17. Radar Love &...

Lyrics

I've been drivin' all night, my hands are wet on the wheel.
There's a voice in my head that drives my heel.
My baby call said I need you here.
It's half past four and I'm shifting gears.

When she's lonely and the longing gets too much,
She sends a cable coming in from above.
Don't need no phone at all.
We got a thing that's called radar love
We got a wave in the air
Radar love

The radio's playin' some forgotten song.
Brenda Lee's coming on strong.
The road has got me hypnotized,
As I spin into a new sunrise.

When I get lonely and I'm sure I've had enough,
She sends comfort coming in from above.
Don't need no letters at all.
We got a thing that's called radar love
We got a line in the sky
Radar love

No more speed I'm almost there.
Gotta keep cool, now, gotta take care.
Last car to pass, here I go.
The line of cars drove down real slow.
The radio plays that forgotten song.
Brenda Lee's coming on strong.
The news man sang his same song,
One more radar lover gone.

When I'm feeling lonely and I'm sure I've had enough.
She sends the comfort coming in from above.
Don't need no radio at all
We got a thing that's called radar love
We got a light in the sky
We got a thing and its called radar love
We got a thing that's called
Radar love


This is an enjoyable, but pretty forgettable song. I am not really a fan of Golden Earring, but it is quite unfortunate that there haven't been any other Dutch bands to follow in the rock footsteps of Golden Earring. This is probably the only Dutch band that consistently managed to make quality rock songs and that was quite successful at it. The lyrics made it pretty hard for me to link it to a logical movie and the video didn't make things easier either. Eventually I decided that you could make the case that the song is about a guy who thinks he can make love to a woman through the use of technology. The woman he is in love with could be a singer on the radio. There is actually a fairly recent movie where a woman is in love with a soap actor she has only seen on television, that fits this interpretation of the song.

The Movie: Nurse Betty (Neil LaBute, 2000)

Nurse Betty is the kind of movie I love the most. It is wildly inventive, unconventional and is often quite unique. It's plot may sometimes lack logic, but the director is more interested in making a point than in telling a conventional story. The movie can't be classified in one genre. It is sometimes melodrama, sometimes a harsh thriller and sometimes slapstick comedy. Sometimes it's all of this in one scene, yet it nearly always works. There are also some wonderful scenes, great performances and some great dialogue.

Betty is a naive, silly waitress, living in a crappy town in Kansas. Everyone is unhappy here. Not only because of the horribleness of the town, but also because they've resigned themselves to the fact that there lives won't change much. They will be forever stuck in this shithole in Kansas with their crappy jobs and lousy marriages. The only distraction in their lives is the trashy soap opera A Reason To Love. While they watch it they have the chance to escape their lives by fantasizing that maybe, someday they too will live in beautiful mansions in LA, have challenging jobs and be surrounded by beautiful people who will love them (at first sight). And Betty may be the biggest A Reason to Love fan in town. She is especially smitten by a character called Dr. David Ravell. One day while watching the soap her white trash no-good husband is brought home from his work by two hired criminals who want to retrieve some drugs he's stolen. The confrontation doesn't end well and Betty's husband is killed. This is witnessed by Betty, who gets in shock. She can't distinguish the real world from the soap opera anymore and thinks that everything David Ravell said in the soap was meant for her and that he is her ex-fiancee. So she sets out to L.A. to find and marry him. When the two killers find out Betty was a witness to their crime they go on a search to find and kill her The confrontation between the two killers (Morgan Freeman and Chris Rock(!) ) and Betty's husband is a fantastic scene. It's wonderfully written, incredibly tense and performed fantastically by everyone involved. It is, I would even say, on the same level as the first scene in Pulp Fiction.

The movie is thus about how we fantasize about having another, better more successful life than our real one. We create images in our head of the perfect different lives we could lead. The movie is not very subtle about this. Not just Betty, but every character we meet is chasing a fantasy of some other life he or she hopes lead. Morgan Freeman's character for example is projecting a fantasy of innocence and purity on Betty. In a scene we see him having an imaginary dance with her. By finding and loving her he hopes that his life as an awful criminal could somehow end and that she will somehow make him a better more decent person. 'Dr. David Ravell' is a soap opera actor who dreams that one day A Reason to Love will become truly great and rise above the trash that it is. So when Betty meets him on a party and addresses him as his character quoting lines from the show he doesn't see her as a deranged person, but as a brilliant actress who auditions for the show and who can stay convincingly in character for more then three hours. This was by the way of the funniest scenes I have recently seen. It's interesting that the movie only makes the point that we are all chasing fantasies of other lives, but doesn't say that this is necessarily a bad thing. Morgan Freeman gets killed because of his naive belief that he can make his life better through Betty, but sometimes chasing a fantasy can really make our lives better. As a waitress for example tells Betty she fell in love with the Italy of the books and movies. This made her eventually visit Italy. And while it may not have been like in the books or in the movies and while she is still a waitress, she had visited Italy and that was a great experience for her. It was the highlight of her life. And Betty eventually escapes the horrible life in Kansas and gets a role in A Reason to Love.

Some minor notes to end. I liked how much of this film is shot in the style of a soap opera. It is full of bright colors and bright lighting. And the house interiors are deliberately made to look more like movie sets of house interiors than real house interiors.
The actors are brilliant. Greg Kinnear and Renee Zellweger as David and Betty can play this kind of role in their sleep. But I was surprised how good Chris Rock is at playing a killer. And Morgan Freeman has recently had some unchallenging and boring roles. But here he reminds us that he can be (and is) a really great actor.