323. Forrest Gump

Song - Sweet Home Alabama (Lynyrd Skynyrd)

Movie: Forrest Gump (Robert Zemeckis, 1994)

"She was born in a barn in 1898. She died on the 37th floor of a skyscraper. She was an astronaut."

Mad Men's (I have never seen the show, but its many iconic lines certainly make it sound appealing) Ida Blankenship was in fact an office secretary, but the sentiment applies to many 20th century (wo)men, of many different backgrounds. My grandmother for example was born in rural Serbia where carrots were a luxury. She went on to become a professor in physics, and marry into a family that played a major role in the Yugoslav resistance; after the war one of her brothers-in-law would share a table with Tito as he was deciding on the future of federal Yugoslavia, and then become a travelling womaniser. Our family is still not entirely clear how many wives and kids he had. My grandmother had two and was pregnant with my father during the greatest earthquake in Skopje's history. Since, she's experienced the moon landing, the Chernobyl nuclear disaster, the dissolution of Yugoslavia and the rise of digital communication technologies. These days, she will occasionally share nostalgic memories of Tito's Yugoslavia over video calls with family members in Germany, the Netherlands, New York, Florida and California, but if you are looking for critical assessments on cinema, she is definitely not the person to speak to. Unless you wanna know about Forrest Gump. She once said the film is a great encapsulation of what the American Dream can make possible. It's the only time I've ever heard her give a serious opinion on a movie. 

Forrest Gump has a somewhat diminished reputation these days, partly because it defeated Pulp Fiction at the Oscars, partly because it's seen as uncritical self-flattery of the post war generation. Pulp Fiction is very much a superior film, but art is not sports and the idea that any film can in any meaningful way be described as 'the best' is absurd; the Oscars would quickly become irrelevant if they seriously aspired to determine objective winners. However, getting non-movie people with communist sympathies to wax lyrically about the American Dream? That's pretty much their raison d'etre! I don't know if my grandmother would have heard of Forrest Gump if it didn't win the Oscar, but I am pretty sure she wouldn't have walked around the house quoting Samuel L: Jackson. In any case my grandmother is a wonderful woman who has led a remarkable life, but her story is not exceptional. The majority of adults living in the mid 20th Century saw, experienced and/or contributed in minor or major ways to events that would have seemed completely improbable based on their upbringing. Forrest Gump is essentially conceived as a representative of that generation and, yes, the film is absolutely uncritical self-flattery. But if you were born in a barn in rural segregated Alabama and saw Neal Armstrong within your lifetime you'd have to fucking pinch yourself too. 

Setting aside that Forrest Gump is born in a plantation house inherited from the founder of the Ku Klux Klan, the film is a sincere fantasy about a man overcoming his physical and mental disabilities through a combination of kindness, naive innocence, self-belief and folksy wisdom (hard to blame anyone for being allergic to lines like "Life is like a box of chocolate. You never know you what you gonna get") that allows him to become a successful college football player and shrimp entrepreneur, fight in the Vietnam war, contribute to Chinese-American diplomacy and inspire Elvis Presley and John Lennon. One of my favorite scenes in all of cinema is Marty McFly accidentally becoming an inspiration for Chuck Berry in Back to the Future. Forrest Gump is essentially a less inspired, but more technically accomplished (it's still astonishing to see how seamlessly Tom Hanks is integrated into archival footage) 2,5 hour rehash of that scene. I am a sucker for that kind of stuff, no matter how awful it can get. The John Lennon scene conceives the most contrived talk show dialogue possible just to have Forrest Gump inspire Imagine, but even that works somewhat because of its underlying truths. A lot of Beatles songs are inspired by unremarkable people, places and events that would have never found their way to the history books if some dime a dozen working class lads who happened to have enormous talent didn't put them to music. Besides, the Beatles' place in history is as much the result of the music they produced, as it is of the mass hysteria of their audiences. Forrest Gump gets a lot better than many other films how ordinary people's response to historical events becomes as much part of history as the historic event itself. 

The film is at its worst when it breaks its own illusion and explicitly infantilises Forrest, for example when it has him running past the end zone all the way to the stadium's exit. It finally ends with a cut to his football coach laughing it up about how dumb and fast his star player is. A scene where Forrest visits Jenny (Robin Wright) at her college has them having a sweetly intimate conversation at his level, only to pan back at the end revealing Jenny's roommate in the background pretending to be asleep to hide her terror of what she's just heard. A montage of Forrest and Bubba (Mykelti Williamson) cleaning up their army barracks has the latter talk endlessly about the various ways of eating and cooking shrimp. None of these scenes successfully capture the wacky tone they are striving too hard for, and are misguided anyway counteracting the film's core ideas. Zemeckis also puts additional emphasis on Forrest's childishness in his scenes with progressive anti-establishment figures, allowing him to make fun of them without quite taking a stance. Tom Hanks is great throughout, but his performance has been parodied and imitated so much it's hard to look at it with fresh eyes. 

322. The Story of Adele H.

Song - White Flag (Dido)

Movie: The Story of Adele H. - L'histoire d'Adele H. (Francois Truffaut, 1975)

Victor Hugo is a good father. His daughter Adele (Isabelle Adjani) has come all the way from Guernsey to Halifax to pursue a romantic obsession. She's lost her heart (and mind) to Lieutenant Albert Pinson (Bruce Robinson) and didn't cross an entire ocean to meekly accept being rejected. Besides, who knows, the next love letter might just find the right words into his soul. Her writing is self-consciously florid and overheated, going to great lengths to both express her talent and her affection. Albert remains uninterested, but there has always been an audience for authors who want to be seen as capital-W Writers. Victor Hugo actually falls in that category, but if his letters to Adele were anonymous they would never be recognised as the works of a Great French Novelist. They are simple expressions of care that could be written by any loving parent concerned about the wellbeing of his daughter. Victor Hugo never appears on screen, but many other people in Adele's orbit adjust their professional and personal lives to show her love. None of them are Albert...  

The British army has come to Halifax to monitor the latest developments in the American Civil War, turning the town into an excited hub of emerging globalisation. The city's administrative services seem to have seamlessly adjusted to support and facilitate transnational movements, while its residents are willing to go the extra mile to cater to its foreign guests. without asking too many questions about the occasional odd behaviour. Adele's landlady is the perfect example, protecting her lodger's character and integrity at every turn even when she has every reason for doubt. In other words, Halifax is the perfect place for wounded romantics to start anew, if they could only see the opportunities in front of them. Granted, gifting Victor Hugo's daughter a copy of Les Miserables is not the world's most attractive flirt, but the town's librarian is kind and attentive to Adele's needs, and would certainly make a better husband than the Lieutenant of her dreams. Albert is too emotionally immature to be genuinely put off by Adele's aggravating stalking, acting towards her with the same performative displeasure he showcases in all his social interactions. Isabelle Adjani got her breakthrough and an Oscar nomination for portraying Adele as a woman constantly teetering on the edge of sanity, but Bruce Robinson is even better as a guy who has, for reasons known only to himself, made the calculated choice to turn cold indifference into his entire personality.  

In reality, Adele Hugo was diagnosed with schizophrenia and her father had to put her in an institution. Truffaut doesn't emphasise her illness, but does present her as an unquestionably tragic figure whose blind obsession ruined her life. Truffaut however also understands that in moderation romantic obsession can be fun, and while the accumulation of misbegotten decisions becomes horrifically (self-)destructive, many of these decisions are presented in scenes of playful excitement that can almost stand on itself as short films. A spectacular static long take showing Adele crashing a house party to give Albert a note is essentially the entire film in miniature, fully evoking the rush of having ordinary conversations with regular people while knowing that your crush is somewhere out there in reach, doing something without you. 

321. Laura

Song - She's Not There (Carlos Santana)

Movie: Laura (Otto Preminger, 1944)

A wonderful film, let there be no doubt about that. However, she is there...

Noir at its very best leaves the world unmoored, forcing its heroes to reckon with their moral and rational framework. Even if the murderer is caught, love prevails, or the get-rich-quick scheme somehow works, everyone is still left with a lingering feeling that preconceived notions about what's possible, what's right, and what's true no longer hold water, raising unanswerable questions about what this new reality means. How should we act upon the knowledge that the truths we held to be self-evident are no longer, without being able to fully articulate what has come in their place? Midway through Preminger's film, Laura (Gene Tierney) arrives home from her trip to the countryside, finding Detective Mark McPherson (Dana Andrews) asleep underneath her portrait. He's had a long day investigating her murder. 

Laura's return is preceded by one of the few long dialogue-free scenes, following Mark around her apartment looking for clues about what might have happened. He is shown from odd camera angles, with the grand portrait always looming somewhere in the background. The musical score becomes more pronounced highlighting that something's afoot, or about to be, and as Mark falls asleep Preminger slowly zooms in, and then zooms out, signalling the passage of time, without depicting the experience of it. When Mark wakes up to Laura questioning his presence he is startled, while we rejoice - an already intriguing film just got more interesting! How can a person who was supposed to be dead suddenly be alive? Was someone else murdered, or is it perhaps Laura's appearance that is staged? Is Laura really Laura? Is Laura even really there or is she an apparition of the obsessed detective? The set up suggests the answers to these questions to contain great mysteries, but all of it is ultimately explained by a somewhat disappointingly ordinary combination of mistaken identities and male jealousy that won't turn anyone's world upside down. The road to get there is nonetheless exceptional.

The film is perhaps at its most noirish when it suggests that Mark's obsession with Laura is potentially irrational and self-destructive, but it's self-aware enough to know that it can't really meaningfully pursue that path. Have you seen Gene Tierney, the way she acts, the color of her hair (yes, even in black-and-white!)? The chemistry she has with every potential suitor is off the charts, and portraying Laura as a vulnerable woman who is still able to keep her cool and comfort under pressure only makes her more attractive. Dana Andrews too gives a great performance as a detective who is professional and grounded enough to not let his personal opinions and feelings distract from his job. Watching him think through what he can and can't express is one of the film's greatest pleasures, and undermining that would have been a mistake. Even then, it wouldn't have mattered that much. A screenplay this great, with such wonderfully stylised, flamboyantly witty dialogue can go in all kinds of directions with little harm. Especially when the cast is so at ease with it, and in sync with each other. I had never heard of Clifton Webb before, now I want to see every film he's made.

320. Images

Song - Suzanne (Leonard Cohen)

Movie: Images (Robert Altman, 1972)

'Sounds' would be an equally apt title. The opening scene shows Cathryn (Susannah York) writing her latest children's book "In Search of Unicorns" in her contemporary London apartment. As York narrates snippets from her work, she is suddenly interrupted by another unseen voice, faintly calling out her name. Robert Altman, who has been experimenting with sound design his entire career, then suddenly cuts to a still shot of an antique grail set to a John Williams's score that's more interested in combining various incongruous sounds than in establishing a coherent melody. As the sequence keeps swinging between the abstract and the familiar, we hear once again the disembodied voice calling out Cathryn. The plot is finally set into motion when Cathryn receives a call from a friend going on and on about her unsuccessful love life until mid-conversation the voice on the other end of the line suddenly changes, telling frightening stories about Cathryn's supposedly unfaithful husband Hugh (Rene Auberjonois). Hugh eventually gets home, convincing his wife that nothing unsavory has been going on, but when he leans in to kiss her, we suddenly see him from her point of view looking like Marcel Bozuffi.

'Ghost' would also be an apt title. We eventually learn that three years ago Cathryn had an affair with Rene (Marcel Bozuffi) that abruptly ended when he died in a plane accident. Her memory of a failed pregnancy is far hazier; even if it did occur, she couldn't say whose child she lost. Either way, she still suffers the consequences of whatever happened. Though aware that her mind is playing tricks on her, she is unable to consistently distinguish between reality and imagination. Her husband senses something is off, but doesn't seem to be the most discerning fellow even in the best of times, and his supportive suggestions often have the opposite effect. He is some sort of high-end businessman, but mostly specialises in terrible dad (anti-)jokes: "What's black and white and black and white and black and white? A nun falling down stairs!" is innocuous, but "What is the difference between a rabbit? Nothing, one is both the same!" may well be the closest the film gets to auto-commentary. Notably, the other two main characters are Marcel and his teenage daughter Susannah, portrayed respectively by Hugh Millais and Cathryn Harrison, while "In Search of Unicorns" is a real book, written by Susannah York. 

Images is mostly an exercise in style, highlighting that when you are as formally accomplished as Robert Altman you can basically make an entertaining film out of very little. Not much happens here beyond Susannah York hearing sounds and entering rooms, usually shown from her perspective as supposedly familiar spaces of slippery, consistently shifting composition. Altman has a lot of fun putting us halfway in the shoes of Cathryn. We are always aware that we have a better grasp of reality than her, without ever getting the full picture to be able to confidently assess the consequences of her actions. I enjoyed it a lot, but once it ends you do feel a bit like you've been pointlessly yanked around. I have yet to see Altman's other 70's movies, but would not be surprised if this turns out to be the weakest of the bunch.

319. Ghost

Song - Unchained Melody (The Righteous Brothers)

Movie: Ghost (Jerry Zucker, 1990)

Every once in a while a guy mostly known for making silly comedies with his brother will suddenly find himself directing a Best Picture contender. Green Book is one of those films that's become a victim of Oscar success. It's nowhere near one of the best films of any year, but I found its central relationship appealing and liked that it always looked at the world through Tony Lip's eyes, rarely letting modern, more enlightened sensibilities seep through. An unsophisticated oaf discovering the absurdities of racial segregation is not able to intellectualise them away, emphasising how plainly obvious it is that black Americans being discriminated is both a fact and an abomination. Even if it doesn't always work, the film highlights why excuses about the past being a different time don't really cut it. I have however never liked the Farrelly's tendencies to sentimentalise their crude and vulgar characters, reaching for ill-fitting pathos. That touch of insincerity that's always there in their comedies is unsurprisingly more pronounced in a serious-minded film and it's easy to see why many didn't buy Tony's anti-racist turn as 'inspirational'.

When looking for a funny comedy, Zucker-Abrahams-Zucker will always be a better bet than the Farrelly Brothers. To my surprise and delight, Ghost shares the "anything goes" spirit of Airplane! and The Naked Gun. It presents the dead as ghosts roaming around in the physical world, unseen by the living, but doesn't bother with any form of tedious world building. Any seemingly established rules are thrown out of the window if there is potential for a cool or fun moment. Late in the movie one of the villains dies and is immediately taken away by shadowy figures making horrifying sounds. It's a surprising, creepy scene that works because the film trusts the audience enough to introduce unexpected elements without feeling the need to set them up in advance or justify any in-universe logic. In addition, the movie also constantly changes its POV, allowing itself even more freedom to switch genres on the fly. It can be a slapstick comedy (Whoopi Goldberg playing a grifting medium who becomes terrified when she realises she can actually communicate with the dead is an inspired choice) in one scene, and an action-thriller in the next, and then swerve into fantasy, horror and romance without ever feeling tonally off. Zucker does make the boring choice during the film's emotional climax when Sam (Patrick Swayze) and Molly (Demi Moore) have one last opportunity to experience each other in the flesh. We see the entire scene from Sam's point of view, when Molly's would have been funnier and more mischievous.

Ghost is at its most romantic in the famous pottery scene, set to Unchained Melody, and performed by Demi Moore and Patrick Swayze with unabashed sensuality, emphasising how much they enjoy turning each other on. The two shots of a jukebox switching records (an almost literal mic-drop) bookending the scene suggest that Zucker and co. are very much aware of what they have created and basically give the audience permission to feel a certain way about it too. I loved the choice to show the jukebox in extreme close up, without any sense of the space surrounding it. It's a seemingly inconsequential shot that opens up many possibilities. The jukebox could theoretically be in the loving couple's home, adding a bit of colorful detail to what kind of people they are, but it's equally likely that Zucker is cheekily breaking the fourth wall, showing the viewers something non-diegetic. A third option is of course that the jukebox does belong to the film's world, without Moore and Swayze knowing. Later on, when Swayze becomes a ghost after getting shot, he will find that supernatural entities are constantly intruding in our lives, through barely perceptible actions that may well have major consequences. 

318. Citizen Kane

Song - The Best (Tina Turner)

Movie: Citzen Kane (Orson Welles, 1941)

I've always loved the story of Orson Welles directing a radio adaptation of War of the Worlds so convincingly some listeners thought an alien invasion was imminent, and have been equally intrigued by F for Fake, his documentary about an art forger that's supposedly somewhat of a forgery itself. I should have perhaps expected Citizen Kane to similarly straddle the boundaries between fiction and reality. I knew that it was supposed to be a thinly veiled biopic of media tycoon William Randoplh Hearst, but was surprised by its fascinating autobiographic layers. Welles was 25 years old and had no experience with film before directing, writing and acting in it, in the process establishing entirely new filmmaking rules and techniques that helped move the art form forward. Welles' genius was only matched by his bluster and bravado, and his willingness to speak his mind on all subjects, especially if he could rattle sacred cows. He presented himself as a larger than life self-consciously stylised slippery figure, with even his most seemingly innocuous statements adding to the mystery. Suggesting he could only make Citizen Kane after seeing Stagecoach over 40 times can be read both as genuine humility and gratitude and as a self-aggrandising expression of passionate obsession. 

As the inexperienced publisher of the Inquirer, Charles Foster Kane treats newspaper journalism as entertainment. He will say and write whatever sells and his main objective in the newsroom is to always be the centre of attention, dismissing any criticism with a quick quip. He is a great orator expressing a political interest in fighting fot the working man, but will sell out his principles whenever convenient. He will build an opera house for his wife to perform, knowing she is a terrible singer with enough integrity to feel humiliated by the false praise from his newspapers. His last words, 'Rosebud', are a mystery to every journalist in the country and attempts to piece the puzzle together mostly reveal that nobody, not even his closest companions, knows who Charles Foster Kane really was. What does become evident is that he was a self-consciously stylised figure of great bluster and bravado who would speak his mind on all subjects, creating an entirely new form of journalism in the process. 

Welles and cinematographer Gregg Toland revolutionised the use of deep focus cinematography, allowing everything in the frame to be seen sharply. That allows for some great shots showing how the action in the foreground affects what's happening in the background or vice versa, in line with the film's broader point that no man 's life can be explained through a single word. The deep focus cinematography allows Welles to reveal the broader context behind key events, even when the characters on screen are not explicity aware of what's happening on the otther side of the frame. There is also some spectacular use of dissolves making elegant and sometimes surprising spatial and temporal connections. The highlight is a zoom into a still photo of successful journalists at a rival newspaper turning into a moving image of the same journalists being photographed six years later as they are about to start working at the Inquirer. I also loved how the story of Kane's first marriage is entirely told through a montage of a series of breakfasts through the years. It lasts maybe less than 5 minutes but communicates more than some entire films on the subject. Citizen Kane contains many more narrative and technical interventions of major importance to film history; none are as great as Welles' lead performance. 

Welles may go big here, but he performs with no vanity, unafraid to highlight the hollowness and cruelty behind Kane's bluster and grandeur. When Kane, leading in a political campaign against an objectively ratty politican, is confronted by his rival over his adultery he is given the choice to either quietly withdraw or be publicly shamed, affecting his entire family. Kane chooses the second option, framing it as an act of personal integrity. Theoretically that's true - besides you don't win elections (or make Citizen Kane!) by choosing the first option, but the film shows that his choice gives the ratty politician the moral high ground, understanding that sometimes choosing a better outcome for others over your personal integrity is the right thing to do. There are many scenes, especially in the latter half of the film where Welles shows a similar critical self-awareness, one that can be quite rare to find in such auteur projects. This characterisation of Kane is however also connected to my only real gripe. I will always appreciate movies that counteract the stories nations like to tell about themselves, but an epic about how American society is shaped by men with completely vapid inner lives can't help but risk narrative inertia. I've had similar issues recently with The Irishman; Welles handles the challenge better than Scorsese, but still almost every scene ultimately leads to the same conclusion.

317. O Lucky Man!

Song - The Logical Song (Supertramp)

Movie: O Lucky Man! (Lindsay Anderson, 1973)

When Mick Travis (Malcolm McDowell) walks past graffiti exclaiming "Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals", O Lucky Man! suddenly clicks as a socialist feature-length version of "the goy's teeth" scene - basically a short moral parable set to Jimi Hendrix - in A Serious Man. The Coens tell of a Jewish dentist who finds potentially religious symbols  inscripted on the back of one of his secular patient's teeth. "Help me, save me" they supposedly read, leading the good doctor to many sleepless nights, digging through Jewish tomes trying to find out whether God communicates to him, and if so how. In his despairing quest for answers he eventually seeks out Rabbi Nachtner, hoping he might know if "Hashem" speaks to him through the "Torah or the Caballah". The Rabbi's answer is simple: "The teeth, we don't know. A sigh from Hashem? Don't know. Helping others? Couldn't hurt."  There is a subset of leftists who seem to treat socialism as a theoretical exercise whose main aim is the expression of Marx and Lenin's thoughts, rather than as a practical framework for materially improving people's lives. Unsurprisingly that often comes with an irony-poisoned worldview requiring to see every single aspect of mainstream society as a fundamentally stupid sham that only a select few comrades can see through.

For over two hours O Lucky Man! presents itself as an intellectualised satire of capitalism and contemporary British society, following Mick, a young coffee salesman whose simple charms and singleminded dedication to proftt fuel his career in the company, and eventually open doors into the even greater riches of the military-industrial complex. The many signifiers of high-minded artistry and postmodern sensibilities (references to Kubrick and A Clockwork Orange, a rock band let by The Animals' Alan Price serving as a Greek chorus commenting on the action until it suddenly finds itself part of the plot, silent film interludes, actors playing multiple roles, surrealist ambigous imagery) can't conceal that many off its potshots are incoherent and off-target. The 'surprising' promiscuity of a plain looking hotel hostess does not represent the dark underbelly of British commonality, no matter how hard you try. The use of blackface does not need to be inherently racist (see Assa, and Tropic Thunder), but it definitely is when used to present a white English actor as the president of a fictional African country, voluntarily and enthusiastically selling off his land to the British government. A scene early in the movie of the company manager rambling in front of a major poster of a stereotypical African farm lady joyously carrying coffee beans over her head makes a similar point much better and funnier. Detours to a military site and a hospital have some similarly effective and funny moments, but overstay their welcome without really making explicit what they are actually criticising, turning O Lucky Man! into a social satire that disdains instutions that save and kill lives equally, because it's mainly offended by the supposedly bourgeois attittudes governing them. 

In one of the sharper scenes, Mick becomes a patsy. He is arrested for the corrupt dealings between a British industrialist and the aforementioned African dictator, but while "justice" is served the deal still gets through. After five years in jail, he gets out a reformed man and the film suddenly becomes much more interesting, making an aesthetic turn for social realism. We now see the world as it is, rather than as a stylised intellectual concept. The film looks unflinchingly at the poverty in London's East End where the better off try to make ends meet in crammed one-room apartments, while the truly miserable live on the street hoping that the kind food truck lady will have enough for all. Mick gets accidentally recruited to stop a single mom from killing herself and starts quoting Shakespeare, Thomas Payne and other great Britsh writers of renown,  finding that their inspirational eloquence doesn't bring any food to the table. "Revolution is the opium of the intellectuals" appears in the next scene, indicating that the film might be self-aware. Even so, it still takes three hours to achieve what "The goy's teeth" managed in seven minutes, but it eventually leads to a rather moving ending that works much better in practice than you'd expect on paper. Ultimately, we are all just simple people trying to do our best.