188. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir

Song - The Man With The Child In His Eyes (Kate Bush)

Movie: The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (Joseph L. Mankiewicz, 1947)

In the 1990's there was apparently an attempt to remake The Ghost and Mrs. Muir with Sean Connery and Michelle Pfeiffer. Nothing came of it, possibly for the best, but perhaps in the next few years some enterprising producer could give it another try. It's hard to see the success of this film separately from the year of its release. Similarly to A Matter of Life and Death, it feels like a direct response to World War 2 and people's need to come to terms with the passing of so many loved ones. In the end the two arrive at different conclusions, and Mankiewicz never comes close to the sheer filmmaking chutzpah of Powell and Pressburger. But like the dead in their film, the ghost (Rex Harrison) here is depicted, mostly without any special effects, as a fully corporeal human being who looks as alive as Lucy Muir (Gene Tierney). There are occasions when he only appears as a disembodied voice, or suddenly disappears from the room without warning, but for the most part his presence in the world is not presented as distinctly different from Lucy's. It's also notable that until his goodbye to Lucy we never actually see his disappearances; he never 'disintegrates' within the frame. Rather, whenever the ghost 'needs' to disappear, Mankiewicz cuts away from him and then either cuts back to reveal an empty space where the ghost stood, or simply shows Lucy responding to his disappearance. This approach essentially never allows you to imagine the ghost as anything other than a human being. 

The film never mentions World War 2, and is in fact set in 1900, but the ghost is captain Daniel Gregg who laments that he travelled the seas to make life better for the 'landsmen" and never got much gratitude for his sacrifices. He now wants Lucy, a widow who came from London to Southcliff-on-Sea where she rents Captain Gregg's old house, to write a book about his adventures to set the record straight. Unsurprisingly they fall in love, which complicates things, especially because most men who meet Lucy do the same. Once you see Gene Tierney, you'll find this to be the most realistc aspect of the story. What makes Lucy even more attractive/interesting is that while she is written as proudly obstinate, Tierney also makes her uncertainty visible. Lucy makes several important decisions in the film, knowing both that they well may be wrong ánd that she wants to make them.

 

I don't find doomed love stories inherently appealing, and was slightly peeved by the finale. While that does fully embrace the more gothic elements of the film, it also embraces the idea that for accepting misery in life, you will be rewarded in the afterlife. It does so with more nuance than expressed here, but it's hard to escape that Lucy's happiest moment in the film comes in death. Still, the incredibly sharp and witty screenplay makes up for any misgivings I may have. Harrison has a lot of fun with his dialogue combining charminly foulmouthed declarations with archly romantic chivalry, but the best line in the film belongs to Miles Fairley (George Sanders), one of Lucy's living suitors. Watching over the English rain, he observes that "it's easy to understand why the most beautiful poems about England in the spring were written by poets living in Italy at the time."

 

187. Roadgames

Song - Gimme All Your Lovin' (ZZ Top)

Movie: Roadgames (Richard Franklin, 1981)

I should maybe explore more Ozploitation films, cause I greatly enjoyed this one about a poet truck driver who starts suspecting he is sharing tbe road with a killer in a green van. It starts off compelling enough with a naked woman playing guitar in a brighlty red-lit hotel room and a mysterious man dressed as a motorist who puts a wire around her neck. We never see her actually get killed and the scene is filmed in a much more overtly expressionistic way than anything before or after. The next morning Pat Quid (Stacy Keach), who had to sleep in his truck in front of the hotel, sees a stranger in one of the rooms suspiciously watching the garbage men do their job. The film gets only better from there, especially once Pat picks up hitchhiker Pamela (Jamie Lee Curtis). He may fall in love with her, but his most cherished companion will always be Boswell, a dingo (or a dog!) 

Pat playfully annoys his co-passenger, calling her Hitch and is also shown to be the owner of a Hitchcock book. The film earns those comparisons, especially during a classic scene of mistaken identity, when it cuts between Pat confronting the potential killer in a public bathroom and Pamela, the daughter of an American diplomat, foraging in the seemingly empty green van. Of course, Pamela disappears, which turns Pat into an even more Hitchcockian character, who mistrusting his instincts essentially starts gaslighting himself. Director Franklin does a good job of leaving it open until the very end whether the man in the van is guilty or Pat's been too long on the road. He is a wonderful character, Pat, a sensitive, rational truck driver on his way to deliver meat from Melbourne to Perth. He likes to imagine the inner lives of the drivers, motorists and passengers he meets on the road, to quote poetry to his dingo and play word games with the passengers he picks up. He is also a former gun runner in Africa, currently possibly a scab, as implied by the radio news which keeps reminding us that the meat industry is in deep trouble because of a trucker strike, while the union boss can't be found anywhere. 

Franlklin uses the wide outstretched roads, the lights surrounding them, and the cramped space in the truck to create some wonderfully stylized scenes reflecting Pat's doubts and unsettled state of mind. He is helped by Keach's terrific performance and his hesitant literary voiceover. Keach plays Pat as an experienced truck driver who can handle with an easy-going confidence anything within the parameters of his job. but also gets frazzled, confused and hurt in situations that aren't in his comfort zone. He is charming enough to seduce Pamela, but it's also easy to see why he could believe that she voluntariliy joined the man in the green van. That's also because Jamie Lee Curtis, who I've always found to be one of the coolest actresses, is in top form here as a self-assured flirty and fiery hitchhiker, looking for "excitement" in defiance of her stuffy elitist parents. Curtis and Keach get great support from a motley crew of Australian actors, playing the various, somewhat quirky, motorists Pat keeps encountering on his journey. 

186. The Big Chill

Song - You Can't Always Get What You Want (The Rolling Stones)

Movie: The Big Chill (Lawrence Kasdan, 1983)

Kevin Kline could have spent all his life getting praised for playing dignified, thoughtful types. Instead he became of the greatest farcical actors of modern times, earning an Oscar for playing a slapstick character. It's a mystery why he hasn't yet been cast by Wes Anderson or in one of the upcoming Knives Out films. The Big Chill is not a farce, but it is a film in which he has, by design, the least challenging and the most underwritten role. He is supposed to be the straight man among his friends who have all kinds of inner turmoil. He responds to this situation by even further downplaying the complexity of Harold, a character who is fully satisfied with his life and career and sees no need to spend any time thinking hard about what might happen, could have been, or should be. His total indifference to navel gazing, thoughtful discussions or painful reflections radiates from his face, often bordering on contempt. In many similar films this would be presented as a facade for typical suburban fears, anxieties and insecurities, the idea being that if you think too hard about your life it all comes crashing down. Not here. Kline doesn't suggest any subtext or deeper meaning behind Harold's casualness. 

Harold and his friends should have many reasons for reflection. They've gathered together after a long time apart to mourn Alex, an old college friend who killed himself. They are Sam (Tom Berenger), an unfulfilled television star in Hollywood; Sarah (Glenn Close), Harold's wife, a caring matriarch who had once an affair with Alex; Michael (Jeff Goldblum), a womaniser using humor to mask his insecurities; Nick (William Hurt), a depressed impotent Vietnam veteran; Meg (Mary Kay Place) a single lawyer who feels her biological clock ticking; Karen (Jobeth Williams), an unhappy housewife who once had dreams of writing. Finally, there is Chloë (Meg Tilly) Alex' much younger girlfriend with an implied history of mental illness and an unhappy childhood. All these characters get some wonderfully observed moments, giving their actors time to shine. But none of those scenes are particularly surprising. These people don't get the opportunity to break out of the mold that Kasdan has created for them and do something that would be out of character. Still, it is worth noting that making Hollywood star Sam the most down to earth character is not a choice usually made in these kinds of reunion films. Also worth noting is that the chemistry between all the actors is great. They are very convincing as a group of friends who haven't seen each other in a long time and they all become quite sympathetic. William Hurt and Glenn Close excel playing characters in gravely concerned, deeply serious, and dour moods and, while having both of them in the same film can be a bit much, their expressions alone are enough to turn it from a comedy into a comedy-drama.

In the end, partly because everyone else is depicted a bit too stereotypically, Kline's Harold actually emerges as the most interesting person in the film, and certainly as the most honest one. He is neither a dimwit nor an asshole, but is often oblivious to his friends' worries and dismissive towards the two main questions the group has: why did Alex kill himself? And what happened to their youthful revolutionary ideals? He believes the first question can't ever be answered and is just a waste of time, while finding the second one annoyingly obvious: the answer to that is money and Harold doesn't know what more there is to discuss here. They were poor students, and now they are rich adults. What should happen? Both those positions are uncomfortable, but probably much closer to the truth than most theories floated by his friends. The film never directly supports or makes these same claims, but these ideas always kind of stay in the background, floating around as a possibility, while the group talks and talks, hoping to find the exact answer that will both be truthful to their current selves and bring back the good old times. Harold may not be searching for any of that, but no one else ends the film as a stockholding business owner engaging in free love. 

185. Collateral

Song -  Under the Bridge (Red Hot Chilli Peppers)

Movie: Collateral (Michael Mann, 2004)

Collateral came out only four years before Iron Man, but the two feel like belonging to two completely different eras. The rise of superhero blockbusters has largely removed stylish star-driven 'Ordinary Joe' action movies out of the cinemas. That's a shame, cause these films kick ass and can be a gateway to further film exploration. Collateral is one of my favorites of this century, in part because it was one of the first films that made me realilse that the cinematography of a film can not only convey just as much information as the screenplay and the performances, but can also communicate things that the screenplay and performances can't. It's a film that makes it extremely obvious that the way in which a director arranges and presents sounds and images is just as important as which sounds and images are presented. At my first watch, the coyote scene was the most striking example of this. The lit up eyes of the coyote; how the second coyote strolls in rhythm with the music; the way in which the city streets surrounding Foxx and Cruise are lit up and framed in relation to them and the cab; It was evident that all these elements don't primarily serve a narrative purpose and that the unusal way in which they are filmed may well be the main reason for us seeing them. I found this cool as shit, in part because it was clear that there was more going on here beyond the unusualness. Mann was expressing certain ideas about Max (Jamie Foxx) and Vincent (Tom Cruise), the relationship between them, and their relationship to the city that couldn't be expresed through dialogue alone. At the same time, while presenting LA in a more stylised way than most filmmakers, he also made the city feel more tangible and immersive than more 'realistic' films. At certain moments it really evoked the feeling of being out at night in a brightly lit city.  

This film may have ruined Michael Mann for me. I've seen The Insider and Heat and like them both, but feel they can't quite measure up. No film in which the De Niro/Pacino showdown is only the third best scene (I prefer the bank shoot out and Ashley Judd warning Val Kilmer) can be bad, but it never gives me the same immediate-yet-dreamy feeling of being part of the city as Collateral does. It also feels much more forced, trying way too hard to be the Big Action Epic. Yet, there is no scene as tense as the one where Max is standing on a parking lot looking across at Annie's (Jada Pankiett Smith) apartment building, as Vincent is hunting for her on the wrong apartment floor. As a bonus, Collateral also has one of the great nightclub shooutout scenes, though I understand Mann may have surpassed himself in that regard in Miami Vice. Meanwhile, it's not just Mann who is on the top of his game here. Cruise and Foxx are now so committted to respectively playing infallible heroes and cool badasses that it's almost surprising to see them be so good as a cold-blooded villain and an vulnerable everyman. Cruise in particular has a couple of scenes in which he is so direct in his aggressiveness that he becomes genuinely scary. 

There were some very concrete plans to shoot this film in New York, with even Robert De Niro in the Jamie Foxx role. I am very glad this didn't happen. The film deserves to stand fully on its own and not be in the shadow of Taxi Driver. More importantly, Los Angeles and its huge sprawl is really key to what makes Collateral special. The film makes you constantly aware of life in the city going on around Cruise and Foxx, with many shots allowing us to see far beyond the space occupied by the characters. We are being made aware of the many millions of people who are unaware of the predicament Cruise and Foxx have found themselves in and vice versa. They are just one story among many other potential ones. 

184. The Grapes of Wrath

Song - Don't Give Up (Peter Gabriel & Kate Bush)

Movie: The Grapes of Wrath (John Ford, 1940)

I didn't know about this history! I am familiar with Dorothea Lange's famous photograph 'Migrant Mother', but somehow never registered that this was an American migrant (Native American even, which complicates things even further), thinking that it was an image that symbolised the great side of America, one that opens its arms to immigrants from around the world and is proud of its image as the melting pot. Similarly, I had been familiar with the romanticised vision of Route 66, as a symbol of American freedom and progress, and all the great promises of its culture and society. I was always aware that this vision was an outsized myth, but it still felt special to drive on it. I never knew that it first gained prominence as a site of misery, death and discrimination, where interstate border controls were set up to stop 'migrants' from Oklahoma, Arkansas and Missouri get to California in search of a better life after being displaced by the Dust Bowl and the Great Depression. And that these migrants, American citizens, were treated as foreigners in their 'own' country, having to wait behind closely guarded barbed wire to enter 'the promised land' hoping that that the state police wasn't in the mood to beat them up. 

Many images in The Grapes of Wrath might as well come straight from contemporary news reports about the situation at the Polish-Belarussian border. And those two countries at least don't pretend to be the United States of anything. But this film should not make Europe feel better about itself, if only because 'we' haven't yet managed to make such a clear-eyed film about the current refugee crisis. Contemporary European (narrative) films about this topic tend to either be glorified Ted Talks or 'difficult' art films who in their attempts to convey the complexity of the problem often become needlessy abstruse and lose sight of the humanity of the refugees, representing them as helpless, almost deified victims of unspecified forces. In doing so, these films mostly decenter the refugees and put their focus either on the artistic integrity of the filmmakers or on the Europeans and on how their feelings towards the refugees are either right or wrong. This is not a highly moral approach, hasn't proven to have any political effect, and is also dull. There is really no good reason why anyone should see something like Those Who Feel The Fire Burning, one of those films programmers really like to include in 'Movies that Matter' screenings.  

The Grapes of Wrath doesn't fully avoid 'TedTalk' tendencies. Most of Jane Darwell's dialogue as 'Ma Joad' seems to mostly address the audience rather than her family. This also leads to a clash in acting styles between her and Henry Fonda, portraying Tom Joad, that only really works in their final scene together. Aside from this, it's a really wonderful film tthat introduces Tom as an ex-convict, suggests that his conviction wasn't entirely fair, and doesn't go out of its way to convince us of this. When Tom is welcomed back by his family they are all excitedly believing that he busted out of jail; poor Tom has to tell everyone he meets that he was actually released on parole. Aside from this being one of the funniest scenes in the film, it also establishes that the Joads are not some sad-eyed sadsack angelic figures, but complex human beings who don't always do the right thing and don't always agree with the way things are done in society. It forces you to accept that polite Californians may not find the 'Oakies' likable, without this being the 'Oakies' problem. 

This depction of the Joads, especially in comparision to modern European refugee films, may not be entirely surprising. American (popular) culture has always been (and still is) better at integrating and depicting 'foreigners'/Others in its stories than European culture. More surprising from an American perspective is the Grapes of Wrath's depiction of poverty, its causes and its solutuions. It shows shanty towns in the middle of California, presenting them from the point of view (sometimes literally) of the poor people living in it. Poor people in American films that sympathise with their plight are often depicted as hard workers or people who have suffered to create better lives for themselves who had no luck/no opportunity/bad health/any other misfortune that could happen to anyone. These films may believe that 'we' should help them through some sort of collective action that could make society better, but utlimately still mostly frame poverty as something that befalls individuals. The exception is when the poor people are non-white, in which case their poverty is often put in the context of the progressive struggle against racism, providing hope that with America becoming less racist there will be more opportunities for non-white people and less poverty. 

The Grapes of Wrath on the other hand depicts mass poverty among mostly white people and explicitly makes clear that this poverty is the consequence of conscious choices made by the American government and that these choices specifically target these particular people. There is absolutely nothing the Joads or any other family in similar circumstances could have done to escape their poverty. It is morover a consequence of decisions fully in line with the norms, values and ideals of their country. I know that by 1940 John Ford was not yet the fullblown American icon he was about to become, but I was still amazed that the guy who turned John Wayne into the embodiment of America's greatness made this film. In the way it criticizes ideas fundamental to the existence of America, The Grapes of Wrath resembles an Oliver Stone film. Interestlingly, Ford uses for this some of the same imagery that helped him mythologise America in his westerns. Here too he likes to frame characters against the backdrop of wide majestic landscapes. America is full of spaces stretching to eternity and yet people have to migrate far and wide, because most of these spaces have become the property of the banks. Once Ford also starts glorfying the unions, disparaging the easy answers religion offers, and promoting workers' democracy it becomes increasingly hard to believe that this became a popular canonical American film.    

183. The Holy Mountain

Song - The Fool on the Hill (The Beatles)

Movie: The Holy Mountain - La montaña sagrada (Alejandro Jodorowsky, 1973)

The favorite topics of Dutch authors are sex and religion, with a dash of World War 2 trauma. The most notorious example of this is probably Gerard Reve, who in one of the most famous passages in Dutch literature, describes a man having sex with God, who has taken on the form of a donkey. Based on The Holy Mountain, Alejandro Jodorowsky may well be the best suited director to adapt Reve. He gets halfway there when depicting a potential God-like figure imagining having sex with a cow.  It turns out it's not particularly erotic. 

The Holy Mountain presents itself as a great visionary work, whose obsession with Tarot cards, New Age mysticism and spiritual envirionmentalism potentially contains the key to all the mysteries of the universe. Its main protagonist is a Jesus-like figure who in his search for immoratlity meets a man known as the Alchemist, played by Jodorowsky himself. The Alchemist teaches the Jesus-figure how to turn his shit into gold in a sequence that depicts this process as a holy ritual of great spiritual importance. This is not even one the five most ridiculous sequences in the film. How about using real toads and lizards, fully dressed in traditional clothes, to depict the colonisation of the Aztecs by the Spaniards? The 'colonising' animals are brought to the 'battlefield' by a man wearing Nazi symbols, while a German war song is playing on the soundtrack. This mishmash of history continues in the next scnee where we see people dressed like Roman aristocrats sell Christian crosses, while American photojournalists harass Mexican women in the midst of what looks like a junta uprising. In another scene the Jesus-like figure takes on a Buddha pose. 

I think that a lot of this is hot air, but Jodorowsky goes to such great lengths to convince you of some greater meaning that he produces some truly astonishing and unique images and juxtapositions. The film at times plays as a colorful surrealist version of Mel Brooks' History of the World and I liked it way more than the deeply annoying El Topo. John Lennon had a different opinion of that film, and is one of the main reasons The Holy Mountain got made. It's co-produced by Allen Klein, the former manager of The Beatles and The Rolling Stones, and this influence is clearly visible here. Aside from the progressive rock riffs on the soundtrack, and the psychedelic guitar weapons, the film has a proudly anti-authoritarian point of view that comes through even when Jodorowsky embraces his most obfuscating tendencies. Sometimes that leads to on-the-nose satire such as the sequence showing how an unidentified country is producing anti-Peruvian toys and comics to brainwash children into war with Peru. But it sometimes also leads to great dark comedy that hits its targets with stunning precision. The president's financial advisor's story is worth showing to anyone mindlessly venerating the Nate Silvers of the world, but the film's absolute highlight is the architect's presentation, a pitch-perfect parody of puffed up Silicon Valley product reveals.     

182. Black Orpheus

Song - Samba Pa Ti (Carlos Santana)

Movie: Black Orpheus - Orfeu Negro (Marcel Camus, 1959)

Up until the final stretch of the film, there is barely a scene in which we don't hear tambourines and other percussion instruments play bossa nova/samba sounds. The music is relentless, especially in scenes where it is not centered, but just a background hum. It feels almost impossible to shut it off either when Orfeu is playing a beautiful song on the guitar or when a loud plane is passing by. And even when three or four different sounds in a scene intermingle, the Brazilian Carnival music, coming from somewhere offscreen, is inescapable. At a certain point this approach starts to grate; the repetitiveness becomes too much, distracting from everything else that is going on. At the same time, I can't remember seeing another film use music in quite this way and while I didn't partuclarly like it, I was at least fascinated by Camus' single-minded commitment.

The plot is much less inventive. Orfeu is about to get married to Mira, without being over the moon about it. When Euridice comes to his village to visit her niece, it's love at first sight, making Mira jealous. Meanwhile, there is also a masked figure (played by two-time Olympic triple jump champion Adhemar Ferreira Da Silva) who wants to kill Eurydice for unspecified reasons. This is all set against the backdrop of the Rio Carnival and the villagers' preparations for it, which is what gives the film its reason for being. It is highly committed to showing off the clothes, the music and the dances, but if you are looking for dramatic/narrative complexity, this is not where you will find it.  

Camus has been criticized (by Barack Obama, among others!) for presenting the Brazilian villagers through a white European lens and imagining them as simple folks solely interested in partying. That's not wrong, but Camus' really does immerse himself in the Rio Carnival culture and he makes a genuine effort to authentically present its rituals, habits and stylings. He also stages the familiar ending to the story of Orpheus in a way that feels truthful and organic to the society he depicts, re-imagining and adapting it as a Brazilian story, rather than 'westernising' the Brazilians to make them fit in the myth. I also liked that the film makes a clear distinction between the traditional way of life of the villagers and the advancing modernity of Rio de Janeiro (the film makes it a point to highlight the skyscrapers) without presenting them antagonistically. Neither is a threat to the other. 

181. 1984

Song - Eye In The Sky (The Alan Parsons Project)

Movie: 1984 (Michael Radford, 1984)

During its ending credits a title card informs us that this film was "photographed in and around London during the period April-June 1984, the exact time and setting imagined by the author." That's a curious statement! Because the London, the actually existing city, in which the film was photographed doesn't bear any resemblance to the setting imagined by George Orwell. More importantly, it doesn't bear any resemblance to the city as it is imagined by the filmmakers. The film looks like it has been filmed on a studio set that is designed to resemble an unspecified dystopian city. The outdoor spaces we get to see are mostly grey disheveled streets filled with equaly disheveled concrete blocks that only seem to exist in relation to themselves. Radford never zooms out of a location to give us even a basic sense of the geography of the place. Where exactly is the pawn shop Winston (John Hurt) and Julia (Suzanna Hamilton) visit to hide their illicit love affair? What is surrounding it? How do they get there from one place to another without being seen? Their visit to the country side is equally disorienting. We never get to see how they actually arrive at that spot, presented in exceptionally bright green colors, giving it a fantastical dreamlike look that clearly distinguishes and disconnects it from the drabness of the city.

The country side is also the only place in the film where Winston and Julia are free from Big Brother. Everywhere else they go they are surrounded by giant screens spouting propaganda about the succesful war efforts of Oceania, or about its expanded production capacity. I am a fan of shots in which a (preferably silhouetted!) human figure is envelopped/dwarfed/overwhelmed by a giant screen in the background and this film got plenty of those. Moreover, they are photographed by Roger Deakins, who was evidently an incredibly accomplished cinematographer from they very start of his career. Similarly. I hope the art directors and costume and production designers working on this film got a wonderful career out of it, because they truly did a fantastic job in creating a totalitarian dystopian city that bears little resemblance to their contemporary society. That is also why I could never really get on board with it. The film often seems more interested in expressing its reverence for Orwell's book, than in expressing its fear of totalitarianism. 

That title card at the end explains a lot. Watching the film you often get the feeling that adapting 1984 in 1984 is the main reason for its existence. It is so smothered in artificiality, and has so little sense of (or connection to) the real world that it plays like a book report by people who want to explain why George Orwell's ideas are so important, but can't ever conceive of living in a totalitarian society. The film distances itself so much from contemporary British society that it can't imagine any aspect of British society ever potentially leading to totalitarainism. It's a bit too safely patriotic and has a holier-than-thou attitude (totalitarianism is something that happens to other people, the Brits are just there to highlight the dangers of it) that I found offputting. 

180. Paris Blues

Song - Still Got The Blues (Gary Moore)

Movie: Paris Blues (Martin Ritt, 1961)

I've never been much into jazz, but I've always greatly enjoyed stories about the jazz scene. Paris Blues is no exception and has all the familiar elements that makes these stories so appealing. There is of course a band of moody musicians with very specific ideas about the kind of music they want to make, leading to the formation of outsider, (culturally and musically) diverse, slightly odball communities shaped by musical compatibility. They play in bars that are just classy enough to give the audience a sense of sophistication and just crummy enough to give them a sense of danger and discovery. That also shapes the attitudes of the musicians themselves, who like to present themselves as artistically accomplished, fiercely independent and just a little bummier than they truly are. That such a role would fit Paul Newman like a glove is to be expected. I found it more surprising that Sidney Poitier is so comfortable playing a carefree cool musician utterly uninterested in leaving Paris to go back to America and fight for black liberation. It's quite a joy to see them play respectively Ram Bowen and Eddie Cook. The film is beautifully lighthearted and for the most part asks nothing more of them than to convey their pleasuure in playing jazz and courting Lilian (Joanne Woodward) and Connie (Diahann Carroll), two friends on holiday in Paris.

I've never been much into Paris either. I've always found it a city that insists a bit too much on its own greatness, being way too self-conscious about its famous sites. From  Montmartre and Sacré-Coeur to the Arc de Triomphe and from the Louvre to the smallest street, everything feels designed to maximally overwhelm you by its beauty and grandeur. Admittedly, it often succeeds! It would be ridiculous to call Paris ugly or unpleasant, but it does feel a bit like the city and its mythology are lording over the people in it. Paris Blues, partly because it is filmed in black and white, manages to counterbalance this mythology a little bit. It's filled with scenes of the two couples walking across the city, falling in love along the Seine. They see many of the famous locations of the city, but are never dwarfed by them. There is one scene in which Connie and Eddie are standing in front of the Notre-Dame and you only truly notice the cathedral when one of them points it out. I found the way in which the city blends in with the character here highly appealing. I have not been to Paris in a long time and wasn't rushing to. This film made me want to go again. It helps that the carefree natural charm of all four main actors is reflected in the atmsophere at the jazz club where they are playing and that Ritt is clearly inspired by the emergence of the French New Wave without really committing to it, which gives the film an even more nonchalant tone, with Louis Armstrong's call-and-response scene as a great highlight. 

I first heard about Paris Blues when reading about the controversial decision by the producers to block the depiction of interracial relationships. The film was originally conceived with the idea to have Newman and Carroll and Poitier and Woodward as the two couples and the actors were not happy with the decision to change that. It would have probably been more dramatically interesting if the producers were more courageous. But both Woodward and Newman and Poitier and Carroll were a real-life couple during filming and their easygoing chemistry really contributes to the pleasurable vibe of the film. Besides, while interracial romances may have been (and still are) rare in American film, that's even more true for interracial friendships. Especially interracial friendships between men and women in which they give each other romantic advice,  without being affected by racial stereotypes. 

179. Jimmy's Hall

Song - Jimmy (Boudewijn de Groot)

Movie: Jimmy's Hall (Ken Loach, 2014)

"Hearts starve as well as bodies, give us bread, but give us roses." 

The first half of this film is a wonderful representation of the ideas and feelings behind "Bread and Roses". It basically consists of a series of short vignettes depicting the joys of socialist idealism. and contains some unexpectedly graceful passages. I could have watched hours more of Irish villagers passionately dancing, discussing politics, reading literature, defying the Irish establishment, and loving and caring for each other in their small modestly utopian hall.. In the second half, it loses some if its grace, getting way too didactic in dramatising the antagonism between Jimmy Gralton's activitsts and their enemies,, but for a long while this is the ideal version of a Ken Loach film. 

I also found Loach's didacticism more welcome here than in his other films. I don't know much about 1920's/1930's Irish history, and was for example surprised to find that the IRA and Gralton were enemies. Gralton was an Irish socialist activist who became the only Irish-born person to be deported out of Ireland. He had spent 10 years out of exile in the USA after establishing a town hall in which his fellow villagers could get together to dance, play sports, study literature, discuss politics, sing, be educated, and create meaningful communities independently from the church and the state. The church and the state are no fans of such heresies, like even less that the villagers get politically conscious helping poor families in land disputes against the rich aristocracy, and smell trouble when upon returning from his exile, Gralton aims to re-establish the now decrepit townhall, and possibly reconnect with his old flame Oona.

At one of those land disputes the film has Gralton speak to a group of villagers coming to protest land theft. He touches on familiar socialist points arguing that it's impossible to claim that Ireland is united as one nation as landlords and bankers have different interests than factory workers and miners, that he saw firsthand in New York how a system based on exploitation led to the Great Depression, and that we need to "take control of our lives again and work for need, not for greed. And not to just survive like a dog, but to live. And to celebrate, to dance, to sing as free human beings."  I have a fondness for rousing speeches in films, so I quite liked this, but it is definitely a good example of Lynch's (and Paul Laverty's - his regular screenwriter), tendency for needless sopabox speechifying. Those final words are a blunt representation of everything we've seen in the film's first half which almost makes you want to live and particpate in Jimmy's hall, in the enjoyable company of the villagers expanding their political, emotional and intellectual worlds in a shared space that gives them freedom to create and imagine better lives for themselves. The film's editing is wonderfully attuned to the rhythms of their life and doesn't rush to tell a story, but to give an impression of the various activities going on in the hall, 10 years before and now. These scenes are filmed with great love and patience, letting a reading of Yeats or a class about Celtic singing, or a political discussion go on for longer than nexessary, allowing you to really share in the experience and joy together with the villagers.  And all the while Jimmy and Oona exchange romantic glances, culminating in a beautfully filmed silent dance, an expression of their emotions which they can't quite say out louid - it takes place after Jimmy returns from exile and finds Oona married with children.

It's a great advertisement for socialism, in particular Irish socialism, with the soundtrack filled with those typical Irish folksy symphonies that are half-joyous, half-sentimental. It's all of course heavily romanticised, but a big part of the job of a political movement is to sell a narrative. And the film is a good reminder that one of the reasons for the success of socialism was its promise of "Bread and Roses". It was not just about economic theory and making sure that people who lived in barely livable conditions could live in slightly more livable conditions, but about self-actualisation, individual liberty and the ability to live happy prosperous lives, allowing people to experience and explore wonderful things independently from the trappings of state, church, social class or birthplace. That's an incredibly strong story and one that has been abandoned by too many of the leftist-progressive parties of today. Ofteng torgetting the roses entirely, their message (crudely summarised) often doesn't extend much further than arguing that people deserve more bread or that more kinds of people deserve bread, sometimes even without inagining that more bread is a possibility.  

178. Little Voice

Song - Thank You for the Music (ABBA)

Movie: Little Voice (Mark Herman, 1998)

A Garland impersonator will never be a great artist, even in ideal circumstances, but bringing together an impoverished working-class town in commonly shared joy has value. So have shoddy bars, shady cars and kitschy overlit piers (Little Voice is set in Scarborough and I wondered at points if it had been influenced by The Fall's video clip for Hit the North, filmed in Blackpool, also a seaside town, but on the other side of England. Addendum here: I don't know much about The Fall and that is the only video of theirs I've seen). An early scene in which Mari Hoff (Brenda Blethyn) tells about her one night stand with local run-down talent scout Ray Say (Michael Caine in one of his more fun roles, playing "one of them lovable twat sort of types"), is a litmus test. If its full embrace of lowbrow style doesn't put a smile on your face, you are in trouble, as the film will build its story on the sights and sounds that someone like Mari would enjoy. And what it builds up to is much stranger and eerier than it apperas at first sight. 

You hear a lot these days about "elevated horror". It refers to horror films that are, or present themselves as, more "sophisticated" than the average slashers giving the poor unthinking audiences shocks, gore and nudity. These elevated horrors can supposedly be identified by their classier look, their more serious tone, or their concern with more mature themes. Now, I liked Midsommar quite a lot, but it's always worth being sceptical of art (and things in general!) that goes to great lengths to signify and sell its sophistication. The fact that 'elevated horror' has become such a popular marketing term does at least prove that more people should be familiar with the story about the Emperor's new clothes. One of the many remarkable things about Little Voice is that it goes to great lengths to present itself as less sophisticated than it is. This is a horror film in the guise of a typical 90's feel good British kitchen sink comedy drama about a reclusive girl, "Little Voice", (Jane Horrocks) whose special talent for singing finally brings her happiness. Hell, it even stars Ewan McGregor as the clean cut wholesome young man who falls in love with her! 

As far as I know neither the film nor the play it was based on had been either received or presented as horror. But I think it's impossible to look at Horrocks' performance, at the way the film uses lights and shadow and somewhat strange camera angles to make her bedroom seem more isolated and foreboding, the relationship with her dead father, the manic irrrationality of certain scenes, the climax and the way it is foreshadowed, and not come to the conclusion that it is at the very least horror-adjacent. The centerpice scene in the film is a 7-minute tour de force in which Horrocks' LV delights an audience performing classics by Shirley Bassey, Judy Garland and Marilyn Monroe. She is presented as someone who is great at imitating these singers, but what happens goes far beyond imitation. She sings as if she is posssessed by them, and is only able to perform when she sees the ghost of her dead father. It's he who she mainly adresses with her flirty moves and songs. The film is very much aware of the connotations it brings up, while leaving the exact relationship between LV and her father ambiguous. That also makes her relationship with her trashy, domineering mom Mari more nuanced than it appears. 

Once her father's ghost dissapears, LV collapses on stage, completely unable to move. From that moment on the film completely abandons any sense of naturalism, yet this is not far from the usual condition LV is in. When she doesn't sing, she is a frighteningly withdrawn woman who barely eats, talks or moves, and these acts seem completely alien to her. It's a hugely impressive performance by Jane Horrocks, who, as the film notes at the end, sung all the songs herself. I am not greatly familiar with the voices and songs of Monroe, Garland and Bassey (the three favourite singers of her dad), but Horrocks clearly distinguishes between them. Whenever she is embodying one of them, there is no trace of the other, or of herself. This doesn't only happen when she is singing; when she's upset she starts reciting dialogue from her three favorites, and again does so at a moment's notice, seamlessly transitioning from one identity to another (I don't know if this is all Horrocks, or if she is playbacking real dialogue). Towards the end of the film she turns this 'talent' to her advantage, scaring away Ray who, hoping he finally found his pot of gold with LV puts all his manipulating skills at display to take advantage of her. Her mom and mr. Boo (Jim Broadbent) have similar ideas, until a cleansing menacing fire puts all their plans to rest and we finally hear LV's real voice and name.

LV's character development, what the happy ending is about, and how that happy ending comes are further arguments for seeing this film as horror. But the film doesn't insist on it, and most of the scenes that don't involve Horrocks would be familiar to anyone who's ever seen mainstream 90's British feel good romantic comedy drama. But it zags in this regard too. Firstly, by adding an occasional dash of magical realism when Billy (Ewan McGregor) is on screen. Secondly, the people it depicts are closer to Brad Pitt's buddies in Snatch than to Hugh Grant's buddies in Notting Hill, but they are treated with the respect of the latter. Mr. Boo and Ray Say are selfish, nasty producers of lowbrow entertainment with  'Take Fat' as one of their key acts. The film punishes them for their selfish nastiness, but doesn't condescend to the entertainment or to the audience that enjoys it. Much more than that, it presents itself as that kind of entertainment and employs its pleasures and aesthettics in its own style and storytelling.  Would relegated horror be the opposite of elevated horror? I dunno, but based on this film and Brassed Off (also about the relationship between working class communities and their entertainment), Mark Herman may be one of the most underrated and thoughtful filmmakers of the 90's.  

177. Terms of Endearment

Song - Geen Kind Meer (Karin Bloemen)

Movie: Terms of Endearment (James L. Brooks, 1983)

All I knew about this film was that Debra Winger dies. The famous scene where Emma Horton says her last words to her children gets to you even out of context. In context it is even more powerful, in part because even when it goes 'full weepie', the film never loses its inclination towards entertainment. By the time her mother Aurora (Shirley MacLaine) makes a big scene in the hospital, because her daughter isn't getting her painkillers on time, you should have accepted that subtlety is not the film's main intent. Brooks is as interested in telling an emotional story (succesfully!) as he is in presenting an acting and writing showcase in which every scene aims to elicit a roaring response from the audience. It fully embraces its melodramatic manipulative elements and is not coy about it. You may be on board with or not (I was, for the most part. Hard to find an excuse for the detour to New York), but the film is extremely honest about what it is. Which is also reflected in the way it sees Garret Breedlove (Jack Nicholson), an ex-astronaut seducing younger women and eventually Aurora, and Flap Horton (Jeff Daniels), Emma's husband. Both are no paragons of responsibility and decency, though one is fully open about his flaws, while the other desperately tries to keep up appearances as a good father, husband and professor. Of course the film loves Garret, while holding Flap in the deepest contempt.  

Daniels plays Flap Horton as a sort of blend of his characters in Dumb and Dumber and The Squid and The Whale. He is simultaneosly callously arrogant and shamelessly clueless. Those characteristics cancel each other out at first, allowing him to somehow come off as clumsily confident, making Emma fall for him. As things between him and his wife become more complicated, it becomes harder and harder for him to hide his true self and his cowardice. This all culminates in the best scene of the film, in which Flap and the dying Emma have to make some tough decisions about the living arrangements of their children. Flap is too prideful to admit that he can't care for them, too cowardly to admit that he doesn't really want to, and just smart enough to know that he shouldn't admit to either. Emma sees right through this and gently guides him into a decision where he can both say that that he wants to take care of the kids and let someone else actually take care of them. It's a perfectly written and acted scene, and one of the most blisterlingly humiliating moments I've seen in any film. In addition, emphasising Flap's, rather than Emma's', fear and vulnerability makes the next scene in which Emma has to say goodbye to her children, come off as less cheaply sentimental than it could have been.  

It is rare for a Best Picture winner to reserve so much more sympahty and understanding for its women than for its men. It is less rare for a Best Picture winner to look with scepticism towards the future. This is not a film that has a high opinion of the new generation. It has a whole lot more sympathy for Aurora than it has for Emma, and it builds that sympathy by letting us observe the characters and coming to the conclusion that Aurora is not needlessly uptight, but wise and right about almost everything. This is perhaps best exemplified by a sequence in the middle in which we see Emma on her way to an abandoned house to have an affair with the (by his own admission) boring and slow sadsack farmer Sam. They drive in a dull car on a tight country road to their destinaion, but before they arrive there, the film cuts to Garrret and Aurora who after having had a lunch date are now wilding out, being drunk in a sports car on the beach. The film also presents Garret and Aurora as having better sex than Emma and her lovers, and sees Aurora as more worldy then Emma, who shrieks in horror when her mum offers up abortion as a viable option.

This slightly retrograde vision would have been more annyoing if Jack Nicholson being given full freedom to be a mischievous charmer wasn't one of the most fun things in modern film. Nicholson and MacLaine got an Oscar for their roles. They are wonderfully compelling, but you never feel like this role was much of a challenge for them. Debra Winger has a much more understated and challenging role. She basically spends the whole film being a wife, mother and daughter, and has to highlight how she is evolving in each of these roles as she becomes more mature. She doesn't get any grand gestures before she ends up on her deathbed and is very much helped by her distinct voice. She got an Oscar nomination for it, as did John Lithgow (who only appears in a couple of scenes as Sam). That somehow leaves Jeff Daniels as the only one from the main cast without an Oscar nomination. I think he gives the best performance and is the best written character in the film.

176. A Star Is Born

Song - Woman in Love (Barbra Streisand)

Movie: A Star Is Born (Frank Pierson, 1976)

I very strongly, somewhat irrationally, disliked Bradley Cooper's A Star Is Born, a film so depressed by its own existence that its hatred for the world was seemingly pouring out of every shot. It felt like a film created by Jackson Maine himself to justify his own vapid nihilism, filled with aggrandizingly portentous self-pity and self-seriousness. It didn't even care enough to play out most of its songs or to stage them in an interesting way. So I was very much looking forward to use the 1976 version as a cudgel to beat Cooper into oblivion, especially after seeing that it was written by Joan Didion and John Patrick Dunne. Having loved The Panic in Needle Park, I thought they would know what to do with a grand romance between two self-destructive lovers. 

Anyway, you see where this is going. Pierson's A Star Is Born made me respect Cooper's film more. It may be the more honest version of this story. Besides, whatever I may think of its point of view (worth noting that my view of the film as an annoyingly nihilistic screed is not shared by most who have seen it), at least it had one, and it was directed with purpose and conviction. More importantly, Lady Gaga and Cooper give better performances and have far more chemistry than Barbra Streisand and Kris Kristofferson. The latter are in fact on completely different wavelengths. Streisand overacts and accentuates every single gesture attracting all attention to herself, which may be diva arrogance or the only way to realistically approach acting across Kristofferson here. If she would have gone down to his level, the whole film would have sunk completely. He gives a strangely blank performance. "There is no pain visible on your face" is the truest line spoken in the film. 

Despite this, there are some things that work better here than in Cooper's film, and some of that may actually have to do with the contributions of Didion and Dunne. The centerpiece performance here, where Streisand first stuns the world with her talent comes way after she has fallen in love with Kristofferson. In the 2019 version Cooper first helps Gaga go viral with 'Shallow' and only afterwards does Gaga start seriously falling in love with him. More importantly, it's also only after she falls in love with him that Gaga realises the extent of Cooper's brokenness. The film shows the audience how much of a dysfunctional alcoholic Cooper is, but that's not how it is in the early scenes with Lady Gaga. While clearly not 100%, he is charming, gentlemanly and professional. This is not how Kristofferson is presented to Streisand. He is an annyoing and disfunctional asshole from the start and she barely ever sees him in a different way. For us, neutral observers, it may be hard to see how she can fall in love with him, but why should we need to know and accept her heart and her thinking? Just like Kitty Winn, in The Panic In Needle Park she is allowed to have irrational personal feelings that only she fully understands.  These decisions make Kristofferson seem much less like a tortured martyr than Cooper, and give much less the impression that Streisand owes him something.

This film has also much love for music and for performing and for engaging the audience in the performance. In the majoirty of the music scenes, the film forgets the plot for a bit and entirely cedes the limelight to the performances. They are not meant for character development, but for highlighting the talents of Kristofferson and Streisand and the joy the audience gets from them. In the end, this does lead to the hilariously misguided final moments in which it seems Streisand has completely forgotten the tragedy that just befell her. Worse, not one of the songs she sings as a famous star is nearly as good as 'Queen Bee', the song she sings as a struggling lounge singer.   

175. End of the Century

Song - Barcelona (Freddy Mercury & Montserrat Caballé)

Movie: End of the Century - Fin de siglo (Lucio Castro, 2019)

The self-assuredness of Lucio Castro stands out, even before we reach the squeaking toy duck. End of the Century is a sort of Before Sunrise, set in Barcelona, only the lovers are gay and during the course of their conversation they find out they have met before sometime over 20 years ago. It hits all the beats you'd expect, but does so in a pleasantly unhurried way, without any of the pretensions or high-minded fussy tendencies that often creep into these kind of artsy debut features. A scene in which a character is reading a book, while the sentences appear on screen and are heard non-diegetically is a notable exception, but for the most part Castro directs as if he is a seasoned director of modest ambition, fully aware of, and at peace with, his skills and limitations. Nothing wrong with that; you don't really need the film to become more than it is, and never even anticipate it, but that's when the squeaking toy duck comes in.

As the film meanders towards its end, Castro suddenly reveals the true depths of his artistic ambitions. He presents it as casually as everything that came before, but by the time Ocho (Juan Barberini) steps on a squeaking toy duck, gets a carrot out of a fully stacked fridge and passes a beautifully singing woman on a Barcelona square, the whole film has been turned upside down, becoming something much more mysterious, lyrical and moving than it first appeared. It wisely never provides an answer to the questions it raises, though the final shot of Ocho is a mistake, as it opens up the possibility for the dullest possible interpretation of the film. Even so, this seems to me a highly successful attempt to merge the proud traditions of 'classic' European modernist cinema with contemporary progressive sensibilities. 

It's a mild spoiler to compare this to I'm Thinking of Ending Things, which made me want to see a more straightforward Charlie Kaufman film, one that focuses more on the mundane relationship drama. Kaufman's obsession with the mind is interesting, as as are his surrealistic flights of fancy. But his biggest strength is that he is an incredibly astute observer of human behaviour, with the road trip to the parents being of one the greatest examples of that. It's much stronger than the somewhat overheated histrionics of the second half of the film. Because Jessie Buckley gives one of the performances of the century, I still liked I'm Thinking of Ending Things quite a lot. But End of the Century is the ideal version of it. 

174. The Parallax View

Song - Fool's Overture (Supertramp)

Movie: The Parallax View (Alan J. Pakula, 1974)

In which Alan J. Pakula and Gordon Willis transform into prime Steph Curry. I don't usually like writing such pseudo-hip sentences, but that's what the shotmaking in this film makes you do. There is not a boring shot in sight here and every frame is constructed to be both cinematically interesting and fit the overarching ideas of the film. Especially in the outdoor scenes, there is so much going on in the frame, with things to see both in the foreground and in the background. Yet you never a get full picture of what is going in the shot. There is always something in the frame that passes by too quickly, or is just blocked out of view, or can't be quite clearly seen. And even if you are not missing anything, you are often left with the impression that you are, that something interesting or worthwhile is going on that you haven't noticed. Similarly, the full scope of the story/plot (of a reporter who tries to uncover the real truth behind the assassination of a senator) doesn't become clear until the end, in part because of small plot holes. Those plot holes are I think unintentional and the result of some sloppy screenwriting, but this is the kind of movie that makes you doubt your own thinking.

The film is ruthless too. The hard cut between the scene in which the distressed Lee Carter (Paula Prentiss), fearing for her life, confronts reporter Joseph Frady (Warren Beatty) and the next scene in which she is lying in the morgue is the most astonishing example of that. So is a boat trip and its aftermath, when it first starts becoming clear to us that Joseph never really had the upper hand, and never will. Every step he takes seems to be orchestrated and expected by The Parallax Corporation, something he only finds out when it's too late. The film has a bleak worldview, but I found that the ending does offer a glimpse of hope. The film begins and ends with a Commission giving a press conference on the closing of its investigation into the murder of a senator. In both cases it concludes that the murderer acted alone and that the conspiracy theories by the public are completely unfounded. Yet, the language in the last press conference makes it obvious that it's becoming increasingly harder to lie to the public.

The biggest legacy of The Parallax View is a sequence in the middle, in which Joseph, posing as a potential recruit of the Parallax Corporation is subjected to a short film where he is shown words like 'Happiness', 'God', Country, 'Father', etc, followed by images reflecting those words, e.g., a pile of money, a church, the American Flag, a fatherly figure. Throughout the film Joseph is shown different configurations of words and images, and it doesn't take long before this word association game takes a sinister turn. An image of a gun follows Happiness, an image of Hitler follows the word Father, Country is followed by Lee Harvey Oswald, a happy all-American family follows the word 'Enemy'. It's both an unsettling sequence and a joyously cinematic showstopper (I have seen it many times, despite seeing The Parallax View only twice), It's also a sequence that opens up many possibilities for pretentious writing about media, propaganda, capitalism and the American Dream. I am not going to that here, in part because the scene itself highlights better why Twitter and Facebook have sent so many people off the deep end than any thinkpiece or academic paper you could write on the subject. 

173. Punishment Park

Song - Blowin' in the Wind (Bob Dylan)

Movie: Punishment Park (Peter Watkins, 1971)

Last year, in the midst of Covid lockdown I stumbled upon the 1990 'documentary' "My Dinner with Abbie" about the countercultural anarchist Abbie Hoffman. It's basically an hourlong interview with Hoffman, talking about his motivations, ideals and life choices, and a great argument against the existence of The Trial of the Chicago 7. I like Aaron Sorkin and many of the actors in it, but it seems absurd for them, celebrated Hollywood artists running around in the same social circles as some of the most powerful American politicians, to make a film that is ostensibly sympathetic to the Chicago Seven, people who have been knowingly, deliberately and repeatedly harassed and destroyed by the American state. And as the film is designed to win shiny prizes and put money and cultural cachet in the pockets of billion dollar corporations like Netflix, it is basically using Hoffman to prop up the ideas/institutions he was fighting against. 

Punishment Park comes much closer to how a film about these activists should look and feel like. It is made in a pseudo-documentary style that rejects the established conventions of the Hollywood of its time. This rugged aesthetic also doesn't sanitise the world around the characters it depicts, while its revolutionaries are portrayed by amateur actors who share many of the ideals of their characters. Furthermore, the film does not shy away away from depicting the violence inflicted on them. It follows a number of Americans (some white, some black) who have been accused of traitorous activities and are found guilty in front of a show trial. They are allowed to choose between going to federal prison for many years or going to Punishment Park, where they will earn their freedom if they reach an American flag in three days, while being pursued by police forces in training. The film cuts between the show trial and the events in Punishment Park, and is presented as an English documentary about the changing character of law and order in America.  

While much of its approach is commendable, the film unfortunately fails to really flesh out the various assortment of hippies, pacifists and anti-war protesters it depicts. They never become much more than symbols of the American anti-establishment and of the heated debates of the 1960's. They are strawmen rather than real human beings. The film has the same problem when depicting their conservative opponents and often ends up resembling a filmed version of an exhausting social media discussion. Nothing is stopping you these days from hearing the Ben Shapiro's of the world spout their bullshit whenever you want and nothing the conservative establishment says in this film is much more shocking than what you'd see in the average right-wing corner of the internet. Nonetheless, the directness with which the film addresses the notion that America is a polarised society that doesn't extend its definition of freedom to all its citizens is quite striking. 

172. Alice in Wonderland

Song - White Rabbit (Jefferson Airplane)

Movie: Alice in Wonderland (Tim Burton, 2010)

That was fun! I had seen Burton's Charlie and the Chocolate Factory and Dark Shadows before. Those aren't films that will encourage you to explore a director's further work. Alice in Wonderland is far from great, but it contains enough to convince you that Burton may well deserve his 90's reputation. The film has a genuinely wacky spirit that feels sincere rather than carefully calculated. It is full of throwaway dialogues, jokes and images that make no sense at all within the context of the plot, and merely follow their own dream logic. It's impossible to dislike a film where an evil queen with a disproportionately large head is playing croquet, using a flamingo as a stick and a hedgehog as a ball.

I wrote about my distaste for whimsical fantasy just a couple of entries earlier when discussing The Wizard of Oz, and never realised that 'Alice' doesn't even belong to the same genre. So I was quite taken aback to find that in White Rabbit, Grace Slick barely uses any imagery from her own drugs experiences. Almost all of the lyrics are directly taken from Lewis Carroll, including the hookah smoking caterpillar and the pills that make you larger and smaller. The sheer quantity of absurd imagery and characters I completely did not expect to see, explains to a large extent my affection for the film, but Burton also deserves credit for doing interesting things with them. The scene in which Alice (Mia Wasikowska) meets the Hatter (Johnny Depp) is a wonderful example. The revelation of the height difference between Alice and the Hatter is surprising and funny; on her journey, Alice was accompanied by a dog whose size seemed to be in normal proportion to an ordinary teenage girl.

The film has much of the same CGI problems as many other contemporary blockbusters, something that's especially noticeable after just seeing The Wizard of Oz. The 'analogue' backgrounds, costumes and locations there all have a much more distinct and specific look than the digital ones in Alice in Wonderland. We visit many different locations, but they all look kinda same-ish. Alice in Wonderland was made just after the success of The Dark Knight made everyone want to 'darken' familiar stories. Burton here gives the impression to do the same thing through the grey tones of the CGI and the somewhat foreboding musical score, but this is constantly undercut by the goofy and proudly ridiculous tone of the rest of the film. Even the final fight between Alice and the Jabberwocky feels more like lighthearted fun than the fulfilling of an epic prophecy. It helps that Mia Wasikowska is very sympathetic and that Johnny Depp, Helena Bonham Carter and Anne Hathaway all act as if they've come straight from the set of The Looney Tunes. 

171. Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Song - More Than A Feeling (Boston)

Movie: Portrait of a Lady on Fire - Portrait de la jeune fille an feu (Céline Sciamma, 2019)

I grew up on films like Speed and Daylight, in which a man with special skills ends up in a fraught situation together with a group of terrified people and one especially resourceful woman, who takes the lead in getting the job done together with our hero. By the middle of the film it's already clear that our two heroes are falling in love, but they can't act on it. No matter how much they pine for each other, first they need to finish the job. The people need to be saved from the tunnel, the bus needs to be stopped. But once the task at hand is completed, the sparks fly and we swoon, more even than in an ordinary romantic comedy. It's not just that Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock get each other after finishing a daunting work, it's that they fall in love through working together, without love necessarily being their intent. They just see each other at their best and nature does the rest. Speed is still the best action movie ever made as far as I am concerned. But its place as the best workplace romance is taken by Portrait of A Lady on Fire. The painting needs to get painted, but afterwards....

I am not trying to be glib here and pretend that I can only enjoy a lesbian romance by comparing it to a kick-ass action movie. Both movies genuinely do have many of the same pleasures, and in fact that is one of the great strengths of Portrait of A Lady on Fire. The job, for a long while, takes precedent over the romance. And even after Marianne (Noémie Merlant) and Heloise (Adele Haenel) start their love affair, Sciamma keeps showing them performing domestic/professional (the distinction between the two is often blurred) tasks in great detail without adding an explicitly romantic/erotic component to them. In doing so she briefly lets them (and us) experience the domesticity of a married life they'll never have. In the process the film also normalizes love as something that simply flows out of regular daily activities. Love, no matter how passionate, is here not presented as something that encapsulates and defines the entirety of our lives. Rather, it's something that exists next to work and the ordinary responsibilities of daily life, something you have to make time for. That makes it more special, not less.

This approach works so well, in part because Noémie Merlant gives one of the great performances of the past few years. She comes to the coast to paint and presents herself as an exacting, pragmatic painter for whom that is a job. She is not a genius artist, but she cares and is serious about her craft and her professional obligation to get the job done. She knows that as a woman in her profession she is disadvantaged, but she views that as a fact of life, and herself as a worldly woman who is able to navigate around those bumps and who has made herself a decent life. She doesn't feel the need to complain much and seems reasonably satisfied with everything. This approach to the character is what makes the film. It's easy to imagine how tempting it must have been to make Marianne/Heloise explicitly feminist, or to frame their love affair as an explicit revolt against the patriarchy, but Sciamma never forgets that her characters live in the 18th century and respects the audience to get the political connotations without underlining them. There is no need to make grand statements, Marianne and Heloise don't even see each other as lesbians, the word is not mentioned, the taboo is not mentioned. Their love for each other is special, that it happened is not. 

I have seen this film twice now and liked it both times very much, especially because it is so surprisingly different from Sciamma's previous film Girlhood. That was set in the French banlieus and after a promising first half descended into boring social realism so desperate to make some sort of grand statement that it ended up perpetuating cliche stereotypes (in both form and content) about the people it depicted. Here she completely abandons her realism for classicism and the lush, grand and colorful compositions nicely contrast with the understated performance of Merlant, while also inviting you to look at the world (and Heloise) the way Marianne does. 

170. Joe

Song - Hey Joe (Jimi Hendrix)

Movie: Joe (John G. Avildsen, 1970)

After seeing The Panic in Needle Park you should understand why Al Pacino was destined to become Al Pacino. And if you still don't, Joe should do the trick. Here, the actor Patrick McDermott, portrays Frank Russo, a drug dealing lowlife wandering the streets of New York, shacking up with his girlfriend Melissa (Susan Sarandon) in rundown apartments. Joe was made just one year before The Panic in Needle Park, and you can easily imagine Frank being embarrassed and outhussled by Pacino's Bobby in some shady street corner. Which would admittedly be an improvement to getting killed by Bill Compton (Dennis Patrick), Melissa's dad, a rich ad executive who in a fit of rage lands one punch too many after his daughter almost OD's. His second mistake is to accidentally confess this to Joe (Peter Boyle) a raging racist hating every sign of change: "The young used to have ideals, now they protest for peace." That line alone is enough to earn the film its Oscar nomination for Best Screenplay. As for McDermott, he only appeared in three films. 

In any case, after their meeting I expected Bill and Joe to go on a murder spree. Instead, they become friends, and the film becomes something of a Richard Linklater joint about the burgeoning friendship between a rich white well-adjusted family man and a working-class bigot yelling about how America is going down the drain because of the blacks, hippies and lefties. For a long while the film basically consists of seeing Joe and Bill meet in various social establishments where they have long conversations about life and listen rapturously to each other, with Avildsen showing a lot of close-ups of their highly engaged faces. Joe can't believe that someone from the upper class finally listens and maybe even gets him, while Bill is overjoyed to have some good old-fashioned 'boys talk' with someone who is not an ad executive. Things are more complicated when their wives get into play, leading to a wonderfully awkward dinner scene between the two families, but without them the two men seem have find a second youth. Especially once they end up at an orgy and discover the bong. The film paints quite a stark picture of how easy it is to break the barriers existing between fascism and polite society. Though it occasionally engages in easy stereotypes about each of the groups it depicts (the rich white establishment, the far-right households and the hippies), it takes all the characters, their ideals and life choices seriously. It wants you to know that people like Joe really exist and that they have a not inconsiderable influence over politics and society. 

The one false note of the film comes when Joe and Bill do eventually go on a murder spree. And not just because it ends on a hilariously melodramatic note. Seeing a bunch of hippie haters kill a bunch of hippies is fascist fantasy wish fulfillment that doesn't even fulfill Joe's greatest wish. That is not to kill a bunch of hippies; it is to be seen and understood by Bill as someone who is wronged by society for not being able to kill a bunch of hippies without repercussions. Whether he entirely succeeds remains ambiguous, but Avildsen leaves no doubt that Bill is at least entertaining that notion. That's much more provocative than anything the film has to offer in its sensationalist ending. 

169. The Wizard of Oz

Song - Heart of Gold (Neil Young)

Movie: The Wizard of Oz (Victor Fleming, 1939)

There are many classic films I haven't seen, simply because I never got to them. The Wizard of Oz is one I've actively avoided. Whimsical wholesome (children's) fantasy is a genre I am quite allergic to, especially if it also involves fantastic creatures and simple moral lessons packaged in needlessly elaborate metaphors. Few things in popular cinema have alienated me more than the enduring success and popularity of the Lord of the Rings films. So it may seem like faint praise that I enjoyed The Wizard of Oz more than The Lord of The Rings, but I genuinely liked the film, if only because it's cool to see how much of modern popular culture is influenced by it. I knew about Over the Rainbow, did not know that 'The Yellow Brick Road', 'Ding, dong, the witch is dead!' and 'Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain' also come from it. And I just can't remember where I've heard/seen 'Surrender Dorothy' before, but I definitely have. 

Additionally, while I may not be a fan of this particular brand of fantasy, I do like movies that accentuate their own fakeness. It is a loss for modern movies that nobody anymore makes use of matte paintings to present a background or a space. The Wizard of Oz uses them in an even more interesting way than most classic movies; they make its world seem more constructed and artificial. Same goes for its use of colors. Things look more green, yellow and red than is realistically possible and you should not expect realistic looking leaves, grass and water either. In fact, the 'plasticness' of all these elements is made explicitly obvious. It makes the film look odd and weird, and even though 3/4 different directors contributed to it, it gives you the feeling that you are watching a personal, idiosyncratic vision, filled with imagination and some stunning shots. The tornado sequence transporting Dorothy to Kansas, while out of her window she watches all the important people in her life pass by is spectacular. So is the scene in which The Witch (in color) watches Dorothy's aunt (in black and white) through her crystal ball. This is followed by The Witch's flying monkeys starting their flight, reminding of attacking war planes in formation, an image that (I think) only became commonplace in movies after the Second World War. 

I did not care for much of the songs (with the exception being the song the Munchkins sing for Dorothy after she kills the The Wicked Witch of the East) and found the performance of Judy Garland a bit too saccharine/childishly ingratiating for my taste. But her interactions with the Tin Man, the cowardly Lion, and the Scarecrow are funny, the Lion gives a wonderfully over the top 'diva' performance, and the action sequences are exciting, hold up much better for contemporary audiences than you'd perhaps expect and would be more at place in an Indiana Jones film than in Narnia. Yet unsurprisingly, my favorite moment of the film is the joke involving the Wizard's doorbell. 

Finally, it's interesting that the film's ultimate 'moral' contradicts its most famous song. The fakeness of Oz is not just a nice artistic construct, especially not in comparison to how Dorothy's farm in Kansas is depicted. It communicates visually that there indeed is "no place like home" and that you don't need to leave Kansas to find 'real' education, love and glory. Can't think of many recent films that have been either willing to express/explore that sentiment, or that have expressed it with as much nuance (Dorothy and her friends only learn the value of 'home' after crossing 'over the rainbow') and elegance without condescending to either the 'coastal elite' or the American heartland.    

168. Only You

Song - I Want You (Elvis Costello)

Movie: Only You (Harry Wootliff, 2018)

Elvis Costello's I Want You can be heard at two crucial moments in Only You and would be a fitting song for any Laia Costa film. Few contemporary actors understand as well how much you can communicate through "the way your shoulders shake and what they are shaking for." She uses her entire body, face and limbs to evoke her state of mind and is in almost constant movement throughout the film. And she is matched beat for beat here by Josh O'Connor, who conveys so much of his emotional state here through the way he moves his hands. They are very much helped by Harry Wootliff, who tries to put the actors' full bodies in the frame and to have the two actors together in the shot. Much of the film is about seeing Jake and Elena be loving, gentle, and caring to each other and see the other person respond to that behavior in kind. It's a wonderful approach that authentically and lovingly conveys the great physical and emotional attraction between the two lovers. 

I was glad to discover that Harry Wootliff's next film will premiere at the Venice Film Festival. She is clearly a good and sensitive director who knows very well what to do with her actors. All she needs is a better marketing department. Only You was presented and written about as a romantic drama about a couple who has trouble conceiving children and the challenges such an ordeal brings. It is certainly (also) about that, but it would have made all the money in the world if it had been marketed to millenials as the unabashedly romantic portrayal of a young financially independent, emotionally mature couple with a somewhat decent house (that they own!) and somewhat decent jobs. You could even see it as an anti-Brexit film that never bothers to explain why the Spanish Elena is living in Glasgow, and never sees her as an outsider/exception in society.  

Wootliff at times does let herself get bogged down by plot mechanisms and cannot avoid a too conventional third act where the heroes break up and then triumphantly get back together again. No film anymore needs a scene in which a parent explains that love isn't perfect, but is worth fighting for (or any variation of it), especially not one in which that idea is so perfectly conveyed by the relationship between its actors. 

167. Kiss Me Deadly

Song - Twilight Zone (Golden Earring)

Movie: Kiss Me Deadly (Robert Aldrich, 1955)

"You have only one real lasting love. You. You're one of those self-indulgent males who thinks about nothing, but his clothes, his car, himself. Bet you do push-ups every morning just to keep your belly hard."  

Christina Bailey (Clorlis Leachmann) correctly pegs Mike Hammer (Ralph Meeker) merely a couple minutes after he has picked her up from the side of a dark empty road. Mike is a private detective who together with his exasperated assistant/lover Velda (Maxine Cooper, somehow her only major role)  specialises in divorce cases/adultery. They are essentially double agents, seducing the partners of their clients and sending the recording as proof they've solved the case. The money is good, so is the sex. The film takes great pleasure in showing the sexual, erotic attraction between Velda and Mike and her provocatively seductive behavior. It takes even greater pleasure in showing contempt to the mores of its times. 

Velda and Mike are of course hated by the 'serious' police detectives and polite society. But the film always remains on their side. It agrees with Christina's assessment of Mike, but ultimately sees it as more of a compliment than an insult. It works, thanks to Meeker's brilliant performance, (it reminded me of Jack Nicholson's early and greatest roles) portraying his arrogance, confidence and manly self-indulgence as an expression of his anti-establishment attitude. It's that attitude which makes makes him a man of the people, who will not turn over the distressed Christina, an escapee from a psychiatric institution, over to the authorities, nearly leading to his death. And it's that attitude that makes him stick his teeth into the mysterious case that has led to the death of Christina and the disappearance of many others, despite the fact it's never clear what he'll gain from solving the case. He just can't stand the powerful getting away with it, even if he doesn't exactly know what 'it' is.

It's an attitude the film sees as necessary and moral but ultimately pointless. The establishment is corrupt and out to crush you, and it eventually will. All you can do is follow your own rules and make bonds with the other lowlifes of society. Those include a Greek car mechanic, an Italian home-mover, a failed opera singer forced to perform for an audience of one in run-down apartments, and a black boxing trainer terrified for his life. Mike's cocky attitude softens in the presence of these people. He becomes friendlier, treating them with affection and concern, even occasionally allowing himself to show fear when they are in danger. The film has a genuine love for these forgotten members of a multicultural working class and their need to bond together in solidarity against the special interests of the police, high society and the government. Those special interests are in the end a bit too much of a McGuffin for my taste. I perhaps would have wished for a little bit more background in the motivations of the film's villains, but am not sure that this would have led to a better film. It definitely wouldn't have made the final scenes as eerie and haunting as they are. 

166. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves

Song - (Everything I Do) I Do it For You (Bryan Adams)

Movie: Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves (Kevin Reynolds, 1991)

I like Kevin Costner, but the world would have been a better place if he realised that Bull Durham is his greatest film. Unfortunately, the man cares too much about being perceived as noble and wholesome, which has led to some films and roles that are far less interesting than they could have been. Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves is one of the worst offenders with Costner never disappearing from his "oh how anguished I am for having to make such great sacrifices" mode. At the end of the film, there is a cameo by Sean Connery as King Richard, providing more joy and wit in a couple of seconds than Costner does through the entire film. He also doesn't have much chemistry with either Morgan Freeman, Christian Slater or Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio (who does give the most confident and realistic performance in the film).

Unfortunately, even aside from Costner, the other actors have problems of their own. Slater never looks convincing as someone who supposedly lives in the 12th century, and the film gives up pretending at the end with an explicitly anachronistic one-liner. This is not some sort of egregious mistake and was obviously at least partly intended as a sort of clever self-referential joke. Unfortunately, it comes at the worst moment, taking you right out of the film's most exciting moments, the only sequence that takes the time to set up the action, inviting you to think along with the characters and to follow and understand their battle plan. 

I also don't much care for Rickman's Sheriff of Nottingham, who too often feels like a retread of Die Hard's Hans Gruber. Rickman seems completely lost in his own world, you never get the feeling that he ever even thought about aligning himself with the tone of the film or with the other actors. Now, as someone who is a bit predisposed against joyless gloomy epics like this, I do somewhat respect Rickman's belligerent attitude towards it, and anytime you get the chance to make lazy screenwriters explain why you'd kill someone with a spoon, you have to take it. 

Finally, the film doesn't really know what to do with Morgan Freeman, but it deserves credit using him to portray the sophistication of the Arabs the crusaders fought against. The film introduces Robin Hood as a heroic fighter in these crusades, but never engages in the kind of stereotypes against Arabs that you would usually see in these kinds of films. It even goes out of his way to present Freeman's Azeem as a rational man of science and compassion. 

165. Wild at Heart

Song - Me And Bobby McGee (Janis Joplin)

Movie: Wild at Heart (David Lynch, 1990)

Some two years ago I started watching Twin Peaks. I stopped doing so after the "It's Happening Again" episode in season 2, which I felt was a perfect encapsulation of everything the show was about. I didn't see how Lynch could possibly improve or move on from that - the extended scene in the bar in particular is one of the greatest things ever filmed. Wild at Heart never stood a chance against Twin Peaks' episode 14 (and can't measure up to the rest of Twin Peaks either), but it is quite entertaining, sometimes funny, sometimes tense and unsettling, and in the end even endearingly romantic. Unexpectedly you do root for Cage as he steps over all those cars to get back to his Lula (Laura Dern).

I will at some point restart Twin Peaks, as I am especially curious about Season 3. Besides, it is just aesthetically pleasing to watch, and what I liked most about Wild at Heart is how much it shares with Twin Peaks. For example, how everytime someone in the film lights a match, it is accompanied by ominous sounds and images of burning and fire. Or Angelo Badalamenti's score, which is somehow both haunting and comforting. Haunting, because it is often used to accentuate something mysterious and potentially evil, but also comforting because there is a softness to it. It's pleasant to listen to it. The same can be said for Lynch's imagery, that's full of warmth and bright colors. And he clearly loves the characters he creates and the actors he works with, giving them freedom to go into all kinds of unexpected directions. It's also fun to see here some of the core cast of Twin Peaks show up in small roles. I also liked that the most Twin Peaks-like performance comes from J.E. Freeman, the actor playing hitman Santos, who does not actually appear on the show, and was amused that Sheryl Lee keeps only appearing as a spectral presence. 

I find the relationship between Lynch's concerns and his style quite interesting and appealing. It may feel quite counter-intuitive to make pleasantly watchable films about the great darkness of the world, but if you believe (and repeatedly point out throughout your work) that there is great uncontrollable and unknowable evil in the world lurking in many corners, shapes and forms, it would make sense for your art to go out of its way to show that it itself is not evil, and in fact, rather comfortingly enjoyable. That's a big 'if', it's worth noting. The absurdity in Twin Peaks is much more part of a coherent worldview than in Wild at Heart where at times you have to wonder whether you are watching a prankster throw spaghetti at the wall to see what sticks. Much does though, and even if some of that is rather stupid, it does lead to stuff you won't readily see in other directors' work. 

I did sometimes wish that Laura Dern, Willem Dafoe and Diane Ladd chilled out a bit (Cage is great), but even that makes some sense as it taps into the world view of angsty and exhilarated teenagers with heightened emotions and big feelings. The car accident scene is another great example of that. It's morbidly funny and uncomfortable, but also a rather great expression of the fear of an insecure teenager that losing some important documents will be the end of the world.  Finally, as an aside. I already thought that the John Wick films would age rather badly (their fights become kind of repetitive and follow the same patterns) before finding out that their world building is pretty much ripped off from this film. 

164. Kes

Song - Blackbird (The Beatles)

Movie: Kes (Ken Loach, 1969)

You don't often see Ken Loach be compared to Scorsese or Tarantino, which is why the best scene in this film took me by surprise. It involves a football training at PE class, and Mr. Sugden, pretending to be Bobby Charlton. Mr. Sugden is the teacher of the class, the 'captain' of one of the teams, and the referee of the game. He makes a show of being better than his 12/13-year old pupils, fouls with impunity, awards himself a penalty, decides that the keeper moved to early when missing the penalty, and wildly celebrates when he hits the retaken penalty. He glorifies his own talent, trash talks his students' skills and mistakes, and after the game turns the water cold when his keeper Billy is showering, to punish him for not saving the decisive goal, letting 'Tottenham Hotspur' beat 'Manchester United'. 

The whole sequence could come straight out of Mean Streets, especially because Mr. Sugden and Brian Glover's performance is the driving force of the scene. Moreover, Loach consistently highlights the difference in strength, physicality, skill, and aggression between Mr. Sugden and his pupils and lets the scene continue for much longer than needed, highlighting the laughable absurdity of it all. Whenever a team scores, he starts filming in the style of a TV coverage of an actual live football match, complete with a text at the bottom of the screen informing us that it's 'Manchester United 1 - 1 Tottenham Hotspur'. The sequence is unquestionably an indictment of the teacher's abuse, but it also the teacher's abusive behavior that is the source of the sequence' cinematic qualities and pleasures. Who knew that Ken Loach influenced Fight Club? 

I am a bit flippant, but it's a genuinely interesting choice Loach makes there. Kes is, among other things, an indictment of the British school system, showing how it uses (physical, emotional, and verbal) violence to beat the individuality out of the students and train them to become cogs in the machine. Billy's care for his falcon Kes is one of the few things that he gets to do in the film that allows him to assert his individuality and to do something that goes against the plans society has for him.  Billy is lonely and has few friends, and Kes does alleviate his loneliness, but this is not the kind of gooey film, believing that his relationship with Kes is a genuine alternative to real friendships. Rather, it shows that through the care for his falcon, Billy gets to express himself and form more meaningful relationships with his classmates and teachers. That in itself is a triumph. The film's view is that it's hard to express who you are in such a conformist environment. The only other person who attempts to do so, is Mr. Sugden in the aforementioned football match, but he can only do so by imagining he is Bobby Charlton, Safe to say, that this doesn't lead to a more meaningful relationship with his students. 

163. Coming Home

Song - How You Gonna See Me Now (Alice Cooper)

Movie: Coming Home (Hal Ashby, 1978)

I had seen this film before, but didn't remember anything from it. Many years ago, I wrote on this blog that I prefer Being There over it. Not sure what I was thinking; this is clearly the superior film. As seems to be his wont, Hal Ashby loses control over the plot at certain points (no need to involve the FBI in this), but his sensitive and subversive approach worked incredibly well for me. The film is angry about the Vietnam War and about the American cultural values that made it possible, but has sympathy for individuals, who shaped by those values are willing to fight and die for them. It evokes how hard it must have been to be against the war (and to be a dissenter in general), not so much from a political, but from a psychological point of view. 

In its opening pre-credit scene it puts Jon Voight, playing paralyzed vet Luke Martin, in a room with wounded real Vietnam-veterans reflecting on their war experiences. Voight is a silent witness to their conversation dominated by a veteran who explains why he doesn't regret going to Vietnam and why he'd do it again. The film respects his point of view, but immediately undercuts it during its credit sequence. Set to The Rolling Stones' Out of Time, we see Bob Hyde (Bruce Dern) doing running exercises to prepare for his deployment to Vietnam. Those scenes, with many shots focusing on the movement of his legs, are intercut with scenes from a veteran hospital with wounded ex-soldiers, sitting in wheelchairs, using crutches, learning to walk with prosthetics. After Dern goes to war, his wife Sally (Jane Fonda) decides to volunteer for the local military hospital, preparing food, helping with exercises and moving wheelchaired veterans around. The next time we meet her husband, is in Hong Kong where she is visiting him on his 'R&R' (rest and recuperation). He arrives at the airport sitting comfortably in a riksha, moved forward by some poor Asian kid. The contrast with the wheelchairs is obvious as is the contempt Ashby has for the American's arrogantly laconic attitude towards the Vietnam war and the 'East' as a whole. 

The film ends in high school gym where Luke in a passionate, emotional speech calls upon the students to not go to Vietnam, to not enlist in the army, explaining that there is nothing heroic about killing for your country. You could perhaps argue that it's a weakness of the film to end on such a preachy, if fully correct, note. But the scene also works as an intellectual breakthrough for Luke, who is throughout the film trying to align his thoughts and feelings about the war with his thoughts and feelings about America and her ideals and promises. Besides, if the film in the end has a 'message' it is much more subtle than 'the Vietnam War is bad and opposed to America's norms and values'. The main character in the film is Sally. She experiences the biggest change in the film, transforming from a dutiful housewife into an independent, confident woman who discovers both her professional talents and her sexual desire while her husband is away. In doing so, the film connects the anti-war efforts to the women liberation movement, and sees both as part of the same fight for progressive ideals. 

 

162. What Richard Did

Song - Troy (Sinead O'Connor)

Movie: What Richard Did (Lenny Abrahamson, 2012)

Lenny Abrahamson did not lose his cool! I was afraid he would go for a comforting ending, turning Richard (Jack Reynor) over to the police. Based on the film's title, I was also afraid he would go for one of those needlessly elliptical plots intertwining scenes of Richard before the incident and Richard after the incident, leaving the audience in the dark for as long as possible about what Richard did. But he tells the story fully chronologically and the film is better for it. The straightforward narrative highlights how unremarkable the events leading up to Richard's misdeed are, and how easily teens can ruin a life. Especially when they are white, affluent and popular and have never needed to face the consequences of their dumb actions. When Richard throws a couple of punches to his rugby teammate Connor at a house party, it is quite clear that this is not the first (or second, or third..) time he has thrown a punch.

One of the more underrated films of the past few years has been Lone Scherfig's The Riot Club, about rich Oxford students who can't be held accountable for their actions, because they can always pull the right strings. It's an sharply written and performed film, unafraid to sting in every scene. It's also driven by a righteous anger that few recent films have matched. It came out two years after What Richard Did, and is the better film. Abrahamson's direction is a bit too understated and too resigned to give the film the extra bit of acerbity it needs. But What Richard Did puts the audience a bit more on the hook than The Riot Club did. 

The Riot Club explicitly identifies the students at its center as (the offspring of) rich Tories and presents them as arrogant entitled assholes who are not liked by the majority of the British society. Yet because of their elite connections they can do whatever they want and be ensured that once graduated they will have the kind of careers that will give them power over the populace. They are untouchable people who can shape the rules of society in their favor. Richard is not an entitled asshole. He is in fact quite a sympathetic character, smart, sensitive and good at rugby. He makes outsiders feel included among his group of friends, is responsible  and able to help a girl who has had an unpleasant sexual encounter in a bar, and genuinely loves his girlfriend Lara (Roisin Murphy). He has courted Lara straight out of the hands of Connor, but that's something 18 year olds tend to do. Besides, Lara is clearly happier (Murphy is a really great actress with an ability to portray small shifts in her emotional state without doing much) with Richard, who is more mature than Connor and can have meaningful conversations about life with her. Richard's parents own a house in Dublin and a small vacation home on the coast, but while they are well off, they are not filthy rich or part of the elite. Richard and his family do not have the power to bend society to their will, but the film is partly about the fact that they don't need to. Richard is the kind of "promising young man" society is built for. There are unseen forces at play which just make sure that the rules bend over in favor of people like Richard, without anyone really needing to make some explicit intervention.

In the end I was reminded of the Rabbi Nachtner's story in A Serious Man (to be fair, I am often reminded of that, as it is one of the greatest scenes ever), about the Jewish dentist who had a moral and spiritual crisis after thinking he found a message from God in one of his patient's teeth. The Rabbi explains that these questions are like a tootache. "We feel them for awhile, then they go away." And so after obsessively checking the mouths of his other patients for a while, the dentist eventually simply stopped checking. He "returned to life", playing golf and having happy dinners with his wife. After killing Connor, Richard has a crisis of conscience. Lara leaves him, he can't eat, he loses touch with his two best friends. But he doesn't turn himself over to the police, potential witnesses remain silent, and eventually Lara comes back to him, he has drunken conversations in the park with his friends, and starts following classes at university. He returns to life.