Movie: The Breakfast Club (John Hughes, 1985)
I always like long dialogue-driven scenes/movies, allowing characters to speak and speak, trying to articulate the emotions, feelings and ideas they have been wrestling with. The Breakfast Club of course contains many such scenes, with the highlight being Andrew's (Emilio Estevez) monologue about why he ended up in detention. Hughes lets the scene unfold patiently, focusing mainly on Estevez, only ocasionally cutting to the reactions of the other kids. As a result, the scene becomes about more than just his words. We are aware of Estevez' (the best actor of the bunch, together with Molly Ringwald) thinking about what he wants to say, earnestly trying to find the right words and thoughts. His monologue is as much about revealing certain truths to himself, as it is about revealing them to the group. You get the sense that he felt bad about what he did, and that now he finally really understands the specific reasons about why he feels bad about it, and what drove him to act in the way he did. The others expose themselves in similar ways, and it's obvious that all the asides, jokes, bullshitting and ball-busting that came before helped make these epiphanies possible, that jokingly giving each other a hard time, probing each other's defenses, also forced everyone in the group to think about themselves and understand their own problems better.
I liked The Breakfast Club more now than when I was its target audience. I had last seen it over a decade ago, and was always quite resistant to it. I found the idea that dark trauma is all that binds teenagers of different backgrounds to be quite unpleasant and obnoxious, especially in combination with its claims to universality. Some of this can be attributed to its legacy; at some point it seemed as if every mention of The Breakfast Club was acommpanied by the addition that it was the ultimate film about the teenage experience or some such nonsense. Hughes' writing is not innocent though - the five teens at the center are clearly presented as teen archetypes and starting the movie with Don't You Forget About Me, and the famous David Bowie lyrics from Change immediately signals that you are expected to find the film an unforgettable, meaningful experience.
Some of these problems persist - the film still often gives the impression that it is trying really hard to be the voice of a generation, or the voice of an experience. But for the most part, watching it now, I thought The Breakfast Club stands out for its specificity. It doesn't play like a film about five average teenagers in a room who accidentally discover that that they are all victims of parental abuse and neglect. Rather, it plays as a film about five very specific teenagers who are vicitms of parental abuse and neglect and an exploration of all the ways in whch that can affect their lives. It has some suprisingly dark moments, and I found it quite interesting that for much of its first half this is barely an ensemble movie. It's pretty much all about Bender (Judd Nelson), the most obviously traumatised character. Everything that happens in the film is initiated by him, and we only get to know the others through their responses to him.
A couple of years ago, Molly Ringwald wrote a great article about her relationship with John Hughes, discussing how she thinks the films hold up now that contemporary (pop) culture is more aware of abuses of power. She argues that she still is very proud of the films she's made with Hughes, seeing them as great movies with valuable insights, but that she does feel uneasy about the sexism and racism at display in some of them. I haven't seen Sixteen Candles, which I understand is the biggest culprit in this context, but Ringwald does mention her discomfort with the scenes of sexual and verbal abuse in The Breakfast Club. Ringwald writes that she is hesitant to show these scenes - directed at her character Claire by Bender - to her daughter, which is quite understandable as they are quite vicious and unambigously unpleasant. It's impossible to see them as cute teenage clowning, and (maybe speaking too much from the current perspective) I don't think Hughes intended them as such. Bender and Claire do get together at the end of the film, but this is not presented as a purely romantic moment (and fits in the context of their characters). Nelson in particular doesn't play it as if the vengeful feelings Bender had towards Claire have now completely disappeared. Such a nuanced consideartion doesn't apply to the criticsms related to the makeover/characterisation of Allison (Ally Sheedy). Sheedy does her best with what she's given, but Hughes doesn't really know what to do with that character and it often seems like he has included her as a punching bag.
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