and during those few moments confronted with his own awfulness he doesn’t do anything. It’s just onto the next score, the next card game, the next night out at the Copa and when called out on this by Catherine Scorsese as Tommy’s mother for never saying anything, just listening to them, he doesn’t even know how to react. His life is his own movie, these guys seem to want to mythologize everything they do into the movies even while sometimes telling us that things don’t happen the way they do in the movies. You can spend your life watching and Henry Hill wants to do that, maybe he’s even ok with doing only that since not being fully Sicilian will always keep him a little bit on the outside, always watching a little but as long as he’s close it means he gets to be somebody, whatever that means, living this life without a care, his friend Tommy making that legendary “How am I funny?” challenge to him and it’s all one big test that he cackles through. All of this information seen through those eyes of course gives it a documentary feel but one that’s combined with the flourishes of the stylization that Scorsese brings to each moment so everything goes together but, hell, you could say that we all see the world stylized in our own way crossed with the reality that’s there. This is just as Henry Hill sees it but it’s also the director’s version of that, filming all this better than anyone else possibly could, paying attention to every little detail so it all matters. Every moment is all about what happens in it so the way he famously doesn’t bother with matching, no point in keeping track of the exact location of a cigar between cuts, instead caring about the emotional connection between every single shot, those small touches to connect them together and the frenzy throughout it all keeps those moments alive, always adding to the reminders of how much we feel at home at least until it all goes wrong.
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Everyone around Henry is watching people too, everyone is watching everyone, keeping tabs on each other, the wheels turning in Jimmy’s head as Cream plays on the soundtrack, the undeniable rage of Tommy when the wrong thing gets said to him, Paulie’s accusatory looks when he insists that he’s not going to die in jail, Karen and her eyes like Liz Taylor that finally catch Henry’s attention, the way Illeana Douglas looks at her with a tinge of sympathy at the wives’ get-together. Even the shots of small children that pop up throughout peering into this world to get a look at what Henry is part of, witnessing the behavior in front of them that they can barely comprehend. So many Scorsese characters through the years are about watching people around them with those giant close-ups of the eyes of Travis Bickle through the steady buildup to the madness that TAXI DRIVER culminates in. Even the growing freneticism of AFTER HOURS as Griffin Dunne’s Paul Hackett becomes increasingly paranoid over what any random person is thinking as they hold their glare on him, the dark comedy of that film seemingly informing how GOODFELLAS pushes that feeling to make the danger seem all the more real, when after fucking with so many people Henry Hill is the one being fucked with, drugs and helicopters everywhere, and he doesn’t find it so funny anymore.
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The way the film tells us everything is never about plot but it is about the sheer amount of information in the voiceover, all the names we’ll never keep track of, the incessant and unending details of it all and, if you dig in between those lines, even a fondness for some of the people he’s ratted out. It’s the memory of the lives they lead, the diners they hang out in, all those nights of playing cards that lead to the worst of what we see in Tommy’s response to the one person who talks back to him. Those details matter as much as anything whether it’s the restaurant that will inevitably be run into the ground or the new couch in Henry and Karen’s home, so the specifics of the all-important Lufthansa heist and who has to do what barely make a difference. What matters is their world and how much of it appears to be set below all those overpasses and elevated trains always looming above, these guys ruling their own subterranean world in the outer boroughs as people overhead drive through to Manhattan or the rest of the world out there that doesn’t matter. It all makes me think how it’s been so long since I spent any time there that in my mind it’s always 1979 in Queens. Part of this is my own memory of visiting family who lived out there back then, part of it is this film. It probably has changed by now but I don’t have to believe it.
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The men are in charge, always ready to snap back at the women if they get out of line not to mention fuck around on them, but it’s clear that the few people we see from the real world people aren’t much better, the way Karen’s mother screams at her and the normal, clean cut guy across the street who turns out to be a total piece of shit with no clue what he’s messing with. Some of the best moments hold a few seconds too long on the simmering rage that comes out of that especially from Tommy, not even letting his date get away with finding Sammy Davis Jr. attractive. The casual racism of these guys isn’t dwelled on but it’s there so when the one friendly civilian in the whole film is an African-American doctor taking pity on Henry with some valium the kindness stands out even more (the doctor is played by the now-familiar Isiah Whitlock Jr. the same year he turned up briefly in GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH which makes him, as far as I know, the only person who appeared in the two best films of 1990). The women accept the reality of all this but not always without a fight and when the film unexpectedly shifts to Karen’s point of view as she’s introduced in the middle of her first date with Henry it’s a jolt, one of the most important cuts in the whole film in telling us that someone like her notices what’s going on with Henry, the danger of it all attracting each of them to the other. And she willingly becomes a part of it, ready to hang on to the gun Henry used on the face of the guy who assaulted her to drive home the connection between them but so much of the dialogue in the entire film is about that give and take, the women always more than ready to laugh at all this even when there’s a joking-but-not-really vibe to the laughter on both sides. The instantly legendary Steadicam shot through the Copacabana is filmed like a dream for Karen, seducing her as she floats along with Henry leading her to the table just for them suddenly appearing in frame, but of course ending one of the greatest shots of all time on the glorious image of Henny Youngman there to tell a joke about all those fights between men and women that never end. The one sighting of him that I ever had in my life was at the Carnegie Deli, because of course it was. The things you remember.
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There’s a danger always around that comes with that energy, those screams of agony carrying over into the next scene mixed with the comfort level that makes it all so welcoming in spite of everything. The smell of cigarette smoke and coffee always hovering in the air in all those bars and diners plus the pitch perfect feel of Morrie’s wig commercial so the New York flavor is always tangible, it feels like every TV is turned to Channel 11 WPIX with the local ads endlessly blaring between Abbott & Costello. And there’s all that food, both in the very careful way it’s all prepared (How many onions are too many, anyway? How much should you balance that out with the razor-sliced garlic?) along with the simple, perfect slam cut to dinner at Paulie’s and that giant plate being brought over to the table, one of the greatest in a movie already filled with the most memorable transitions in all of cinema. Even all these years later I still dream about this food, including when it's mixed in with the drug-induced frenzy of the big final day, the paranoia of those helicopters always on Henry's mind but always circling back to the the sauce that has to be stirred for that glorious final feast. Even the brief glimpse of the dinner has that feeling with Karen insistently and nonsensically telling her daughter “Please don’t feed the dog from the table from the plate on top of it,” easily one of the greatest lines in the whole film that passes by almost unnoticed, one of the best reminders that the food and all that nitpicking in the out of nowhere dialogue that probably wasn’t scripted is just as important as everything surrounding it. These things matter just as much as the drugs that have to go out to Pittsburgh, all part of this world which, in the end, is what Henry knows and it makes him the perfect person to share it with us.
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The film does stop even if Henry Hill doesn’t want to stop, he just wants to keep talking about how great all this is. He’d talk after the credits if he could. But every Martin Scorsese picture stops eventually, that point in his movies when everything suddenly gets quiet, when the camera is no longer moving and the music cuts off to let us know things won’t be the same after. It’s the blandness of the office setting in that scene when Henry and Karen confer with the federal agent about witness relocation with no more hyperactivity between the cuts and the angles so cinematically it’s all just dead, all of the excitement turned off at the moment as everything reset in the zoom in/dolly out in the diner. Even today, GOODFELLAS feels like the most quintessentially Scorsese of all Scorsese films. It’s not a culmination of everything he does since it was too soon in his career at this point but it does feel like a fulfillment of all that promise of everything he was doing up until then, a perfect combination and renewed sense of freedom unlike anything his films had expressed before, mixing his life and the films he cared about leading to every Scorsese ending that cuts to the credits with the main character isolated, hidden away from the world and everyone he ever knew as things go on without him, forced to reckon with the actions of his life even while never fully admitting what was so wrong about it in the first place, never apologizing for who he chose to be.
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There’s no introspection to any of this, that’s what Martin Scorsese films written by Paul Schrader are for. Instead the feeling is sheer, dazzling exhilaration mixed with a reportage that always keeps an unapologetic distance no matter how repellent the behavior is. Starting with his remake of <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2011/11/if-you-hang-on-to-past.html">CAPE FEAR</a> released only fourteen months later Scorsese shifted the aspect ratio for the majority of his films to 2.35 Scope and the feel of them largely got slicker, bigger, often reveling in the movie-movieness of it all. GOODFELLAS holds onto the roughness so it feels perfectly at home on those streets, with all these people that it loves and hates at the same time. Even with the backing of a major studio the film often feels like it was made on the run, desperately keeping any anachronisms out of frame but in the end who cares if a license plate falls off, not when everything else matters so much more. The deeper meaning comes not from anything these people say or do but from the music that, just as it does for any of us, means whatever you want it to mean when the mix tape of a life is put together. Jerry Vale performs at the Copa, Bobby Darin is heard as dinner gets prepared in jail, Nilsson to get Henry going at 6:55 AM, Donovan singing in “Atlantis” about being way down below the ocean. That’s where these guys are anyway, in their world below all those overpasses ready to bash in the head of anyone who tells them to go get their shinebox all the way to the haunting, wordless sounds of the “Layla” piano break as we view Jimmy’s carnage, that point when the good times are over and there’s nothing left to do but look at all those dead bodies, people too stupid to have known it was going to end like this but you feel a tinge of sympathy anyway. All they wanted was the world, after all, they just couldn’t keep quiet about it.
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And it’s the Billy Ward and his Dominoes version of “Stardust” that plays when the film flash forwards to Henry as an adult in 1963, a song that came back again a few years later in another version at the very end of CASINO, each time reflecting back on each other. The lyrics say it all about the dreaming of a song, the stardust of yesterday, the music of the years gone by and all that, how this film looks back with all the joy but also an emptiness felt, asking what did it all mean and there’s no answer except for what’s in those words. That’s the past, remembering those days of thirty years ago. What it meant was what we saw, what we experienced, what we thought we had until all that is left is the dream of getting it back. Of course, at the end of the film when he’s fled from the life into the bland nothingness of witness relocation Henry Hill hasn’t learned anything and he still doesn’t care. He just knows that he misses it. As far as he’s concerned the life as a schnook is just one more beating he has to take.
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The charm of Ray Liotta comes through just as much as the rage, putting so much in his eyes, the eyes doing that watching but also as he crosses that suburban street with the gun in his hand and his unstoppable energy keeps going all the way through, walking that tightrope of being us, the audience surrogate, understanding what this all is but still loving it, embracing this world as long as it lasts. Robert De Niro takes what is basically a supporting role and makes it more crucial than you ever expected, a symbol of the star power that Henry wants but De Niro is willing to stand off to the side in scenes sometimes laughing his ass off, just waiting for the fight moment when he can explode in moments like the way he won’t stop when laying in on Johnny Roastbeef about that damn Cadillac. It’s the little moments in the small things he gets annoyed by as well as the small, unsung pleasure found in the way De Niro says the word ‘hoof’ in a certain scene. Joe Pesci in his Oscar-winning role brings all the power imaginable, embracing the simmering rage that builds as Tommy sits there, waiting for his moment, even during the casual joking with his mom and during all those viewings over the years it's those moments that stand out at least as much as the rest of it along with the unexpected shame in getting blood on Henry’s floor. Lorraine Bracco and her own eyes do just as much, almost like she's out of a silent movie at times and she becomess the counterpoint to everything Henry does as she stands off to the side watching, forcing him to take some accountability and during the growing desperation that becomes so palpable during her best moments she seems absolutely possessed. It’s that feeling of anger bubbling up that makes every moment genuine and even when it feels like Paul Sorvino is doing almost nothing in his scenes, which I mean in the best possibly way, when his head moves an inch it means everything and whatever he isn't saying is right there in his look. Just like the songs, there are way too many people to mention in their small roles but there’s the unforgettable Chuck Low as Morrie, Frank Sivero as Frankie Carbone with the Mutt and Jeff act in his scenes with Pesci along with Kevin Corrigan as Henry’s brother stirring that sauce. And there’s the women who get caught up in all this particularly Welker White as the babysitter intent on retrieving her hat or Debi Mazar stumbling as she backs up when Henry approaches her but especially Illeana Douglas, not that I have any idea who that is, who has only a few lines but just as much as the best performances in the film not only clearly gets the joke but knows exactly how far to take it and how dangerous that can be.
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As a film, GOODFELLAS is everything. It still feels like everything, all these decades later. There’s no way to put all that it means to me into a few paragraphs, the excitement and dream of this life mixed in with the ugliness of it all. But I don’t need films to make me feel better. I need them to make me feel alive, to find that life in every other film that I see, searching for that next hit. To nourish me. To remind me. To keep the disease that is film going inside of me. The legend of Martin Scorsese is undeniable by now but even on that the day he was directing scenes in New Rochelle (this included the phone booth scene where Henry picks up a sobbing Karen followed by stuff outside of her house nearby) he was no doubt as obsessed as always, watching it all come together, turning this into the masterpiece that it became. A film that asks what did you want out of the world and how close did you come. And how many ways did you manage to fuck it all up. There’s nothing redeeming about Henry Hill, not at all. Is there anything redeeming about you or me? Is there anything redeeming about that one person you can’t stop thinking about? Looking at it now, looking at it always, GOODFELLAS is about where the world was going. It’s about where the world is now. Strip it all down, sell it for parts, let the people die, take the money. Who gives a fuck, what are you gonna do, complain? Right now that destruction is the American way.
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This is a film about where all that came from, where the people in this world came from. “Prejudiced against Italians,” the New Yorker in me sometimes thinks, hearing it in Joe Pesci’s voice, flashing back to the afternoon when I took my dad to see this film. Once I posted a photo on Twitter of myself taken long ago and someone asked why I looked like an extra in this movie. Hey, when you’re an Italian-Jew named Peter, not Paul, that grows up in New York it comes with the territory. It’s a feeling I’ve had a few other times over the years but we won’t talk about that right now. Flying too close to the sun gets you hurt and the pain doesn’t go away. With Tommy’s brief appearance dressed as a gangster of the old school to fire his gun at Henry at the end that's right out of THE GREAT TRAIN ROBBERY it’s as if Scorsese is saying every film made since that one (not to mention the birth of sound with THE JAZZ SINGER, playing on the TV for Karen earlier) has been building to his. He’s saying this film, this life, is every film and every life. And he's right. But that shot of Tommy is also the past, firing at Henry, firing at us, never allowing us to forget who we were. Because you can’t outrun your own past any more than you can outrun all the films you’ve ever seen and why would you want to. The past barely matters at all. It matters more than anything. Knowing that both things are true may be the only way to move forward.
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Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-45128221704602265882020-08-31T12:35:00.001-07:002020-08-31T12:36:39.535-07:00From Now On That Counts<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1aNznlBKu7CiZQmimMBiZonfRzLYr4GxIc6YICKmXjbExy8gmGbLBp-oTS4ZUMgV5qTTyrMB2veUjbEK3Zvq3IRf7r_A59IPsklhngEShXOu2PgvRbp_lHhCi8alFWnjWUOnbPFHYapfR/s1600/EdgeoftheCity1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEg1aNznlBKu7CiZQmimMBiZonfRzLYr4GxIc6YICKmXjbExy8gmGbLBp-oTS4ZUMgV5qTTyrMB2veUjbEK3Zvq3IRf7r_A59IPsklhngEShXOu2PgvRbp_lHhCi8alFWnjWUOnbPFHYapfR/s400/EdgeoftheCity1.jpg" width="400" height="294" data-original-width="500" data-original-height="368" /></a></div><br />
The deepest conversations I’m having these days are late at night, when it feels like the connection is strongest because why not just be honest and say what you really feel at that hour, even if a phone call is the closest you’re actually going to get to these people. Because, especially at a time like this, words matter. Friends matter. People matter. Love matters. That fight to make things better matters. But there are times when all those words, all those offers of connection, only help so much because you still find yourself alone. These days, we’re forced to be alone anyway. More than anything right now is the feeling of how empty things are without people around, whether they’re friends, family, certain women or whoever. And it hurts more all the time. There’s a scene early in Martin Ritt’s EDGE OF THE CITY when Sidney Poitier, the young Poitier with all the fire and energy in the world, lays it all out for his new friend played by John Cassavetes. You have to make a choice, he says, when it comes to which way to go in life. You can go with the men and you’re ten feet tall or go with the lower forms and you’re down in the slime. But the choice to be alone, he says, is the worst. The thing is, we don’t really have that choice right now so we’re trapped all alone with seemingly all that goddamn hate of the lower forms the only thing in sight. And it feels like there’s nothing we can do to get rid of it. <br />
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Released in 1957 when Bosley Crowther of The New York Times called it an “ambitious little film” before settling into an undeservedly mixed notice, EDGE OF THE CITY is small but powerful and it deserves to be better known these days. My own first viewing was at the annual Noir City Festival some years back and it’s arguable if the film really qualifies as part of that genre (somebody get Eddie Muller on the phone to give us a definitive answer) but it absolutely knocked me out, one of those times when the second movie on a double bill comes up and the rest of the night instantly gets forgotten. Even if it doesn’t fall into that category, since it’s really more of a post-ON THE WATERFRONT social drama, the film offers a sense of humanity that finds its way into every scene making it feel alive, infused with that black & white location footage of New York from this period that I have a real jones for as if the very notion of seeing that era in color would be some sort of affront. Looking at EDGE OF THE CITY in the present time gives it an extra power while still making me aware of some of its drawbacks but even they help me understand what those themes really mean and how much they resonate. The film has a tangible sense of realism that’s felt throughout and an earnestness in how the characters interact that for a few moments almost make me feel hopeful about the possibilities in the world. Almost. As EDGE OF THE CITY reminds us, things can never be that easy. Not in 1957, definitely not in 2020. <br />
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A young man calling himself Axel North (John Cassavetes) shows up at the freight yards of New York looking for a job. He is assigned to the team of Charlie Malick (Jack Warden) unloading crates off trains but he soon befriends Tommy Tyler (Sidney Poitier) another supervisor at the yard who manages to get Axel transferred over to his team, away from the bullying Malick. Their friendship quickly develops with Tommy helping Axel find a room to rent and, with his wife Lucy (Ruby Dee) assisting, introduces him to their friend Ellen (Kathleen Maguire), a schoolteacher who he quickly hits it off with. But when Charlie Malick catches on to the secret that Axel has been keeping from everyone, including his real name, and begins extorting part of his pay for staying quiet, Axel soon fights back leading to tragedy which forces him to decide if certain things are more important than the choice to keep running from his past. <br />
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From its very first moment, EDGE OF THE CITY is dynamically compelling with an energy and electricity to every scene, fast and to the point while still lingering for moments of intimacy between the characters that grow in power as the film reaches its climax. This is a movie that feels like it’s about to burst with the sense of life it has, made by people quickly building up to the great work they’re going to do and so much of that talent is already on display. For Martin Ritt, this was his feature debut after directing for television with his career sadly getting sidelined by the blacklist for several years in between but much of the film crackles with the immediacy of a live television broadcast in the best sense, marking the beginning of a filmography that would last over thirty years. Sidney Poitier made this between the likes of THE BLACKBOARD JUNGLE and THE DEFIANT ONES while for John Cassavetes it predates his own directorial debut SHADOWS by two full years, each bringing enormous power to their performances and the chemistry between them is totally genuine. Even if EDGE OF THE CITY isn’t the best known work of the people involved during this period the undeniable sense of humanity at its core has a true power even now from the main titles by Saul Bass, the jangling music by Leonard Rosenman, the tabloid harshness of the black and white cinematography by Joseph Brun as well as the extraordinary work by the actors involved. More than just a simple story of friendship and the unavoidable issue of race, within EDGE OF THE CITY is a yearning quality of asking if only things could be different. If only. If only there wasn’t so much hate and fear always getting in the way of the possibility for a decent life. If only you could say how you really feel and who you really are. If only there weren’t people so determined to make it all worse. <br />
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And with a screenplay by Robert Alan Aurthur based on his teleplay “A Man is Ten Feet Tall” (which starred Poitier, the only actor to reprise his role here), the power of the film stands out even more because of how much it knows to spend time with those relationships as they get deeper, staying with them during the good times which gives the film a looseness to help set it apart from ON THE WATERFRONT, the easiest film to draw a comparison to. The main characters are so vividly drawn in how they go together that it’s easy to wish this was just a hangout movie following Tommy and Axel with their girls as they go out dancing and bowling, their scenes always playing out in a relaxed, natural way. Each of these actors go together, they get the jokes they’re making between the lines and the sense of yearning is felt every time the film pauses for those quiet character beats, seeming totally free within the moment. Of course this is the point, that life should be like this but the film knows it can’t be since that hatred is always hanging over things, the ugly racism of certain people always making it clear who they really are in this film that’s largely about people trying not to give into the darkness that’s always lingering nearby. <br />
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It’s a short film, only 85 minutes, but never in a rush and one brief scene is nothing but the two friends talking and laughing as they eat their lunch on top of a train car, the Empire State Building visible behind them. For a long stretch the plot barely even matters since it’s all about what they come to mean to each other, two guys who become friends in spite of what divides them racially, each standing out in the world around them for their own reasons. Tommy wastes no time in revealing his goodness and seems to be liked by almost everyone around him but Axel in particular displays a sensitivity that could be coded as gay, Jewish or maybe just a blacklisted screenwriter of the time, running from his past with those secrets that are tied into the conspiratorial nature of some early dialogue that could mean anything before we know what’s really going on. Of course he’s unable to escape who he is and what he’s done, eventually forced to confront the greatest source of hate around him to prove he can move forward. The question of what the world does to an individual, to make a person feel truly alone, is all over this post-blacklist film, asking how brave can you be and how willing are you to do the right thing no matter the consequences. As an actor Jack Warden was part of that world too, appearing in episodes of live TV as well as playing one of the 12 ANGRY MEN the same year as this film and the nastiness of his performance now plays as an unmistakable avatar for the hatred that oozes out of people prominent in our world right now. Certain words notably aren’t used in dialogue here, even if Richard Widmark already screamed the n-word right at Poitier in his debut film NO WAY OUT seven years earlier, but when Warden’s Charlie Malick calls Tommy “the blackest ape I ever saw” right to his face followed by just shouting the word “BLACK” at him nothing else is necessary. What he really means can be heard loud and clear. <br />
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In moments like that the anger is palpable and ugly but the film is equally unafraid of the pain caused by it and doesn’t hold back. Axel calls his parents, just wanting to hear their voices and unable to speak to them, driving his mother sick with grief not knowing what she did wrong and in the world of this film it’s the women who are really forced to deal with the weight of the world around them with her desperately wondering what she did to her son, the tentativeness of Kathleen Maguire’s Ellen talking about the social issues on her mind but especially the painful realism of Ruby Dee as Tommy’s wife Lucy, each of them seeming more aware of the troubles that are really out there. They’re not as willing to laugh it off as quickly as the men do over their post-dinner cigars, the way Poitier seems to dare Warden to say what he really thinks. The film is all about finding those moments, the way it pauses for a look Maguire gives early on mentally preparing herself for the first date with Axel, so even the briefest looks between the characters always mean something. “It’s important to me what happens to you,” a line of dialogue from one to another that feels so open and honest in the simplicity of the statement it’s impossible to imagine it in a film these days. <br />
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The momentary frenzy as the opening credits begin try to give it that feeling of immediate jeopardy with a punchy, tabloid flavor to those shots of the New York skyline that’s not what the movie really is let alone qualifying as noir. Even if it is a film about someone who only knows what it is to feel alone, a very noir concept if there ever was one, and he does have dark secrets that are gradually revealed but none of them are quite as melodramatic as you expect, understandable guilt involving the brother he loved more than anything and parents who he feels could never love him enough with still another secret that he keeps hoping he can outrun. This isn’t a world of active corruption so much as total uncaring passivity with the actor who plays the boss at the freight yard never revealing a speck of emotion about anything really going on there. The darkness of the genre is easily found in all that fear and hatred but the sense of hope still pokes through with the scene where Axel and Tommy first get to know each other out by the water, literally at the edge of the city, one of them getting the other to open up just enough to let the friendship begin. Martin Ritt’s directorial career became seemingly gentler over the years after this film all the way to his final work <a href="http://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2020/03/anything-is-possible.html">STANLEY & IRIS</a>, two films made decades apart that each deal with social issues but ultimately are about one person desperately reaching out for a connection to help another and face their greatest regrets. If EDGE OF THE CITY is the beginning of his visual style it often seems no more complex than putting two people together in the frame, forced to understand each other, but the rawness gives it a vitality that I’m not sure his later films had to this extent so in its best moments this always feels genuine and real. The films directed by Martin Ritt are portraits of individuals and how they fit into the world they occupy, trying to hold onto who they are as well as what the right way to prove your worth is which goes beyond simple issues of genre into the question of what is right and how we can bring ourselves to face the next day. <br />
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As powerful as EDGE OF THE CITY is, there’s still a sense of formula within the narrative that dictates which direction the story is forced to take so no matter how good Poitier is, no matter how much his character means, it’s hard not to want the film around him to be more than that. He’s playing someone with depth and dimension but, after all, he’s still at the mercy of the film’s plot as well as the person who wants nothing but to destroy him. Part of the well-meaning idealism of the film’s message feels grounded in that era but looking at the film now, over sixty years after it was made, becomes a reminder that Black Lives, after all, do matter even when they’re only fictional and their inherent goodness should serve as more than just a lesson to the someone else in the film. This lingered in the back of my head the first time I saw the film those years ago and the ambivalence I feel about it is still there now even as recent tragic losses in the real world have made it clear how much power those people who leave us too soon can have. The genuinely progressive messages of the past still make sense now, even as we realize how much further we have to go beyond them to continue to fight back against that hate. <br />
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Along with all this, the plot itself isn’t quite airtight particularly how late in the film a certain character could simply go to the cops rather than take the direct action he does but the code of the film’s world that Tommy has established says that a man needs to stand up for himself in a definitive, physical way for the ending to really mean something. Things like this maybe hold EDGE OF THE CITY back from being a true classic when viewed now, but it still could be called at least a minor one or at least the very best film imaginable that you hope to discover in the back half of a Noir City double bill. Those films, after all, are the ones that sometimes affect us the most and in spite of whatever flaws may be there this one still contains an undeniable sense of humanity that shines so bright it can’t be ignored. The film allows for the feelings to play out whether the fear in John Cassavetes’ eyes or especially the sheer fury displayed by Ruby Dee during her own key scene late in the film as well as the power of the ending with the final bars of Leonard Rosenman’s score drilling those feelings deep down. Through all this, EDGE OF THE CITY is a great, emotional film that doesn’t hold back. Every moment of it has the feeling of absolute humanity and it’s the sort of film I wish that I could show to all those people who aren’t around right now to remind us of how good things could be in our dreams when we aren’t alone. <br />
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Every inch a movie star here, Sidney Poitier is so relaxed and natural that it’s a wonder to see, displaying his love for the people around them and bringing such a feel of humanity in how he displays that with even the tiniest gestures. The jittery nerves displayed by John Cassavetes go perfectly with that, taking the rhythm their scenes have and letting himself relax into their scenes together, building his character scene by scene to let both his pride and sadness come through all at once. Against all this, the bully that the great Jack Warden plays comes in like a freight truck in every scene, not a shred of likability, just pure bullying nastiness and still totally real. Ruby Dee takes a part which at first isn’t much more than playing Poitier’s wife that she turns it into a powerful reminder of everything that can be lost while Kathleen Maguire has a totally relaxed and engaging screen presence, revealing her shyness but also her intellect so you can tell that there’s much more to her character than just waiting around for a man to enter her life. Ruth White and Robert Simon are also enormously effective in their brief but crucial scenes as Axel’s parents making them more than just the way he describes them, yet another reminder in this film of the good things that are still out there in the world. <br />
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At a crucial moment late in EDGE OF THE CITY one character desperately exclaims, “This doesn’t make any sense.” That’s right, it doesn’t. Hate doesn’t make sense. And Hate doesn’t care. We have plenty of evidence of that these days so looking at this film now, right now, in 2020, maybe this one moment is what stands out more than anything. In 2020 when hatred and ignorance are causing things to get worse and people to die. You want to be able to laugh at them, those lower forms of animal life as Tommy Tyler calls them, the ones who don’t care about anything good but they still come at you with all their hate. EDGE OF THE CITY plays right now as someone desperately reaching out for a connection to find the goodness in the world, the good people, the ones who are out there, to help you make a choice, to be your own person and not so alone. It’s a nice thought and a reminder of the strength in this film with the hope that maybe things can still change for the better. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsi0l0s7OvLm6KToHgxNzLlKHrANlJD8cfVEyfPKLYjlbJMOSgblhJfgw8YoC8Qsl1MzG4YfvIO8sc4yG9_3_fqih2zHoEyaXJEiNMkCGn_H_ALz9Kth6MJHoZ9MZ-VUmvoc_K4LJHyOw/s1600/EdgeCityP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgnsi0l0s7OvLm6KToHgxNzLlKHrANlJD8cfVEyfPKLYjlbJMOSgblhJfgw8YoC8Qsl1MzG4YfvIO8sc4yG9_3_fqih2zHoEyaXJEiNMkCGn_H_ALz9Kth6MJHoZ9MZ-VUmvoc_K4LJHyOw/s400/EdgeCityP.jpg" width="256" height="400" data-original-width="320" data-original-height="500" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-2710188143119493912020-07-31T14:29:00.002-07:002020-07-31T14:38:03.477-07:00Drifting Through Eternity<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisRzqPFmC-UGhIP7AlZK1gsRK3HsrNMuRPMataE2M18iP9oVDNIueDtxk8xrGNM_QcZKUP4PsAMSek2iEgQXOMIlnk_5U3ZlHL6sc1m2LWqDF7h_r_P2PLeoEU2EALQb6HUCZfDd8k8byz/s1600/MissiontoMars1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEisRzqPFmC-UGhIP7AlZK1gsRK3HsrNMuRPMataE2M18iP9oVDNIueDtxk8xrGNM_QcZKUP4PsAMSek2iEgQXOMIlnk_5U3ZlHL6sc1m2LWqDF7h_r_P2PLeoEU2EALQb6HUCZfDd8k8byz/s400/MissiontoMars1.jpg" width="400" height="300" data-original-width="800" data-original-height="600" /></a></div><br />
Well, we didn’t know this was going to be the future. Stuck like this, away from the people we’ve known and care about. But even now they stay with us as we close our eyes, wishing we were back with them. It’s the naiveté of youth, I suppose, the dream that you grow up and as the future appears the world will grow with you, eventually turning things into that life one dreams of. But the real future, the one we’re going to get, is always closer than we think and those people just get further away. So by the time we actually get there, it’s too late to do anything about it. That’s when we realize there’s no one else around. <br />
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Brian De Palma’s 2000 film MISSION TO MARS is set in what was then the future. But revisiting this film during its 20th anniversary is not simply about addressing when it opened but how it actually begins in the year 2020, on June 9th to be exact although the preciseness of the date serves little purpose. It’s still a pretty familiar looking future except that people appear to be drinking boxed beer at a crowded barbecue which, boxed beer aside, hasn’t been happening or at least it shouldn’t—I was going to add that we’re also not going to Mars anytime soon but there’s actually a mission happening, go figure, even if there won’t be any humans onboard. Living in this actual time as we are, if you call this living, we already know that the 2020 of this film has little to do with the reality we currently know even if the film doesn’t spend much time on Earth. My main recollections of seeing this film opening night way back in March of that year at the El Capitan on Hollywood Blvd. are that the packed house violently booed when the end credits rolled and someone threw what looked like a Snapple bottle at the screen. But time changes things. For one, this is a film where a character gets marooned all alone and who the hell knew back then that the very idea of isolation would turn out to have the most to do with what life in 2020 really is. Like many films that have been loudly rejected on opening night, MISSION TO MARS is more interesting than that initial response indicated and even though it does still have more than a few issues, it’s a film striving to be about hope and connection in a way that makes me think a little more fondly about it these days. There’s a lot to figure out right now about the way things are going and even if there aren’t any real answers in the film I’m watching, there’s always the dream that maybe something can still be found there.<br />
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As the first ever crew on the surface of Mars explores the red planet, they discover the possibility of water which would allow for earth colonization. But when they try to investigate, the entire team except for Commander Luke Graham (Don Cheadle) is wiped out by a mysterious vortex of massive size leaving the lone astronaut remaining stranded there. When news of this reaches the World Space Station via a message that indicates Luke is still alive, plans for the next ship for Mars are changed to turn it into a rescue mission which will include Commander Woody Blake (Tim Robbins), wife Terri (Connie Nielsen), Phil Ohlmeyer (Jerry O’Connell) and Jim McConnell (Gary Sinise), who gave up his own shot at commanding Mars One when his wife Maggie (Kim Delaney) fell ill and soon died. But months later when their ship begins to orbit Mars things immediately don’t go as planned and once the team reaches the ground to search for Luke, they soon discover the existence of a massive stone face which may lead to the answer of what sort of life once existed on that planet and what may have really happened to it. <br />
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For one thing, it’s definitely the second best Brian De Palma film with the word “Mission” in the title but this is of minor importance. Even after all this time MISSION TO MARS is still a tough one to figure out, a film which on the surface doesn’t seem to be anything other than a showcase for spectacular digital effects but somewhere deep down feels like it has other goals in mind that it hasn’t entirely worked out. Maybe it wants to be more of an interior journey into outer space but even with several big names in the cast the characters are never interesting enough to warrant this approach so what’s left becomes the focus on those effects and the way De Palma builds his own visual methods around them. Right from the very first moment as the title flashes onscreen a rocket blasts off, only to be revealed as a toy in a suburban backyard giving the impression the film wants to play with our expectations, finding a way to turn kid stuff into the adult regret of lost dreams and back again, to understand what the dream in those toys meant in the first place. It’s an idea that doesn’t feel entirely formed and the film is forced to pay more attention to all that hardware while still looking for ways around all the expected tropes, like how in place of the expected spectacular launch sequence is a simple transition to the surface of Mars done with a cut from a playful footprint in a backyard on Earth. This is an attempt at hard science fiction which at times seems more interested in finding unexpected ways to tell the story rather than acclimating us to the drama at hand and plays at such a distance that it’s a little too easy to check out early on. There’s no mission control populated with familiar character actors, no cutaways to worried loved ones back home, no bogus conflict between the astronauts played by big names and even an early sequence involving cross cutting that plays with notions of time within the narrative for reasons that still seem a little hazy. <br />
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A few plot points, like how Cheadle’s command will presumably be joined at a later date by Mars II commanded by Robbins, seem vague in the way they’re casually discussed but I’m not sure it matters and I’m not sure the director really cares about making such generalities clear. Complicated exposition gets doled out in a way that hasn’t taken into account what anyone watching the film doesn’t know so not enough of it registers, lost to whatever De Palma is actually interested in focusing on. Even when the film opens with one of his patented endless Steadicam shots it’s not about the technology surrounding a Mars launch but the simple act of the astronauts socializing at a farewell barbecue, giving us more info about the relationships than the actual mission which is fine but the mundane setting doesn’t seem to warrant such a complex visual approach (which features a cut partway through as if a decision was made in editing to rush things along) and it also makes the film feel unexpectedly small with the interactions never registering all that much as the camera swirls around them. There’s so little drama in the friendships of the main characters which means right from the start we’re facing a Brian De Palma film where everyone gets along, no ominous foreshadowing in the air, so earnest that the scenes barely seem about anything. <br />
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The way the writing credits read (screenplay by Jim Thomas and John Thomas & Graham Yost, story by Lowell Cannon & Jim Thomas and John Thomas) along with the very nature of the project (presumably inspired by the Disneyland ride that closed back in ’92 but it has the Touchstone Pictures logo) one imagines many, many drafts of various scripts written but the story still feels either not quite smoothed over or maybe had whole sections deleted for whatever reason. One major plot point is even relayed via news delivered remotely at another location and there’s something to be said about how the film seems more interested in dwelling for a long moment on the sight of Armin Mueller-Stahl silently drinking a cup of coffee than the spectacular landing we didn’t get to see. But the question is are there really plot points to this film or just several specific events leading up to the final revelation. So much of what appeals about films directed by Brian De Palma more than the necessities of story structure is his portrayal of the madness that surrounds the main characters as they try to make sense of this increasingly insane world while the plot happens around them. The characters in this film are all good and pure, which makes sense since they’re astronauts, but the earnestness doesn’t feel all that fleshed out as if he doesn’t quite know how to make it ever seem genuine. They can each be described simply via who means the most to them, nothing more; Woody and Terri are the happy couple, Jim is sad because his wife died, Luke misses his son back on Earth and Phil is the joker who constructs the DNA of his dream woman using M&M’s in zero gravity. There’s no real conflict between the characters at all beyond how to address whatever any given immediate issue might be, saying things like “Let’s work the problem” as they get to it, all of them so idealized as heroes that there isn’t much else to them beyond the perfection. These are the types who normally get sacrificed, if not totally destroyed, in the cruel world of De Palma films so maybe in being forced to portray people without flaws it removes all the fun and doesn’t replace it with anything particularly interesting. <br />
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This has never been a director known for showing much interest in healthy relationships between men and women (maybe with the exception of Kevin Costner as Eliot Ness and Patricia Clarkson as “Ness’ Wife” in <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-wheel-went-round.html">THE UNTOUCHABLES</a>) which makes it feel like there’s not much to portray here beyond the simple idealization. Tim Robins and Connie Nielsen are played as being totally devoted to each other, such a mirror image of Gary Sinise and his late wife played in flashback by Kim Delaney that it almost feels a little confusing as if husband-wife missions have somehow become a NASA requirement in the future. But even if the perfection plays like a neon sign that something bad has to happen, this is still a rare Brian De Palma film with next to no cynicism, no irony or real sense of the fates conspiring against all the goodness in the universe. Even when a sacrifice has to be made, even when an American flag is planted upon arrival at the new planet, it seems to insist on holding onto some kind of optimism so the movie is never embarrassed by its own inherent dorkiness coming out of the science fiction technobabble or how much these people love each other as if it wants to actually believe in this dream of everything being ok. <br />
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In spite of what feels like his reputation as a director only interested in the camera, dialogue does matter in De Palma films but in a very musical sense so if the words and images don’t go together then there’s no way for it all to flow. Here it feels like a lack of drama coming out of all that vaguely specified scientific exposition and declarations of friendship, some of which is at least partly necessary but too often gets me to zone out so not enough of it registers and even some of the big statements in the dialogue that are clear don’t seem to matter beyond the moment they’re spoken. In some ways the framing of how people are placed together in a given shot becomes what matters more than the words, as if all the main audio were shut off the film would make about as much sense as it does now. But the narrative by itself remains a little too thin, a novella slotted into what needs to feel epic so clocking in at a fairly brisk 113 minutes, which includes a lengthy end crawl, the film always moves but sometimes a little too quickly from one incident to another with occasional fades to black to divide each section that play a little as an excuse for leaving out bits of connective tissue. But it’s not the amount of plot that matters as much as the pacing which gives the feeling that the movie could use more breathing room, more moments of the characters simply getting lost in the majesty of it all and maybe even one or two scenes of non-cryptic exposition to really clarify things. The few moments the film does dwell on the Mars landscape feel right for the dissonant alien feel particularly when it pauses to reveal the scale of the massive vortex and as always De Palma, with editor Paul Hirsch (whose work with the director goes all the way back to HI, MOM!; to date, this is their last film together), knows how to maneuver his pieces into place but there’s an elegance missing, no way to enjoy the small touches in between the big moments which gives the pacing a stop-start quality. The purest De Palma films often flow beautifully from shot to shot with grace notes that could only come from this director but maybe with all this reliance on technology, effects and a plot which doesn’t feel entirely formed that just can’t happen as much as it should. Even when there’s a sense that it wants to linger within the imagery a little more to get lost in the vastness of space the film resists, maybe to avoid playing as too similar to 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY or maybe just a desire to simply keep things moving. <br />
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It’s the score by the great Ennio Morricone (RIP) that gives the film much of the soul it does have, while maybe overreaching in assuming any emotional connection we have to these characters. It’s a little ONCE UPON A TIME IN SPACE in the way it searches for the emotion found through the discovery in a different way than the usual John Williams majesty and the overriding emotion that it projects feels like it’s about yearning so the film becomes about yearning as well, the hope of what can possibly be found out there supplanted with suspense music that features a prominent haunted house organ underscoring the danger always nearby. These emotional touches lend a humanity to the thinly drawn characters, a reminder of how Morricone never scored simple plot beats and even when working on undeniably trashy films he always went beyond simple emotion and beauty into examining the very idea of how the characters are affected by Fate. His music always played like it was what he responded to in a film deep down in his soul, using the themes he created to infuse the religion that is Cinema and transform it into something greater. What he brought to MISSION TO MARS is almost too noticeable at times and in some ways the old-fashioned quality clashes with the futuristic setting but it doesn’t hold back in its quest to provide a clarity to the answers that are beyond anything one could imagine and in helping us begin to actually understand those emotions maybe that’s as close as we’re ever going to get. <br />
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But to bring up music that has nothing to do with Morricone, the zero gravity sequence with Van Halen’s “Dance the Night Away” playing as the Mars II centrifuge spins serves as a break from those more stately moments. It’s the sort of long take we want from this film, done with just the right sense of the old De Palma funkiness that lets him play with the three-dimensional quality to bring something extra to the Kubrick nature of the moment as if pausing the movie just for the sheer pleasure of doing it. The staging during moments like this is impeccable in the way only he knows how to do but the film still feels like it’s missing a human connection between those shots. De Palma’s visual approach over the decades has often been about pure emotion, not logic, which is when his films work best but this one has to spend time on the science of all that hardware whether it interests him or not and the balance feels lost more than it should. At times those darkly comic touches come through, particularly during the nastiest death early on that has just the right kick, but too often it doesn’t feel like there’s enough inspiration to the way scenes are staged; an early conversation between two people is shot with simple, dull over-the-shoulder angles and one later moment even pulls out the old visual trick of a character suddenly revealed to be standing behind someone else in the immediate foreground likely cribbed from Argento. It was also used in <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2011/11/in-order-to-study-them.html">RAISING CAIN</a> and <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2011/05/only-in-my-dreams.html">FEMME FATALE</a> but the giallo-styled frisson of the moment here feels strangely timed wrong as if the gimmick just didn’t fit the scene, no matter how the staging was adjusted and it becomes another one of those occasional touches that don’t quite belong.<br />
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The effects driven plot points that lie within the sometimes iffy, circa-2000 CGI have a largely ‘shit happens, then more shit happens’ approach to the storytelling which at times feels too mechanical, things going wrong before it’s been made clear what’s supposed to go right. But during the big midpoint setpiece when Mars II has to be abandoned as it attempts to enter orbit and the disaster which follows this all comes alive, finding the balance between the technology and what the director knows how to do. Shot by shot it’s easily the purest De Palma sequence of the entire film, building to a literal cosmic joke (plus answering why one of the presumed leads gets an “and” billing in the credits), and the whole sequence even feels more like a dream than anything else in the film in showing the helplessness of trying to reach something that is so close yet so far and there’s not a thing you can do about it. And in many ways the scene is not about trying to reach Mars at all but a reminder of how little power love has in the grand scheme of things even as you hold onto it as tight as you can, desperately looking for the right answer when everything else is falling away and if only this could have been fleshed out more. In our real 2020 it feels like loneliness is unavoidable but this is a film that wants to reject that through the pure love it portrays and even the way Don Cheadle compares the union he creates with the plant life on Mars to a marriage, that companion who gives you oxygen. And when they’re gone you gasp for air, wondering how to breathe. Deep down the movie wants to find a way to fight through that loneliness, even in the way Mars and Earth ultimately depend on each other, with the planet that could rightly be called the younger sibling arriving in search of all the answers to be found. <br />
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The year it was released, the main competition for MISSION TO MARS was the Val Kilmer-starring RED PLANET, a more straightforward genre piece (ok at best) which wound up not opening until November and didn’t do as much business but then again neither one could really be called a box office success. This film is definitely the more ambitious of the two even if what finally gets revealed makes me wonder how much was cribbed from whatever science fiction novels by Clarke or Asimov or whoever that I never got around to when I was reading this stuff in my pre-teen years. The climax makes sure to spell everything out as clear as possible, no Kubrick ambiguity here and all presented in the style of a three dimensional IMAX museum film complete with narration that the film would have been better off without (or, to bring up a movie that came out over a decade later, maybe done more in the style of TREE OF LIFE) to make sure everyone in the audience gets it but of course that was never going to happen. Then again, it took several viewings for me to get a handle on another plot point involving the key to establishing communication with life on the planet, again zoning out during more of that exposition, so what do I know. The action taken by Sinise to embrace his destiny after learning the truth is also somewhat reminiscent of the denouement of STAR TREK: THE MOTION PICTURE, another film with considerable flaws but its own charms that always makes me want to try to accept the film a little more. It may seem strange to have Kim Delaney receive prominent billing for playing Sinise’s wife in such a tiny part, seen more or less entirely in flashback, but she does get the big speech seen on an old video, to say that the answers we’re looking for are not about chaos but connection, how life reaches out for life and accepting that idea can allow us to finally move forward. The moment seems deliberately tossed off but it is the main verbal expression of the film’s theme along with a simple but emotional expression of thanks between two people at the end that echoes an identical beat in the closing moments of <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2010/08/when-wheel-went-round.html">THE UNTOUCHABLES</a>. <br />
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In some ways the film plays like a true oddity now, a giant effects movie from a major studio without action, adventure or any sort of real antagonist and the thing that unlocks the mystery in the end comes from working out an equation. Whether because of the reliance on the visuals, the thinly drawn characters or how tight a timeframe so much of it takes place in, the desired emotional payoff at the end doesn’t really happen and yet within all the awkwardness is an optimistic sweetness about the potential of humanity that goes beyond the usual STAR TREK speechifying to make me want to defend it a little more. Part of that is because of touches that can be found during certain random moments that really feel like they come from the director, how he seems to want to express certain feelings through those long unbroken takes, split diopter shots to connect the characters and De Palma zooms that only he could be responsible for which express more humanity all these years later than the overwhelming CGI the film chooses to dwell on. And in the bookending final image really does transform the stuff of children into a realization of what can really be out there for the adult willing to strive for it. It takes us away from the loneliness once and for all while keeping the spirit of that close to be willing to go on to the next part of the adventure. And, hopefully, find a way to continue on. <br />
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All that hardware becomes a reminder that there are many wonderful performances in Brian De Palma films it’s just that, Sean Connery aside, they’re more the kind that Pauline Kael raved about than the sort of thing the Academy recognizes. So while this is a film with solid actors doing largely solid work when they can make the dialogue register, I can’t help but shake the feeling that they did this for a chance to be in a big Brian De Palma film more than anything but every now and then there’s a looseness to moments during those long takes that don’t feel entirely scripted which lets a little bit of humanity poke through. Gary Sinise finds the sad calmness in what he does as if so much of his arc has to be played out through silence and, in a way, he’s the only one who seems to be working out all those complex problems in his head. Much of the time Don Cheadle feels like he doesn’t have any real character to play at all but he also gets the one moment of true emotion in the film near the end, which plays as weirdly genuine while Connie Nielsen and Tim Robbins each project intelligence but little registers beyond a basic sense of decency. Armin Mueller-Stahl is unbilled and an odd choice for his character actor-authority figure reeling off exposition that we probably need to retain but the words never seem vivid enough. Maybe this part should have been played by more of an extrovert (now I’m picturing Dennis Franz in space) but maybe it’s an issue with the entire film that it needed to find a way for the performances to really matter even with all those effects, to find a way to make the words pop in a way that would engage with all the majesty around them and then the ending would have really paid off. <br />
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The soundtrack album featuring the Ennio Morricone score is a somewhat hodgepodge of a listening experience with one track running just over thirteen minutes but the final piece, titled “All the Friends”, is a quiet, gentle rumination that feels like what the film was really trying to contemplate. Or maybe it’s the film that I imagine is trying to poke through. The technology of the future as presented in MISSION TO MARS ultimately seems incidental but what it wants to say, especially via the ANNIE HALL-styled montage at the very end, is that what matters is the people we’ve known, the experiences we’ve had, the ones we’ve loved. I’m not sure if other composers would have latched on to this idea to such an extent which is what always seemed to give such power to the scores Morricone wrote. We can go as far as we want to in this universe, and hopefully we will, but it’s the people you’ve known that mattered and will continue to. It’s a nice idea, one that I wish really clicked in this film, and it’s what I keep reminding myself during the actual year 2020 as I don’t see any of those people, not really. It’s like what we see when we close our eyes, the flashes of our lives, the people we care about and wish were here, is what 2020 is all about. Because so much hurts right now, there’s so much emptiness without them. Admittedly, part of all this is all about finding a way to somehow understand a film made by a director whose body of work means a great deal to me. Maybe it’s a search for an emotional connection that says more about me right now than what can be really be found but there’s always the hope that the answer will present itself. Anyway, it’s a nice dream to hold onto. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHXjr6CHUbP_T6Apt4C0wBatclamkgpXt4X8Lca6mhXOVRfNlMkM6Zxoif5pn0DpQVScfty5H8toYWCNWIUdfZwxGd4ZogOyhFx1c5eS7Xlpzm50o087CwAmoo1r1PKUiBXH0temOu5u-/s1600/MissiontoMarsPa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjTHXjr6CHUbP_T6Apt4C0wBatclamkgpXt4X8Lca6mhXOVRfNlMkM6Zxoif5pn0DpQVScfty5H8toYWCNWIUdfZwxGd4ZogOyhFx1c5eS7Xlpzm50o087CwAmoo1r1PKUiBXH0temOu5u-/s400/MissiontoMarsPa.jpg" width="275" height="400" data-original-width="667" data-original-height="969" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-27917756176747528512020-06-22T17:08:00.001-07:002020-06-22T17:09:43.678-07:00To Live In That Picture<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyRchvN5v-kzNQe7LG5klyO0EKi9TCyxTBTcW7Orcdr8vMAAwdne7nVIZem3OQX3WX-bFc38xpkFFC_nzfhFMc5dPI8ejWody3rJqgliY958qcSy2j8jm-rbC8Ed-eynnRe9Wxtrl6aSCO/s1600/HouseSitter9.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjyRchvN5v-kzNQe7LG5klyO0EKi9TCyxTBTcW7Orcdr8vMAAwdne7nVIZem3OQX3WX-bFc38xpkFFC_nzfhFMc5dPI8ejWody3rJqgliY958qcSy2j8jm-rbC8Ed-eynnRe9Wxtrl6aSCO/s400/HouseSitter9.jpg" width="400" height="269" data-original-width="1000" data-original-height="672" /></a></div>It was a Friday night, several weeks into being stuck at home, when I decided to order HBO on streaming via Amazon Prime. This was mainly to see the recent season of CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM, which I watched and loved, but it didn’t take long to start looking for what films were on there. I discovered they had ARTHUR, realized I hadn’t seen that entire film in years so within seconds I was watching ARTHUR. That led to looking for similar pieces of comfort food along those lines, films that I hadn’t seen for decades or maybe ever. They’re not all ARTHUR, of course, that one is pretty close to perfect, but it was the tone that I needed. Comedies of the 80s-90s, maybe romantic comedies and if they feature a saxophone playing over shots of the Manhattan skyline all the better. Maybe I’m just not in the mood for explosions right now. There was ALL OF ME (nice), VOLUNTEERS (meh), SOMEONE LIKE YOU (the Ashley Judd movie; hey, Ellen Barkin was in it), JUMPIN’ JACK FLASH (let’s hear it for the 80s), CAN’T BUY ME LOVE (hard for me to dislike), DESPERATELY SEEKING SUSAN (now that’s what I’m talking about, this one I love). Even BIG BUSINESS on Disney + (they have some real movies on there, I enjoyed revisiting this one). And then there was HOUSESITTER. You remember HOUSESITTER, starring Steve Martin and Goldie Hawn. Released in June 1992 on the weekend between the openings of PATRIOT GAMES and BATMAN RETURNS which is when I saw it. Maybe you caught it on cable at some point. <br />
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But the question is, does anyone anywhere think about HOUSESITTER for any reason these days? Possibly not. I put it on late one night just figuring it would at least be relaxing and, truthfully, halfway through I got one of those panic attacks I’ve been having on occasion through this whole thing. But eventually I finished it, so let’s not blame that on the film. Directed by Frank Oz, it strikes me how this is neither the best nor the worst film ever made by the people involved. Definitely not the worst for the director, not when he did that STEPFORD WIVES remake and as far as Martin & Hawn go they even had their own lousy update with the 1999 version of THE-OUT-OF-TOWNERS. Compared to these, HOUSESITTER isn’t badly done at all but it’s just missing some sort of comedy X factor that would help it pop and make a real impression. At the very least it’s pleasant, not a bad thing right now and in the way it adequately cruises along the film even manages to provide a smile here and there. It’s so much the very definition of adequate that it might even be the most average Hollywood movie ever made. Something has to be, right? May as well be this one. <br />
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Three months after Newton Davis (Steve Martin) had his marriage proposal to longtime love Becky Metcalf (Dana Delany) rejected after building her a beautiful new house in their hometown, he is back at the Boston architecture film where he works in a minor capacity. At a work function Newton, called Davis by pretty much everyone, meets a waitress named Gwen (Goldie Hawn), a drifting free spirit who he spends the night with but sneaks out before the next morning. When she awakens to find Davis gone, Gwen gets the idea to travel to his hometown and find the abandoned house he spoke of so she can stay there which very quickly leads to introducing herself to people in the town, including the infamous Becky, as his wife. When Davis finally shows up and is shocked to discover what’s been going on, which has included Gwen getting to know his parents, he agrees to keep the charade going in exchange for her help in using the troubles their ‘marriage’ is going through as a device to help him reignite Becky’s interest in him and finally get her back.<br />
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After some fairly simple white-on-black opening credits, the first shot of the film is Dana Delany wearing a blindfold which in the film serves as a symbol for the careful way she proceeds in life, unable to respond to the bravery Steve Martin’s Davis as displayed in building a house for her, itself a symbol of how much he wants to stand out in the world but is unable to commit in a way that would get anyone to notice. And, yes, digging this deep into a film as mild-mannered as HOUSESITTER may be a little silly but that’s what you start to do at times like this. The film tries to make the point of Davis being open to original thought, objecting to the sort of cookie cutter office buildings his firm designs, he’s just not the sort of yes man who can make that approach stand out which the free spirit played by Goldie Hawn picks up on right away. She even calls him average right to his face which is an ideal designation for someone to be named in this film and it seems to wound him considering he’s trying so hard to be more than that even if from our perspective, the most unique thing about the character is that people refer to him by his last name. So it’s basically a film about how there’s a way towards happiness to remove the fear and help you stand out, even if it means making up the truth as you go along. Or something like that. <br />
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Somewhere in that theme is a concept but the execution is a little too freeform which means there’s a looseness to HOUSESITTER that fits the plot almost as if it’s a movie about someone making things up as they go along which itself was being made up as it went along, but that approach really amounts to only so much. Frank Oz’s directing style is consistently assured with lots of long takes and elegant camera moves thanks to the great cinematographer John Alonzo which lends a sense of grace to the film that it wouldn’t have otherwise, going nicely with the bucolic setting of the town. But the story never really winds up going anywhere, missing the big laughs that could be built out of the solid structure in something like the previous Frank Oz-Steve Martin teaming <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2019/08/know-your-limitations.html">DIRTY ROTTEN SCOUNDRELS</a>. This script plays out in a way that sort of makes sense but it all comes off as pretty inconsequential, more about the characters trying to determine what each scene is going to be during the scene and the sense of them interacting with their surroundings which at least gives it a style but it becomes about that more than actual jokes. <br />
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HOUSESITTER, screenplay by Mark Stein from a story by producer Brian Grazer and Stein, plays at its most promising as a screwball update with a setting that brings to mind a sort of generic Golden Age of Hollywood feel. In my mind all those films seemed to be set in Connecticut (I’m either thinking of MR. BLANDINGS BUILDS HIS DREAM HOUSE or something else I can’t remember) but this one moves the story further up north to Boston and the nearby fictional town of Dobbs Mill, all the better for the occasional New England accent, I suppose. The basic concept has potential but it really just cruises along so it never becomes more than a middling early 90s studio comedy with a couple of big names. Those two stars bounce off each other pretty well in each scene but I never really believe them as these characters they both seem maybe ten years too old for, not that the age thing matters very much. Their interplay at least feels well utilized with a cleverness to the beats of their arguments and how far each one of them pulls the other further into the improvisation of all those made up stories. Structurally, the screenplay comes off as neatly organized as it moves from one giant lie to the next with Davis’ parents played by Donald Moffat and Julie Harris, both excellent, acting concerned and Peter MacNichol’s co-worker/best friend serving little function but to give Steve Martin someone to clarify plot points to. The real set pieces come out of those lies thought up by the ‘Ernest Hemingway of bullshit’ as Davis calls Gwen and the way they work out as they get told; Hawn making up the story for the first time in the grocery store, the various scenes with the parents, Newton’s anguish as he realizes he can only do so much as long as Becky thinks he’s married. And for all the effort the film seems to be putting in to finding things for them to argue about, nothing is really ever at stake which means that it doesn’t really do much but bounce from one scene to the next, looking for a reason to keep going and never reaching any comic boiling point. <br />
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That low-key vibe at least keeps the tone consistent from scene to scene and the small town feel offers a nice, laid-back energy while also making me think of how excited people in the real town likely were to have movie stars hanging around for a few months. Even the layout of the all-important house that gets the plot going adds to this, based on a design that was named House Beautiful’s Best Small House of 1990 so at least it’s a nice movie to linger in. And it’s almost as if Oz knew that the high concept was missing something so a number of scenes play like he encouraged the actors to do whatever they could to add their own bits of business to moments with elements tossed in like a giant sheepdog at the house who runs through things but is almost never mentioned. The way this is all staged feels like he correctly knows that the best way for such scenes to work is to keep the shot on Martin and Hawn as they each flail in tandem with each other, searching for the next part of the lie. Even the bouncy score by Miles Goodman (who was really good at this sort of thing and died way too young) adds to this elegance along with how the camerawork seems to glide along in unison with an added beat sometimes to punctuate a laugh. When Steve Martin takes a spectacular pratfall that ends with him perfectly straightening up again it’s a sharp piece of timing but maybe almost too rehearsed and the overall schematic of the film is as well so all that work by everyone to give extra life to scenes makes the film amiable but not much more than that. Maybe because of this, the best moments seem to slip in almost unannounced like when Moffat lapses into his high school principal mode to lecture someone or a scene with Martin and Dana Delany, which is maybe the best moment in the film, when the two of them almost finally start to play out their hoped for romance. The physical interplay between each of them slowly turns into what he desperately wants in a shot that goes on longer than you’d expect and their chemistry is almost too good here but in that moment the movie briefly comes totally alive. <br />
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Such moments like this where comic gold turns up feel like they’re made out of very little in the best way which makes them stand out all the more, as if somehow the movie could have gone further. There’s something darker that could be done with this basic idea of this woman who is a con artist but really a free spirited manic depressive with a propensity to take all these games way too seriously in her desire to put roots down somewhere, the way she mentions the dream of belonging somewhere as part of the desire to live in the picture of the home that Davis scribbled on a napkin. If the part was played by an actress who really stuck out in this sort of small town it might have had some teeth but, of course, that’s not the movie any of these people were making. Which is fine but the approach they went with is pretty surface, groping around for a theme in how the way to live is not about logic but the sheer feeling of passion whether it’s true or not. The lies get rid of the fear and allow you to really experience things and it doesn’t matter what the truth really is, I suppose. Fight for what you want, be brave and take that step to do something to stand out. Which is all well and good but if only the film has that sort of courage. <br />
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HOUSESITTER climaxes at a party. Well, of course it does, what better way to get everyone together at once and bring all the farcical complications to a head. For whatever reason it feels like the party being ridiculously overcrowded should be part of the joke but it never really is and the ultimate effect of the whole sequence is Steve Martin flailing around from one group to another, doing everything he can to stay in control. There are some nice beats in the staging thanks to the way Oz and editor John Jympson (who also cut A FISH CALLED WANDA and LITTLE SHOP OF HORRORS but also Hitchcock’s FRENZY and A HARD DAYS’ NIGHT) make it all go together, serving as a reminder that this sort of thing is hard to pull off even when it only sort of works but like so much of the film the overall effect is…fine while never really landing on a satisfying payoff. I can’t remember which critic back in ‘92 was appalled at the way the film used a couple of supporting characters who are homeless as a punchline which isn’t too unfair a slam even if the tone of the film has so little to do with the real world they may as well be called hobos like in the old screwball days but I get the point being made even if I can’t bring myself to get too upset over that. This almost brings a sour tone to things but in the end, the film isn’t significant enough to get upset over and manages to stay likable most of the way that it doesn’t ruin the momentum even if I still get the issue. The thing about HOUSESITTER is that maybe there is only so much to squeeze out of this premise, either comedically or otherwise. It wants to be about that freedom of succeeding through impulse and fantasy in a world of logic, how in the end certain things matter more than the truth. You have to fight for what you want, be brave and take that step although even as a formulaic romantic comedy it never quite breaks free of its own chains, or blindfold, as it were. It’s still a pleasant 102 minutes and, these days especially, I suppose there are worse things. <br />
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For both of the stars, HOUSESITTER comes in the middle of a surprisingly heavy period of activity. Steve Martin was making one or two of these movies a year with this coming six months after both FATHER OF THE BRIDE and Lawrence Kasdan’s GRAND CANYON. Goldie Hawn, who apparently was a late replacement for Meg Ryan on this, always had long stretches without working yet this one oddly comes during a twelve month period that included four new films after which she didn’t do anything for another four years. All of this is a reminder that HOUSESITTER was one more comedy made along the Hollywood assembly line back in the days when they did these things, just not remembered as much as some of the others these days (Hawn’s other summer ’92 comedy, DEATH BECOMES HER, is the one with the cult). But the chemistry between the two leads pops just enough with them always in synch with each other, giving the performances just enough of an edge. Steve Martin grounds it all with excellent timing through his growing anxiety and little moments throughout like when he gropes for a single word to describe Gwen’s effect on him, all a reminder of how much better he got as an actor over the years. Goldie Hawn’s best moments are when she’s performing the high wire act of all those stories being told to people unaware of what’s really going on and the energy she gives off clicks even if the character sometimes feels a little too familiar so the effect she has keeps the movie going. Dana Delany, particularly good as a sort of preppie Gail Patrick, continually gets laughs out of small moments while balancing out the farce with just enough real world skepticism, making her almost more appealing than she’s supposed to be. It’s the sort of performance which feels that much freer since the movie isn’t on her shoulders and there are lots of strong work from the various supporting actors who each get moments to stand out—Donald Moffat has what is maybe the one true emotional moment in the entire film as well as Julie Harris along with Richard B. Schull and Laurel Cronin in the problematic roles as Gwen’s pretend parents. One surprise appearance looking at the film now is Cherry Jones who turns up in an early role as a waitress at the Hungarian restaurant and looking it up this wasn’t even her first film. <br />
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HOUSESITTER is pretty minor stuff made by some very talented people, a film that makes me smile more than ever laugh out loud but it’s harmless enough, a reminder of studio comedies which feel like such an endangered species now, for better or for worse. And compared to films like it that do get made now, HOUSESITTER is practically Lubitsch. Maybe there isn’t really that much to say about it in the end but for a film where I had a panic attack midway through this time around it’s not that bad and this is one of those cases where writing about the film itself is secondary. This sort of thing is comforting for me right now and I’ve been watching so many of them lately in search of something, I’m just not sure what. It’s like I’m trying to make my way back to a simpler time and start over although it’s possible my recent revisit of BETSY’S WEDDING may have been taking all of this a step too far. Maybe while stuck in this limbo I’m simply trying to figure out my own past, why I went to see these films in the first place and what they really meant to me, whether I liked them or not. Sometimes I think I liked all of them anyway, regardless of what the truth really was. I suppose if HOUSESITTER has to serve any sort of purpose at this point in time, it may as well be that. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht-QqvnjUvAzzB5YdUPpCfNgErSf8GptgjOKnRvyDi9i0ASeWOi2a7NWi4NH7P6mB1Gvkwwaw6MKNjQBRev8aNkYigOZnCHsPYgsGm9p3qAtGGVflEpBfu-BktidUB8uIahEFZUGNzoCoi/s1600/HousesitterP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEht-QqvnjUvAzzB5YdUPpCfNgErSf8GptgjOKnRvyDi9i0ASeWOi2a7NWi4NH7P6mB1Gvkwwaw6MKNjQBRev8aNkYigOZnCHsPYgsGm9p3qAtGGVflEpBfu-BktidUB8uIahEFZUGNzoCoi/s400/HousesitterP.jpg" width="267" height="400" data-original-width="504" data-original-height="755" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-91158153653554532172020-06-17T15:27:00.002-07:002020-06-17T15:27:49.930-07:00What You Think It Means<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmLsv82aiUfsIQWWGlHbhM5DBKOv6Tv2AYar_OytCABm4ur_biZM5j2Wr_StzLVR0L67M6GbZGlgRFY3XDathqvWL96n2xz4vEiTrOOFtvmqc_jgN1GPQ7-nV8aSvLZK5T3qj_dkpiM4w8/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-06-17-15h00m00s611.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhmLsv82aiUfsIQWWGlHbhM5DBKOv6Tv2AYar_OytCABm4ur_biZM5j2Wr_StzLVR0L67M6GbZGlgRFY3XDathqvWL96n2xz4vEiTrOOFtvmqc_jgN1GPQ7-nV8aSvLZK5T3qj_dkpiM4w8/s400/vlcsnap-2020-06-17-15h00m00s611.png" width="400" height="216" data-original-width="853" data-original-height="461" /></a></div><br />
Part of me dreams of traveling back even if I don’t really want to. But at least the past has movie theaters. Trapped here staring at these four walls right now you could hardly blame anyone for wanting a little comfort. The sort of film that makes us feel better, one we wish we could live in for a little while. This isn’t so much about nostalgia, which is a nice feeling but a limited one. You can’t stay where you once were, after all, you have to move on from those memories whether your joyous triumphs or bitter regrets. You have to grow. And films shouldn’t just be about their comfort level but there’s nothing wrong with sometimes attaching yourself to a feeling that reminds you of the good things. Still, there has to be more. So much in Alfred Hitchcock’s films, for example, hold onto their vibrancy which even now makes them much more than simple Hollywood classics to fall asleep to. These are films that allow us to dig as far as we want to go, to break down everything beyond the simple mechanics of Plot to help us understand why they work as well as they do. That obsession never goes away, helping us to see what the director was revealing about how he saw the world through each new shot and to really learn what films are to begin with. <br />
And considering how much I’ve been cooped up in a modestly sized apartment lately, the most famous film involving that comes to mind. REAR WINDOW was basically the first Hitchcock I ever saw, during the theatrical re-release several of his 50s titles had in the early 80s when Universal put them back into circulation for the first time in years. And that afternoon, which looking it up would have been at some point in late November-early December ‘83, was probably a very important day for me in a Film 101 sort of way, making it a key moment at the start of my film education. To this day it’s still my favorite Hitchcock movie, the one that says the most about what his films were while also being the most entertaining. Notice I didn’t say best. For the moment, that doesn’t matter since this is all about what certain films mean to us and why. This is the one of his that means the most to me which is really the only issue. <br />
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The plot of REAR WINDOW does matter so to get it out of the way, news magazine photographer L.B. “Jeff” Jeffries (James Stewart) is entering the final week of being confined to his tiny New York apartment with a giant cast on his leg after breaking it while taking a photo from a precarious angle on a race track. In between physical therapy sessions with insurance company nurse Stella (Thelma Ritter) and dinners with visiting girlfriend Lisa Fremont (Grace Kelly) who wants more of a commitment, Jeff is still feeling antsy after being cooped up for so long staring out of his window for hours on end at all the people who live nearby in his courtyard. The resulting curiosity leads him to believe that one of those neighbors, a certain Lars Thorwald (Raymond Burr) has murdered his wife who suddenly seems to have vanished. The circumstantial observations get Lisa to be curious as well although old war buddy/police detective friend Tom Doyle (Wendell Corey) doesn’t believe it. But Jeff is soon convinced and even more determined to uncover the truth before Thorwald disappears. <br />
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Moments stick out. Images stay with me. Jimmy Stewart as Jeff awakens, presumably from a dream during a late afternoon nap, to find Grace Kelly there, leaning in for the kiss. So much of what we’re living through right now feels like a dream, a reminder that the moment of her first appearance really is everything, the fantasy breaking into reality as her shadow drapes over him prefiguring all sorts of things to come and the perfect symbol for the Hitchcock world of this courtyard. This is all a reminder of how at its core REAR WINDOW is about a relationship, it’s a romantic comedy when you come right down to it, one about the fear of marriage or at the very least any kind of commitment, even if it seems crazy that anyone would hesitate to commit to Grace Kelly’s Lisa who with that slight inflection of a z in her name each time we hear Jimmy Stewart say it reminds us each time just how special she is. Because if the opposite of commitment is the freedom to go anywhere in the world, what Jeff seems to desire more than anything, who wouldn’t want to do that? He’s understandably going a little stir crazy when the film opens, itching to get back to his job and the world that he can just barely make out across the way so each of those neighbors reflects back at him with another element of that lifestyle he yearns for, that reminder of what he’s forced to put off. The tortured composer who is clearly a man about town but none of it gives him any satisfaction, the carefree sculptor without a worry in the world, the lonely soul who more than anything wants companionship, the newly married couple on their honeymoon, the popular girl who could have anyone. Jeff is trapped with just about the most beautiful girl in the world who wants nothing more than to be with him and all he can do is watch and wait and dream of doing what he really desires. But until then there’s nothing for him to do but look out the window and wait for her to show up again to continue the debate over that future, with the feeling that there’s nothing else pressing, nothing at stake.<br />
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Hitchcock takes the time at the start to introduce us to the courtyard in two stages, the geographical layout and then the people, both equally important in his eyes for us to pay attention to. Raymond Burr plays Lars Thorwald—has there ever been a better character name?—and the sight of him directly across the way is of course the nightmare mirror version of Jeff’s dilemma. Since he’s a jewelry salesman that even makes him sound a little like a similar sort of nomad, only without the creative angle, and one who seems to be regretting what he’s gotten himself into. Like each of the other windows facing Jeff it seems to reflect a possible future, one that he’s so fearful of diving into even if he knows deep down that it’s the right thing. Almost all of those windows, anyway; up in the corner of one of those buildings is a couple with a child but we barely see them during the film, no apparent story to reflect back as if the thought of kids with Lisa is so far off and the implicit message is that life stops once they come into the picture. There’s a little bit of a fantasy role play with Lisa as she pretends to introduce herself while they ease into their nightly patter, fitting for such a romance but we can feel Jeff starting to resist going beyond that in his realization of how that dinner she has brought over from “21” is perfect but he doesn’t know what to do with perfect. Even the simple, pragmatic reasoning offered by Thelma Ritter’s Stella during the morning rubdown she gives him does nothing to change any of this and all it does is make him try harder to convince himself of what he doesn’t really want. <br />
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A little bit of nostalgia is unavoidable in this case but to this day watching REAR WINDOW again is one of the most relaxing things I can think of, as comfortable as those neatly pressed pajamas that Jimmy Stewart spends the entire film in. With a screenplay by John Michael Hayes based on the Cornel Woolrich story “It Had to Be Murder”, the concept could have been played as noir, the story of a man whose curiosity leads him towards doom, but that doesn’t generally go with the more lighthearted Hitchcock approach, especially when he worked in color. As easygoing as that genial feeling is, the film always compels me to pay attention and watch each moment with the intensity Jeff does while it still contains that undeniable sense of upscale politeness found in Hollywood films of the 50s. When I randomly put the film on late one night recently, because time has no meaning at the moment, there was no way to simply drift off with REAR WINDOW playing since even at that hour it demanded my attention and total focus, every moment there for a reason with dialogue that sounds better each time I hear it, more laid back than the elegant quips of NORTH BY NORTHWEST in a way that goes perfectly with the Greenwich Village charm of it all. The way Jeff’s growing suspicion of Thorwald builds the exposition gets laid out beautifully, always getting us to want to hear more. But it’s also the purely visual storytelling angle of each new cut to one of the neighbors, each still so vivid from far away without any dialogue to help. All this is balanced out so well that even when the film casually stops worrying about the plot for a few minutes to let Jeff and Lisa talk a little more about their own issues it never goes afield, it always sticks close to the subject at hand and the answers they can never agree on. <br />
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All of this is on the inside but on the outside of REAR WINDOW is that sense of life going on, the life Jeff isn’t supposed to be paying attention to but it’s impossible not to keep watching and listening to it all, the soundscape of that courtyard, the parties from across the way, the jazzy Franz Waxman theme which is never treated as traditional scoring along with the simple passage of time as day turns to night as well as the romantic aspect of a couple working together which turns out to make them more in synch with each other as the man begins to see what he really loves about this woman. It brings them closer together away from that potential loneliness they might find themselves in if this doesn’t work out so if that’s not being willing to go anywhere and do anything and love it, I don’t know what is. To mangle a certain famous Godard quote, Hitchcock is basically saying all you need to make a movie is a man, a woman, a single location and a murder. As much as Jeff and Lisa question the ‘rear window ethics’ of what they’ve been doing the film takes voyeurism as a given, reflecting back to how the film affects us in the first place. Voyeurism isn’t all that different from watching a film, after all, and just as the various people across the way are still continuing with their lives at the end no one in a film ever seems to realize they’re being watched. And since no one in the film seems to have a TV, maybe it takes place in an alternate universe where the invention hasn’t yet taken hold. Which makes it more interesting for us, anyway, every frame that Jeff peers into its own film with its own genre. <br />
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So much of Jeff and Lisa’s conversations-slash-flirtations seem to be about money, directly or otherwise, so it becomes a question of if he’s really that attached to that magazine job or if he’s just insecure about the possibility of being part of some other world. Based on what we hear Jeff could probably make a decent living as a photographer who never leaves the island of Manhattan, settling into a life of luxury somewhere on the Upper East Side with Lisa, even there’s only fifty cents in her purse so she’s likely living beyond her means anyway, just like most people. But in the baffling way he insists to Lisa that there’s no way this can go anywhere Jeff seems to feel like their dinner of romantic bliss is just as phony as the one Miss Lonelyhearts is pretending to have with someone across the way but the passion is what matters. Thorwald, meanwhile, insists that he doesn’t have any money and seems to have based what he’s done on various other reasons of passion which in the Hitchcock world would qualify this murder as a sort of art, just not one of the more defensible ones. The question is more or less dropped in the end in favor of that passion and the love Jeff has for Lisa so the subject of money ultimately becomes as irrelevant as the infamous $40,000 that winds up in the swamp in PSYCHO. <br />
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Even the deceptively casual sense of the film doesn’t rob it of all that intensity and the way each scene is shot whether the surprising energy of certain camera movements when it does spring into action or that crucial moment taking Jeff’s point of view from Miss Lonelyhearts to the wider shot of Lisa upstairs and the impending return of Thorwald, essentially giving us three cuts within two shots right then a perfection of the form and the pure cinema Hitchcock was talking about. This, along with certain elements peeking through the sound like the timing of the music heard nearby with Doyle’s proclamation about the suspect’s innocence, an audio beat that I can hear that in my sleep, and of course the unrelenting feel of the montage of the final confrontation which looks forward to the PSYCHO murder with an unexpected intensity in how it’s more of a clumsy struggle than a skillful fight. The view from the apartment shows off the details in that massive set that in my dreams I show up to the Paramount lot in the early 50s to take a tour of. So much of the film is about that basic concept of point of view and how we perceive other people whether from close up or far away even if Hitchcock doesn’t stay entirely in that vantage point, moving outside for a few key shots when the one neighbor cries out to everyone after discovering her dog has been killed, an oddity brought up in the famous interview book “Hitchcock/Truffaut” without the director ever getting into the specifics of why although his discussion of “dramatic purposes” in a point related to this gets at it and it makes these neighbors human, this is where they stop being an abstraction, answering the question of what is cinema in way that also involves removing the coldness from the schematics of it all. <br />
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Going to the movies is nothing more than a memory right now and thinking back on that day long ago I still remember the gasp heard as Raymond Burr glances up looking towards a certain direction, one of the great moments of audible audience response ever, implicating us for any part we've been playing in all this peeping tom action throughout the entire running time and a reminder of how seeing a film like this in a theater can force us into paying attention to what’s happening, to be that much more committed to what is seen. “What do you want?” asks the killer with desperation. What do any of us want when we see a movie? Or when we attach ourselves to another person, looking for love, for that matter? Maybe we’re looking for a way to feel alive, to do something, to make us feel whole, even with the guilt that can often be attached to it. Noticing the way Thorwald’s wife discards the flower he kindly brings her with dinner one wonders about the valiant efforts he’s made towards the woman in the past before deciding on that whole murder thing and Hitchcock’s comment to Truffaut about how Stewart’s character “deserves what’s happening to him” in the climax points to his own sympathies. He knows how guilty we all are through our own actions and, besides, the killer’s chief motivation is to somehow get out of the life he’s been trapped in so to the director this is at least doing something about such a problem. But working as a costume jewelry salesman indicates something about his own emptiness, his lack of ability to understand what’s really around him, and though even Jeff is a little puzzled by all those fashions Lisa twirls around in for his benefit but he’s patient, he wants to. The desire is there, just the fear of what may come next. <br />
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And when Thorwald at long last enters Jeff’s apartment it’s on a Raymond Burr close-up that makes this character who is only seen from far away for so much of the running time forever memorable. At specific moments of this film that spends so much time on relaxing distant and medium shots of the action each of the three leads receive extreme close-ups that instantly define them—Burr has it there, Grace Kelly when she first appears and Stewart when he seems to see Lisa with new eyes after she’s proven herself. Up until that moment Jeff doesn’t want to lose the life he has but once he sees her that way he has a reason to love her now and he stops trying to figure out if the woman he loves has any place in it by not really doing much of anything, hoping that they can just go on as they’ve been doing, as he puts it. For him, not doing anything is the best answer of all but eventually he realizes you have to and the very end of the film proves that life goes on no matter what, past the heat wave of Jeff’s curiosity just as the wistfulness of the song that composer spends the whole movie on then gets to play for Miss Lonelyhearts, sounds like a romance that you’ll never fully achieve, even as it brings them closer together. The shades are drawn when ‘The End’ appears onscreen but that’s outside of the body of the film and the actual final moment of Lisa picking up her issue of Harper’s Bazaar when she sees it’s safe isn’t really an ending, of course, the battle between the two has to continue. We already know that they love each other so it’s an upbeat ending but one that is under no illusions about what has to be done for the feeling to continue. What is life, after all, if it doesn’t involve that question? <br />
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We always think of them as Jimmy (not James, no matter what the credits say) Stewart and Grace Kelly, that’s just the way it is. Stewart’s voice and his growing determination combined with how much of his body language is taken away is which means that so much of it in the eyes, whether settling in for the evening with Lisa or his growing awareness of how right he really is, that natural authority we’ll believe no matter what. And though it can be tough to know what to say about Grace Kelly other than some ‘cool elegance’ statement she’s a dream girl we want to be a dream girl while still displaying her sad vulnerability. She’s life. Thelma Ritter’s unapologetically straightforward nature bounces off of them just as easily as the cool humor of Wendell Corey with how much of his exposition is given while glancing around Jeff’s apartment. And now that I’m familiar with Raymond Burr from so many noirs he made during his pre-Perry Mason years it makes the sheer nastiness he projects stand out all the more as well as how afraid he always really is. The various neighbors each make an impression but especially Judith Evelyn from THE TINGLER as Miss Lonelyhearts and Georgine Darcy as Miss Torso each so vivid and so human, letting us know what they want without much audible dialogue just their actions to show who they really are. <br />
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Having said all this, REAR WINDOW remains one of the best films ever made to watch over and over to take away something different from it each time. It doesn’t just have to be about the romance, of course, but that desire for connection is what I’m thinking about right now. Naturally, this is one of the more obvious films to think of at this point in time considering it’s a film about someone confined to a single tiny space for six weeks with nothing to do…well, we’ve long since passed that number in the real world by now. My shades are mostly kept drawn but I’m still here, watching a film about the way people live when they’re alone, even when others are close by. It’s a long way from the Fine Arts Cinema in Scarsdale, which closed way back in 2006, where I first saw this film. For the past several weeks someone across the way has been practicing the cello (Is it the cello? I’m never certain) during the day which is such a soothing sound so that’s helped and I wish I could thank this person for helping out here and there through all this. The girl across the hall from me sometimes leaves her door open. Is that a good idea right now? She’s nice and I miss talking to people like we all do, but really? It’s not an easy time to be a neighbor. So trapped here I think of the past, of all those films, of a life that led me to this temporary version of solitude. But if recent history tells us anything it’s that nostalgia needs to die, that this isn’t about enshrining certain films but keeping them alive to really understand them. Jeez, L.B. Jeffries not only had Thelma Ritter for those rubdowns, there were all those nightly visits from Grace Kelly and he still got bored. But this movie is like an old friend and these days we need friends. They remind us of how good things can be. How much better they can get. And all the things we tell ourselves to convince us those things might be able to someday happen if we're with the right people. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYcoRL4E30koQDM9sMrdDUN2oGwccCXaLKa24jEo6pxHGRoMvDpDq_RbDx0aeniKiECBZZK5FnpAhR_Wjiz_6JskiK9jdvNQHpWhYlT3zVMEGkxdDZFJc3azjcZG2G7FPq5vJSozgbCJIw/s1600/RearWindowPb.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgYcoRL4E30koQDM9sMrdDUN2oGwccCXaLKa24jEo6pxHGRoMvDpDq_RbDx0aeniKiECBZZK5FnpAhR_Wjiz_6JskiK9jdvNQHpWhYlT3zVMEGkxdDZFJc3azjcZG2G7FPq5vJSozgbCJIw/s400/RearWindowPb.jpg" width="268" height="400" data-original-width="505" data-original-height="755" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-67029297676579955512020-04-28T21:10:00.001-07:002020-04-28T21:14:01.921-07:00Guaranteed Return<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCs9bmYBVe072zHRNIJZENONYKi5O4oijFe1MllYOKcqtXObBAN2a6pIbP8y7Ug8vob-LzOFAfHNJJ4oQWR1F6OIDxVnC5Uc5lRXBroXWdFYXKy2aYQSonQ6muH55yOpUpbW1MRXwmleBx/s1600/HotRockThe6.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgCs9bmYBVe072zHRNIJZENONYKi5O4oijFe1MllYOKcqtXObBAN2a6pIbP8y7Ug8vob-LzOFAfHNJJ4oQWR1F6OIDxVnC5Uc5lRXBroXWdFYXKy2aYQSonQ6muH55yOpUpbW1MRXwmleBx/s400/HotRockThe6.jpg" width="300" height="400" data-original-width="413" data-original-height="550" /></a></div><br />
None of us are going to the movies right now. That sentence has to be one of the saddest things I’ve ever written. Maybe all we can do as far as that goes is take care of ourselves and the ones we love, looking forward to the day we get to go back. Maybe talking about how much I miss it is a little overly dramatic but that’s the sort of time this is and it really is truthful so even watching a movie a night, or two or three, on DVD or Amazon Prime or wherever, doesn’t fill the hole. Sure, I’m discovering lots of films I’ve never seen before, some good and some bad as well as a few I never thought I’d give a second look. But it’s no substitute for seeing a film the first time in a theater, for that feeling of walking in with your popcorn and hopefully discovering something with the crowd all around you, the joy of that giant image flickering and no matter what else there is to say, it’s missing. Considering everything else that’s going on this is secondary, of course. But it still matters and everything feels incomplete. <br />
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Now, whether people care about any of this is a debate for another point in the future. And we don’t know what’s going to happen or how long this is going to go on for. But the desire to return is there. And to bring up an example, one of the several times I went to the New Beverly Cinema over the final weeks before the world changed was to see THE HOT ROCK, my first theatrical viewing of this film directed by Peter Yates with a screenplay by William Goldman from the Donald Westlake novel. Released in early 1972, it’s one of a number of well-regarded Robert Redford films from the period, never one of his most popular but definitely with its devoted fans. I've even met a few of them. As an honest admission, I’ve always been somewhat lukewarm on it over my handful of viewings through the years, at least until now. Because it was at this screening that I suddenly found myself getting caught up in the casual rhythm and charm felt in every scene so as a result the film totally clicked for me. Oddly, this was exactly the same response when I saw <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2019/02/fresh-for-first-time.html">BUTCH CASSIDY AND THE SUNDANCE KID</a> at the theater in late 2018 so maybe it’s a Redford-Goldman thing, but for whatever reason this was a film that really came alive in a theater with a crowd around me. Funny thing, the print of BUTCH was absolutely gorgeous and the one for THE HOT ROCK wasn’t in that sort of shape at all, a little scratchy and faded and, since it came all the way from the UK, even featured the alternate title HOW TO STEAL A DIAMOND IN FOUR UNEASY LESSONS (as a comparison the print of the second feature, Aram Avakian’s COPS AND ROBBERS, was flawless). But none of this mattered. The film just put a huge smile on my face in every scene. As 70s heist movies go it’s pretty mild, no sense of fatalism you’d expect from the genre and no heavy body count. In the end, it’s basically a comedy so the way it takes a cockeyed view of the crime and how the scattered precision becomes such a crapshoot makes it totally endearing. And now it’s a movie that helps puts me in a better mood. Sometimes that’s ok. Right now that’s even better than ok. <br />
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It takes no time for career thief John Dortmunder (Robert Redford) to be released from his latest stint in prison than for his friend Andy Kelp (George Segal) to instantly show up with a new scheme, having been hired by one Dr. Amusa (Moses Gunn), United Nations representative for the African nation of Central Vatawi, to rob the Sahara Stone from the Brooklyn Museum in order to return it to the rightful place of his homeland. With getaway driver Stan Murch (Ron Leibman) and explosives expert Allan Greenberg (Paul Sand) brought onto the job, the heist goes off but not without a hitch, leading to multiple attempts to steal the diamond again only with something else unexpected going just a little wrong each time. And when Greenberg’s lawyer Abe (Zero Mostel), who also happens to be his father, gets involved with his own agenda Dortmunder and his crew have to resort to more extreme scenarios to finally retrieve the rock from where it is. <br />
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The depths of cynicism found in 70s films not only becomes more apparent for me as time goes on, what those films are saying means more as well, a feeling that goes perfectly with the decade and certainly means something now which makes a movie like THE HOT ROCK, which contains none of that, play as even more of a surprise each time out. Characters in heist films never seem to spend much time going over the possible ways things could go wrong, not because of double crosses, although there always seems to be some of that, but because of the plain fact that, well, shit happens, no matter how well the plan might be executed, no matter how ultra-cool the crooks are. This is a film where those unexpected developments happen and instead of staring into the pits of what crime has led these people to it’s a breezy, enjoyable caper film that deals with the expected twists of the genre but always in a surprising way as the layers of the plotting are peeled off to of course reveal that what’s done isn’t really done. None of this makes these guys want to stop, of course. Dortmunder couldn’t do anything else if he tried and is always confident on the surface even with some nasty stomach issues, but he at least takes solace in how his inevitable ulcer is still years away. Kelp, with a nasty habit of freezing up in the middle of a job, doesn’t mind failure and seems to be as much about putting on the act of doing the job no matter what happens even as things go wrong, never knowing for sure who they can trust.<br />
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The first shot of the film after the Twentieth Century Fox logo is wiped away says it all, showing the serenity of an empty green lawn at the prison separated from the concrete yard where everyone congregates, the peace of nature always close but just as unreachable. Dortmunder and the crew scrambling after this diamond are in the same position so no matter how close they seem to get it’s still a long way off and considering how these guys are all sort of dopes, each plan turns out better than anyone could have imagined but it never seems to be enough. THE HOT ROCK is the rare crime movie where the guy gets out of jail at the start and never thinks for a minute about going straight because even he knows there’s no way it could happen. He just needs to be talked into this particular heist but it’s really never a question for Dortmunder anyway since, as he puts it, it’s what he does, even if he’d rather not do the job with Kelp. The real conflict doesn’t come from those double crosses and fellow crooks just waiting to fuck you over but from how unexpectedly difficult it all turns out to be, how even when things go almost perfectly there’s still something you didn’t see coming. Within the very casual quality of Yates’ direction is just watching these guys figure out what the next step is going to be so in fairness there’s not that much suspense and as a director he never seems as assured with the broader comedy aspects as he is with the hang out nature of letting certain moments play, naturally letting the humor emerge out of that laid back feel. When Moses Gunn pauses in amazement to exclaim, “I’m a criminal,” as he realizes the plan really is taking shape it’s one of the best moments in the film as if he never quite believed this would happen just as later on he can’t believe the eternal annoyance it’s led to. <br />
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Even the big museum robbery which you’d think would be the centerpiece of the whole movie happens sooner than you’d expect and is done with a surprisingly tossed-off feel, as much about the silence of that huge, empty space cutting back to the carefully planned diversion outside as the specifics of the actual robbery even when the focus is the ticking clock of the moment when Kelp unexpectedly gets trapped in the very place the diamond is. The various steps to each scheme are all about the characters in one way or another, whether the way Leibman plays an accident victim for that diversion, Redford silently freaking out in the helicopter or the teamwork involving a certain elevator shaft when even we’re not sure what surprise it’s building to. <br />
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Along with the camaraderie of the four guys are the incidental sights of the location shooting, all a reminder of the panic business in New York that Kelp is so fond of and it probably only feels like half the film is set around those expressways circling the outer boroughs with one briefly used location up in the Bronx that maybe I recognize which gives a sudden rush of nostalgia. The plot also basically stops for the quick helicopter trip around lower Manhattan as Leibman’s Stan Murch tries to figure out exactly where he’s supposed to fly to with footage looking directly down on the city and at one point lingering on the incomplete World Trade Center which 10-15 years ago was unnerving, now it’s just heartbreakingly beautiful. The main cop at the precinct being raided is played by William Redfield of A NEW LEAF and ONE FLEW OVER THE CUCKOO’S NEST, seeming more annoyed than anything by what’s happening, just another cog in this New York who views it all as just one more pain in the ass, wondering why every problem can’t be solved by just monkeying with it.<br />
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Maybe THE HOT ROCK is one of those products of the 70s that now feels like the visual equivalent of easy listening music and the 100 minute film goes by in a flash but if I’m being honest, I can still see what maybe wasn’t clicking for me on past viewings in the way the movie cruises along instead of ever exploding. The tightly plotted story beats are so carefully laid out all through Goldman’s screenplay that I wish it could breathe a little more, maybe with a few better transitions at times to orient us better or just a little bit more bickering between the two main guys to really make those characters pop since it worked so well for Butch and Sundance, after all. Kelp, who picks Dortmunder up from prison in a stolen car, is married to his sister played by the briefly seen Topo Swope in one of those elements it feels like the film could have done more with, but none of the women in the film are around for very long, even the one who becomes integral to the final step of the plan. Looking up the extensive writings and interviews from William Goldman on his work there is surprisingly little about this film beyond a vague quote that it was “not cast well” but who knows what he’s referring to—did he think Segal was a more suitable Dortmunder than the bigger star Redford? <br />
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Even if it is maybe too laid back at times, there’s a confidence to the shots and Yates never lingers on them even when it’s a good one and the way moments are staged to place characters in relation to each other in the frame makes their dynamic even stronger. Sometimes it feels like the film is even more interested in that vibe than the plot and it’s sometimes more than willing to just let the Quincy Jones score play for a few extra beats as it goes to the next scene. That sense of seventies cool is a reminder it was likely more of an inspiration for Steven Soderbergh’s OCEANS’S ELEVEN than the film that was actually a remake of. So much of THE HOT ROCK is just going along for the ride with the star power of Redford, and Segal too, and directed by Yates a year before he made the truly great crime film THE FRIENDS OF EDDIE COYLE, this one has no bigger goals in mind with very little even to say about the racial politics of the colonial aspect but presumably all’s fair when thievery is involved, after all. For Dortmunder, being a thief is not about being tough but about being just smart enough to get the job done before the other guy does and win out over this diamond that’s jinxed him. It’s the suspense of the climax that works beautifully moving from shot to shot, each beat that leads him to the all-important safe deposit box comes off as effortless, with one particular reaction shot of Redford after he utters the infamous key phrase “Afghanistan banana stand”, not knowing for sure if what he says will work, that is basically what the movie is building to. And it earns the refreshingly offhand moment as Redford calmly walks down Park Avenue, finally getting a sense of the serenity he couldn’t have earlier. I think the movie knows this is only temporary for the guy but these days it’s a reminder that even a brief feeling is better than none. <br />
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The Robert Redford portrayal of Dortmunder is very much about the movie star quality of it all, the laid back charisma crossed with his casual nervousness and the sense that he can’t let go of something once he’s going for it. The film is light and Redford is maybe even too light for that insignificance but the way he lays out how the plan has to work and why he’s doing it along with just the sight of him thinking things over gives it much of its heft, knowing that even his smarts may not be enough to figure out everything. As Kelp, George Segal is secondary but that desperate glad-handing style keeps the energy going and it’s always just right to bounce off Dortmunder along with the sense that he knows just how to get under his partner’s skin. It’s those little character moments that make up the most idiosyncratic moments with the manic glee in the great Ron Leibman laying out the precise directions of how he got somewhere along with Paul Sand as Greenberg who always seems to be wondering what the hell he’s doing there. Moses Gunn lends the perfect amount of dry humor to his growing exasperation as Amusa while Zero Mostel always plays it as having one over on everyone which he almost always does. Charlotte Rae is Stan’s ma, Lee Wallace of THE TAKING OF PELHAM ONE TWO THREE is Dortmunder’s doctor and Robert Weil, also from PELHAM ONE TWO THREE as well as MOONSTRUCK is the bank employee who unknowingly assists Dortmunder at the film’s most crucial moment. <br />
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But even after all this, my honest admission is that watching the film again on DVD at home, it’s still not the same. Seeing THE HOT ROCK in the theater makes it, like all films, bigger than life and allows us to focus on the sheer personality of these guys, on the charm of Robert Redford, the stalling tactics of George Segal, the toothy grins of Ron Leibman, the jittery nervousness of Paul Sand. And those New York surroundings, which right now provide a level of comfort. It’s still fun, just not the same. Moving past this film for a moment, there have been other Dortmunder vehicles taken from the Donald Westlake book series although you’d be forgiven for not knowing. Martin Lawrence played the character under a different name in WHAT’S THE WORST THAT COULD HAPPEN? a major summer release in 2001 but now forgotten and so did George C. Scott in 1974’s BANK SHOT which I recall being strictly so-so but it’s been a few years. Paul Le Mat was actually named Dortmunder in the Gary Coleman vehicle JIMMY THE KID which I recall from early 80s cable and have never seen again since. The point here is THE HOT ROCK, which I’d always thought was a nice, pleasant movie, which it is, and how much a theatrical viewing caused it to rise in my estimation. It’s one of those things I think about right now, since we can’t go to the movies. And we don’t know when we’re going to be able to go back and what’s going to change when we do, but I dream of that return when it’s safe. There’s nothing like the rush of that feeling when you’re at the movies, especially when you’re making just the right discovery but sometimes just the experience of being there to see, well, anything is enough. Maybe it’s an addiction. But even now, when staying away is for the best and absolutely necessary, it’s something I never want to give up. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBRHCyA1mne5je5HG4XWpBT_Wc8S2if-Lo9TpJ6f61p8SXdKgd8eh3G9lATeJaAD4WqNBylV4VxIxj2RnGT-eM4alSHVfB9QsBPoppW5pl5y2JvwYxdkq9Wo_ZB2t2g_pI2KuIytuFuIu_/s1600/HotRockPa.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjBRHCyA1mne5je5HG4XWpBT_Wc8S2if-Lo9TpJ6f61p8SXdKgd8eh3G9lATeJaAD4WqNBylV4VxIxj2RnGT-eM4alSHVfB9QsBPoppW5pl5y2JvwYxdkq9Wo_ZB2t2g_pI2KuIytuFuIu_/s400/HotRockPa.jpg" width="265" height="400" data-original-width="580" data-original-height="875" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-90982263498046886642020-04-10T15:35:00.001-07:002020-04-10T16:48:46.830-07:00The Capacity To Recover<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-E6qbLFpGHhfOI5xLwWFDYuNsUKh8giCmEuUbWWlEdLy-y2B6OY-bmEVOdDdTvHUp6Wvpv_lYXlbbuSS5OYAXu3Hbl1tGhdVGLCJYyDXD3Eqw5eARJRAJd_SVRVDkfnBhMTR9ZPHBV6ts/s1600/RegardingHenry1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh-E6qbLFpGHhfOI5xLwWFDYuNsUKh8giCmEuUbWWlEdLy-y2B6OY-bmEVOdDdTvHUp6Wvpv_lYXlbbuSS5OYAXu3Hbl1tGhdVGLCJYyDXD3Eqw5eARJRAJd_SVRVDkfnBhMTR9ZPHBV6ts/s400/RegardingHenry1.jpg" width="400" height="267" data-original-width="700" data-original-height="468" /></a></div><br />
Maybe we can never fully escape the world we come from. Our parents are our parents, our siblings are the ones we can never impress, the dreams we have sometimes turn into memories of places we never want to return to. And deep down we have a better idea of who we are than we want to admit. Directed by Mike Nichols, REGARDNG HENRY was released during the summer of 1991, less than a month after the 25th birthday of its screenwriter Jeffrey Abrams, now better known to everyone as J.J. Abrams so this is an easy reminder of just how young that guy has always been. And this isn’t even his first screen credit which was the previous year’s TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS co-written with Jill Mazursky and directed by Arthur Hiller for anybody with memories of watching that one a hundred times on cable. By this point plenty of us have our opinions on the work of J.J. Abrams whether strong feelings about his STAR WARS films or even the second season of FELICITY. The slightly forgotten REGARDING HENRY (which, as a fun fact, opened the same day as POINT BREAK) hasn’t been examined quite as much but it makes sense to look at it now as a reminder of where his career path began and maybe what his point of view of the world has always been. In some ways it’s a starter screenplay, one that comes off as basic as possible while still being complete and ready to shoot to make itself an actual film. But even those are never easy. Not even as easy as getting away from the places that made us. <br />
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Manhattan lawyer Henry Turner (Harrison Ford) is successful and respected at the powerful firm where he works but cold and unfriendly to everyone in his life, even to wife Sarah (Annette Bening) and daughter Rachel (Mikki Allen). He’s seemingly willing to do anything to get ahead in his career and the society life, more interested in the big case he’s just won than anything else. But late one night Henry goes out to grab a pack of cigarettes when he stumbles on a holdup and is shot in the head by the gunman. He surprisingly recovers but along with a secondary wound that resulted in a lack of oxygen to the brain he has essentially no memory of the person he once was. After a long recovery process aided by physical therapist Bradley (Bill Nunn), Henry gets well enough to return home, getting to know his wife and daughter anew. He also goes back to work at his firm but is soon confronted with the sort of lawyer he was as well as the sort of person he was and is forced to come to grips with figuring out what sort of person he’s going to be now. <br />
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The austerity of Mike Nichols’ early films became a considerably more casual style through the 80s and one of the surprises of looking at REGARDING HENRY for the first time in years is that to a certain extent this represents a sort of return to that approach, even if the ultimate effect leads to a different place. That intent is apparent right from the start with the credits rolling on a long look at the courthouse on Centre Street in lower Manhattan over a cold grey afternoon with snow falling, perfect for the harsh world the main character is so successful in. The following extended shot introduces Ford’s Henry Turner in what is close to a full 360 as he gives the closing argument in the big case he’s about to win and knows how to win. His slicked back hair and expensive suit blend seamlessly into the background of that courtroom, inherently part of the world he occupies just like his briefly mentioned father was. The first dozen or so shots of the film spread out over the first six minutes set up this very particular visual approach aided by the great Giuseppe Rotunno as cinematographer (who also shot CARNAL KNOWLEDGE for Nichols, among many other films) which gives REGARDING HENRY what complexity it has since this is at heart a simple film in all sorts of ways, simple in plot and structure as well as how it plays out to the point it almost feels like there’s next to no drama at all. Henry is a cold, selfish prick who only cares about himself, then he’s not and everyone is either ok with that or they’re not. As a screenplay it’s a fairly straightforward telling of the story with few diversions of any kind but as a film Nichols turns it into an exploration of how we can relate to the world we occupy, how much we ever actually belong there and how much of that decision is really up to you. <br />
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It’s the burnished wood signifying wealth that seems to make up the recurring color palette of each of these courtrooms and restaurants, a signpost of the tradition all around them with the lack of color infusing how these people really feel about anything that isn’t money. The mammoth apartment where Henry lives with his family is located in a building recognizable from being prominently featured in THE FRENCH CONNECTION (“Remember Don Ameche, the actor? He lives here.”) but it also has no real color, an overly decorative dining room table that Henry hates, all contrasted with the endless green lawn of the rehab facility that gives him life again. The short, clipped scenes that detail much of this gives a no muss, no fuss feel to the storytelling so edited by Sam O’Steen there’s not an ounce of fat on the film as if nearly every moment is seemingly about getting the correct amount of plot and thematic information into a scene but maybe not much more than that, to simply follow Henry through his recovery as he tries to figure out just who he is. He definitely becomes friendlier with a newly floppy haired look to underline his innocence—some scenes aren’t too far removed from Harrison Ford playing a kid in a body switching movie—but it’s not all that interesting and when Henry gets an empty frame as a gift it’s a reminder, maybe a little too obvious, of the blank slate he is. One brief moment of some society types scarfing down spoonfuls of caviar at a party feels a little too broad to make the point (just like much of the extravagant wardrobe of Robin Bartlett as Sarah’s best friend) and such undisciplined moments feel like a broadly satirical indulgence out of step with the tone but it also feels like there’s an energy to it which at least gives some life to the scene that too much of the rest of the film is doing without. <br />
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The question of how medically accurate what happens to Henry is could be argued but it doesn’t even really matter since this is all mostly about the symbolism of that scar on his forehead so the whole movie plays as not a story of recovery but a signpost for moving from the cruelty of the Reagan 80s to what was going to be the calmer, gentler 90s. Bill Nunn infuses the stock type of his physical therapist of color with an undeniable sincerity but it’s still hard not to think of it as the stock type it is, dispensing the right sort of wisdom at just the right time. Between that and the lessons Henry learns from his helpful daughter it’s as if the wisdom he receives from these people is more important than anything his actual doctors ever did and briefly musing over what he became in life thanks to his father it feels like the message is that getting shot in the head was the best thing to ever happen to him. Through the arc of the film he basically goes from being a child, baking cookies with his daughter--the bit where he suggests making ‘one big cookie’ is cute--to essentially being forced into maturity when confronted about the truth of what his life was and how to decide which path he’s going to take, a reminder of other films from the time about a workaholic husband/dad who learns what really matters (it’s better than HOOK, I’ll give it that much). It makes me wonder how much importance the concept of intellect actually has in the work of J.J. Abrams or if it’s all just about good fortune and luck, to do the right thing with the birthright you received whether James Kirk in STAR TREK’09 (a film I still like, but that’s a discussion for another time) wrestling with the legacy of his father, Sydney Bristow and the mystery of her mother on ALIAS, all of which pointing towards the reasons for what ultimately makes the lead character so special in their world. <br />
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On the Mike Nichols side of things, some of the films that he made during the second half of his career including <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2018/03/played-from-inside.html">HEARTBURN</a> and <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2012/12/and-not-take-whole-thing-so-seriously.html">WORKING GIRL</a> all have a genuine sense of living in New York and the east coast stratosphere but in the case of REGARDING HENRY it also feels like a film made by people with an undeniable self-loathing for that world, filled with society types forever wandering the streets of Manhattan clutching the Playbills of the Broadway show they just saw heading off to dinner. All this makes it feel like little more than the product of someone who comes from privilege whether that someone is Nichols or Abrams or a little of both, wrestling with that privilege and the thought of turning their back on it. Looking at it now, the film has a surprising similarity to <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2014/06/how-we-lower-our-sights.html">WOLF</a>, Mike Nichols’ next film released a few years later and at least a more interesting one, also featuring a middle-aged man going through a transformation that improves his life after an unexpected encounter late one night. WOLF now plays like a film more about acknowledging the cruelty and where the world was clearly headed, so the creature Jack Nicholson turns into in that film is the only way to fight back against it. REGARDING HENRY, clearly the more benign version of this concept, merely serves up what happens unquestionably and with kindness. <br />
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The elemental quality of Nichols’ direction means there’s that smooth sense of professionalism which makes it clear that he knows what each scene has to be about and what to focus on in any given moment. At other times he lets those moments relax and play out in a single shot to let the actors fully relate to each other but the problem is too often the scenes in question aren’t about very much. When Henry disappears to wander around New York, winding up in a porno theater at one point, nothing bad happens and he even buys a cute dog. The real drama which emerges when Henry’s daughter goes away after becoming his big human connection from his old life at first then she’s removed as the maturity comes into play all feels like it’s all easily resolved after Henry skulks around the city for a few minutes looking serious. It would be a little harsh to say that it becomes as empty as Henry’s head with what may be the most low-key Hans Zimmer score of all time to inch the scenes forward but maybe this makes the collaboration an ideal combo: a director who seemingly approaches everything from a standpoint of intellect with a writer who’s all about instinct and what happens in the moment, never thinking too far into the future. <br />
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It strikes me that a movie which explored the ambivalence of never being able to fully unlock the mystery of who Henry used to be sounds like a much more interesting one, just not as heartwarming so maybe the answer is as much of a void as that empty frame and isn’t particularly fleshed out for a reason. Even the issue of Henry’s father who apparently believed life was all about the ‘work ethic’, which is mentioned at the start and brought up again later, never becomes a touchstone of all the answers like it seems it will. And aside from a few clever foreshadowing touches in the script that stand out on repeat viewings, like the Rosebud of the word ‘Ritz’ that Henry initially responds to as well as the key piece of evidence he withheld in the big trial, there’s not much to uncover and instead it wants to be a warm blanket of a movie that never says very much of substance. Along with a few cozy expressions to help Henry out such as, “When you have enough, you say ‘When’” the overall feeling of niceness is what makes up both the text and the subtext with nothing else to read into it. The best of Mike Nichols generally offers some degree of ambiguity whether the endings of THE GRADUATE or <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2012/12/and-not-take-whole-thing-so-seriously.html">WORKING GIRL</a> all the way to his final film CHARLIE WILSON’S WAR and without that feeling of wondering what’s being left behind, REGARDNG HENRY doesn’t have much of anything beyond the fuzziness. At the very end the credits just roll when they’re more or less supposed to, no real crescendo given to the final moment so it’s all more of a pleasant feeling than an actual movie. <br />
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Even Harrison Ford’s crooked smile makes an appearance as Henry comes to life again and that long stretch with no dialogue gives us a look at what he can do without it, almost making him vulnerable like never before. It’s the most interesting part of his performance which by its nature feels like we’re missing a key ‘Harrison Ford’ element even if it does manage to find a balance between the adult and the little boy, playing as slightly endearing but still a little calculated. This film also comes in the middle of Annette Bening’s 1991 run, falling between GUILTY BY SUSPICION and BUGSY, and she’s terrific here bringing an undeniable strength which helps to make sense of a role where it doesn’t feel like the script has given her all the answers. Mikki Allen, who has no other screen credits, brings a totally believable sadness as their daughter but it never feels overdone, playing as totally believable as she tries to connect with her father. Bill Nunn offers a valuable directness in his scenes which gives them a focus as pat as they are and it is, in fairness, an excellent supporting cast with what feels like familiar New York theater faces or maybe just friends of Nichols meant to fill out that world including Donald Moffat, Rebecca Miller, Bruce Altman, James Rebhorn, Robin Bartlett and Elizabeth Wilson (Benjamin’s mother in THE GRADUATE). John Leguizamo is the liquor store gunman, Abrams himself cameos as a delivery boy and an unbilled Nancy Marchand gets almost the last line of dialogue. <br />
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Thinking back to when this film came out, I remember seeing it with my father who at the time was right in the middle of some of his own extensive health issues so because of that memory you’d think the film would have more pull for me now but not really and I can’t even remember what he had to say about it. There’s not really a lot to chew on here. As an honest admission, when I first had the idea several months ago to write about this film (it won out over TAKING CARE OF BUSINESS, primarily because of Mike Nichols) it was in the immediate wake of Abrams’ THE RISE OF SKYWALKER which made me think to connect the overall poorness of that film to the simplistic ideals of this one. And, in a way, Daisy Ridley’s Rey comes to the same conclusion at the end of her film that Henry Turner does in his, to reject where she comes from and find another way to move forward. All this may be valid and it’s a little hard not to look at Abrams’ work in film & TV and think that his view of the world has never been about intellect but the sheer luck of what you’re born into, what you supposedly have coming to you as destiny. Of course, a lot has happened since I had that idea and spending much time thinking about the J.J. Abrams STAR WARS films doesn’t interest me very much at the moment. As for REGARDING HENRY, I’m not in too much of a mood to strongly object to what is ultimately a ‘nice’ movie with a message of, ‘Be who you are deep down and don’t let anyone else tell you what that is’ but there’s still not very much to say about it. The question for us right now is what are we going to be in this world that we have to live in? That’s an answer we don’t have yet. We’re trapped here, after all. And, at the moment, there’s nothing we can do to escape. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXf5wTbPWWToEeYm6WaTExf7BKrJ_ShSPRsyV7moEIHuTi3i2T4NUEVPXLBDNBTq0XZR-zkQZb6w8lOsHJ1x-s-JHhGqsKOP8NP6A-Tudn9tX5fSLuX8BkDieR5R3BZsvxKzG3CjULXmOE/s1600/RegardingHenryP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgXf5wTbPWWToEeYm6WaTExf7BKrJ_ShSPRsyV7moEIHuTi3i2T4NUEVPXLBDNBTq0XZR-zkQZb6w8lOsHJ1x-s-JHhGqsKOP8NP6A-Tudn9tX5fSLuX8BkDieR5R3BZsvxKzG3CjULXmOE/s400/RegardingHenryP.jpg" width="270" height="400" data-original-width="520" data-original-height="769" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-20098362370869473552020-03-29T12:10:00.001-07:002020-03-29T12:16:42.553-07:00Anything Is Possible<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2UbV6-jV3eA9lkxzZ1CgN9DV-CmyzJDyYRydsr3B-HnX8XsUGSQfN7H-Ibyz4Wly7o1SzJaTir8Doqpjx0kJJgY_R5rE8hK_ZZfslktyWcBhNv25do-UgtrxykGnXwj6BABbmyUpuaPsX/s1600/StanleyandIris1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEh2UbV6-jV3eA9lkxzZ1CgN9DV-CmyzJDyYRydsr3B-HnX8XsUGSQfN7H-Ibyz4Wly7o1SzJaTir8Doqpjx0kJJgY_R5rE8hK_ZZfslktyWcBhNv25do-UgtrxykGnXwj6BABbmyUpuaPsX/s400/StanleyandIris1.jpg" width="400" height="269" data-original-width="1489" data-original-height="1000" /></a></div><br />
Let’s try to calm down for a moment. Pause, take a breath and remember a few good things in life. We all have those people who have meant something to us and whether they’re still part of our lives or not, what they’ve given has helped make our worlds closer to what we want them to be. People like that remind us that something close to decency still exists out there, a feeling which makes us want to strive to become better and make the world we live in just a little more serene. If only all this could be as true as we wish. Forgetting the real world for just a moment, we don’t get that feeling very much in films these days either and for a number of reasons this makes sense. The world is not in the greatest place so films are going to reflect the reality but too often they don’t do anything to fight back against that either. It’s true that kindness can be difficult to make dramatic and drama, which can’t just be nice people doing nice things for other nice people, inherently needs conflict in some form. So roughly 30 years ago in February 1990, the world got what is now the mostly forgotten STANLEY & IRIS, the final film directed by the great Martin Ritt who passed away before the year was done. I actually saw the MGM release at the time since back then I saw almost everything and even remember taking notice of a particular sensitivity to the direction but didn’t really think about it for much more than that. It’s a nice, pleasant movie, about people who struggle to move forward with their conflict coming from within as much as anything and lives in its own sense of quiet, with a craft to the filmmaking that may be subtle but is still undeniable. STANLEY & IRIS is a film about an issue that affects many people but doesn’t get discussed much at all and it could even be argued that the issue itself isn’t inherently dramatic. While it may not be a forgotten classic there’s still nothing wrong with a film that has its own ideas of how to tell a story and in doing so tries to make its world just a little better. <br />
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Recently widowed mother of two Iris King (Jane Fonda), who works on the line at a local baking factory, meets Stanley Cox (Robert De Niro), a cook in the factory’s cafeteria. After several chance encounters an attraction clearly develops between the two but after noticing his occasional odd behavior, Iris soon discovers that Stanley’s secret is he can’t read or write. After losing his job and being forced to put his father into a home when he can’t take care of him, Stanley finally asks Iris for help to learn how to read. And she begins to teach him through the various difficulties of the process and the growing awareness of what their relationship is becoming. <br />
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Maybe it’s my current state of mind, but films set in Connecticut make me think of the past. To this day, distant memories of sitting in the backseat of the car with my family as we drove through the state still linger somewhere in my head, remembering those trips when we were on the way to visit someone, passing through towns that we rarely ever stopped in. Has much of anything changed there since I lived one state over? That doesn’t really matter. Some of the most famous films that address life in Connecticut seem to focus on the wealthy, that east coast repressed old world of wealth and affluence seen in things like THE ICE STORM or <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2018/09/sense-of-personal-worth.html">THE SWIMMER</a>, but on the opposite side of the financial chain STANLEY & IRIS is set in the blue collar world of people living paycheck-to-paycheck, if they’re lucky enough to be employed at all. The opening shots of the small city it’s set in bring up those distant memories of passing through which is appropriate for a film that, after all, is about people stuck in a place that the rest of the world just passes through and the setting may not be specified but the establishing shots are clearly Waterbury—interiors along with less recognizable exteriors were largely filmed in Toronto—which I mainly remember for the sight of a giant cross on top of a hill (apparently part of a long closed religious theme park, go figure) that can be briefly spotted here. Looking at the film again now all these years later, STANLEY & IRIS plays as the sort of quiet social drama that might have come out of Hollywood regularly in the early 60s, maybe set somewhere in New England, possibly in black & white CinemaScope with a gentle score in the TO KILL A MOCKINGBIRD vein, although the films directed by Martin Ritt during that period usually had more fire than this one does. <br />
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Starting his career in theater and live TV before being blacklisted in 1952, Martin Ritt’s films often place an emphasis on social issues alongside a strong humanist vein, lacking the pulp ferocity of someone like John Frankenheimer but instead finding dramatic power in the simplicity of how people relate to each other when they have no other choice. He’s maybe best remembered now as the director of the masterful HUD but there’s also THE SPY WHO CAME IN FROM THE COLD, the blacklist drama THE FRONT (about as good a film on the subject as has ever been made) starring Woody Allen, the Sally Field Oscar winner NORMA RAE as well as the gentle MURPHY’S ROMANCE, which gave James Garner his one Oscar nomination, among others. Even Ritt’s first film, 1957’s EDGE OF THE CITY starring Sidney Poitier and John Cassavetes, is a dynamite noirish human drama with a hopeful tinge of yearning for the way the world, and the friendships in it, could be if it wasn’t for the hate that always beats it down. Stretching the comparison all the way to his last film, at the core of STANLEY & IRIS is a story about how people help each other to find the best of their humanity and in doing so overcome what are their greatest hurdles deep down, a victory which can matter more than anything when you’re just about ready to give up. The films he made were about how the world around people formed them and what they hopefully can do to move past their troubles to make those lives better. <br />
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The portrayal of the working class world seen in STANLEY & IRIS (screenplay by Harriet Frank, Jr. and Irving Ravetch, based on the novel Union Street by Pat Barker; this was the final credit for the screenwriting team who had collaborated with Ritt on multiple projects including HUD, HOMBRE and NORMA RAE) feels admirable looking at it these days but still a little idealized, spring days with clothing all neatly pressed as Iris heads to the factory with her co-workers like they’re off to camp for the day. The words the characters speak in the script make it clear they feel very different about their situation—it doesn’t seem like these are union jobs—with the dialogue underlining more than once how these people are all trapped in their own kind of prisons, accepting shoes that don’t fit because it beats having to pay for new ones and holding on to those dreams of actually owning a car. All this seems to exist in its own gentle reality with Iris getting her purse snatched at the start the only outward indication of real world hostility (which we never hear about again anyway) and the Madonna poster on daughter Martha Plimpton’s wall maybe the one sign of the late 80s in evidence anywhere else in the film. The various minor authority figures all seem a little grouchy but with kids playing ball in the streets and people calmly walking through parks there’s always a sense of tranquility in the air especially when Stanley gives Iris a ride on his bike after work one day as they get to know each other, a sequence which catches just the right tone for the start of this relationship with them both a little wary of trying to connect with someone new. The mood goes just right with such a simple, direct film about people who are lost but still trying to help each other even if the overall softness means that the film becomes a gentle stroll more than anything, the bitterness hanging on the edges in those scenes when someone chooses to simply walk away from the expected confrontation, no anger left in them, no more energy to bring out. <br />
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There’s also a feeling of regret that runs through things, with Iris unable to move on from mourning her husband so I’m guessing that’s his oversized Hawaiian shirt Fonda wears in one scene, trying not to let go. The guilt Stanley feels over having to leave his father in a modest, slightly shabby old age home stays with him as well and the sweet sadness of these scenes gets me deep down, especially when he apologizes to his father played by Feodor Chaliapin Jr., maybe best remembered now as the grandfather in MOONSTRUCK, delivered with a surprising vulnerability projected by De Niro and these moments are some of the film’s most affecting, bringing up a few regretful memories of my own father from around this period. The past affects how the characters behave in the present whether Stanley finally asking for help or the way Iris tries to pass along the right lessons to her pregnant daughter, trying to accept certain realities even with the bitterness in her voice as she says, “None of us stay cute,” while dealing with the volatile marriage between her sister played by Swoosie Kurtz and husband Jamey Sheridan. It’s a subplot that feels missing a resolution with the characters pretty much disappearing from the film but what’s left of it shows the danger of simply giving up and accepting how bad it’s going to be. <br />
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Ritt’s craft as a director always comes through even when the scenes are just a little too pat, expertly using the widescreen Panavision frame to place people in relation to each other during the teaching scenes as Iris tries to understand what happened to Stanley and the process of his learning as the words begin to come into focus. The film also occasionally pauses for those moments of daily life, showing Iris’s days at the factory, transitions held together by a lovely John Williams score to provide the connective tissue. And yes, maybe there’s not a lot of inherent drama to stretches of it since a scene where one person is teaching another to read may not have much conflict but in Stanley asking about himself, “Do I have a name if I can’t write it? Am I really a person if I can’t read it?” the simple clarity of the question comes through. Maybe the closest thing to a visual setpiece is when he’s given a test to walk to a certain intersection using a map he has to read and the trouble it causes, one overhead shot carefully laying out his silent confusion, the feeling of being completely, truly lost and alone. <br />
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The way the film cares about these people and their relationship to the world around them carries that sense of gentleness, the story of a romance which feels like it’s about the tentative nature of that romance, people who spend time feeling around each other while becoming aware of that passage of time and how they need to finally take action before it’s too late. There’s a feeling of warmth to Donald McAlpine’s cinematography that matches up with how the seasons change as the story progresses and at one point when Stanley is walking around a park with Iris’s son played by Harley Cross the scene briefly holds a shot on an odd perspective to show how dwarfed the two are by the nature around them which will be there long after they’ve gone. In another later scene Fonda and De Niro are separated by another tree in the middle of the Panavision frame, the world they share keeping them apart and this sort of lingering does give the feel of an old man’s film but looking at it as the last film directed by Martin Ritt causes every scene to play with a focus on the pure ideas of what he cared about, a way to just watch these people as they move through the world. More than a simple commercial for literacy, so much of it is about the tentative nature of holding back out of fear and what can be done to move past that, a reminder that we all only have so much time. STANLEY & IRIS may not be very much more than a nice movie with an ending that is a little too idealized, Stanley’s hobby as an inventor finally paying off almost as if to say that unless you have credit cards and a new car you’re not really a person. I don’t think that’s what the film is ultimately trying to say but it does feel like it’s an attempt to give the studio not just a happy ending but the happiest, least complicated ending possible. In the end, what sticks out is how this is a film about wanting, yearning to do more than just work and eat and sleep as Iris puts it in one scene, about the dream of making a connection and finding a way to escape from your own prison so maybe these days that message doesn’t seem so wrong. <br />
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Jane Fonda and Robert De Niro feel slightly at a remove from each other which makes sense—this isn’t supposed to be a movie about sexual tension anyway, just an easygoing tentativeness which will hopefully blossom into something else. The look in their eyes, Fonda’s yearning as she fights against the bitterness which is always about to overtake her and the look on her face as she realizes he has an interest in her. Seven months before GOODFELLAS opened, this film is a reminder of the charming awkwardness which can turn up in De Niro’s performances when he has to play an uncomplicated guy, in this case someone with a polite inquisitiveness with a lot bubbling up inside him to keep his secret and there’s a sweetness to it all so even when he shows up drunk at her house in one scene it’s never threatening, just sort of clumsy. Martha Plimpton matches up well against Fonda as her daughter, not intimidated at all and it gives an extra charge to a subplot which might otherwise just play as hackneyed. Stephen Root is the head of the nursing home while Iris’s co-workers at the bakery include Loretta Devine, Kathy Kinney, Julie Garfield and Zohra Lampert, practically extras but each giving the feeling that they’re embellishing their bit parts on the edges of the frame although if the film never stays with them for very long, but even those brief moments give the film another touch of humanity. <br />
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Where you come from and what happened to you matters. What happens now matters too. But right now my thoughts are drifting to people I’ve known and what they’ve meant to me. I’m not even sure I’d know how to tell them if I got the chance. In some cases, maybe it doesn’t matter. As a side note, STANELY & IRIS co-screenwriter Harriet Frank Jr. whose career dates back to the late 40s passed away at the beginning of 2020 at the age of 96 and not only was it the final film directed by Martin Ritt, after its box office failure it was also Jane Fonda’s last film for the next sixteen years—from this to MONSTER-IN-LAW—and is mostly forgotten now unless you happen to be digging through Amazon Prime. As I write this, our lives are on pause at best. Maybe I’m not even sure what my greater point is beyond that there’s something to be said for a film about people finding each other and using that as a path to a better version of this life. And, by the way, reading is good too. These days I have to try to remember something like that for as long as possible. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzWVJyuKHEtHX7_J7g1cRrp3znsru_aecZ2BIQcuyea1xQCZ-dTKndpCPwpx5Y5GPoiGrmBIks9jRH90cAoTt84zNPUyUTdcqt62u33HuLc4DHeFLX-TYMPVizlvxFqLqeooHN1e-AOI0d/s1600/StanleyandIrisP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgzWVJyuKHEtHX7_J7g1cRrp3znsru_aecZ2BIQcuyea1xQCZ-dTKndpCPwpx5Y5GPoiGrmBIks9jRH90cAoTt84zNPUyUTdcqt62u33HuLc4DHeFLX-TYMPVizlvxFqLqeooHN1e-AOI0d/s400/StanleyandIrisP.jpg" width="270" height="400" data-original-width="580" data-original-height="859" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-82624361243800334342020-02-29T10:21:00.001-08:002020-02-29T10:21:36.432-08:00What They Grow Beyond<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgr0WoAk9xWrhAi3sGgKQ_NyBvkSL2I0PYXO1PNnjJ29A654u8lqOom-A7HyXg0h8kF3B8LnaDB9AIrBBrT8-TLCSkq9xznO4tCPSW5bfQaIdO58wxfusbwfRECIjYKHGcaMOGsBB0BWOx/s1600/LastJedi1.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEjgr0WoAk9xWrhAi3sGgKQ_NyBvkSL2I0PYXO1PNnjJ29A654u8lqOom-A7HyXg0h8kF3B8LnaDB9AIrBBrT8-TLCSkq9xznO4tCPSW5bfQaIdO58wxfusbwfRECIjYKHGcaMOGsBB0BWOx/s400/LastJedi1.jpg" width="400" height="267" data-original-width="1500" data-original-height="1000" /></a></div><br />
We were never meant to be obsessed with STAR WARS for over 40 years. These things simply happen. We were never meant to remain trapped in our childhoods. Life should take care of that by itself. But the way things played out, two years after sitting in the El Capitan Theatre on Hollywood Boulevard while getting a sinking feeling about forty-five minutes into THE FORCE AWAKENS, I found myself in the exact same seat watching THE LAST JEDI, overcome with a huge sense of relief and, finally, delight. This film knew what it was doing. This was a film with a viewpoint towards providing something unexpected, filled with energy and introspection, locating the soul of whatever STAR WARS is supposed to be and infusing it with a strength towards that mythos which for a long time had felt dormant in my head and giving it something new. Any obsession that I ever had with STAR WARS is largely in the past by now and no complaints but THE LAST JEDI did something no film in that series has done in a long time—it made me thrilled to live in that world again for a few more hours and reminded me of what a joy that was. Of course, two years after that viewing I found myself back at the El Capitan once again for THE RISE OF SKYWALKER although not, I should point out, back in the same seat. Anyway, that film isn’t worth spending much time on no matter what year it is. <br />
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What happens in THE FORCE AWAKENS never stays in my mind very long even during the few times I’ve actually seen it but that doesn’t really matter. THE LAST JEDI, of course, begins with the Resistance on the run from the First Order as Poe Dameron (Oscar Isaac) encounters pushback from General Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) over his hotshot tactics while Rey (Daisy Ridley) has located the missing Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill) only to discover he’s not what she expected and isn’t particularly interested in listening to her concerns about what may happen if he doesn’t come back with her to help in the fight. Back at the fleet, Finn (Jon Boyega) meets Rose Tico (Kelly Marie Tran) and they team up to hatch a plan in search of a code breaker to allow them to escape from the clutches of Kylo Ren (Adam Driver) and Supreme Leader Snoke (Andy Serkis). As for how much this particular plot matters, it’s almost like STAR WARS films rise or fall on how much they really understand how important the basic plot needs to be—not story, that’s something else entirely—and how to maintain the correct balance. <br />
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And all discussion of plot aside, it becomes a question of what STAR WARS is. The original trilogy began life as a tribute to old-time serials before turning into its own mythology entirely while the prequels, whatever anyone thinks of them, are at the least somewhat stodgier and less kinetic that have their own odd quirks, largely playing now as lengthy effects demos with an added, more overt political slant which certainly helps them remain interesting these days. For all the qualities those films have or are lacking at the very least they still play as experimental and attempting something new. The post-George Lucas trilogy takes an approach of streamlining that mythos to give the people what they apparently want and in rebooting the franchise THE FORCE AWAKENS discards all attempts at experimentation with pretty much zero interest in any new cinematic ideas at all. Written and directed by Rian Johnson (Academy Award nominee for the screenplay of KNIVES OUT), THE LAST JEDI, meanwhile, forces the hand on this bluff and quickly turns itself into an exploration of that approach to the modern myth, serving as a commentary on what the saga has come to represent in the world we live in filtered through characters who have mattered to us longer than we remember. The mystery of Luke Skywalker in the previous film played like it was stalling to avoid dealing with the character in any way at all, an approach that this film winds up embracing in order to use his status as Generation X icon to throw into question what the fight was really all about in the first place. <br />
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To be honest, I never wondered much about what happened to Luke Skywalker. I barely thought about whether there would ever be more sequels anyway. On the one hand, the concept of his living a totally drab, sexless life as essentially a Jedi samurai monk wandering the galaxy couldn’t sound any duller. So if his story was going to somehow continue, what we see here makes as much sense as anything, taking the characterization beyond the stasis he remained in for pretty much all of RETURN OF THE JEDI and still connecting him with what’s come before. At his most interesting, Luke was never the calm centered presence of Obi Wan Kenobi so having him serve as that figure here would have diminished the role which in some ways plays a reminder of all those things Luke still had to learn, that he never learned through the snowballing plot points of his own trilogy and, without total understanding, leading to his ultimate moment of weakness gradually revealed here in opposing flashbacks. He doesn’t have all the answers and never did in the first place which keeps his character relevant in the narrative beyond standard teacher-student dichotomy. It’s why tossing that light saber, or “laser sword”, over his shoulder which at first seemed like something out of an MTV Movie Awards sketch immediately caused me to perk up, realizing this film would be something different in directly confronting expectations and immediately questioned what was expected of Luke after all this time. Rey, meanwhile, represents the future looking to the past for answers without knowing why, searching for who she is with only a vague awareness of what this myth ever was and still needing to learn about it for herself. She’s looking for the ultimate answer to the truth behind the truth, the way she asks Luke what the Force is to try to understand and what it all means, what it can possibly mean, whatever we’ve been told in the past. <br />
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And that’s the thing. If there isn’t an attitude towards all this to help make the film live and breathe creatively in the now then it just becomes empty homage, a reminder of how nice it was to be ten years old and I can’t think of anything more depressing. In some ways Rian Johnson’s take on the universe in THE LAST JEDI is comparable to what Nicholas Meyer did with directing STAR TREK II: THE WRATH OF KHAN as if to ask questions like, “What is this place? How does this all work? Who are these people?” infusing the answers with a sense of wit along with a snap to the dialogue in every scene, starting early on with the hotshot tactics that Poe takes near the beginning to get the First Order’s attention or the approach taken by Vice Admiral Holdo played by Laura Dern (Academy Award winner for Best Supporting Actress in MARRIAGE STORY) in dealing with him later on, no interest in pretending she has to have patience for him. The growing connection between Rey and Kylo offers added depth as well as if trying to figure out why they’re good and bad guys in the first place but it also comes down to Rey’s examination of her own self to figure out who she isn’t and never was, providing an open book towards whatever she could become in the future. Facing an infinity of her own reflection in the equivalent scene to what Luke once encountered long ago in THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK makes sense since the entire film plays as sort of that film in reverse or maybe turned inside out but with its own conclusions, so even the unexpected plays out in an unexpected way but also at times much more simple than we could have ever realized. Even the presumably all-powerful Snoke, Palpatine redux but much more intriguing than in the previous film, is really just a ranting old man with little else to explain him since none of that matters, nothing more and maybe even less. <br />
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The confidence of Johnson’s direction is always in evidence, bringing a true sense of craft along with a sense of exhilaration and energy to that epic old movie feeling as well as an extra kick to the space battles which bring the right sort of punchy quality to scenes onboard the First Order ships and the clean style of the way each of them gets laid out. No matter how much is going on through all the crosscutting there’s always a balance maintained so the film doesn’t rush, all the better to pause for some fresh green milk, and the pacing of what is the longest STAR WARS film ever is always measured thanks to editor Bob Ducsay, never overly hyper and playing as totally confident. Even if a few minutes could be cut, that pacing lets the film breathe and exist inside of scenes, interested in more than just the action beats and whatever needs to move the plot forward. Like all good directors, Johnson is interested in exploring the environment that the film is set in and he loves those moments where we can feel the weight of all that has happened and, enriched by cinematographer Steve Yedlin, shots that quietly explore how the events affect the characters and their understanding, the way Luke gets Rey to understand how the Force works visualizing the very concept for the first time ever in sort of the STAR WARS version of THE TREE OF LIFE and the unavoidable darkness it leads to. The film is always enriched by those moments, the simple character beats of Rey feeling the rain as it drips down outside the Millennium Falcon or Leia standing silently outside the rebel base on Crait, the weight of all these years on her, waiting for whatever’s going to come. For once it’s a STAR WARS film that wants to explore the feel of all those worlds it takes place in beyond whatever the basic ecosystem of a planet is and how all this affects the balance of the Force as well. <br />
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That approach brings a sense of richness to every scene and even the clutter of the Canto Bight section has a purpose towards lending clarity to the universe in general, the casino playing as an update of the original cantina scene filtered through all the CASABLANCA nods, of course, but also containing another kind of wretched hive than we’ve seen before as if to answer what’s been going on with all the rich people in this galaxy since the prequels. Rose Tico sees right through that but it also helps bring out who the unformed Finn is becoming, all impulse and still learning, not yet understanding what sacrifice really is. In its commentary on how much the series seems to take for granted that these wars are going to go on endlessly it’s further challenged by Benicio Del Toro’s rogue code breaker (his best line: “Blip bloppity bloop.”), kind of a Han/Lando mashup crossed with his USUAL SUSPECTS character, tossed in with the actor playing it like he’s both unimpressed by all these massive sets yet is more overjoyed at sharing the frame with BB-8 than anyone else in the film but still with an unpredictability of the rare person in one of these movies that never really cares who the good guys are after all.<br />
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Those challenges to what’s come before blend perfectly with Rian Johnson’s filmmaking prowess which always finds a way to approach a scene to give it additional power with a clear sense of composition to make every shot matter, even providing continuity to the degree of homage not seen in these films since what Lucas did as director in 1977 from the BLACK NARCISSUS vibe found in the lived-in feel of the island of Ach-To with the fish nun caretakers to the unending red of Snoke’s chamber that seems ready to stage a darker version of Marilyn Monroe’s famous “Diamonds are a Girls’ Best Friend” number from GENTLEMEN PREFER BLONDES so whether intentionally or not it becomes its own show stopping musical number with spectacularly thrilling choreography in this light saber duel staged just as precisely as the finest Jack Cole number imaginable. The overt homage to Billy Wilder’s THE APARTMENT in the layout on the main First Order ship sadly wound up in the deleted scenes on the Blu-ray but the floating camera of the establishing Canto Bight casino shot lifted directly from WINGS goes perfectly with the dynamic feel just as right as the line partly cribbed from THE WILD BUNCH at one point later on because of course that should be in there. These elements are in some ways incidental but still integral to the richness of the world and overall sense of tradition of how these films were always meant to be paying tribute to the past, the things that happened a long time ago which mattered more than anything to the person making the film and affected the world of the film they were making down to the bones. And, as I’m not the first person to point out, this is the only STAR WARS film to feature the John Williams theme from THE LONG GOODBYE, however briefly, which naturally means that if this isn’t the best STAR WARS film it comes pretty close. <br />
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But more than that it’s the characters searching for who they are within, what is found under Kylo’s mask that he destroys early on, Rey and her identity, Luke and his understanding of himself, just as Johnson even explored later on in KNIVES OUT and how much that film’s main character realizes that in spite of everything she is in fact a ‘good person’. Part of that search within in THE LAST JEDI is found in the recurring imagery of hands reaching for a connection, reaching for the Force, searching for those answers that aren’t coming, yearning for a way to understand, the connection between Rey and Kylo that gets broken by Luke before he’s able to admit the truth of what led to this. And it extends to how the film honors the memory of Carrie Fisher ever before she died so for once the character of Leia really does feel like an extension of what we think of when we think of Carrie Fisher, worn down but her humanity and flippancy never leaving her. The way the film honors Fisher even before she died is found in every moment we get of her here, culminating in what feels like the first ever cinematic moment to actually make genuine use of the character’s famous theme forever alters how we’re going to see this, how much she knows her time is passing but still with a final understanding that what she’s accomplished will somehow continue on.<br />
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All this connects to how the film feels about STAR WARS history in general, confronting and embracing that all at once, even down to the way it engages with the prequels and what happened in them as Luke explains what separates the concept of the Force from the Jedi and even now I get a rush out of hearing Mark Hamill say the name ‘Darth Sidious’ to acknowledge a past we remember that he didn’t witness. And whatever Rian Johnson actually feels about THE FORCE AWAKENS, his film wisely not only doesn’t ignore certain elements introduced there (Snoke, Phasma, etc.), it also confronts and subverts them, improves them and in the end renders each of those elements irrelevant as well as showing why they should be irrelevant in its pursuit of loftier thematic goals. The film’s view of Kylo is complex but the evil around him is appropriately hollow so the pastiness seen on the face of the likes of Domhall Gleeson’s General Hux is treated with all the contempt that he deserves no matter who’s dishing it out. But in going further back to the past, it’s the surprise introduction of Yoda, of course once again voiced by Frank Oz, and what it contains that turns into the most emotional moment of the film for me, a reminder that we all have our soft spots during certain moments that come out of nowhere in these films. What that Jedi says about failure feels like the greatest lesson for Luke ever, the sort of lesson that makes it a film perfect for this moment. It’s very much a film about failure and the lessons that come from it, the sort of failure each of these characters encounters throughout to help you understand the reason you’re fighting in the first place and why you need to keep on doing it. Failure is a hell of a thing to live with each day, a reminder which meant something in 2017 just as it means something now. Within that becomes finding that love of what we’re fighting for and we love about it. What we love about what it might be. And what we might have in ourselves to move forward. <br />
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In a way, THE LAST JEDI is a middle film in a trilogy that is itself about finding that middle ground, just as important as the balance to the Force that’s always being talked about and the search for hope that the characters find themselves in. It’s the bravura filmmaking during the best moments in this series which always mean more than the plot, when all the elements manage to coalesce into pure cinema maybe especially during the showstopper of Holdo’s final action but also when the glorious John Williams music kicks in for the climax going full throttle and the Porgs that I love so much, who I assume have finally been accepted by Chewbacca, go crazy so during those moments all that is required is to be caught up in the coolness and pure joy of it all. Part of it is also Luke at the end, seen in full spaghetti western close-up, discovering his own truth as the symbol he finally realizes he needs to be and only he knows how to be. So does Rey using the force to lift those rocks at the end as she finally understands the complexity of what she can do in simple terms, taking the lessons of the past and translating them for herself. It’s a movie that wants to find the light in the darkness that the middle chapter is expected to be, the way Rose finds joy in the Fathiers on Canto Bight in a way that no one has ever reacted to anything in this universe before just as the very uncomplicated Poe Dameron spends the film in the middle of an increasingly complicated situation. It’s Holdo who reminds him about what hope means but it’s not until the end when he repeats what her determination to serve as a spark to light the fire of the rebellion that he can understand the film’s own argument against nihilism, that it’s not about the crazy plans and cool sacrifice that Finn almost makes for nothing but what can really be done to make things better to defeat the darkness. Unlike the increasing gloom of most blockbusters (and would be blockbusters) of the past decade, many of which I feel such a growing emotional distance from, this is a film that feels alive and vibrant and, once its own cynicism has been addressed, even optimistic about what its world can be, about what STAR WARS can be, and to make the past itself remember why that mattered. It’s beautiful. <br />
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Because if the argument could be made that great films are either puzzles or dreams, that also explains how STAR WARS can work at its best. THE EMPIRE STRIKES BACK is definitely a dream in how little it makes any rational sense and yet still works flawlessly in all its glory and emotion, just as you could argue that a failing of the prequels is that they each get caught in some sort of middle ground between the two. THE FORCE AWAKENS, not at all a great film, never feels like it’s about more than its own puzzle which means there’s nothing particularly to explore on repeat viewings. THE LAST JEDI, a STAR WARS film very much about the interpretation of STAR WARS and what we imagine it to be gloriously brings the dream back with possibilities of how we still can prove what we have. Of what the future can hold. Because you don’t let the past die, at least not completely. You grow from the past and you have to, because if you don’t then there’s just a void as empty as Kylo Ren’s hands are near the end, forever lacking any knowledge or understanding. The myth only means something if you directly confront it, using that power to turn it into something more before moving on. A few years later, after everything that’s happened in our own world to make this struggle seem all the more resonant, it’s a film that feels even richer than it has yet. <br />
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In scene after scene it feels like the actors are energized by the material in Johnson’s script and there’s always an extra kick in the air between them in scenes as they face off against each other. Mark Hamill is phenomenal, giving this taking this return to the character a power I didn’t see coming as he plays every moment with an air of regret that weighs upon the gift he’ll always have no matter what, all the stories of what led him here found in his eyes and the cumulative effect is a performance that is fearless. Carrie Fisher, in what is basically her final performance, brings an unexpectedly soulful quality missing from the previous film along with a resigned sadness while keeping the humor which is so much about the character and what we want to remember about the actress. Daisy Ridley is especially effective with the growing conflict within what she faces along with the joy that sometimes shines through while Adam Driver is flawless at capturing Kylo’s arrogance and ultimate confusion, growing increasingly unclear which side he should be on, along with the determination of Oscar Isaac and Jon Boyega with how locked in they are in their storylines along with the sense of true goodness and light that Kelly Marie Tran brings to this world. The quiet determination of Laura Dern also pays off with a bang, along with the ball that Benicio Del Toro is having every moment he’s around and Andy Serkis actually gets me interested in Snoke in this film, at least for those few minutes where it’s needed. Even the small roles pop, whether Ngo Thanh Van who is nearly silent as Rose’s sister Paige Tico or Amanda Lawrence as Commander D’Acy and the cumulative effect of these moments from the actors gives it all a humanistic quality unlike any other STAR WARS film ever seen. <br />
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Not long ago I was thinking about how the last thing Luke says to Kylo Ren in this film is “See you around, kid,” making me think that in the next film he might return as a Force ghost unlike any we’d seen before only to have him finally show up basically redoing Obi-Wan Kenobi in RETURN OF THE JEDI spouting exposition while sitting on a log and oh god why am I still going on about all this. But that’s the thing with obsession. It’s very possible that I’ll never find myself back in the El Capitan again seeing another one of these movies, just as I’m aware that this may be the final thing I ever write about STAR WARS in any form but in the best noir tradition we keep getting pulled back, like it or not so I can’t say for sure. And for all the debate over what STAR WARS ‘is’ maybe by now it’s become about the obsessions of our own past as much as anything and how it all means we have to look back, like it or not. Recalling George Lucas’ own penchant for pure cinema, STAR WARS films generally shouldn’t have any sort of last line so in its final shots THE LAST JEDI shows us a seemingly random boy who will one day have his own adventures that we’ll likely never see. No dialogue is needed to tell us this but that future is clearly destined, just as it’s destined for these stories to continue, here presented in a simple, elegant image of hope. What that image means, what it should mean, what it may always mean. Feel free to take that as an ending and maybe the final piece of STAR WARS related media I’ll ever need to pay attention to, since as it’s turned out, what followed this film wasn’t particularly interesting in any way. So let someone else have those adventures, if they even want to. It’s possible to stay in the same place forever, not moving forward and never truly finding your place in the world. That very idea has always been at the heart of STAR WARS, certainly the George Lucas version of it but maybe this film as well, the very human fear of not wanting to let go and of what the future may hold if you do. It was what Anakin Skywalker didn’t want to lose, what Luke Skywalker was afraid he might learn, what Rey can’t seem to admit to herself. But you can’t stay in the same place forever. It’s the very thing Luke was trying to avoid to begin with, a long time ago. Even then he knew that sometimes you simply have to move on. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis1pUKdar-oIXk7o1dSo7DEjwzCG6LwN94-SsYqArfqnxwnVMz8b6EzqKr3O-U8i2SLFKQS_Hj0AUUwQ7MXLLH__7EaNnpeW-qhVGCI5xrWL0aHdrua7A38bWhUTC3eo7Ki4XSr9ZYq1Kg/s1600/LastJediP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEis1pUKdar-oIXk7o1dSo7DEjwzCG6LwN94-SsYqArfqnxwnVMz8b6EzqKr3O-U8i2SLFKQS_Hj0AUUwQ7MXLLH__7EaNnpeW-qhVGCI5xrWL0aHdrua7A38bWhUTC3eo7Ki4XSr9ZYq1Kg/s400/LastJediP.jpg" width="270" height="400" data-original-width="1012" data-original-height="1500" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-70431033010462882832020-02-18T14:17:00.001-08:002020-02-20T19:36:21.702-08:00To Make Limbo Tolerable<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXDEZcxVJMmm_UI9qOdXm-M_b6lxQfFKnXSHI4djfMOMBHIHc_XfexaRFt4FU9wYExES0oVUHuHlQ317KfNT8X-Fi4uvU8CMItXyoWuPw0eYBdZNdnDl0aO_zBxPf84txSCn-edMFux1X/s1600/vlcsnap-2020-02-15-09h39m58s989.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhwXDEZcxVJMmm_UI9qOdXm-M_b6lxQfFKnXSHI4djfMOMBHIHc_XfexaRFt4FU9wYExES0oVUHuHlQ317KfNT8X-Fi4uvU8CMItXyoWuPw0eYBdZNdnDl0aO_zBxPf84txSCn-edMFux1X/s400/vlcsnap-2020-02-15-09h39m58s989.png" width="400" height="216" data-original-width="853" data-original-height="461" /></a></div><br />
Some anniversaries only matter to you and no one else which is just the way it is. But I recently passed the ten year mark of being laid off from a certain showbiz-related news program where I had worked for several years, which was a pretty good job all things considered, and I can’t help but think about it for a few minutes. The day I was let loose from there back into the world remains as vivid now as it was then and my life has never really been the same since. That’s going to happen. The people I know now are different and my world is different which isn’t to say that’s a bad thing. And, yes, it’s weird that I’m thinking about it after all this time but anniversaries have a way of doing that to you, so I’ll get over it soon enough. Anyway, the day this happened in December 2009 was exactly one week after seeing Jason Reitman’s UP IN THE AIR on opening day, a film about the very thing I would soon be going through, I just didn’t know it at the time. My feelings about UP IN THE AIR have always been somewhat conflicted as a result since, after all, what did Jason Reitman and George Clooney have to tell me about being unemployed? About what that actually felt like? Ten years later, the movie still has an undeniable slickness that makes me keep it on cable in the background but I still feel like I’m watching from a distance as if being reminded how this film is only ever going to care so much. Removed from the feeling that it’s trying to say something about the-time-we’re-living-in is an equal sense that the film never wants to stray too far from first class and spend all that much time worrying about what it’s never going to be able to change. <br />
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Ryan Bingham (George Clooney), expert corporate downsizer for employment consulting firm CRC, spends much of his life flying one from one city to another with the simple job of firing people. Along with a sideline gig as a motivational speaker, he is forever in love with his first class lifestyle of impermanence maintaining almost zero attachments and never having to stay in one place for long, even meeting a businesswoman named Alex (Vera Farmiga) with a similar attraction to life out there on the road between places. But when he’s called back to his home office in Omaha, Ryan is faced with the possibility of it all going away due to the arrival of Natalie Keener (Anna Kendrick), a young and ambitious new employee at the firm with the goal of making all business done remotely over video links, completely removing any need for Ryan to travel. With boss Craig (Jason Bateman) still figuring out how to proceed, Ryan is sent back on the road with Natalie so she can learn about what he does and what their job really entails. They are soon met by Alex but this new relationship along with an impending family wedding causes Ryan to finally question everything he’s become for the very first time. <br />
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Revisiting UP IN THE AIR a decade later, far removed from its status as an Oscar contender (six nominations, zero wins), the film plays as a smooth ride with a tight script and solid role for George Clooney, even if it never seems willing to stare into the pit of the moment the way the great MICHAEL CLAYTON featuring the actor did two years earlier. With a screenplay by Reitman and Sheldon Turner based on the novel by Walter Kirn, more than anything UP IN THE AIR feels like what began life as a satire on the coldblooded nature displayed by corporate America as people are tossed out that was eventually smoothed over to better relate directly to the present moment in a more hopefully empathic way. The remnants of the darker approach still hang in the air, the briefly seen Zach Galifanakis getting fired introduced for comic effect which takes a shift as we glimpse his actual pain and the plot point of the business plan to fire people via what we now commonly think of as Skype serves as a reminder of the ruthlessness that’s always going to be involved no matter what the business entails. Playing a little now as a time capsule of the hope of early Obama and Blackberries everywhere, the film’s well-publicized gimmick of using actual victims of such cutbacks to respond to their firings lends the snappy patter a jolt of verisimilitude with the genuine hurt and anger coming through. But looking at it now the conceit feels slightly undercut when at one point the film removes the documentary element to have it actually cut to the lead actors, turning the pain of real people into reverse shots for George Clooney and Anna Kendrick to react to, even if the genuine pain is still felt through their eyes in these moments. <br />
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At the very least it’s the characters that are the film’s greatest strength with plotting loose enough that it’s easy to miss exactly why Natalie travels with Ryan in the first place, which is fine, and the way it dispenses with that plot for long stretches allows the film to breathe as it focuses on them, with sequences like the tech conference party during a stay in Miami charmingly playing a little like a memory recalled later on with a wistful fondness. But there’s maybe too much of a wannabe Alexander Payne vibe to the approach both on the surface (Omaha home base, Rolfe Kent score) and down below (character examination during a long trip where someone is confronted with certain truths about their life) with what feels like a sort of meta commentary on what we presume to be the secret life of George Clooney. Along with a dose of 70s-style naturalism that never feels entirely lived in, the smoothly laid out plot schematics always feel a little overly calculated when they have to come into play, as if the characters are shifted around on the chess board because the movie tells them to as opposed to simply being. <br />
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It’s the look at Ryan Bingham’s daily rituals while traveling that serves as part of the approach, the calming reverse of Edward Norton’s outlook on the lifestyle in FIGHT CLUB from ten years earlier, so the emphasis is really on the way he lives, one hotel to the next, one airport to the next, the rapid fire montages of his travels appropriately seeming out of a commercial. The idea of what this job is doing to the insides of the people in this industry that’s designed to thrive in misery is left mostly unexamined, the ‘can sir’ one flight attendant asks him about in a brief misunderstanding left hanging. His life never lingers in the moment so the film never does, at least not enough, the ‘What’s in your Backpack?’ motivational speech aimed at getting rid of all the dead weight in your life is used as the partial framing device to all this, an extension of the speech he falls back on during firings to convince people that this is a sort of rebirth. All he does is send them out into limbo which, after all, is where he’s happiest, so why shouldn’t they be, with nothing but the totem like device of those packets they hand out to everyone being let go which I suspect will do them little good at all beyond giving them the strength to actually walk out of that room to face the inevitable. <br />
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Maybe it’s fitting that there’s a hollow quality to all this slickness in the world Ryan embraces, gladly residing in that limbo with the closest thing he has to a friend a fuck buddy who’s moved on so bonding with Alex during their meet cute over a mutual love of how synthetic the lifestyle is and the brief nudity courtesy of a body double for Vera Farmiga plays as a superfluous element which feels cheap and artificial but maybe that’s part of the point. Even when we go with Ryan to the more genuine world of his family life back in snowy Wisconsin it still feels a little manufactured as if the handheld modesty on display is what equals reality. As it is, one of the most natural moments in the entire film becomes the awkward silence between Ryan and his sisters, siblings that have nothing to say to each other beyond the awkward smiles, which suddenly feels like it takes take place in a world that is completely recognizable. <br />
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As much as the emphasis on showing life out on the road and those establishing gods eye view of all the cities flown into, Reitman’s direction is often best when he cuts out the talk so at times there’s the feeling the film knew how to slice certain scenes down to the essentials and play out moments through the eyes so the film is ok with spending moments with the characters in those silences, whether a shot of Kendrick sitting in a room of empty chairs that were likely once occupied by people no longer working there or the way Clooney’s eyes read at the possibility of anything at all messing with his enjoyment up there. The lengthy conversation between the three leads after Natalie is dumped by her boyfriend via text also feels like it genuinely comes out of the characters and plays as totally relaxed even as it goes for a few obvious laughs, each of them letting their veils drop as much as they’re willing to. “Life can underwhelm you that way,” Farmiga’s Alex tells Natalie at one point and it’s one of the better lines in a film that ultimately is about people who try to keep that from happening but some of them know a little bit more about dealing with that than others, the way Ryan Bingham treats his job with seriousness—the film isn’t that callous about its subject—but he also wants to keep away from the real world for as long as he can. <br />
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The bitterness towards it all felt more palpable a few years later in Reitman’s <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2012/05/lone-march-of-being-special.html">YOUNG ADULT</a>, likely thanks to that script by Diablo Cody and the way UP IN THE AIR discards the shocking fate of one victim feels like a reminder that some people are mere collateral damage who can’t be saved, not in the midst of all this cruelty. The way Natalie reduces one older guy the size of a linebacker to tears as he’s fired via the video linkup makes her pat words of encouragement ring all the more hollow, the workflow of downsizing she focuses on morphing into actual pain she has no idea what to do with. The way Ryan has to finally use his motivational skills for the exact opposite reasons he’s gotten used to, to talk someone into not letting go for once becomes his own harsh lesson of a certain truth that he always refused to grasp for himself. The moral of UP IN THE AIR seems to be not about knowing what you want but realizing what you’re missing out on, the pitfalls of what it is to be a ‘human parentheses’ as Ryan finally realizes he is. You have to be somewhere in this world after all. In the end, if you’re everywhere, you’re nowhere.<br />
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The film is still a smooth ride although maybe it needed to be more than that, maybe we needed to feel the uncertainty Ryan finally grasps a little more in the end, the stylized shot of Natalie moving away from him late in the film serving as a reminder of a connection he’ll never be able to hold onto. Granted, most people only change so much by the time they get to a certain age and when he lets go of his suitcase at the end it feels like a tiny, significant step, a realization of someone who never realized how trapped he really was in all that freedom and what it actually meant. But in being about someone who realizes what he never had, this also means it’s never about what he lost. This never becomes someone who chooses to quit his job or refuse to fire someone since that wouldn’t have accomplished anything and even if the character does walk out on his big motivational speaking engagement, another one of those plot points that feels a little too calculated, it’s not like he gives up anything so instead of a Billy Wilder ending the movie gives Ryan Bingham more of a Hal Ashby ending, another version of Warren Beatty’s George Roundy at the end of SHAMPOO as he realizes what he’s missing a little too late. Looking at the film now as a flashback of The Way Things Were in 2009, or in the early months of 2010 when it’s set, it becomes clear how everything has gotten meaner this many years later and by now there’s no end in sight. To this film, firings and layoffs are a natural force, like the weather. I guess the cruelty is too. The distance Ryan and his company keeps is almost troubling and feels more troubling now in a world that has only gotten more willing to discard you when that time comes. If anything, the film is a reminder that it’s nice up there in first class, I say that from experience. Of course, eventually you have to leave. That’s where the world is. That’s where your home needs to be. <br />
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It’s now been several years since George Clooney last appeared onscreen in a feature film so it’s hard not to think we’re missing a few films he might have gotten made that could have at least aspired to what this does, the sort of film he was striving to make—at times with more success than others—during the peak of his star power. I miss the guy. Even if you can sense when he knows exactly how to play certain moments to get the audience on his side he’s always totally relaxed and confident here which helps make the vulnerability that finally emerges seem totally real. The way he holds himself onscreen means no one, no one, can come close to saying an exasperated, “Oh, fuck,” the way he does and damn it, he’s really, really good. Vera Farmiga projects just as much confidence in her own way, offering a cool authority that plays well off Clooney during their initial flirtation and especially when it becomes clear how much more assured of her situation she really is while Anna Kendrick is especially strong, the chipper quality of her line readings displaying her eagerness that cut through with moments where it feels like what’s going on is told through her eyes, truly seeing what she’s chosen to be a part of. The strong supporting cast also includes Jason Bateman as Clooney’s boss bringing a callous pragmatism to what he’s in charge of, a particularly effective Melanie Lynskey who is so good in projecting reams of unspoken feelings about the brother she barely knows during her few minutes onscreen, Danny McBride with a vulnerability unlike any of his other roles, Jason Reitman regular J.K. Simmons nailing his one scene getting fired and Amy Morton who brings a grounded determination to her role as the sister who won’t let Ryan get away with any excuses for even a moment. <br />
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Even if it seemed like a lot of things were collapsing during the last few years of the aughts, looking back on it now it becomes clear that we didn’t know how good we had it. The day after I got laid off in December 2009, during a very rainy weekend, I got a call from a certain friend of mine who asked me to meet her at the House of Pies where over coffee she gave me her own version of Ryan Bingham’s “Anyone who ever built an empire or changed the world…” speech. Only since it wasn’t her job it was for the right reasons. So what she said helped, it really did, and it isn’t much of a stretch to say that I may not still be writing this if not for what she did that day. The eventual falling out a number of years later turned out to be more painful than losing a job ever could be, especially one where I had to fake an interest in the Kardashians. And maybe I still don’t quite know where the last ten years have led me to. I don’t know where I am now. I only know that there are people who come into your life and leave a mark which never fully goes away, something I still don’t quite know what to do with. Which, no matter how aware I am of my own ambivalence towards it, is of course a reminder of what this film about, the things those real people who have been laid off say near the end about what really matters in the grand scheme of your life. That you have those people close to you which, in its way, can be its own kind of pain. And in between all that is the luxury of being up there, where you really want to be, where you like to think you’re safe, at least for as long as they let you stay. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjiGfuY94Dc4CXibVgHh_-X95I-DzB0j5KjiTShA7-Wjd9mopBNbnOkxf6V_pZ5FZOjUi2sB74xyeQmLgNZqv3tUYao6tg9DVRJ0LV6cTsUAmRIEYAgnOe5yszat2qsS1wraEFIT_ZZnw/s1600/UpintheAirP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgGjiGfuY94Dc4CXibVgHh_-X95I-DzB0j5KjiTShA7-Wjd9mopBNbnOkxf6V_pZ5FZOjUi2sB74xyeQmLgNZqv3tUYao6tg9DVRJ0LV6cTsUAmRIEYAgnOe5yszat2qsS1wraEFIT_ZZnw/s400/UpintheAirP.jpg" width="270" height="400" data-original-width="520" data-original-height="769" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-65469991827814871332019-12-31T21:49:00.001-08:002020-01-05T10:41:43.379-08:00The Rest Is Waiting<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEineaZwMXp516sdN-8IsbzkT6sPGbhU2wlspzx75zRsTFwyBxMPN1pIDxdnfl7mgXe_St9aaArDAbAfkfgP9mmX8sJkokqlvGfYqMgpR0q38VFaGQuzLs0nAeDBtxRHHg3CCiBkN5WX4R2I/s1600/vlcsnap-2019-12-31-10h55m13s977.png" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEineaZwMXp516sdN-8IsbzkT6sPGbhU2wlspzx75zRsTFwyBxMPN1pIDxdnfl7mgXe_St9aaArDAbAfkfgP9mmX8sJkokqlvGfYqMgpR0q38VFaGQuzLs0nAeDBtxRHHg3CCiBkN5WX4R2I/s400/vlcsnap-2019-12-31-10h55m13s977.png" width="400" height="216" data-original-width="853" data-original-height="461" /></a></div><br />
It can be near impossible to avoid thinking of the past, especially at the end of the year. Remembering what you did, how you screwed up, or if you did anything at all. And sometimes you think even further back, as far back as a decade, wondering what your world used to be and how things changed, going over the things you did wrong and what you could have done instead. In our minds we hope for the best, we have to, but it can be difficult to face the truth as we wonder how much time we really have. Too much becomes our own fault if we’re willing to admit it. So at the end of the year, at the end of the decade, maybe all we have left is the chance to just wait for the next one, the next chance to make everything all right. That is, if there really is a chance. <br />
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If Bob Fosse is ever in danger of being forgotten that was likely delayed in 2019 with the airing of the FX miniseries FOSSE/VERDON which was enjoyable but never very substantial in spite of inspired moments from some of the performances. Drawing conclusions based on what seemed to be its own thematic goals more than anything having to do with history, watching it was like eating halfway decent Chinese food; enjoyable to munch down on but it left me feeling empty in the end. Some of the stylistic approach was clearly inspired by Bob Fosse’s own films, because how could it not be? And when I say ‘stylistic approach’ I’m basically saying it was hard to watch it at times and not think, isn’t this just ALL THAT JAZZ? And it didn’t even spend much time on ALL THAT JAZZ. Regardless, ALL THAT JAZZ turned 40 this year and it wasn’t Fosse’s last film but feels like it was meant to be, possibly serving as the final statement of a creative life and everything that it meant. ALL THAT JAZZ is exhilarating and addictive like few other films I can think of, one that draws me back to examine it, to wrestle with it, to try to deal with it, wishing that what happens could go in another direction even as you know the inevitable. Kind of like a recent decade I can think of. But unlike that decade, as I go back to this film I ultimately embrace it. It means too much to me, it speaks too much to me. It’s about as close to a perfect film as I can think of but it’s also better than that, not a pristine jewel but a complicated piece of work that’s still messy enough to allow for exploration of its parts and what it all means while trapped in the parade of our own lives. Maybe while trying to figure it out I find myself in there, but I suppose we all do. <br />
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Legendary choreographer Joe Gideon (Roy Scheider) is beginning rehearsals on the new Broadway show that he’s directing while simultaneously attempting to finish editing his latest film. As his days ping-pong back and forth among the various projects with the women in his life all a part of it, including ex-wife Audrey (Leland Palmer), off-and-on girlfriend Katie (Ann Reinking) and daughter Michelle (Erzsebet Foldi) while in his head we see Joe with the only women he can be totally truthful with, a spectre of death named Angelique (Jessica Lange) who of course knows all his secrets. But when he’s rushed to the hospital with chest pains in the middle of working on the show, Joe’s total denial of his condition soon begins to catch up to him and he can’t fight where all this is going for very much longer. <br />
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It’s showtime, folks, as Joe Gideon says to the mirror every morning with his Vivaldi tape playing as he puts on his face on for the world, ready to start the performance all over again, even if he knows he can’t hold this face forever. Written by Robert Alan Aurthur and Fosse, ALL THAT JAZZ is an extraordinary film but it’s the kind which feels like it was never meant to be anything but an extraordinary film. What would be the point if it wasn’t? A musical unlike any other, an examination of the Broadway world and a man at the center of it with an energy to it all that puts us right in there. So much of what we’d ever need to know about Joe Gideon is his morning ritual complete with cigarette hanging from his mouth in the shower, but it’s the opening audition montage set to “On Broadway” that tosses us in without any orientation as if we’re one of those dancers looking to be validated by this legend but it gets us to understand the world instantly. The desperation of all those hopefuls isn’t his problem and to him the work which leads to all that brilliance is all there is, searching for his own inspiration as he choreographs his dancers, no qualms about fucking some of them who he may or may not decide to cast before torturing them to do better. Even the ones he’s not fucking get some of that treatment anyway. <br />
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The cutting style is as insistent as <a href="https://mrpeelsardineliqueur.blogspot.com/2019/01/divine-decadence.html">CABARET</a> but this isn’t an extension of Fosse’s earlier films as much as a culmination of them but of course it’s really a culmination of his whole life anyway. And even more than those other films ALL THAT JAZZ is unrelenting in its pacing with each new shot adding to the intensity of the neverending delirium. To be on the wire is life, says Joe, the rest is waiting. It’s a justification for what he does, the pain he causes, the sound of coughing heard right from the start which serves as a tell of where this is all going to go. Angelique points out how theatrical the phrasing is while also getting Joe to admit that he didn’t come up with it. Everything about his life needs to be theatrical and even if someone in this day and age doesn’t know Bob Fosse, it’s impossible not to get a sense of a life that never slows down, that never waits. And Joe Gideon clearly never had any interest in waiting. <br />
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ALL THAT JAZZ is no doubt supposed to be too much, gloriously so, with an approach that goes beyond what you'd expect from any normal film with truly phenomenal musical numbers that go on and on to the point that you realize they have to be that long to mean as much as they do. Even the stylistic extremes it goes to during unexpected moments add to this feel whether the hospital delirium of the second half or the way all sound drops away during the script reading when Joe mentally checks out. But it’s how Fosse seems to find a way to shoot every moment with such life and vitality in the first place, the spectacular Airotica number for the backers of his new musical NY/LA featuring the truly awesome Sandahl Bergman coming out of seemingly nowhere and the power it gives off even in that tiny rehearsal space makes us dream not only of the fully produced version but offers an unexpected intensity which allows us to fully believe in his talent that's been talked up so much, even if it does come out of his own insecurity and desperation. That’s what the film does, especially in the first hour when it’s the creativity being focused on and it plays like a drug. <br />
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Over multiple viewings through the years I would gravitate towards that first hour and its unrelenting exhilaration, then feeling always a little let down when Joe entered the hospital for the second half where it would feel like the momentum halted. But seeing the film in 35mm at a New Beverly screening a few years ago (paired with LENNY) it all made sense—this is one of those nights at that theater which has stayed with me, a packed house (an audience that included Robert Forster, who we lost this year) that gave the night an undeniable energy felt from the unrelenting power of the second half that as it went on became emotionally overwhelming by a certain point, taking this film I’d already seen before multiple times and transforming it via that cinematic experience into something that I didn’t want to let go of, just as Joe Gideon doesn’t want to let go, as if the film ever let you off the hook that energy would dissipate. <br />
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Just as Bob Fosse was and in some ways still is, Joe Gideon is a god in this world with the way all his dancers look at him, whether he’s already fucked them or not, always looking for the answers they know his genius will provide, no matter how much he anguishes and the seduction of one of them set to Nilsson’s “Perfect Day” playing catches the perfect mood for the seduction. With Joe looking out from the cutting room of his big budget film at a strip club across the street to remind him that the two aren’t so far apart, the cynical laughs come from the inside sleaze of this world and the money men without a shred of art in their bones, so it’s all how much his life when he’s not around to be an artist comes down to dollars and cents. At times in watching this film I’ve wanted a little more of the world around these people, connected to all those young girls limbering up all over the place and the 1979 New York out there on the streets but that’s never where Joe Gideon is, he’s inside in that showbiz world where it feels like you’re going to live forever, like the 24 year old who finally gets “a house in Beverly Hills” that his ex-wife Audrey is so determined to play. It’s an entire world based on putting off death, no matter what the subject of the musical is (I’d still like to actually see NY/LA, whatever it might be) but it's also about putting off anything resembling an actual commitment that would take you away from it all just as Ann Reinking, more or less playing herself as girlfriend Katie, knows which buttons to push as she desperately tries to get him to give her a reason to stay. <br />
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The film is overwhelming but it has to be and it’s the only way for it to make sense, while Joe Gideon stands in the center of it, already aware of what everyone wants from him. Gideon’s latest film that he’s editing is so obviously meant to be LENNY it doesn’t even try to hide that, with the film’s comic played by Cliff Gorman, who won a Tony for playing Lenny Bruce on Broadway only to have Dustin Hoffman take the role in the film version. The glimpse at the cutting process shows him listing off the five stages of death as part of his stand-up routine, patter that gets repeated a few too many times and it’s maybe the one thing in the film that strains my patience over multiple viewings. But it’s not like subtlety is ever really the goal, either in this world or in this film and even the repetition feels intentional, a reminder of what Joe is working on running in his head over and over so when his film gets trashed by a critic for giving free reign to the star, after all the time he’s spent obsessing over every tiny change in the cutting room, it’s a clear sign that the people who aren’t there for the creation don’t know. Joe’s talent, if not his brilliance, is never in question, but it’s clear none of that means anything if everything else is ignored. Maybe in trying to analyze ALL THAT JAZZ all anyone can do is simply not become that snarky critic and just try to understand what the film means for them deep down in a way they’ll someday have to admit to themselves. <br />
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It’s the whole death thing that matters in this freeform dive through Joe Gideon’s mind, going perfectly with the forced gallows humor that he can’t keep up forever. That attraction to it he’s always had only adds to the delirium of his interior dialogue with Angelique and the whole unresolved Fellini quality of these scenes, always feeling like there’s something outside of the frame in his subconscious. It’s like the film is a non-stop war between the danger of his lifestyle and how much living in this world gives us the rush of creativity, whether the eagerness of the dancers in the rehearsal scenes or with Katie and Michelle’s private performance of “Everything Old Is New Again” just for Joe, serving as the feeling of what this music does, what all this does, if only it could always be this joyous, keeping the cynicism at bay for a few minutes. Through all this is a game of which past Fosse project is being referenced at any given time, not to mention whatever he’s pulling from his own life and all of this detail means every new shot pierces your soul, shepherded by the editing mastery of Alan Heim (who appears onscreen as the editor of THE STAND-UP, adding one more mirror to things) in connecting the richness of those images photographed by Giuseppe Rotunno together. It all remains completely alive right up until the very last shot, which as anyone who’s seen the film knows is the way it has to be. <br />
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However critical (or self-critical) the film is about him, it’s done in a way that is deliberately self-regarding as if Bob Fosse himself in the guise of Joe Gideon saying, I’ll hate me enough for both of us so please love me. Which is still a justification in the midst of all that self-loathing but it still feels more honest than the FOSSE/VERDON approach of simply trying to poke holes in the myth. The unrelenting and extraordinary “Bye Bye Life” sequence which serves as the finale puts the lie to the concept of people criticize a scene like this for simply being indulgent because there is no film otherwise, there’s no way it would come anywhere near this power if it wasn’t. And without it we wouldn’t feel the tragedy of what’s being lost and grieved in the shot of Joe’s daughter embracing him one last time. There's no point in saying 'if only he could have known' because of course he did. It just didn’t do any good. He is who he is. We’re all who we are as we get closer to the end, facing a little piece of truth at the end of each year, like no business I know. <br />
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Roy Scheider, Oscar-nominated for this performance, is absolutely remarkable and totally transformed, without an ounce of his more familiar screen persona and light years beyond anything else he ever did, making me wish we’d gotten more of this side of the actor in the following years but how many films like this are ever made? Even if the film has to shoot around how he’s not really a dancer, Scheider’s very physicality in every movement sells it and he perfectly finds the balance of where his brilliance comes from, how he can command a room even while that self-loathing is never far behind. Maybe because in spite of everything we still see ourselves in there. Playing Joe’s ex-wife, the remarkable Leland Palmer (who I guess we mostly know for serving as the namesake for a certain famous fictional character) finds just the right balance between her bitterness and being unable to hide her unending love for him, always finding something unexpected in the tiny moments including the very last thing she does in the film. As his current girlfriend, Ann Reinking builds up to the yearning she feels for him until it can only be contained in giant close-up, desperate for a shred of his love, whatever he really feels. Erzsebet Foldi as Joe’s daughter is almost too believable in what looks to be her only screen appearance, displaying such directness when acting with Scheider and such joy in her musical numbers that provides more raw emotion than anything else in the film while Jessica Lange, somewhere between KING KONG and TOOTSIE, tantalizes as the vision of death outside the main world of the film but always ready to challenge Joe on his legend, knowing what has to come eventually. Every performance, however small, fits perfectly including Deborah Geffner’s dancer looking to be a movie star and willing to be seduced by Joe, the desperation of Anthony Holland’s songwriter to keep the show going, Ben Vereen’s oozing insincerity as “O’Connor Flood” always making introductions on his variety show and the nasty, fragile ego of John Lithgow as rival director Lucas Sergeant. <br />
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Like it or not, the end of the year always feels like waiting anyway. You’re done with the holidays, itching to get back to whatever it is you do and just want to see the damn ball drop already. But The End is still something we think about since it can mean a lot of things. Even Bob Fosse made it another eight years after this so there was no way for him to know everything about it, not even after making this film. For a film about The End, ALL THAT JAZZ is still alive like few other films I know. Maybe because in its way the film is saying don’t be afraid of all that, just try to do a few things better while you’re here. Don’t fuck up. That’s the sort of lesson worth taking from what might be one of the best films ever made. So, as the New Year approaches, it’s back to waiting as I get ready to begin again. Sometimes we don’t have a choice. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWVTOgwvpK9kkqgGQ0hAqpmPJ3wpOzzWq2IOy4-Qum34Hhl1bTJ1tljHmjvaREcmPBlFsjrpT-6v8uMTMsecDTYQwTVb_MRsSajUBjjzXNQ7sl3XylTAIrK9Y6MbRR_T9ncC2o_9Q7Lxn5/s1600/AllThatJazzP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEhWVTOgwvpK9kkqgGQ0hAqpmPJ3wpOzzWq2IOy4-Qum34Hhl1bTJ1tljHmjvaREcmPBlFsjrpT-6v8uMTMsecDTYQwTVb_MRsSajUBjjzXNQ7sl3XylTAIrK9Y6MbRR_T9ncC2o_9Q7Lxn5/s400/AllThatJazzP.jpg" width="271" height="400" data-original-width="511" data-original-height="755" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com2tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2118574901486983093.post-36809263193315368782019-12-17T19:52:00.001-08:002019-12-17T19:52:18.473-08:00Good Against The Living<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MKVnY_OpIJIlHIyAxxx0z3xkfCJRt17secQLpWGbTNHaCu4Vjc0rMe_7Dce2gaMOWa530HcTSNiFDF9boRN0Vs6KfktRO0akO_vzfHgss8IH9QFAY0ZqmNXJs3Q9yx6dDO_5xJ0kf3b0/s1600/StarWars16.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEi1MKVnY_OpIJIlHIyAxxx0z3xkfCJRt17secQLpWGbTNHaCu4Vjc0rMe_7Dce2gaMOWa530HcTSNiFDF9boRN0Vs6KfktRO0akO_vzfHgss8IH9QFAY0ZqmNXJs3Q9yx6dDO_5xJ0kf3b0/s400/StarWars16.jpg" width="360" height="400" data-original-width="1440" data-original-height="1600" /></a></div><br />
At the end of AMERICAN GRAFFITI, Richard Dreyfuss as George Lucas avatar Curt Henderson looks down from the plane taking him away from childhood in Modesto where below he sees the elusive white T-Bird driven by Suzanne Somers one more time as if to say farewell to him, to his youth. He’ll never really find her but that’s ok. When it comes to destiny, you have to keep moving. You could ask what Luke Skywalker would have done if those droids had never shown up to take him away from his uncle’s farm on Tatooine but he would have figured out a way to leave eventually because that was his destiny. STAR WARS opened and exploded during the summer of ’77 when a few other films dealt with destiny in their own ways. In William Friedkin’s SORCERER, Roy Scheider travels to the ends of the earth to avoid punishment for his crimes but, as things turn out, he never travels far enough. Which in its way is just as inevitable as the ending of Martin Scorsese’s NEW YORK, NEW YORK which actually opened the same week as the Friedkin film in June of that year, presenting the breakup of Liza Minnelli and Robert De Niro as inevitable as their varying degrees of success. Each film plays as an example of what the directors saw as the possibilities of their place in the world and it’s all about whether you can still exist once you’re there. AMERICAN GRAFFITI is about the past, about leaving. STAR WARS, a futuristic look at what it presents as the past, is about the arrival. <br />
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The thing about George Lucas’ 1977 film STAR WARS is that it’s presumably meant for the kid in all of us, the kid still looking to discover what their own future is going to be. Of course, all this presupposes we actually want to let the kid out in the first place as long as we’re not too hardened by where we’ve ended up in life but it makes sense that a film like this is an immature one, about people who haven’t yet encountered all the hardships that come with age and failure, from the destruction of the planet Alderaan which barely even gets commented on fleetingly to the groundbreaking special effects which have a tinge of 2001: A SPACE ODYSSEY but after an opening shot where we take in the enormity of the Star Destroyer chasing the tiny ship belonging to the good guys it never quite pauses for the same kind of awe, always going for the sensation over the majesty. It’s not that there’s anything wrong with this approach and STAR WARS never wants to be a deep film anyway, never more complicated than all the potential for greatness that lies before you when starting out, a feeling you sometimes fight to hold onto and don’t always succeed. <br />
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The bare bones of the plot of STAR WARS don’t need to be gone over again, they barely matter anyway. It is, after all, a quest that seems connected to any other fantasy tale half-remembered from when you were a kid found in the story of Luke Skywalker, boy farmer on the desert planet of Tatooine in a faraway galaxy, who makes a discovery which takes him away to a magical place where he learns something about himself that places him on his path in life. It’s myth, that’s what it really is and never more complicated than that. The Death Star plans hidden away for him to find are the McGuffin, the mysterious power that is the Force with its light and dark sides is the morality, the plot is the excuse. <br />
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Of course, the plot does matter in the way the story is told and at times it matters brilliantly in how the elements are juggled with dialogue that breathlessly reveals all that exposition as instantly iconic. But there’s still the question of how much plot ever really matters anyway because more than its Wizard of Oz/Flash Gordon/Lord of the Rings/whatever else mashup of mythology so much of the film is about the emotional effect that comes from what the sensation delivers. STAR WARS in its own way is a combination of all films and what that larger than life mythos coming from any of them can mean to us deep down, with characters that are true archetypes we know everything about the second they appear onscreen, whether good and bad. Everything about them is clear and all we need to know is what they’re going to do next. <br />
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Serving as our entryway into the film, the droids R2-D2 and C-3PO only seem like they’re going to be the leads in the first fifteen minutes which in itself is one of the bravest things about the film, avoiding a real human connection for as long as possible but making them endearing as Laurel & Hardy-styled comic relief or maybe fools right out of Kurosawa or Peckinpah, commenting on the action and occasionally moving it forward, even if by accident, and once the humans take center stage everything about the world already makes sense. That humanity is found in the trio of Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill), Han Solo (Harrison Ford) and Princess Leia Organa (Carrie Fisher) and they’re the ones who really bring the film to life, each one instantly vivid in their characterizations. By the time we meet Luke we’re as acclimated to this world as he is, relating to his whining and staring at the binary sunset as he yearns to get away. He’s the one we lock into whether we want to admit it or not and his frustrations make sense just as much of Princess Leia’s defiance. The glimpses of her in actual distress are so fleeting and it’s as if much of her characterization can be found in the John Williams theme for her, an idealized vision of her set to music that she spends much of her screentime fighting against, looking to take control instead when her rescuers have no idea what to do. Han Solo, meanwhile, always seem to turn up in the film a little later than I expect, with loyal sidekick Chewbacca next to him, but he emerges so fully that he barely needs to be introduced anyway, a man who answers to no one except for the alien gangsters he’s being chased by, everything said about him is clear when confronted by bounty hunter Greedo over an old debt as if his AMERICAN GRAFITTI character Bob Falfa was reborn in this other galaxy and is suddenly given a reason to believe in something more than all the strange stuff he’s already seen. The older figures around them ground that feeling, given the task of bringing gravity to dialogue which hints at greater events around them particularly with everything implied in the very presence of Alec Guinness as Obi-Wan Kenobi, the former Jedi Knight who in his total calm seems to think back on past events with every glance and utterance. It’s his belief in the Force that provides the film with a center, someone who has seen more than he’ll ever talk about, instead carefully passing along his wisdom with such a calm that we instantly believe his reasons for not believing in luck and that there really is a larger world out there if we’ll only choose to look for it.<br />
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On a cinematic level it's meant to be an update of old serials using the filmmaking approach of the New Hollywood and every technological advancement imaginable which thinking back to the time it came out feels revolutionary, taking what was likely thought of as junk back in those days and turning it into something which is as good as it always felt like it could be in the covers of old science fiction novels, the all-powerful space station the Death Star serving as the dark fortress of it all with the image of the mysterious Darth Vader, the figure of all-purpose evil given a mysterious backstory and connection to the Force that Kenobi must confront. The strength of every moment is a part of the filmmaking prowess George Lucas brings to it and just as Steven Spielberg is always moving his camera in something like RAIDERS OF THE LOST ARK, Lucas as director is more about the sole purpose of working out the puzzle to put the shots together aided by the sharpness of the framing thanks to Gilbert Taylor, also cinematographer of DR. STRANGELOVE, A HARD DAY’S NIGHT and REPULSION, which crystalizes the way everything should look. Along with that look and the tempo taken from those acting styles it’s how every one of those pieces fits in with the pacing thanks to the editing by Paul Hirsch, Marcia Lucas and Richard Chew that makes the shots add up, not always about the individual moment but the way those frames go together, what in the days of Eisenstein would have been called the ‘montage cell’ in how every single shot is not just another part of a sequence but really just one piece of the overall body with a specific purpose. This approach is strongly revealed in some of the best set pieces particularly in the unrelenting kineticism of the TIE Fighters pursuing the Millennium Falcon after the escape from the Death Star but even simple dialogue scenes are given an extra kick by the movement found in the edits or those wipes during scene transitions meant to recall an old fashioned flavor of pulp combined with the naturalistic feel of what was still then the 70s approach, apparent in touches like the relatively sparse use of music at times which lets us pick out what really matters for ourselves. <br />
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The story is of course already in progress when the film begins with even what sounds like a key battle serving as nothing more than background in the opening crawl, just like C-3PO is all beat up and dirty for reasons we never learn. The characters aren’t impressed by everything around them so the film doesn’t need to be either and the conversational nature of the dialogue, revealing fantastic things in a matter of fact way, always gets to the point. There may be so much about this universe that isn’t found within the widescreen frame and so many questions about it all even though it’s probably futile to expect total logic from this but so much of what’s there allows us to fill in the blanks. The script, credited to Lucas, slices what we need to know down to its essentials while never getting too lost in all the fantasy jargon even with his fetish for lots of numbers referenced in dialogue whether the Stormtrooper named TK-421 who won’t respond or the new BT-16, whatever it is, that’s apparently quite the thing to see. The script was also reportedly worked on by AMERICAN GRAFFITI co-writers Willard Hyuck and Gloria Katz so the Luke-Leia-Han triangle plays a little as a revisit of the main relationships in their screenplay for the 1975 Stanley Donen film LUCKY LADY, another attempt at an old time pastiche which did more than just imply what was going on between the threesome of stars Liza Minnelli, Gene Hackman and Burt Reynolds, it literally put all of them into bed together. STAR WARS of course keeps the sex out of things and sticks to the enjoyable banter, a sense of carefree innocence in the air during the final moments as if these three will be perfect together the way they are. <br />
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As director, Lucas always operates with an eye towards the details whether all those ever-present Stormtroopers, the eternal mystery of the lookalike droid behind C3PO in the opening moments or even how the revolutionary Ben Burtt sound work makes R2-D2 a fully fleshed out character. But even when on the surface the action should be generic like the endless running around the Death Star, the scenes always have an extra kick whether laughs at just the right moment, how much the actors play the tone just right or just the unrelenting sense movement that never lets the tempo slow down for too long. Even the mayhem is placed correctly up against the eerie quiet of other moments, particularly when focusing on Obi-Wan Kenobi’s journey around the massive space station in the way he takes care of the tractor beam or the simple calm of finding Vader standing before him, waiting for the inevitable. The design of the Death Star and the coldness of the corridors that seem to go on forever add to that feel while each spaceship design has just the right amount of character to make us want to see what each of them can do. <br />
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This version of outer space is a different yet recognizable universe, with elements like the funhouse quality of all the creatures in the cantina scene, full of touches that add to the old movie tropes whether from old westerns or CASABLANCA and up against all that the special effects are groundbreaking, yes, but the way the rhythm of the film itself responds to it so to create this universe means there’s not a wasted frame, nothing is missing. It’s not that the film ever has a huge amount on his mind—buried under the intellectualism of the Eisensteinian cutting style and not so hidden left wing slant to the rebels in their fight against the evil Empire it’s about the emotion of the moment, a reminder that sometimes what the best films can do to give us this feeling, itself a kind of propaganda to inform us not through speech but the pure cinematic combination of sound and image. Even down to the final bars of the closing credits where the spectacular John Williams score, itself a tribute to both classical music and all sorts of Hollywood adventure films of the past seems to quote a passage from Alfred Newman’s “Street Scene” overture at the start of HOW TO MARRY A MILLIONAIRE or the use of the Fox CinemaScope extension in its fanfare at the beginning as a way to definitively announce that this is a larger than life Movie just like they used to make, at least in our dreams. <br />
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In the end, it feels like STAR WARS is about making the decision to go off and live the life which helps you comes to terms with that destiny, letting go of the past that terrifies you to figure out who you really are. In a way, Luke’s decision to turn off his targeting computer before his final shot at the Death Star’s exhaust port is an odd case of the film rejecting the technology it wouldn’t exist without yet it’s still the perfect conclusion to his arc here, to figure out the world by using whatever lies within yourself to make that leap forward. And even with all this technology to produce the visual effects the film plays as effortless as it should and the ever-present charm comes out of that feeling. That’s the masterful exhilaration of the final Death Star battle which is all about that pacing and how the unrelenting rhythm gets into our heads, the excitement that grows with every single new shot which allows it to be analyzed endlessly right down to the power of that cut from Peter Cushing’s Tarkin to the very last second of the Death Star right before the explosion. It’s a feeling we never get rid of that matters more than plot or where those revelations are going to lead ever could, always moving forward towards destiny.<br />
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The lead performances match the tone perfectly in all their excitement with the uncomplicated boyishness of Mark Hamill, the adroit fearlessness of Harrison Ford, the Hawksian determination of Carrie Fisher who also brings a touch of regality to the dialogue she plays with Peter Cushing, rolling his r’s like nobody’s business and having a glorious time in his ice-cold ferocity. Alec Guinness is particularly enjoyable to watch as he bounces off Hamill and Ford, his bemused nature bringing all the weight in the world to even the smallest of moments, even if it never quite brings out the desert eccentric ‘Ben’ Kenobi allegedly is. But this really doesn’t matter, not when his very presence adds so much and his final smile to Luke as he goes off to deal with the tractor beam provides all the human connection the film needs. Even the small roles pop like Richard LeParmentier in his run in with Vader as the cocky Admiral Motti, the weathered nature of Phil Brown and Shelagh Fraser as Uncle Owen and Aunt Beru but also particularly a few of the rebels during the climax who have stayed in our heads all these years and seem to develop full characterizations while doing nothing but spout battle jargon, each one achieving a certain kind of immortality in their X-wing fighters. <br />
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STAR WARS famously opened at Grauman’s Chinese on May 25, 1977, the day after a celebration at the theater to commemorate its fiftieth anniversary which included a special showing of KING OF KINGS. The symbolism of this is tough to overstate, almost dividing much of film history itself into what came before STAR WARS and what has followed after. And who knows what filmmaking is even going to be once we pass the fifty year mark on this one. Of course, just as STAR WARS, the film called simply STAR WARS, doesn’t really have a beginning it also doesn’t really end, merely concluding with this victory over the Evil Galactic Empire. Sure there was more to come but it’s as if by this point George Lucas really has embraced his destiny with this achievement, the blonde in the white T-Bird far in the past, and after that nothing else needs to be said. In the 70s up until STAR WARS was released it seemed like pretty much every ending was downbeat, except for maybe JAWS, ROCKY and FREEBIE AND THE BEAN. But after this and the rapture of CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND soon after those endings no longer seemed of the time, as if it was suddenly a film’s job to remind us that everything was going to be ok and nothing more. Not that it was the fault of these individual films, mind you, but it did happen. And even now the film that goes by the name STAR WARS plays as a reminder of how we always need to move forward, no matter how afraid we are of what might happen. Although we should still remember that happy endings are always happy until they’re not. Because even destiny doesn’t necessarily lead us where we think it will. No matter how exhilarating the trip is. <br />
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<div class="separator" style="clear: both; text-align: center;"><a href="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbw5-jGV8HQ2QjJ_clKicxpDnQ-gyjLxV8PBqXqrJfpCpXzhqPAsV8PZubGMDFNMusuewZI1u-H8CLR-yzSe9p24NGO__XtdjxyLVGXhP_QPRdWF3LnLdL3GRjs8ybBfUH9aw8h-1yMGiu/s1600/StarWarsP.jpg" imageanchor="1" style="margin-left: 1em; margin-right: 1em;"><img border="0" src="https://blogger.googleusercontent.com/img/b/R29vZ2xl/AVvXsEgbw5-jGV8HQ2QjJ_clKicxpDnQ-gyjLxV8PBqXqrJfpCpXzhqPAsV8PZubGMDFNMusuewZI1u-H8CLR-yzSe9p24NGO__XtdjxyLVGXhP_QPRdWF3LnLdL3GRjs8ybBfUH9aw8h-1yMGiu/s400/StarWarsP.jpg" width="262" height="400" data-original-width="981" data-original-height="1500" /></a></div>Mr. Peel aka Peter Avellinohttp://www.blogger.com/profile/10553482286909862975noreply@blogger.com0