Lyrics
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen
Friday night and the lights are low
Looking out for the place to go
Where they play the right music, getting in the swing
You come in to look for a king
Anybody could be that guy
Night is young and the music's high
With a bit of rock music, everything is fine
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...
You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen
You're a teaser, you turn 'em on
Leave them burning and then you're gone
Looking out for another, anyone will do
You're in the mood for a dance
And when you get the chance...
You are the dancing queen, young and sweet, only seventeen
Dancing queen, feel the beat from the tambourine
You can dance, you can jive, having the time of your life
See that girl, watch that scene, diggin' the dancing queen
I don't know whether I will ever get to the 2000th song. It is quite a lot. But I certainly do hope to get as far as possible. Which means that I'll most probably get to Mamma Mia, which is in the 479th position. Which means that I'll have to watch the movie Mamma Mia. There are some tolerable ABBA songs, like Dancing Queen, and I actually like the next ABBA song on the list, The Day Before You Came. But most of their songs are really awful, so watching a schmaltzy musical full of their songs is not something that sounds like great fun to me. To make matters worse, the musical is directed by Phyllida Lloyd, who made The Iron Lady. This biopic about Margaret Thatcher is probably the worst biopic I have ever seen. The movie I linked this song to is not very good either, though it certainly was a pleasure to watch the actress playing the young dancing queen.
The Movie: Flashdance (Adrian Lyne, 1983)
One of the best recent movies I've seen is Holy Motors (Leos Carax, 2012). It is a completely original, insane and very funny movie that seems to be, among other things, a parody of every movie ever made. At one point there is a scene where a photographer is taking pictures of a model, played by Eva Mendes. While doing this the photographer is constantly repeating the word 'beauty.' I was reminded of this while watching Flashdance. It seems as if the people making this movie only cared about creating beautiful shots, mostly of Pittsburgh and of the leading actress, Jennifer Beals. And they really did manage to this. The movie looks incredible and there are some truly wonderful shots, especially when Beals is on screen. Besides this, these shots are often also filled with some very nice music. Having said that the movie is also hilariously stupid and nonsensical. So I sort of enjoyed this movie, in both an ironic and non-ironic movie. What's good about it is pretty good, and what's bad about it, is so incredibly bad that it at least becomes enjoyable in a hilarious way.
The movie is at its best in its first half, when it is nearly plotless. The first half of this movie consists basically only of set-pieces meaning to show either Beals or Pittsburgh in the most sexy way possible. The first two scenes are actually really good. The first scene is basically a very good typical 80's music video set to the Oscar-winning song Flashdance (which somehow is not in Radio 2's top 2000, and neither is Maniac). We simply follow Beals as she cycles through Pittsburgh, but the combination of the music and some wonderful shots make it a very good scene. In the next scene we see Beals, whose character is named Alex Owens, dance in the bar where she works at night (During the day, she works as a welder!). This scene alone makes Flashdance's Oscar nod for Best Cinematography deserving. Using lights and shadows the movie here creates one of the most sexy and unique (although it seems inspired by Michael Jackson) dance scenes I've ever seen in a movie. Another scene I really liked during this first half is a very random scene on the streets of Pittsburgh. Alex and her sister are walking on the street, when they meet a bunch of children with whom they start dancing. In tone it is a very similar scene the famous scene in (500) Days of Summer in which Gordon-Levitt is walking happily down the street and everybody joins him in an ecstatic dance. The Flashdance scene becomes even weirder and better when we suddenly follow a policeman who controls traffic, in almost perfect accordance with the music on the soundtrack. The scene makes no sense at all, but as I've written before I am a fan of movies which create original, wonderful scenes, just because they can. It's something I haven't seen done before ever.
All of this would be even better if the movie weren't so weirdly conservative. This has probably much to do with the movie rating system in America, which decides which movies can be seen by people of what age. I don't know much how that works, so I won't waste further words on this. What I wanted to say though, is that one of the most awkward things about this movie was that we never see Alex' breasts. And it goes to great lengths to not show them. It cuts just when we would see them, or it films her in such a way that they are strategically covered. I don't mean to sound sexist, and I didn't necessarily want to see them. But not showing her breasts felt really hypocritical and seemed like evidence of some really weird values on behalf of whomever is in charge of such decisions. I have seen few movies were the women are being so objectified as in this one. There is a completely random dance scene in which the camera regards Alex in an incredibly fetishistic way. During this scene, the camera mostly focuses on her buttocks, and when it goes away from it, you sense that the camera has only gone away from Alex' buttocks, because to show it throughout the whole scene would be too perverse. But you also sense that the cameraman really wants to go back to the buttocks as soon as possible, and so it does as much as it can. And other scenes aren't much less fetishistic. So the movie is not very 'respectful' of women. That's not a problem in itself, but by not showing her breasts, it wants to pretend that it is. It wants to make us believe that by not showing Alex' breasts it represents Alex in a decent manner, which is absolutely not the case. This is made even more explicit when Alex berates her sister for dancing in a topless bar and we actually do see her sister's breasts. This is ridiculous. Not only are the dances we see Alex do in her 'normal' bar much more objectifying and erotically charged than the dances of her sister in the topless bar, but it is also obvious that her sister actually can earn more money dancing in a topless bar.
I could talk more about the nonsensical plot, but there is not much to say about that. It's just hilarious how everything in it happens for completely random reasons. It's quite funny for example how Alex' lover Nick becomes her lover. After one of her dances, Alex is stalked by a bunch of guys who want to have sex with her. She is annoyed by them and they are scared away by Nick. She goes home, only to be stalked by Nick, because he wants to have sex with her. She does accept his flirtations. By that point in the movie there is hardly any difference between Nick and those other guys. There is absolutely no reason why she should not be annoyed by the stalking of Nick, and be annoyed by the stalking of those earlier boys.
Lastly it is worth mentioning that Alex wants to be accepted to a prestigious dance school. In the final scene we see her dancing in front of the committee and they, naturally, accept her. Somehow the movie manages to make this final dance, by far the dullest and worst dance in the whole movie.
No comments:
Post a Comment