292. Runaway Train

Song - Locomotive Breath (Jethro Tull)

Movie: Runaway Train (Andrei Konchalovsky, 1985)

It's perhaps a little greedy to ask for a couple more action set pieces in a movie that culminates with a spectacular chase scene between a sadistic prison warden hanging from a helicopter rope ladder and a runaway train harboring two escaped convicts. The helicopter and the train often appear in the frame together as they pass through and around the remote Alaskan wilderness and its snowy imposing mountains. You really get a great sense of the danger everyone is in, and the seeming impossibility of making it out alive. It makes every single move feel exciting and unpredictable, yet understandable in the larger context, allowing you to yell at the screen whenever you feel someone is making a dumb or unnecesarily dangerous decision. It helps too that the film has established the rivalry between warden Ranken (John P. Ryan) and Manny (Jon Voight) quite effectively. They are evenly matched and equally stubborn, turning their battle of wills into a personal vendetta that has a long time ago ceased to be about upholding the law or escaping for freedom.  All of this works really well, but, alas, I really could have used a couple more action set pieces. 

Runaway Train used to be always on TV and our TV guide always used to give it 5 stars, writing it up as a more mature film than the likes of Speed, Die Hard or Lethal Weapon. So it was OK that it was (in my mind at least) always playing a little too late in the evening - there would eventually come a time when I'd see it. And when the time did come, I remember it felt quite cool to finally be able to sit down and watch it. I also remember that I felt a tinge of disappointment after it ended, thinking that it wasn't as special as I expected it to be. Seeing it now, not much has changed. It's really good, but still not entirely satisfactory. Part of it may be that a train is inherently less exciting (at least in the context of action cinema) than a car, bus or plane. Konchalovsky has a lot of exterior shots of the train passing by with great speed, but seeing a train on the loose isn't much different than seeing a normally functioning train. Sure, it's faster, but it's still just a big unwieldy thing that moves in a straight line along a railway. If it gets derailed, the action will stop, so the options of showing it moving in ways that are out of the ordinary are limited, and you can entirely forget about having it do cool action stunts. And so, here we have a sequence where a train coming in from the opposite direction is moved to a different track right on time, and one where the out of control train passes over an old bridge with a speed that may or may not be too high for the bridge to withstand. Konchalovsky and co get as much suspense and excitement out of these scenes as they can, but that's mostly evoked through dialogue, good editing, and reaction shots. The movements of, in, and around the train itself are not that interesting. especially not in comparison to the deranged, chaotic violence of the prison fight scenes that set up the story and characters.

The film starts with Manny being released from three years of solitary confinement in an Alaskan maximum security prison, mostly so that Rankin will have an opportunity/excuse to hurt him when he tries to escape a third time. When he does, he is joined by Buck (Erick Roberts), who, as most prisoners looks up to him, but is too dumb to realise many things, including that Manny isn't too proud of his own criminal actions. Voight really does give a good performance as a cruel, ruthless man who regrets he doesn't know how to function in the world otherwise, but has no intentions to change his ways. Ranken (presumably) does, but still chooses to be as brutal as he possibly can in any given situation, without much remorse. The film wants to build some philsoophical ideas around this contrast quoting Shakespeare "No beast so fierce but knows some touch of pity. But I know none, and therefore am no beast." I don't think the film is very convincing in exploring these ideas, but Voight, Roberts, and to a lesser extent John Ryan, take them to heart and add a primitive touch to their performances that makes them more interesting.

291. To Have and Have Not

Song - You Are So Beatiful (Joe Cocker)

Movie: To Have and Have Not (Howard Hawks, 1944)

It's hard to imagine now, but in 1960 Alfred Hitchcock had to explicitly ban audiences from entering Psycho midway through. It used to be common for many filmgoers to get in at any point during a screening, stay through the ending and the beginning of the new show, and then leave when they got to the point of entry. This was especially popular during double features or full programmes that contained newsreels, shorts, ads and other entertainment before the main feature. Currently, some small 'alternative' cinemas are trying to restore this practice. I am not the biggest fan, especially when you are not informed in advance. Recently a place like that was showing 80's wrestling clips and an episode of Twilight Zone before finally getting to the main event (The Producers), a movie that had no connection to what came before. The Twilight Zone episode was quite good even, but I couldn't fully enjoy it, as I was just waiting to get on with it. A better experiment might be to screen a triple feature of Casablanca, To Have and Have Not and Key Largo in a continuous loop throughout the day, allowing people to get in and out whenever they feel like it. 

The one issue here is that Casablanca is the obviously superior film, but setting that aside all three of these movies have so many thematic, narrative and stylistic similarities, scenes and moments from all three would start blending in with each other, creating one big narrative about 'Bogart's' World War 2 experience. emphasising the strength of his screen persona. At whichever point you start watching, it may take you a bit to get into the story, but within less then 5 minutes there won’t be any doubts about the feel and tone. It doesn’t matter that much whether Bogart is trying to mind his own business until forced into action by events beyond his control in a Nazi-occupied French colony in Africa or in the Caribbean. It’s of equally little importance whether he is undertaking a dangerous boat trip in a foggy ocean to evade gangsters or Vichy officials. It's all about how much his attitude guides every single aspect of these films.

Casablanca and To Have and Have Not both also have a piano player who supports Bogart’s romantic prospects with love songs and friendly banter, but it does make a difference whether Ingrid Bergman or Lauren Bacall is Bogart’s co-star. Casablanca may be the better film, but in seeing how much Bogart’s persona overshadows everything, you should also get more appreciation for Bacall. She is more than anyone else in these films able to evoke a style and mood that is her own and not beholden to Bogart (she also feels ahead of her time, paving the way for Michelle Pfeiffer). Her chemistry with him in To Hava and Have Not has, if anything, been undersold. They fell in love during the film's production, and even if you didn't know, you'd think it. There is a joy and attraction in their scenes together that feels completely and knowingly spontaneous. This is the film where Bacall says her famous line "You know how to whistle, don't you Steve. You just put your lips together and blow." The way Bacall puts it, she'd seduce any man, and Bogart's response is the most flappable you'll see him in any of these movies. 

To Have and Have Not ends with Bogart’s character deciding to help the French resistance get from Martinique to Devil’s Island (a notorious penal colony off the coast of French Guiana) to free some of their prisoners. The film ends before we see his new adventure, but it was interesting to find out that in 1944 Bogart also had a role in Escape to Marseille, directed by Casablanca’s Michael Curtiz. Here, he plays Jean Matrac, a French prisoner at DeviL’s Island who is helped to escape by the French resistance. Would it be too much to add a fourth film to our programme?

290. 1492: Conquest of Paradise

Song - Conquest of Paradise (Vangelis)

Movie: 1492: Conquest of Paradise (Ridley Scott, 1992)

The pioneers of exploration committed far graver sins than Ridley Scott, but at least they were pioneers. Some of Christopher Columbus' harshest critics argue he can't be excused as a 'man of his time', pointing to writings from the Spanish Royal Court accusing him of disproportionately cruel and inhmane acts in the 'New World'. Although the veracity of some of these accusations is disputed, what's true is damning enough. However, the Spanish monarchy didn't issue these warnings out of some sincere concern for the rights of indigenous people and its standards for the treatment of its colonised subjects were in no way morally justifiable. Discussing the extent to which they were more humane than Columbus is just splitting hairs about acceptable levels of brutality. Columbus did however meaningfully diverge from his time in his insistence on using science to fight for the truth, in defiance of the conservative dogma's of his society. Should progressives dismiss that so easily?

Towards the end of the film Columbus (Gerard Depardieu) tells his main rival, the fully fictional Sanchez (Armando Assante), Qoeen Isabella's (Sigourney Weaver)'s chief advisor "No matter how long you live, Sanchez, there is something that will never change between us. I did it. You didn't." It's a wonderful line, that resonates even more a bit later when Sanchez admits to one of his allies "if your name or mine is ever remembered it will only because of his." I got a kick out of these moments ahd have always liked the mythology around Columbus, but no, he didn't prove to his contemporaries that the Earth was round - it had been established knoweledge for centuries. What's more, many had a better idea of the difficulties of his journey west than he did. Although nobody thought there would be an entire continent between Europe and Asia, there were significant doubts whether Columbus had correctly calculated the time it would take him. Those doubts were proven correct. Scott's film points this out in such a roundabout way that you never really get a clear sense of Columbus' views on the matter. It's an example of one the film's key issues; it wants to both print the legend and avoid accusations of being completely ahistorical. So it starts with a scene in which Columbus explains to his son that the Earth is round, followed by a moment in his workplace where he angrily pushes a ramshackle globe of his table, giving the impression that the globe is his own unique creation. However, In none of the discussions with the rich and powerful he is seeking to convince to finance his journey does the point about the shape of the Earth come up. In one of those scenes there is even an actual 'royal' globe in frame, but it's not centered, nor fully visible. It just stands there, unremarked upon, denying a good view of what it represents.

I liked the film most when it most fully embraced the Columbus legend. Soctt takes an experiential approach to the first exploration of the Santa Maria, Pinta and Nina. He spends about half an hour on their voyage that took about three months in reality, choosing mood over story. He shows life on the ships at different points of the journey, but most of these scenes (the exception is a brewing mutiny Columbus stops with a powerful speech) don't represent a major milestone for the expedition, or have a strong narrative connection. Scott rather focuses  on small and seemingly less significant moments that evoke how it must feel to be going into the great unknown. That's an interesting approach reflective of the mindset of the explorers - they have no way of knowing when they have reached a crucial point, or what the beginning, middle and end of their journey would look like. Scott's approach continues when they finally reach land and we experience the jungle as a mythical untouched Eden alongside Columbus and his crew.  And then the natives arrive...

Not knowing how to choose between the historical Columbus and the mythological Columbus, Scott manages to direct himself into a strange corner where the film itself comes off as more racist than Columbus. Part of that may be on Depardieu, who always has a whiff of a naive manchild, and fully leans into it in his portrayal of Columbus, turning him into a combination of Jesus and Forrest Gump. His Columbus is a man of pure heart and good intentions who has little understanding of the forces unleashed by his actions. All that matters is that he "did it" and the film seems to believe that this should absolve him of all his mistakes, which includes treating the 'others' as human beings to be reasoned with. All the violence the Spanish inflict here is presented as a consequence of actions by the indigenous peoples, and the direct result of Columbus' trust in their humanity. In the climactic battle scene Scott films the violence from up close, and without any inhibition. The natives all wear identical plants and leaves as camouflage and proteciton and when they attack the whites they are completely unrecognisable and unidentifiable. It's as if the Spansh are attacked, as ltierally as possible, by savage nature. 

289. The Abyss

Song - How Deep Is Your Love (Bee Gees)

Movie: The Abyss (James Cameron, 1989)

An estranged couple re-ignites their love engaging in shared physical labor and effort; gruff unreconstructed-yet-tenderhearted blue collar ordinary guys survive through their sense of camaraderie and their nuts-and-bolts knowledge of oil rig machinery; in man-to-man combat an oil worker fights a Navy Seal to a standstill, his lack of experience offset by the day to-day demands of his job. The Abyss also contains some of the most spectacular special effects and cinematography I've seen, only made possible by technological advancements James Cameron is more than happy to show off. But not even the shiniest new toys can be a substitute for simple, humane pleasures, like cutting the right wire in a moment of great duress, a chase between two marine vehicles bumping against each other, a triumphant proof of life when all hope seems lost, or just smashing an evil dude's head with a blunt object. And then there are also aliens. 

I enjoyed Avatar a lot when it came out, but had no interest in seeing last year's sequel. It's not wrong to call it Pocahontas in Space, but the bigger issue is that it all feels like we are watching a story set in the world's most elaborate screensaver. I think it's incredibly unfortunate that James Cameron has decided to spend the twilight of his career obsessing about Pandora, when he is so great at making giant blockbusters that feel tactile and tangibly set in the real world, even when they engage in completely outrageous sci-fi scenarios. Yes, he doesn't make movies to be subtle, he wants you to notice the money on screen and the effort that went into the production, and to be aware and awed by how much pioneering engineering went into the creation of his movies. But all of that hugeness ultimately serves to put you as much as possible and as directly as possible in the shoes of his characters, both physically and emotionally. The idea that the forces overwhelming the screen should also be overwhelming the audience is of course at the heart of Avatar, but to remember how it's done right Cameron should rewatch at least the resuscitation scene in The Abyss (or all of The Terminator, one of the greatest movies).   

The Abyss is multiple blockbusters for the price of one. It follows an underwater oil drilling crew, led by Bud Brigman (Ed Harris), asked to retrieve a sunk American nuclear submarine. They are joined by Bud's ex-wife Lindsey (Mary Elizabeth Mastrantonio), the chief engineer of their drlling platform. A hurricane, a trigger happy Navy Seal gone rogue, and underwater aliens move the job even further outside of routine territory, forcing the crew to constantly take action agaunst the forces threathening to overwhelm them and to regroup and reassess the situation after each exciting set piece. At one point, Bud and Lindsey get in a tight spot with only one functioning deep sea suit and the only way out is for her to effectively drown herself and have Bud swim with her body to their main sub where she will be reuscitated by the remaining crew. By then, it's become obvious that the two are falling for each other again, to everyone's delight, and when it's time to get her back to life, the entire crew is intensely preparing the defibrilator and watching in great anguish as several attempts fail. All seems lost until a manically angry Bud starts violently hitting her and insulting her as a "stubborn bitch" who chooses the wrong moments to fight. Cameron films all of this in extreme close up, fervently moving the camera around each person on site, barely allowing a moment to breathe until Mastrantonio does.

Mastrantonio waking up immediately became one of my favorite moments of triumphant relief in action cinema, but Bud's behaviour in the scene is absolutely meant to make you feel uncomfortable. Cameron and Harris leave no doubt that Bud's vicious anger, though expressed in despair, towards Lindsey comes from a real place, and is as authentic as his love for her. At the same time, Bud accepts throughout the movie that Lindsey is obviously intellectually superior to him, while also being able to match his physicality every step of the way. The whole thing is a great example of why the notion that James Cameron is a much worse writer than director is misguided. So many major Hollywood movies, in particular action blockbusters, find it really hard to present the unpolished roughness of male heroes, without either resorting to macho posturing or to cleaned up strawmen to correct the course. It probably helps that Cameron himself stands somewhere in the middle between the two. He is a 'my way or the highway' perfectionist who pushed the cast to such inhumane lengths (multiple people almost drowned) while filming The Abyss that Harris (he acts out entire scenes while holding his breath in a water-filled helmet) and Mastrantonio couldn't talk about the film until the 21st Century, while also being a corny humanist pacifist with a genuine interest in putting his money where his mouth is to explore how science can improve the world. It leads to him wrtinng things like "Coffey looks and he sees Russians. He sees hate and fear. You have to look with better eyes than that", and meaning it from the bottom of his heart to the extent he builds his entire film around this idea. 

288. Claudine

Song  - Think (Aretha Franklin)

Movie: Claudine (John Berry, 1974)

Some may scoff at the scene in which Claudine (Diahann Carroll), a single mother of six, and Roop (James Earl Jones), twice divorced, with kids in Ohio, furiously explain to each other why they are not respectively a welfare queen and irresponsible absent father, but it's one of the film's many great moments. This is not a film that lazily wants to teach you that not all black people fit the negative stereotypes of them, but it's about how the politics shaped by these stereotypes directly affect every aspect of their personal lives. The first time we see a social worker visit Claudine to see if she is not breaking any rules that might cut her social benefits, the slow trek through the apartment is filmed in one long take, highlighting exactly how much Claudine is forced to make even her smallest private decision, up to room decoration, fit the expectations of a political burocracy designed to impose on, and humiliate, poor and black people.  

Claudine's feelings aren't safe from political incursion either. She and Roop are not necessarily made to be togethet, but they do greatly enjoy their company, and one of the film's joys is just seeing Jones and Carroll freely interact, flirt and reflect on how their love might affect their future. The camera stays close to their bodies and faces during long scenes in which they are allowed to interrogate their thoughts and feelings for as long as they can. It's as if the film wants to give them the time, the system doesn't have the patience for. Social security is dependent on one's relational status, and when a man gets into a house the social worker will want to know exactly why and who, blocking Claudine and Roop from dictating the pace of their relationship on their own terms. And even if they do make a decision about a common future they are left to navigate all the paradoxical complexities of their hellish burocracy. John Berry and his screenwriters Tina and Lester Pine deserve a lot of credit for untangling all the absurdities of the administrative rules and obligations hampering their heroes. Narratively, this makes the film and its characters' motivations and frustrations easier to follow, and politically it shows that the complex structure is a feature, not a bug. The social welfare system could look differently; making lives complicated for its beneficiaries is a political choice.   

But what to do? Well, the film doesn't have any real answers for that. There is a joke (it's funny because it's true!) that a lot of contemporary leftist art criticism boils down to "The character didn't turn to the screen and proclaim himself the exact type of communist/socialist I am." John Berry's issue here is similar, desperately trying to fir the film's ideals within a specific subset of radicalism that leads to muddled politics and (especially towards the end) ill-fitting character decisions and dialogue. On the one hand it actively tries to embody a perspective that's alienating to mianstream white audiences - Claudine only decides to go out with Roop when he stands up to a rich white homeowner, while her children complain that the Tarzan movies feature the wrong hero. They also hang out with a guy who changed his birth name to Abdullah, presented here as a thing doesn't require any further explanation. On the other hand, the film is actively skeptical of Charles' (Claudine's oldest son) efforts to join a civil rights group (named after W.E:B Du Bois) that seeks to protest injustices and doesn't fear confrontations with the police. The fates of Charles and Charline (Claudine''s oldest daughter; her final scene with her mom contains some awfully unnatural writing) both play above all as a screenwriter's desperate attempt to make a larger dramatic/political point. Sometimes reality will make that point for you. Diahann Carroll is here very beautiful and very good (even getting an Oscar nomination), but perhaps convincingly playing a sympathetitc black welfare recipient is no smart career move. After Claudne, she wasn't cast in a feature film until 1990.

287. The End of the Affair

Song - Sara (Fleetwood Mac)

Movie: The End of the Affair (Neil Jordan, 1999)

After playing the world's dimmest, sexualy confused, soldier in The Crying Game, Stephen Rea is now back in a Neil Jordan plot twister, playing a sexually absent husband too obtuse to realise that his wife Sarah (Julianne Moore) is meeting her needs with his friend Maurice (Ralph Fiennes). In a conversation about his suspicions of Sarah's whereabouts, Jordan frames him as a pathetic wimp who seems to almost shrink in stature when the centre of attention is on him. And when he returns home one day just when Maurice is putting the final touch on Sarah, she tells her lover not to worry about her moaning: her husband wouldn't recognise the sound. Playing such types seems to come naturally to Rea; even in roles that don't specifically call for it, there is a hint that the world's complexities will eventually overwhelm him. As a result, both Fergus in The Crying Game and Henry here, feel like real, specfic people ratther than metaphors for some pathology. I also found it quite amusing that Fergus is an IRA recruit, while Henry is a minister in the British government - feebleness has no ideology. The End of the Affair shows it has no demeanour either. 

Maurice, a succesful writer whose books have been adapted for the screen, enjoys overshadowing his friend with his worldly sophistication as much as he enjoys parading his high culture bonafides over the working class detective he hires to find out if Sarah is having an affair he doesn't know about. But his refinement and education mostly serve to intellectualise his inability to put two and two together until the answer is staring him right in the face. When your motto is "to be is to be perceived' it's hard to accept that love exists when it's not right there in the room with you, much less God. It's no great insight that this attitude is detrimental to the relationhsip with the love of your life, but the film's most provocative point, if you follow its reasoning to its logical conclusion, is that jealousy and atheism result from the same weakness. Sarah and God both have to go to great lengths to respectively show their love and their existence to Henry, who simply doesn't have the force of faith to accept as true that which he can't immediately see, feel or recognise. 

You can't go wrong giving Julianne Moore, Ralph Fiennes and Stephen Rea sharp, well-written dialogue veering into religious, romantic and ethical dilemma's. Jordan also handles the plot twist well; patiently building up to a tragic reveal by showing Sarah's point of view of an event he previously depicted from a different perspectve.  An additional nice touch is that we find out about Sarah's experience through the eyes of Maurice reading her diary. Unfortunately, this twist happens halfway through and ensures that there is really only one way for the movie to end, especially since Jordan had been ostentatiously highlighting Moore's cough long before that. This predictability would have been more palatable if the film had introduced a bit more doubt to either the question of God's existence or Maurice' fate. It's notable that he entire movie is filmed in the conventional style of a British World War 2 romantic drama, carefully ensuring it doesn't in any way deviate from this norm. The only exception is the incident that ultimately separates Maurice from Sarah, which creates a bit of a sense of the uncanny with its wobbly special effects. I don't know how intentional that was, but it did raise some hopes and expectations that the film would go in a more exietentally ambigous direction.

286. Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid

Song - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Bob Dylan)

Movie: Pat Garrett and Billy the Kid (Sam Peckinpah, 1973)

Pat Garrett (James Coburn) 'learned to code' and what did that get him? Sure, when the old ways are dying, and your expertise as an outlaw has diminshing currency, it's tempting to reskill. And make no mistake, getting yourself elected as sheriff has its benefits - a steady income, no jail time, a decent horse. All of that's great, but do you really want to abandon your calling, your trade you've spent your whole life perfecting, to please some men in suits who look down on your craft? These people, they want to create laws, enclosed communities and capitalism and they think that killing men in the service of those ideals is the same as killing men in the service of freedom. They see no dignity in marksmanship, and have developed a written code that makes binary decisions about good and evil for us. We are given the illusion of choice, but the only decision we can really make is when to pull the trigger. Just a matter of time before machines replace us. Pat knows, look at him, he's riding and gunnin' around New Mexico as he always did, but his heart just isn't in it. You can be good at capturing criminals, but if you don't find any meaning or pleasure in it, what's the point?

Peckinpah directs as if he'll never again be allowed to make, or even see, a classic western, luxuriating in all the signposts we've come to associate with the genre, but above all in the freedom to roam and travel across the widespread landscapes. In one of the many lyrical moments, Pat Garrett is sitting by a river bank when a makeshift boat slowly passes by, its passengers shooting at objects they throw in the water. It's by our standards an entirely idiotic and dangerous activity that serves no purpose, but is saluted by Pat, who signs his approval by taking his own shot  It's of course on the mark, leading to Pat and his counterpart on the boat pointing guns at each other. The two men will likely never see each other again, going their own way in the wilderness, capturing exactly why the film repeatedly laments the rise of bordered settlements and towns where people have to act in ways that are compatible with the norms imposed by authorities. Pat Garrett has accepted that this transformation can't be stopped and has decided to adapt to it. As a result, he spends most of the film in misery, unlike Billy the Kid (Kris Kristofferson) who has decided to be an outlaw until the bitter end. He knows this might mean an early death, but he'd rather be happy, and Kristofferson's roguish smile never disappears. 

The movie is ostensibly about Pat Garrett's pursuit of Billy the Kid, but neither Pat nor Billy is too obsessed with the outcome of said pursuit.The sherriff only does the job out of obligation, while for Billy the action is the juice. He knows that his adventures will come to an end sooner rather than later anyway, and part of him would rather be killed by his old friend than by someone else. Peckinpah is above all interested in exploring these contrasting attitudes to the changing world, and all the various colorful characters we meet along the way. This approach does mean that the film sometimes becomes a bit too leisurely, but every time it risks dragging. it steers into a funny, tense and/or eccentric moment. It helps too that it is filled with great character actors (that doesn't include Bob Dylan. His soundtrack is wonderfully melancholic, but as an actor he seems completely out of place, unable to adapt to the film's tone, style or period) who need only very little time to create highly specific and distinct personalities, which allows Peckinpah to build the film's most iconic moment around Slim Pickens' who is barely 5 minutes on screen before knockin' on heaven's door. That scene is also one of the few instances where the film swaps its standard western imagery for a dreamier, painterly look underscoring how futile it is to sacrifice such beauty for the pursuit of Billy.

285. The Color Purple

Song - Papa Was A Rollin' Stone (The Temptations)

Movie: The Color Purple (Steven Spielberg, 1985)

I saw The Color Purple on the day Quincy Jones died, which makes you appreciate even more what a titanic figure he was. In addition to shaping the careers of Michael Jackson and Frank Sinatra, and the trajectories of some of the most popular music genres, Lee Daniels may also owe him a thank you. This is one of the few major Hollywood classics I've seen that fits Daniels' counterintuitive sensibilities and I think it's not that much of a stretch to see Precious as a subversive version of The Color Purple. Both films feature horrific parental abuse, filtered through an aestehtic that is often antithetical to realistically communicating grave seriousness. It's just that Daniels' filter is campy explootation, whtle The Color Purple feels always on the brink of magic realism, or even full blown fantasy. Quincy Jones played a major role in that by convincing Steven Spielberg to come on as a director, despite concerns that he is not the right guy for a film about poor black folks in the American South. Jones's score however highlights his reasons for choosing Spielberg. Scenes of Celie (Whoopi Goldberg) making breakfast or dressing Albert (Danny Glover) and his sons, are set to the kind of music that you'd more readily expect during the moment in a Christmas movie when a child is about to come down the stairs to see all the presents Santa brought. When you add Spielberg's characteristic childlike fairy-tale enchantment to that mix, Celie becomes something like a black Mary Poppins. 

Of course, Celie is not supposed to be a governess, but Albert's wife, sold by her dad at the age of 14. In of the film's more ruthless moments, just after Albert buys her, Spielberg cuts directly to him walking home with a leashed cow by his side. It's an apt metaphor and during these early scenes, the film is unflinching and straightforward in its depiction of the horrors inflicted upon Celie and her sister Nettie, and rather uncomfortably harrowing. As a result it's incredibly disorienting when we jump in time to a grown up Celie (the first time we see Whoopi Goldberg on screen) in the middle of a scene that borders on slapstick. When preparing for work, a clumsy awkward Albert keeps descending the stairs, only to remember that he has forgotten his watch, tie or collar. Every time he comes back upstairs, he finds Celie quietly waiting to give him the exact item he's been missing. It's funny, and very much directed with comedic intent, but it such a sudden and unexpected shift of tone you are unsure whether you are supposed to laugh. Soon enough, the arrival of Sofia (Oprah Winfrey), the fiancee of Albert's oldest son Harpo, and Shug Avery (Margaret Avery) the local blues star, and Albert's real true love, confrims that the film indeed has more on its mind than just solemnly depicting black misery.

Perhaps it has too much on its mind, and its willingness to go into all kinds of improbable directions as long as it gets an interesting emotional reaction suggests that the musical adaptation may be the better fit for this story. The only truly consistent throughline is Spielberg's obsession with dysfunctional families. He gets to depict so many terrible parent-child relationships, all of them bad in distinctly different and uniquely perverted ways. Celie is continously raped by her dad and is forced to sell the babies she births to hide his crimes. Through a twist of fate these babies end up being raised by Celie's sister and her husband in Africa. Adolph Caesar is so aggressively hostile and hierarchical towards Danny Glover it took me a couple of scenes to realise that he is his dad rather than some sort of old foe/(business) partner out for humiliation. Sofia with her maturity and confidence becomes a mother figure to Celie, despite being her daughter-in-law. The same is true of Shug Avery, only she is bisexual and sleeping with both Celie and Albert, until she leaves them and returns with a husband. Shug herself has a complicated relationship with her dad, a priest who hates that she has abandoned church for a life of sin with blues musicians. This culminates in the film's absolute greatest scene, a musical duel between the church's choir and Shug's band that leads to a reconciliation of the two lifestyles.

284. Da 5 Bloods

Song - What's Going On (Marvin Gaye)

Movie: Da 5 Bloods (Spike Lee, 2020)

Firting with Hedy (Melanie Thierry), a white peace worker in Vietnam, David (Jonathan Majors) gets ironically ceremonial: "We plead innocent to all charges, claims, accusations, allegations, and associations connected to the Klansman in the Oval Office. so help me God." His attractive alliterations however can't conceal that his dad Paul (Delroy Lindo) is spending their entire trip with his red Make America Great Again hat on full display. Paul has come to the Vietnamese jungle with three other black war veterans to find the remains of their fallen squad leader, and the gold he buried. His son's romantic prospects have to take a backseat to that mission, and when his paranoia, resentment and long-buried memories result in the kidnapping of Hedy and her equally white colleagues, David has to choose between his blood and his conscience. Psychological battles lead to real ones, when the Americans end up in a gunfight with French mercenaries, destroying part of the Vietnamese jungle, and killing several Vietnamese on either side. 

On top of all this, the film ends with Black Lives Matter receiving a fortune that would have stayed in Vietnamese hands if it wasn't for the Americans' violent return to Vietnam, and yet when Da 5 Bloods came out certain corners of the internet accused Spike Lee of ignoring American imperalism and the role black Americans play in it. These criticisms are partly the result of people's continued misunderstanding of Spike Lee - the man loves America! Da 5 Bloods starts with a montage of 1960's upheaval approvingly citing Malcolm X, Angela Davis, Kwame Ture, Muhammad Ali, and their radical, communist ideals connecting the civil rights movement to the Vietnamese resistance, leaving no doubt that America's atrocities abroad and at home all result from the same vile ideologies inherent to American society. But Marvin Gaye is equally inherent to American society, And so are The Temptations, Stevie Wonder, Martin Luther King, Edwin Moses, Barack Obama and the classic Hollywood of The Treasure of the Sierra Madre, and Hedy Lamarr. Spike Lee loves all that, and as he has rightly pointed out in many interviews, aside from the USA, there are very few places where minorities have gotten so many opportunities to build a life on their own terms, and to express themselves, let alone to do so in ways that go against the dominant cultural narratives. Indeed, even now that Europe is becoming more diverse, and that we have more serious discussions about our colonial past it's hard to imagine any black filmmaker emerging here who wil be as honest, as influential and as beloved as Spike Lee. 

And so Da 5 Bloods does not merely aim to criticise an immoral war and its exploitation of black American soldiers. It is also interested in using the Vietnam War to see how it could look like to reconcile the civil rights movements with mainstream American culture. The film ends with Martin Luther King quoting a rather wonderful poem by Langston Hughes: "I say it plain, America never was America to me, and yet I swear this oath, America will be." The poem lists all the great promises and opportunities America is offering, only to be constantly repudiated by members of various oppressed groups explaining why and how they have been excluded from America's riches. In the end the oppressed people all speak as one, expressing their intention to turn America into a country that fulfills its promise to all its people. America is not there yet, but how would an American war epic about the experiences of black soldiers look like if it were? It would definitely not speak exclusively the language of black leftist radicalism/pacifism, but it would also feature shots of helicopters descending against the backdrop of a romanticised sunset. It would feature epic gun battles with close ups of black soldiers heroically shooting machine guns, the camera slowly circling around their position on the battlefield showing us how they always have each others' backs. It would have scenes breaking the fourth wall in which the Vietnamese jungle becomes a mere theatrical backdrop for personal expressions through Shakespearean monologues. It would have shootouts in isolated outposts where wounded Rambo's summon their last remaining energy for one final heroic act that saves themselves and their comrades. And all of this would be surrounded by jabs, taunts, wisecracks and all kinds of other cool dialogue, and a soundtrack filled with Marvin Gaye songs. 

Though most of this is incredibly entertaining, a lot of the movie plays in the same register as Willem Dafoe's famous death scene in Platoon. That moment, bloated in heavyheanded grandiosity and symbolism was when I fully gave up on Stone's film, and especially on my first viewing of Da 5 Bloods I was actively annoyed by some of it. Yet, it can't be denied that there is a clear aesthetic purpose to this approach that contributes to the film's oddness, subversiveness and sheer ambition. Lee knows that America is not yet America to its black population, but this film is about how the country is on its path to become that, how it presents itself as being much further than it really is, how that shapes how the rest of the world looks at black Americans, and how black Americanse see themselves in the context of the rest of the world, and and how all of this adds a further complication to the struggle for black liberation and emancipation. More equality means more responsibility (sometimes unfairly so!) for America's sins. 

Kamala Harris will experience all of this soon enough, but much lighter contexts also showcase how far ahead of his time Spike Lee continues to be. One year after this film came out, England at long last reached the final of a major football championship, only to lose on penalties to Italy. The penalties were missed by Bukayo Saka, Marcus Rashford and Jaden Sancho, three of its black players. Especially the first two were instrumental in England's great tournament and the newfound joy surrounding the national team. England's mostly white fans responded to their team's successes by taking the dust off their hit single Football's Coming Home, which in the minds of many European football fans became a symbol of the broader English insularity and arrogance, especially in the context of Brexit. Many of these fans tried to reconcile their enjoyment of the exploits of Rashford and co by actively disconnecting them from these expressions of English identity, while the players themselves actively tried to present themselves as proud wearers of the shirt representing (a new, more progressive version of) Englishness. After the final this dynamic was turned on its head, when British racists issued death threaths and questioned the Englishness of the faulty penalty takers. The fact that the final was played in London at Wembley stadium, which has become one of the key symbols of the globalisation of international football, is almost as much on the nose as Da 5 Bloods' black veterans opening the film partying in an (apparently really existing) Apocalypse Now-themed bar in Ho Chi Minh City. Once they exit the bar, the first thing we see are the bright lights of McDonald's and other American multinationals. It'll be the only thing we'll see of Vietnam's capital.

283. In the Company of Men

Song - Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown) (The Beatles)

Movie: In the Company of Men (Neil LaBute, 1997)

Chad (Aaron Eckhart) is a business graduate who can meet women coasting on his professional, cool look and his ability to fake charm and confidence, but it's easy to believe these relationships end sooner rather than later. He is selfish, egotistical, arrogant and willing to exploit any inkling of power for his own gain. Howard (Matt Malloy) is his schlubby college buddy and work colleague. We get the sense that he's always operated in Chad's shadow, picking up the breadcrumbs he leaves behind, without ever really thinking for himself or developing a real identity. Their work trip to Fort Wayne for a project supervised by Howard is an opportunity for change, but even before they set foot in the office they revert to their traditional ways. Chad proposes to amuse themselves by wooing the most vulnerable woman they can find, showering her with love and attention, and breaking up with her when she falls in love with them. He reasons it would be great revenge for their recent breakups. Of course, 'Howie' goes along. 

Howard and Chad spend most of their time demeaning other colleagues and their job, taking personal calls, chiding their minions, having lunch, taking smoke breaks, playing golf and courting Christine (Stacy Edwards), the deaf typist in their office. Most of these activities border on the nihilistic and serve as nothing but fuel for their personal ego's and sense of superiority. However, sleeping with other women is easy, but when your objective is love, that takes work. Howard and Chad have never done that work, and their relationship with Christine forces them to adjust their behavior. They actually listen and respond to her emotional needs. They adjust to her speech impediment and make her feel good about herself. Chad becomes intrigued to know more about how deaf people communicate and how they watch movies, while Howard teaches himself the basics of sign language. Though they neither can't nor want to articulate it without layers upon layers of irony, they like the feelings of care and love their relationship with Christine evokes in them, and they like the opportunity to explore a different side of themselves. Chad is not entirely sure whether he wants to fully accept that side and tries to have his cake and eat it for as long as he can. When he is forced to drop the charade, he transforms in a split second from a caring lover into a raging mysoginist, providing Eckhart's best and most disturbing 'Two-Face' performance of his career. 

LaBute likes to explore to what extent character/psychology breeds behavior and whether people can become good and caring if they make a conscious effort to do so. Howard can't, despite trying real hard, and when he screams at Christine that she is "fucking handicapped", the film's suggestion is that she is not the only one.  It sees Howard's inability to choose a different kind of life, unaffected by the forces that have confined him, as a form of disability, especially emphasised during the final scenes showing his emotional impotence making him literally sick. In the Company of Men is a good film about mysoginist attitudes, male rage, abuse of power and how all of these are enabled by the patriarchal hierarchies of corporate culture. Many films have been made about abusive men though, What makes this one special is LaBute's willingness to explore what happens when men (or even people in general) choose to step outside of the norms and values of their culture, and how they can give themselves cover to do so. When people act against the expectations of their in-group, that raises all kinds of uncomfortable questions they prefer not to answer, risking both their self-identity and their social acceptance. So if you want to try out how it feels to be more sensitive and caring towards women, wouldn't you hide it in a mysoginistic game? Maybe these aren't Chad's intentions, but would it look any different if they were? The ending certainly allows for such an intepretation, and if you wanna have some fun going out on a limb you could also see these ideas reflected by some of LaBute's aesthetic choices. 

It would make sense for a film about the abuse of a deaf person to go the extra mile to be accessible to deaf people, but the crowd of 90's indie cool kids LaBute tried to make his name in would definitely look slightly down on such concerns.  However, as In the Company of Men is his debut feature and an adaptation of his own play it has a good excuse to mostly consist of statically filmed dialogue, set in/against deeply ordinary backgrounds. An added benefit is that this gives the impression that some of the most hateful shit you'll ever hear is nothing more than an unremarkable commonplace experience, giving the film the edgy appeal it seeks. 'Coincidentally', LaBute's approach also makes it easier for deaf people to follow the film, as in most scenes they can read the actors' lips. Maybe that's not LaBute's intention, but would it look any different if it were? Well, the scene in which Christine explains to Chad that she follows most films by reading lips is shot from high up, making it impossible for anyone to read the actors' lips, in the process reinforcing the film's core idea that caring about other people's needs is a choice you can or can not make. 

282. The Happy Ending

Song - Just A Little Bit Of Peace In My Heart (Golden Earring)

Movie: The Happy Ending (Richard Brooks, 1969)

I recently saw The Producers for the first time, and found it absolutely wonderful, for more than just the obvious reasons. It's no surprise that Gene Wilder can be hysterical (and wet!) or that Mel Brooks is capable of writing an absolutely brilliant parody of Nazi propaganda (the Oscars are cowards for not nominating Springtime for Hitler for Best Song), but I probably laughed most during Dick Shawn's audition scene. I had never heard of Shawn before, but he is fantastic as a hippie so oblivious to his ridiculousness that the audience misinterprets his earnest performance for a comedic one. Some of Shawn's stand up comedy is on YouTube and it's easy to see why when he collapsed and died on stage people thought it was part of his act. It's fun to see him in a small role in The Happy Ending, partly because he plays an almost equally oblivious character, though in an entirely different register. He is a married tax consultant who puts so much effort in conveying the sarcasm behind his constant self-deprecating jokes, he completly fails to realise that everything he says comes off as a confession of his (professional and personal) dishonesty. 

Shawn's performance is mucb more subtle than the movie itself, which finds Mary (Jean Simmons) and Fred (John Forsythe) Wilson on the brink of a failed marriage. She is younger than him and has turned to pills, alcohol and cosmetic interventions to ease her sorrows. On the day of their 16th anniversary she spontaneously books a one-way ticket to the Bahamas, leaving Fred, their daughter and her mom (Teresa Wright) in despair.  Simmons and Forsythe are quite good and affecting as people who genuinely love each other, and can't understand, despite their best efforts, why they are unhappy together. The movie should have been on their level, but it acts as if it knows exactly what's ailing them: marriage is a form of consumerism devised by American capitalists to sell houses and beauty products, that is incompatible with human desires and behaviour. While it's true that contemporary western societies have a lot of incentives in place that put some pressure on people to marry, there is plenty to argue with the film's reasoning, even aside from marriage being highly valued in communist societies as well. 

A film can overcome making a bad argument though. What it can't overcome is pounding you over the head with it. Almost every line serves to drive the same point home, leading to completely unnatural dialogue and to de-individualised characters. Brooks finds that all people respond in exactly the same way to marriage and have the exact same problems, and that individual behavior or psychology don't play any role here.  Aside from being unfair to Simmons and Forsythe who do their utmost best to create specific characters, this approach also renders moot the film's non-linearity. It doesn't matter how when, or from which perspective facts are revealed, if all facts lead to the same conclusions anyway. Rumors may be more revealing. Allegedly, the much older Brooks made the film because Simmons' alcohol issues had put a strain on their marriage. With that in mind, The Happy Ending can be seen as Brooks' equivalent of Robin Williams telling Matt Damon it's not his fault in Good WIll Hunting, which makes it a rather nice gesture. As Joan Didion's famous quote puts it, we tell ourselves stories in order to live. 

Besides, the film is only tedioius when people open their mouths. Its prologue, set almost entirely to Michel Legrand's score, detailing the courtship of Mary and Fred is rather beautiful and extremely romantic. It lets Forsythe and Simmons express their love for each other purely thorugh their body language and their gestures. It ends with a touch I've never seen before. Once it reaches their wedding, it shows that on just one half of the screen, with the other half being reserved for a montage of wedding scenes from classic Hollywood movies. One of those scenes is followed by a title card stating 'The End' which then occupies the entire half of the screen next to Mary and Fred giving each other their wedding vows. It's the first hint of the film's blunt messaging, but on a purely cinematic level it works incredibly well, as a slightly disorienting jolt that makes you pay attention. 

281. Nights of Cabiria

Song - Another Day In Paradise (Phil Collins)

Movie: Nights of Cabiria - Le notti di Cabiria (Federico Fellini, 1957)

Casting Shirley MacLaine in Sweet Charity must have been one of the most self-evident decisions in Hollywood history. Nights of Cabiria plays like a Chaplin movie with MacLaine at her most irascible in the role of the Tramp. The film, and Gulietta Masina's great performance in it, works so well because of its sparseness, making the choice to turn its American remake into a lavishly produced Hollywood musical much less self-evident. Masina is free to overwhelm the screen with her incessantly earnest emotionality, without being distracted by anything that doesn't belong there. More importantly, her Cabiria's angry, proudly disagreaable attitude is a necessity, and an entirely understandable response to her surroundings. She lives in a traveller's encampment on the outskirts of Rome in a barely functional cabin that is still preferable to living in the surrounding caves. As a prostitute she's earned enough to be able to own her shelter, but still has to spend most of her life on the streets, where she is constantly exploited by men, both clients and not. 

The film essentially presents several episodes in Cabiria's life that mostly follow the same pattern. Circumstances beyond her control create an opportunity for her to improve her financial or romantic prospects, she puts her entire being into trying to make the most of it, only for other circumstances beyond her control to put an end to her hopes and dreams, sometimes in deeply humiliating ways. Though Chaplin movies have similar structures, the Tramp usually responds to his misfortunes with an open-hearted, gracefully self--effacing, humanity, while Cabiria doesn't let you look away from her hurt, anger and irrationality while turning combative. In either case, both characters defiantly will not let life bring them down, whatever happens. For this reason, the ending doesn't entirely work for me. For the most part, whatever challenges Cabiria faces, they feel like they flow organically out of the film's milieu and its characters. That is not the case for Oscar's (Francois Perier) final act, that feels forced by Fellini to create the ultimate tragedy in which Cabiria is doomed forever in a perpetual cycle of misery, rather than as an honest expression of Oscar's feelings towards Cabiria. 

The opening half hour however gives the impression that this is going to be one of the great masterpieces, with Fellini translating Masina's unpent energy and outlook to his depiction of the streets of Rome. The city is her workplace, but also a not entirely comprehensible world that exists outside her ordinary reality, where there is potential to burst in a spontaneous dance, meet the nouveau riche, and encounter exotic showgirls from unknown corners of the the world. In these scenes Fellini integrates a sort of manic metatextual expressionism withiin the usual context of Italian neo-realism, giving a glimpse of how a 1950's Michael Mann movie could have looked like. After the visit to Alberto Lazzari's (Amedeo Nazzari, playing apprently a version of himself with a wonderful combination of sleaze and charm) extravagant villa, Fellini only ocassionally returns to this approach, settling for a more conventional style that still showcases why post-war Italian cinema has become so influential. Among other things, he keeps framing his characters against the backdrop of construction projects, railways and other symbols of Italy's rapid industrialisation during the 1950's/60s. It's a metter of time before the travellers' encampment will be replaced by apartment flats, but whether Cabiria will get to live in those is a whole other question. 

280. On the Beach

Song - Vluchten Kan Niet Meer (Frans Halsema & Jenny Arean)

Movie: On the Beach (Stanley Kramer, 1959)

When an American nuclear submarine docks in Melbourne, it finds its citizens rather unexcited by the approaching end of the world. Nuclear war has wiped out life in all of the northern hemisphere and it's a matter of months until the radioactive fallout will reach Australia, where people await their faith with a dignified resignation. A fuel shortage has left the streets filled with bicycles and horses, moving even slower than usual in scenes that are quietly masterworks of pacing and perfectly timed choreography. Nobody has a spring in their step, yet everyone is still trying to do more than just go thorugh the motions, wonderfully evoking a sense of demure bustle. People still tend to their families and work, run errands, enjoy the beach, make love, and commit to their daily responsibilities. At no point does anyone do anything illegal or out of line with social conventions. Moira (Ava Gardner) is a promiscous drunk, but she had always been that, and the arrival of Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck), the commander of the submarine, may be her chance to find real love at last. 

The social conventions everyone respects are not those of 50's Australia, but of the 50's Hollywood studio system. It's notable that everyone, including characters who are supposed to be English or Australian, speaks with an American accent. It's also notable that nobody ever gets angry at the American submarine crew for maybe being complicit in the apocalypse. Nobody blames the Sovjets either, all of it is chalked up as an immensly tragic accident, and it never becomes clear who started the war, or why. The stale, actively inoffensive formality of the film's politics, style and characters is sometimes a bit too much, but it does help make Kramer's less conventional choices more startling and effective. On the Beach looks like it is going to follow a familiar structure. It presents a seemingly totally hopeless situation, until a certain 'revelation' hints that things may not be as dire as they appear, becoming a 'men on a mission movie' where the men on the mission are supposed to heroically improve things through their hardheaded determination. However, commander Towers and his crew never get to showcase any determination and this subplot only serves to highlight that even the idea of hope is completely ridiculous in these circumstances, a point Kramer keeps reinforcing. The film has no interest in offering even the slightest possibility of a way out. 

Apocalyptic fantasies have always existed, partly because they allow people to imagine that the fate of the world may depend on their actions and that they will belong to a very special 'last' generation.  Most narratives about the apocalypse reflect that and are about people finding meaning in their lives, becoming heroes, asserting their true personalities or simply about spectacular sights and sounds never before seen. The famous saying 'it's easier to imagine the end of the world than the end of capitalism' means to imply that capitalism has become so entrenched in our daily lives that it is hard to imagine an alternative to it. There is a lot of truth in that, but it's also the case that many people would much rather imagine the end of the world, because it gives them more freedom to indulge in their most irresponsible, incredible fantasies. I think it's worth researching to what extent climate change doomerism has contributed to the rise of fascist movements around the world and quite appreciated On the Beach's coomplete refusal to indulge in any fantasy that would make the end of the world feel in any way meaningful - it doesn't even show a dead body. Life remans as mundane and insignificant as usual, people are just slightly sadder.  As one character exclaims, "there is a lot of bureaucracy still, you know?", and indeed even in the final days people are still standing duly in line to receive the suicide pills from the government officials handing them out.   

279. Priscilla

Song - Always On My Mind (Elvis Presley)

Movie: Priscilla (Sofia Coppola, 2023)

Maybe Shakira's hips don't lie, but Elvis' (Jacob Elordi) do. The tantalising promises of their public appearances amount to nothing in private, where Elvis needs an emotional assistant more than a romantic partner. In Baby Doll, Elia Kazan consistently highlighted Carroll Baker's immaturity to emphasise her sexual desirability. Here Sofia Coppola too makes it a point to show how childish Priscilla (Callee Spaeny) looks in comparison to Elvis, and how that childishness is what draws him to her. However, Coppola then goes into a more provocative direction, positing that Priscilla's baby doll qualities are attractive to Elvis precisely because they provide him an excuse to not have sex with her, in the process seing him almost as a sex worker exploited by the unseen Colonel Tom Parker. Pleasuring women is his job, in Graceland he is off the clock, leaving Priscilla to wander the halls of the mansion in frustration, hoping against hope that the stage version of Elvis will match the reality. It never happens, and aside from a detour to Las Vegas (Coppola highlights the explosively bright lights of the city so much, the contrast with the brown-darkish hue of Graceland couldn't be bigger) and a brief scene where they playfully take sexy pictures of each other, Elvis and Priscilla spend most of their time together doing  what ordinary middle class middle-aged couples would do. They watch some movies, have dinner, read books and have a clear division of roles. When Elvis goes on tour to work (which includes going to bed with Ann-Margret), Priscilla stays home to watch the house. And when they do have sex, Priscilla gets pregnant. 

Sofia Coppola is interested in how men withholding sex (or more precisely, sexual pleasure) can be a way of manipulating, opressing or controlling women. It's a perspective that is quite out of the ordinary in American movies, especially in combination with Coppola's commitment to be a populist formalist filmmaker, making stylishly appealing movies that are willing to find entertainment in their sources of criticism. There is a scene here in which Elvis at the height of Priscilla's pregnancy crudely suggests that they should maybe spend less time together. As his attempts at nonchalant coolness can't hide his existential confusion, half his body is well lit, the other half appears in the shadow. The scene makes a point about how much Priscilla was mistreated, and works as a metaphor for the patriarchal structures women in general are faced with. But it's also leaning in on Elvis' compelling attittude and appearance, and Elordi's freedom to give a remarkably eccentric (If Jim Carrey were to play Elvis without ever deciding whether to give a dramatic or comedic performance, you might get something like this), yet extremely well controlled, portrayal. Much of the film works like this. It's serious in its criticism of the forces that made Priscilla's life impossible, while also exploiting their (aesthetic) appeal. 

Elordi's approach could have easily turned Elvis into a gimmick, instead it's an extremely believable performance of a perpetually morose and bewildered man who is somewhat surprised by his power over Priscilla, but will happily experiment to what extent he can yield it. Unsurprisingly, the Elvis estate was opposed to the movie, but Coppola is more sympathetic towards him than it may seem at first sight. Even aside from the mysterious activities of Colonel Tom Parker, and other handlers who've figured out that Elvis being unprecedented makes him malleable, the expressive stylisation in some of the scenes in which Elvis' odiousness is especially pronounced, also serves to highlight the subjectivity of these accounts, allowing that it could be to some extent contested whether they really happened as shown. That still however leaves us with two ironies: While Elvis contrbuted to the sexual liberation of American/western society, his own wife didn't get the benefit of that, and due to the nature of their relationship even a biopic about Priscilla ultimately provides more insight into him than into her.  

278. Boyz n the Hood

Song - Father And Son (Ronan Keating & Cat Stevens)

Movie: Boyz n the Hood (John Singleton, 1991)

When a film takes its name from a NWA song, references NWA lyrics in its dialogue, and casts Ice Cube in a key role you expect brazen unfiltered showmanship. Singleton shows an affinity for that by getting Laurence Fishburne to play a guy named 'Furious Styles', yet much of the film plays like a Parental Advisory warning label come alive, with multiple scenes existing solely to remind young men to wear condoms. Singleton wanted Doughboy's (Ice Cube) aimless, shit-talking hangabout friends to be played by the other NWA members. They rejected the offer, because of a prior dispute with Ice Cube, but you also wonder how they would have felt about the film's perspective. Their namesake song forces you to delight in the vulgarity, violence and posturing of its subjects, while Singleton looks at this life from a (psychological) distance and with a moralising attitude. It's a great example or Roger Ebert's famous notion that what a film is about is less important than how it's about it. For all the horrors Singleton depicts, his earnest de-escalatory approach is the biggest testament to the bleak state of black American neighborhoods. A 24-year old first-time filmmaker only makes a film like this if he is thoroughly devastated by all the shootings, drug use, broken families and general hopelessness he sees around him. 

I think Singleton's approach is valuable, but there are better ways to do this. The majority of the scenes pretty much follow the same pattern where we see people act in certain ways, only for them to be explicitly corrected when they step outside the norm. Perhaps this is more obvious now than it was in 1991. The film formed the breakthrough of many black actors like Morris Chestnut, Nia Long, Regina King, Cuba Gooding Jr, and Ice Cube who have helped define and change American popular culture in the past few decades, probably much more than Singleton ever expected. Their irreverent slang and attitude, both extremely confident and playfully derisive of both themselves and of white America, have in certain cultural contexts (both in and outside of America) become the mainstream, bringing with it an often self-deprecating lighthearted approach to serious subjects that is more sophisticated than it appears (and shares a kindred spirit in Balkan humor!). This has led to a lot of racist talk decrying the downfall and unserious frivolity of western civilisation, ironically pointing to some of the same things (though obviously for much different reasons) as John Singleton  It's fun to see Regina King here in a much less dignified role than in If Beale Street Could Talk. Like everyone else, she has a field day with her graphic dialogue, but you often get the feeling that Singleton has writen a lot of it purely to admonish it.    

Singleton's need to neuter any potential volatilty he sets up, and to force a mature responsibility on his characters turns them all more into symbols than actual human beings, perhaps most ridiculously so when Tre Styles (Cuba Gooding Jr,) and Brandi (Nia Long) lose their virginity. The scene is filmed with such an adult perspective on sex and romanticism, showcasing how people should ideally behave when preparing for, and engaging in, sex, rather than how two teens who barely know shit about it would act. A visit from a college adminstrator who is interested in offering Ricky (Morris Chestnut), an NFL prospect and the great hope of the neighborhood, a scholarship is filmed with a similar wide-eyed sincerity. The respect for that particular moment is so overblown by Singleton you almost start fearing that he is setting it all up to pull the rug under poor Ricky's feet, or to make a satiric point, but he is too enamored by civil, correct formality (and too invested in contrasting it with the 'crass' attitudes surrounding it) to do any of that. What makes that scene even odder is that the film points out several times that the Army is just another way for white people to kill and exploit black people, while the most vile character is a black (with much darker skin than most characters in the film) policeman who seizes every opportunity to harrass and hate with outrageously evil facial expressions. You'd expect that someone with such a negative view towards these institutions would be a little more skeptical towards college football, even (or especially) when a kindly black recruiter makes a case for it.   

Finally, we get to Furious Styles, who is somehow both the film's preachy paragon of virtue and the most interesting, intelligently conceived character. Furious will stop entire scenes in their track to talk about sexual education, personal responsibility and the evils of gentrification, in the process raising his son Tre into a 'real man', and an example for the community. Furious became a dad at 17, and both Singleton's characterisation and Fishburne's great performance highlight how his moralism is not entirely selfless. You get the sense that Furious never really got the chance to define himself as an adult as oridinary 17-year olds would, so now his persona as the neighbourhood's moral conscience is as much a performance for himself as it is an act of good parenting. He is called out for that by Tre's mother (Angela Bassett) in the film's sharpest scene that highlights what Singleton is capable of when he allows a little bit of knottiness. Even better examples of that are Four Brothers and his 2000 remake of Shaft.  

277. If Beale Street Could Talk

Song - You're The First, The Last, My Everything (Barry White)

Movie: If Beale Street Could Talk (Barry Jenkins, 2018)

Lulu Wang's The Farewell is my favorite work from the Barry Jenkins household, but If Beale Street Could Talk is also one of the best films of recent years. It may sound a bit odd, but if Oliver Stone was interested in black history (some would shudder at the thought), and was romantically inclined, you can imagine he could have made something like this. The film cuts between different timelines, giving itself the freedom to digress whenever it sees fit, re-contextualizing images, motifs and lines of dialogue, introducing and re-introducing characters, hovering between different styles and genres, while never losing focus of the central love story between Tish (Kiki Layne) and Fonny (Stephan James). Starting out as childhood friends, they fall in love in their twenties and prepare for a life together until a vindictive cop frames Fonny for the rape of Victoria, a Puerto Rican immigrant. 

Jenkins is a director who wears his heart on his sleeve, sometimes a bit too much. I thought Moonlight was quite good, but it was obvious that Jenkins was way more invested in the final third of the movie, especially the diner scene, than in the rest of it. If Beale Street Could Talk features a trip to Puerto Rico, where Tish's mom (Regina King) has gone to convince Victoria and her handlers to change her testimony - she was clearly forced to identify Fonny as the culprit and now fears the ramifications of the truth, The detour to Puerto Rico requires a more conventional realism, as well as dialogue that could come out of a straightforward crime drama. Jenkins is more at ease with the elegiac romanticism of the rest of the film and employs here the kind of out of focus shots and handheld camera work so loved by uninspired American narco-thrillers set in Mexico or another generic 'Latino' environment. That results in Puerto Rico being presented as a place where people lead unappealing lives in boringly anonymous slums only defined by their grtttiness, and you could criticise Jenkins for perpetuating the kind of stereotypes about Puerto Rico, that he seeks to subvert in his depiction of Harlem and the lives of African-Americans. But man, he sure does subvert those!

Interesting, stylish dialogue has been my way into film, and the elongated scene in which Tish announces her pregrancy to her in-laws is one of the scenes of the century as far as I am concerned. Rarely have actors been allowed to delight so openly in rhetorically playful viciousness. It matters I think that this scene is set in the safety of Tish' parents' living room - solidarity is great, but being free to tell the truth of how you really feel without fearing being divided by the whites is better. What's remarkable is that the languid intensity of that scene is upheld throughout the rest of the film, playing as if it demands that you find the time to bask in love, friendship, sex, solidarity, artistry, a good smoke (vaping companies and lung doctors should really watch this film in sheer terror), good food, and good conversation. At the end of the film, It's almost startling to realise that it has actually shown only a relative few moments during a very specific period of Tish and Fony's life. It feels like we know their every thought and feeling. 

This romantic approach is not just the result of Jenkins' general disposition. There is a political dimension to it, that seems to fit James Baldwin's work. I have read little of Baldwin, but have found all of it fantastic. His writings care as much about pointing out the absurdities and hypocrisies of American racism, as about advancing his literary stylistic concerns. Too much of contemporary social criticism and critical journalism forgets that second aspect, in part becuase of economic models which incentivize clickbait and parochialism, and is less effective as a result. Writing that makes an argument for a better/more interesting world should not present itself like regular slop, but as a dispatch from that world, providing an appealing window into how something else might feel and look. That's definitely what If Beale Street Could Talk is, with "Unbow your head sister!" and "We've been here long before you, and we'll remain here after you are long gone" as its driving principles. 

276. The Strawberry Statement

Song - Almost Cut My Hair (Crosby, Stills, Nash & Young)

Movie: The Strawberry Statement (Stuart Hagmann, 1970)

The students occupying their university (it has displaced a playground and community centre for black people, aside from funding the Vietnam War) apprehensively await the speech of their dean. It's expected that he will send in the National Guard if they don't cease their occupation. Outside, the faculty grounds are filled with press, cops, and curious crowds of all political colors. When the dean takes the microphone, he indeed gives the students five minutes to clear out voluntarily. Instead, they break out in song, chanting the chorus of John Lennon's Give Peace A Chance. For the next five minutes (the movie almost gives the impression that it's happening in real time) tension mounts, as the music envelops everything and Hagmann cuts between the uneasy atmosphere outside and the students inside, solely concentrated on their performance. When their time is over, the National Guard charges in, and we are dropped in the middle of the action, seeing from up close how the cops wreck havoc inside the building and inflict violence and tear gas on the students, while on the soundtrack we keep hearing the ever fainter (now non-diegetic) sounds of Give Peace A Chance.

The scenes described above form the climax of The Strawberry Statement, are some of the most memorable I've seen in American counterculture cinema, and come as a complete surprise. The clarity, intelligence and sharpness of the filmmaking here is at complete odds with the rest of the movie, which is both unfocused and overdetermined. That becomes obvious from the opening scene, in Simon's (Bruce Davison) dorm. Just after we see a poster of JFK on the wall, we hear a radio report on the Sharon Tate murder trial, followed by Simon comparing the ants in his room to the Viet Cong. Craming the entire 1960's in one scene to signal what your movie has on its mind seems unnecessary, but not once you realise that Hagmann has quite a lot of trouble communicating his ideas narratively or visually. At one point, a montage set to a rock song from the counterculture movement is directly followed by a montage set to a similar song without either montage containing anything of note. Ordinary dialogue scenes between two characters are sometimes shot with the camera quickly moving in a circle around them, showing things that are completely irrelevant to the scene. During protest scenes the camera mirrors fists being thrown in the air, making quick jitttery moves forwards and backwards. The movie has many similar moments that mostly emphasise that Hagmann is making big, original directorial choices, without seemingly having thought about what these choices actually add to the movie. Most of the time they are counterproductive. 

The aforementioned Simon is a 20-year old dude, part of the rowing team, and loving it, despite not entirely fitting in its conservative macho culture. Identifying as a liberal, without really thinking about the actual ideological implications of that, he joins the protest movement on a lark and mostly to meet women. He doesn't quite fit among the occupiers either, but he senses that their concerns are valid, without really feeling emboldened to take radical action beyond that. He spends most of the film confused about how he wants to define his relationship to the protests, the rowing team, the university itself and Linda (Kim Darby), the student radical he has a thing for (and vice versa). I quite liked this characterisation of Simon - it's one of the more realitic portrayals I've seen of how students negotiate their political awakening with their desire to comfortably enjoy, and adapt into, the adult world. Simon eventually does find his voice, choosing to fully stand with the protesters, in a monologue that sets up the film's climax. What this means, and what adds some additional interest to the movie, is that the sharpness of the filmmaking corresponds with Simon's clarity of thought.  

275. Inception

Song - Dromen Zijn Bedrog (Marco Borsato)

Movie: Inception (Christopher Nolan, 2010)

There is a dreamsharing-industrial complex! Dom Cobb (Leonardo DiCaprio) may be the best extractor in the world, but he is one among many. There are competitors out there, as well as corporations developing protection from people who are trying to invade your dream space. And then there are the bars and dens opening their doors to those who want to dream together in safety and peace. Dreamsharing is not a secretive plot of the American government that is separate from daily life; it is integrated into society-at-large and my favorite bits of Inception are the ones where Nolan shows glimpses of the odd ways in which the world has adapted to this new phenomenon. Unfortunately his actual conception of dreams and the subconscious is much less imaginative, never going much further than literalising the most straightforward ideas about the inner workings of the mind, and integrating them into a Hollywood blocknbuster that doesn't deviate as much from the mold as it likes to pretend. 

Inception is always entertaining, but it's one of the reasons why I wasn't fully on board with Nolan (despite liking most of his movies) until Tenet and Oppenheimer. Tenet is probably the best possible movie about the current state of the fight against climate change. Its genius lies in not showing us a glimpse of the future - we don't really know whether it's good or bad, which is much more unsettling than presenting a straightforward dystopia. It's also the best possible fit for Nolan's obsession with exploring all the ways in which we can never know the conesequences of our actions. That makes him of course the perfect director for a biopic about Oppenheimer, a better film about the strangeness  and unpredictability of our subconscious than Inception. 

In one of the potentially best scenes in Inception Ariadne (Elliot Page) goes through the elevator of Dom's mind, seeing various memories of his life with Mal (Marion Cotillard). You could easily forgive the obviousness of Dom's memories becoming darker further down the elevator, if the content of those memories was a little more unrelaible and fraught. As it is, each memory of Cobb seems to follow a perfectly understandable straightforward narrative, about which he feels almost completely certain. There is no naked Florence Pugh appearing out of nowhere in an interrogation room. Even aside from those kinds of surrealist interventions, in Oppenheimer we are constantly aware that something feels off about Cillian Murphy's recollectios of the events and we always have to live with the notion that it may not have happened quite as it is presented, or that whatever is presented could be seen in a much different light. Inception achieves this only rarely, even in the scenes between Dom and Mal, where it most forcefilly tries to go for such an effect. DiCaprio and Cotillard are put through an aleborate wringer in the service of a cloyingly sentimental, and somewhat distasteful, plot about trauma that offers no real insights into the characters except that they are feeling sad and guilty, something that's established right at the start of the movie. It offers no real insights into dreams, subconsciousness, or architecture either (though it likes to talk about these things a lot), while also sacrificing any semblance of fun.   

Thankfully, the rest of the film is much better. In partuclar, the final third, where the fate of characters in a dream depends on the actions of others in a dream within a dream, while there are also things going on in a side dream, is exciting. Nolan's greatest strength has always been setting the stakes, and creating great tension by showing exactly how a different number of conflicted interests and scenario's converge to a point of no return, His croscutting across different dream states here makes it really fun to follow how the actions in one dimension affect events in another one. Inception also works exceptionally well as a heist movie, helped by Elliott Page, Tom Hardy (between 2010 and 2015 there was probably no more exciting actor in the world than him) and Joseph Gordon-Levvitt at the height of their bantering charisma. Still, none of that can take the attention away from the film's most basic issue. Dom has done an inception before, planting the idea in his wife's head that the world she lives in is fake. This should provide an opportunity for some freewheeling filmmaking that goes into all kinds of goofy, grotesque, frightening and bizarre directions. Instead, Nolan glosses over this with a few lines of dialogue and instead focuses on the inception of the idea to break up a company, culminating with the opening of a vault with a piece of paper inside. It's quite incredible that the movie sets up its world with the folding of Paris, and the subsequent dream tour of the city, and then never shows anything remotely as spectacular or as irrational. 

274 Radio Days

Song - Radio Ga Ga (Queen)

Movie: Radio Days (Woody Allen, 1987)

Woody Allen has an instantly recognisable and warmly pleasant voice. I think that's an underdiscussed element of what makes his films so popular. His dialogue is great, but it's also often knowingly smarter-than-thou, causing many Allen critics to describe his characters and films as smug, self-absorbed, and egotistical. To some extent they are intended to come off that way, but to the extent that they are not, Allen manages to smooth that over by his homely delivery, giving the impression that even his most callous utterances are not really intended as insults, but as friendly invitations to marvel in unison at the world's absurdity. Of course then, it makes perfect sense for Allen to narrate, without appearing on screen, a film about the golden days of radio. Allen essentially serves as the presenter of a 1,5 hour radio special featuring funny annecdotes, musical performances, gossip, tall-tales that are too good to be true, historical and personal drama, and romantic interludes aimed at lonely spinsters seeking to get swept away by stories of tragic romance that are just uncouth and sad enough to make you feel something, without quite making you uncomfortable - I have mentioned here before that I like the idea that art should be enjoyed by the people it depicts. In that sense Dianne Wiest's subplot is the best in the film as Wiest perfectly plays exactly the kind of character who'd spent hours telling her friends about the latest installment in her favorite show about the misbegotten romantic adventures of Aunt Bea.

The rest of the movie is quite good too. It's essentially a nostalgic recollection of various radio-related episodes from the narrator's (named Joe) youth, switching around his family and the radio stars they listen to. It's often sweetly funny, and driven by one of Allen's favorite ideas: we can't ever really plan anything, and most of the major events in our lives rely on chance and whimsy. All of this is told through deftly set up scenes with punchlines that both come as a surprise and make perfect emotional and narrative sense within the context of the story. Radio Days doesn't waste any time and its opening scene is one of the funniest in Allen's career. It's also one of the few scenes here that finds Allen at his very best. The flipside to his homely friendly appearance is that there is a genuinely acerbic side to him that engages in mischievous irony, irreverently absurd humor and situations that (almost) make you root for the less moral or ethical outcome. Another great example of that is the scene where Joe's mom and dad fight with his rabbi teacher about who has the authority to spank Joe, leading to the poor kid (played by Seth Green) being moved around like a boxing bag among the three of them. 

Most of the film though is just a tad too sentimental. Joe's family members have their quirks, but they are presented as generally nice people caught up in the world's whirlwinds, which they mostly accept with a weary resignation. And Allen's writing and direction is almost constantly patting them on the back for it. However, the film never becomes condescending and its quaintness does fit the tone and style of the radio programmes it cherishes, It's why I think it could have been rewarding if the film did a little more, aside from Allen only appearing as an off-screen narrator, to cinematically evoke how it feels to listen to the radio. Allen's disinterest in doing so takes the power away from his key scene centered around a live radio report on the efforts to save a girl who fell in a well. Allen works really hard here to showcase the importance of radio, cutting across families from different social classes as they listen intensely to the commentary on the rescue mission, showing how radio can be a uniting factor. However, he also keeps showing the rescuers' efforts on site, nullifying the importance of the radio report, and taking the audience out of the shoes of the radio listeners. 

273. Days of Heaven

Song - Fields of Gold (Sting)

Movie: Days of Heaven (Terrence Malick, 1978)

Never has farm equipment been depicted so lovingly. Malick lingers on key mechanical parts and drops Ennio Morricone's score just to listen to the sound of wheat harvesting machines doing their work. They create perfectly cultivated wheat fields, stretching as far as the eye can see. In gorgeuos shots we see trains crossing these landscapes; they transport wanderers from all over the US looking for work, housing and a sense of community. They find it during harvest season in the Texas Panhandle where they bale, frolick, dance, pray and eat and drink in unison, before moving on to some other corner of the country. All of it looks so perfectly beautiful that you can easily imagine seeing your time here as the days of heaven. But when perfection is in one's grasps, the yearning to obtain it intensifies. Some need money, some need love, but all will go far to get it. 

 

Bill (Richard Gere) and Abby (Brooke Adams) need money. They have spent all their lives going places and would like now to settle down somewhere and to own and be something. The (unnamed) farmer (Sam Shepard) who owns the wheat fields is rich, but also terminally ill and seemingly not someone for whom social interactions come naturally. When he falls for Abby, believing that she is Bill's sister, the 'siblings' decide to continue their ruse, hoping they will inherit the farm once its owner dies. As he keeps not dying, and is also kind and handsome, that leads to a sitation that is ripe for tragically hopeless romanticism, but for a long while it's left entirely up to Malick's directorial flourishes to conjure that. 

The actors, in particular Adams - I don't remember seeing her before, but she is spectacular - approach the situation with blunt realism. Their close-ups are fascinating, communicating both their emotional turmoil, but also their acceptance that having made up their bed, they gotta lie in it. I like too that among his many conflicted feelings, Gere at times also projects a sense of contenment that feels only to some extent self-deceptive, accepting that the arrangement he made has its flaws, but also has actually led to him living an easy life in luxury. At the same time, the farmer may not be the most worldly figure, but he is not entirely naive either. Shepard makes clear that he is making an active choice to believe that there is nothing shady going on between Gere and Adams. The question is not when he will 'find out', but when he will stop accepting it. This clear-eyed approach is only further emphasised by the performance of Linda Manz, who plays Bill's (actual) younger sister and also narrates the film with a directness that doesn't allow any delusions. As a result this becomes a story about four essentially decent, rational-minded, highly specific people who have to find ways to constantly (re)negotiate their thoughts about an absurdly impossible reality of their own making.  

It's cool to see that Malick's big bravura sequence here was obviously the main inspiration for the stunning hellfire in Killers of The Flower Moon. It's not surprising that Scorsese would have had Days of Heaven on his mind when making a movie about an arranged marriage in which a party awaits the promised death of their partner, while accidentally (maybe) falling in love with them. The film becomes even more interesting and perverted though when you consider who is in the position of Gere, Adams and Shepard, and how its hellish imagery and atmosphere (its other main reference point is Rosemary's Baby) contrasts Days of Heaven. 

A film that fares less in my mind after seeing Days of Heaven is Malick's own The Tree of Life. I liked that at the time, with some major reservations. The idea that our surroindings shape our feelings and actions is interesting and wonderfully depicted in Days of Heaven. The Tree of Life goes many steps further into some sort of unappealing mystic ecospiritualism that argues that nature, history and the built environment have an inescapable soul that defines our identities. As a result Brad Pitt and Jessica Chastain are essentially playing Fatherhood and Motherhood, rather than actual individual people. I should perhaps revisit it. If you can make Days of Heaven, you deserve the benefit of the doubt for the rest of your life. 

272. Fruit of Paradise

Song - In-A-Gadda-Da-Vida (Iron Butterfly)

Movie: Fruit of Paradise - Ovoce stromu rajskych jime (Vera Chytilova, 1970)

Vera Chytilova plays it fair, immediately letting you know what you are in for with an almost 10-minute prologue about the Fall of The Garden of Eden, It tells the familiar story, but entirely with abstract close-ups of barely recognisable plants and flowers, and faded out desaturated images of a naked man and woman moving around. The quick hard cuts make it even harder to distinguish what's actually on screen, while the score consists of agressively progressive rock melodies, chirping birds, quaking frogs, choir singing and banging drums. When the snake appears that combination of incongruent sounds somehow gets unified into a single noise that seems to be coming out of a radio cassette that is being played backwards while breaking down. When the movie proper finally starts, you think you can settle down, but soon you realise that you will pine for the comprehensibilty of that opening montage. 

The story tells of a woman named Eva who is supposedly married to Josef with whom she lives in what could either be a spa, a mental institution or a hippie commune. Soon Eva gets obsessed by the devlishly mysterious Robert, hoping that he will either love or kill her, with the possibility that killing her may in fact be the greatest expression of his love for her. All of this mostly serves to give Chytilova the opportunity to be genuinely experimental, which demands a lot of her actors, in particular of Jitka Novakova. She plays Eva, and is asked to perform a lot of recognisably human activities in a way that no other human has ever done them. Meanwhile, Chytolova's aesthetic choices serve mostly to find out how connecting certain images to certain sounds would feel, and even scenes that seem to build to some sort of idea are abruptly cut off before you are allowed to get the sense that there is a larger point to them. You can't exactly say that it doesn't work - every scene gets at something that you have never experienced in a film, and never even expected to.

Every scene also at some point starts feeling like a complete waste of time, and I can't say that I plan to revisit this film anytime soon. But (and it is a big but) Fruit of Paradise let to the Czechoslovak government banning Chytiolva from filmmaking, which brings me to Never Look Away, a German film that got great reviews and was nominated for the Oscar for Best Foreign Film in 2019. In my view it is one of the most misguided and hypocritical movies of recent times. It's not a straight biography, but the life story it depicts closely resembles that of the painter Gerhard Richter, who struggled with his art first in Nazi Germany and then in Communist East Germany. In the opening scene, the film shows the famous Nazi exhibition of degenerate art, with a Nazi guide criticizing Malevich. Once the war is over it rails against the social realist art of the DDR, exemplified by an art professor scolding Picasso. These are the right targets for scorn, but the ethos and artistic sensibility of the film is ultimately much closer to Nazi-approved art and social realism than to Malevich and Picasso. Never Look Away is a state-funded epic prestige picture that's completely beholden to confirming its state's most mainstream ideas about politics, art, and the relationship between the two, doing this through a story, filled with 'teachable moments' at right places that make sure that the audience will always get the exact message it seeks to convey. Whatever else you may think of Fruit of Paradise, it is purposefully alienating and an honest expression of its contempt of, and rebellion against, social realism. 

271. Summertime

Song - I Want To Know What Love Is (Foreigner)

Movie: Summertime (David Lean, 1955)

There is the famous joke about the man who prays every night to God to let him win the lottery only for God to eventually tell him to buy a lottery ticket. We don't know much about the man, but the joke suggests that he may well be the "son and heir of a a shyness that is criminally vulgar." That's definitely the case for Jane Hudson (Katharine Hepburn), who in Summertime is told: "You are like a hungry child who is given ravioli to eat. 'No', you say, 'I want beefsteak.' My dear girl, you are hungry. Eat the ravioli!". What Jane and the unidentified lottery guy have in common is that their efforts are merely performative and won't have any effect on what they ostensibly seek to achieve. Jane will tell everyone she listens that she's come all the way from Akron, Ohio to Venice to look for the miracle that's been missing in her life, only to run away scared shitless once the miracle (as you may have guessed, the ravioli is indeed a metaphor) stands in front of her. 

In the piece on Shoot the Piano Player, I mentioned that the world conspiring to give you what you want, without you needing to do anything about it, is a shy person's wish fulfilmment fantasy. But there is indeed a more vulgar (as an aside, I Want To Know What Love Is being so high in Radio 2's Top 2000, while How Soon Is Now, or anything else by The Smiths, is entirely missing, is a discussion for another time) shyness that is less about the fear of expressing what you want, than about the fear of actually getting what you want, or think are supposed to want. As Hepburn shows here, it leads to a lot of running in place, whose main function is to create the illusion of activity so you can be able to tell yourself (and the people around you) that you are attempting to change things, while otherwise making sure that everything stays exactly the same. Summertime is ruthless in dissecting Jane's actions, while presenting itself as a gently pleasant romantic comedy-drama/Venice travelogue. It's a masterpiece

The film apparently helped tourism to Venice skyrocket, which makes sense as it presents the city in the most beautiful way possible, in a way that gives viewers the impression that they are slowly discovering its greatness. When Lean gets to a piazza, building, or side street, he often takes a bit of time, to reveal the true breadth of its beauty. Most of the time this happens through some quite elegant camera moves, but especially striking is the opening scene, which lets Venice showcase itself gradually through the window of a train moving towards it. As a result, Venice feels even more magical than Jane ever thought it would be, with Piazza San Marco as an especially romantic highlight. It turns out that you can actually just sit there and wait for a potential love interest to make eye contact and fall for you. In a way the film works as the inverse of the most famous scene in 500 Days of Summer. Yeah, it can be sad when reality turns out worse than your expectations, but there is far more potential for tragic blundering when reality actually exceeds your expectations. No better example of that than the ending of this film.