Dirty Dancing (1987)

 

Off-List: Dirty Dancing

It does not matter if you were a boy or a girl. Being a teenager in 1987 there is no way you could have missed “Dirty Dancing”. I was 14 years old when it came out and although adamant that this movie was NOT for me, the girls loved it, the music was played at EVERY teenage party we went to, and everybody ended up watching the movie anyway. The craze lasted for years, especially in a small town in Jutland, Denmark.

This also happened to be one of my wife’s favorite movies and as her birthday a few days ago was ruined by influenza anyway, we sat down to watch this instead.

Nobody puts Baby in the corner!

It is the early sixties, and the Houseman family is vacationing at the Kellerman’s resort in the Catskills. Daughter Frances “Baby” Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is soon bored with the inane entertainment of the place, but fascinated by the staffers, especially with the dance instructors. She becomes friendly with Penny (Cynthia Rhodes) and Johnny (Patrick Swayze) and although staffers are supposed to separate completely from the guests, clearly some do not. Robbie, one of the waiters happily sleeps with everybody including Baby’s sister and Penny. When Penny gets pregnant, no trifle affair in those days, it is Jenny who steps in to help. She borrows money from her father so Penny can see a doctor and takes her place at a dance show at a neighboring hotel. The latter is easier said than done and requires some intense dancing training by Johnny and Penny, all top-secret.

Of course everything explodes at some point, including some mistaken assumptions on the part of several key characters, but while tense enough not to be flat, it also resolves very satisfyingly and without too many ruffles as only an eighties romantic movie can get away with.

The attraction of “Dirty Dancing” comes from a happy marriage of several factors that come together very well in the movie. The first one being the coming-of-age story of Baby. She is a character interesting enough to get invested in. She is intelligent and curious and with enough integrity to understand what is right and what is not. She understands that she cannot just insult Neil Kellerman (Lonny Price) by turning him away, but she sees him immediately as a bozo. Baby is stirred by the thinly veiled sexuality of the dance raves the staffers are mounting and it becomes her lead into adulthood, partly by discovering her sexuality (of course), but also by the more cynical lessons of learning about the divides there exists between the haves and the have nots and between those with integrity and those without. These are life lessons that forces her to make adult choices herself.

The second reason is the dancing and the music. I admit flatly that dancing in movies in itself very rarely does anything for me, but this is an exception. Not so much the moves (although I suppose they are excellent), but because the dancing and the music is a catalyst for sexual liberation in the movie. The staffers experience something real and intense as opposed to the inane drivel of the vacation guests. A few of the dancers having sex in the corner would not have been out of place at all and the funny thing is that it works on us viewers. I feel invited into their party as does Baby and we certainly felt way that back in the late eighties even if we were a trifle young to fully understand it.

A third reason is that Jennifer Grey and Patrick Swayze is a fantastic match. Or at least feels like a fantastic match. Rumour has it that Grey initially had reservations working with Swayze, but if so, you do not see it at all. Swayze had at this point only played dramatic roles, but he was a trained dancer and, I think, surprised everybody by being born to play Johnny Castle.

“Dirty Dancing” was made on a shoestring budget, one of those movies that almost never happened, but ended up being a cultural icon that everybody from my generation would know, though not necessarily be honest enough to admit that they like. I really do not understand how “Dirty Dancing” did not get a slot on the List.

In Danish we called the movie “Snavset Dans”, but I think you need to be Danish to see that as being kind of sweet.

 

Brightness (Yeelen) (1987)

 

Yeelen

This was another movie I had problems finding. Early on, I found it on YouTube, but without subtitles. As this is a movie in a Mailan language I did not understand anything and half an hour in, I had to throw in the towel, this was too stupid. My only take away was that this was very African. More research and I found a version with subtitles and what a difference that made! I cannot say I understand everything, this is still too culturally embedded in West Africa, but I managed to get caught up in the story and I did enjoy the movie.

“Yeelen” can best be described a fairy tale or a legend, a magic story from many years ago where magic is a real thing, which the story takes seriously. While we never learn exactly when the story takes place, it has the feel of a world where people have been living in this way for thousands of years and except for a few concessions (some agriculture, basic iron working, horseback riding) maybe since dawn of humanity.

In this world we meet Nianankoro (Issiaka Kane), a young man and a wizard. Nianankoro and his mother escaped his crazy father years ago and now he learns that his father is looking for him to kill him. Soma (Niamanto Sanogo), as his father is called, is indeed a crazy wizard. He walks around with his two servants carrying his magic totem while he screams and shouts curses of destruction on his son and everybody in general. I never learned exactly why he is so upset, but he did seem quite deranged.

Nianankoro sets out on a journey to find his uncle, another magic man. Passing through the land of the Fulas he helps the king (Balla Moussa Keita) defeat his enemies by conjuring up a swarm of bees. When the king asks him to also help him cure his youngest wife, Attou (Aoua Sangare), of barrenness, he is taken in by the young beauty and must admit that “My cock betrayed me”. The most awesome line in a movie of great lines. He did cure here of barrenness, old school way. Nianankoro is sent on his way, now with a new wife.

He finds his uncle and is equipped with a magic tool of his own, the wing of Kore. Soon he meets his father in a cataclysmic battle. The god, or whatever magic entity that gives them power tells Soma that he is so disgusted with the way he has abused his power. The battle erupts with blinding light, both wizards disappear and the land is devastated and I think we are to understand that this is what created the Sahara Desert.

Attou’s son is then seen to pick up the remains, and it is with him the future of the Bambara people lies.

“Yeelen” works best if you see this as an African Odyssey or local version of Lord of the Rings. Magic in this context is very real and a lot of the action and reactions, while obscure in a modern context, makes perfect sense within the logic of the movie. I do not understand half of the things they are doing, especially the conclave of the wizards is very strange and bizarre with a lot of weird yelling, but I buy it because it makes sense in this world. I get the feeling the movie is very true to folklore and ancient customs in Mali and a local viewer will see a lot more meaning than i do. I am just happy it all looks authentic.

There is a real danger that something so culturally embedded would be too difficult for an outsider to follow, but once I got the subtitles, the story caught me completely. I rooted for Nianankoro and felt the tension of the chase of his crazy wizard father.

This is also a beautiful movie with lots of scenic shots and a beautiful framing of the characters. It is evident that many of the actors are amateurs, but the key characters are doing a good job and together with the beautiful scenery, this is a feast for the senses.

“Yeleen” won the Jury’s prize in Cannes in 1987 and was nominated for the Palme d’Or. I can see why.

 

The Horse Thief (Dao Ma Zei) (1986)

 

The Horse Thief

“The Horse Thief” is a movie of scenery. Beautiful vistas, grand landscapes in saturated colours and exotic culture. There is not much of a story, but with scenery like this, do you really need anything else?

Dorbu (Rigzin Tseshang) is a young man on the Tibetan plateau, presumably in 1923, who supports his family of wife (Jiji Dan) and infant son through some thieving. When he steals what appears to be treasures for the temple, he is banished from his village with his family. Life is hard on their own and with an animal plague ravaging the country, life is even harder. Their little son gets sick and dies. The villagers refuse to let him back and in desperation Dorbu steals some horses so his wife and new child can get back to the village while he sacrifices himself.

And that is about it.

This is a story told in a very slow pace with a lot of tableau scenes and extremely little dialogue. The most persistent sounds are not those of speech but the wind howling and the hum and chant of Buddhist monks. Very little is explained, so understanding what is going on is often through inference or by waiting for some later revelation. If fact, I get the feeling the story is not that important. It is the impression that is the intend here and we are left with plenty of impressions.

Foremost, this is an impression of landscape. Of big, brutal and beautiful landscape. The kind you can really only find in Tibet and it is breathtaking. This alone is enough reason to watch this movie. It helps tremendously that the images are created with an eye for capturing the grandeur. Long panoramic shots, small people in large landscapes, openness and saturation. There is not a single scene where the landscape is absent. Even tent or monastery scenes let in the bigness outside. It is a shame that the same skill is not evident in the filming of what the characters are doing. Ineptness is a harsh word, but when you have just watched as master class shot of landscape, it is disappointing to watch the slashing of a knife as the initial movement and then the result, but nothing in between. That is just cheap. But nevermind, that matters little in such a movie.

The second notable impression is that of Tibetan culture. This is a deep dive into the visuals of Tibetan culture. The monasteries and their monks in particular, the life of villagers, struggling with the harshness of their environments, animal herding, worshipping and dealing with the criminal Dorbu. Given the official Chinese attitude to Tibet, it is difficult not to see some accusation in this depiction of a seemingly medieval, superstitious and brutal culture. This is Tibet before the Chinese moved in (to save them from themselves, mind). But there is also admiration in this depiction. The Tibetans are not vilified, and the camera loves them and seems eager to preserve for posterity something that may be disappearing. In any case, this is a window into a very different world than what we in the west are used to.

From an outside perspective, it is a clever touch to downplay elements so deeply culturally rooted as narrative and dialogue and replacing them with large, universal impressions of loss and struggle. We may not understand exactly what is going on, but we do understand that. Who is not moved to tears by Dorbu standing in the snow with his dead son in his arms?

The result is a movie that works a lot better than it sounds. I am not certain it would have worked on most other locations, but for the Tibetan plateau, this seems like the right movie.

If you ever dreamed of going to Tibet, but it never really panned out, this is as good a substitute as you will ever get.

This ends 1986 for me. I am ready to move on to 1987.

  

  

Sherman's March (1986)

 

Sherman's March

There is a fantastic show on HBO called “How to with John Wilson”, which is essentially the filmmaker going around with a camera in and around New York trying to explore some theme, but constantly getting sidetracked by all the curious characters he meets. Forty years ago, Ross McElwee did something similar, except his movie is not much fun.

“Sherman’s March” is Ross McElwee trying to make a documentary about this Civil War general rampaging through the south, though he never gets far in this project. Instead McElwee films a lot of women. Or more precisely, he films himself interacting with a lot of women, though always with a camera between himself and the subject.

Ross McElwee has returned from the north to his native south after a break-up, and his mother and sister are very keen to set him up with some local woman. McElwee himself seems keen at seeking out acquaintances as well, always with the prospect of a romantic relationship in mind, except there is always something. Most commonly McElwee is simply being obnoxious, some of the women are oddballs, but mostly they are simply doing something else and not that interested in McElwee, at least not in this sense.

On this backdrop McElwee gets to meet, talk to and film a lot of curious characters. We are deep in MAGA land, decades before this was even a term, and it is not that they are portrayed as off-beat, they are simply normal people in this part of the country. Or this is the impression I get.

The result is somewhere between a portrait of the South (Northern and Southern Carolina and Georgia), a whole lot of women characters and the navel-gazing of a depressed filmmaker.

The latter is also the weakest part of this movie. Ross McElwee does not come across as a very likeable character. For somebody as both self-effacing and self-obsessed as he is, he needs a lot more self-irony than he can muster. Without that, he balances somewhere between dull and pathetic and this whole affair become more cringe than fun.

The strongest parts are those where McElwee forgets himself and instead takes a real interest in the subjects his is filming. Life on the island in the delta, the preppers in the forest, the religious going on about their prediction of doomsday, the musician and the actor both trying for their breakthrough and the campaign against nuclear plants. There are small gems here and they are pieces in the jigsaw of a portrait he is making.

John Wilson, in his HBO show, involves himself a lot. He is also an awkward type who approaches and talks to people through a camera, but despite never actively mocking people, he manages to create some very amusing scenarios that come across as hilarious even though they are just in a sense everyday life. It is, I think, his eye for that awkward comedy and his self-irony that makes it work. Ross McElwee had some very similar material and a similar approach, but lacks that instinct. Delivering himself as he does is not making it funny or sympathetic. It just makes me feel like giving him a kick in his arse.

With a running time of 2:37 hours, this felt like a long journey. It was also incredibly difficult to find (unless you have an American student or library card...). Just as I had given up, I found it on some dodgy Russian site. So far, I seem to have come out of it alive, but I doubt this movie is interesting enough to go to those lengths to watch it.

  

Top Gun (1986)

 

Top Gun

If you were a teenage boy in the second half of the eighties, there was no bigger movie than "Top Gun". This movie incorporated everything you wanted to experience in a movie and was the golden standard everything was measured up against. My brother had my mother make him a jacket like the one Tom Cruise was wearing and we knew the entire soundtrack. What I had forgotten is how much cheese this movie also is.

Pete “Maverick” Mitchell (Tom Cruise) and Nick “Goose” Bradshaw (Anthony Edwards) fly F-14 Tomcats from a carrier and are pretty good at it. Because of that they are sent to the Top Gun school at Miramar to train dogfighting with the very best.

There is a price at Top Gun for the best pilot and Maverick is facing tough competition, especially from Tom “Iceman” Kazansky (Val Kilmer). Maverick is however going for a different prize as well, the pretty flight analyst Charlotte “Charlie” Blackwood (Kelly McGillis). This is all going pretty well until a training accident kills Goose to devastating effect on Maverick and Goose’ wife Carole (Meg Ryan in an early role). Will Maverick recover and save the day? If you are in doubt of the answer to this, you have not watched enough eighties movies.

The plot of "Top Gun" is one, big eighties cliché. Predictable from start to finish and with so much cheese you can taste it. The competition at school, the mysterious father on Maverick’s shoulder, the romance. Especially the romance. Geez, how did I cope with that back then? My goodness...

The one big draw that makes “Top Gun” worth watching even today is the flight scenes. The F-14s are VERY cool and they make you want to be a pilot sooo bad. Not only does the movie give them a lot of time, but the flight scenes are also some of the best ever filmed. I normally consider car chases or flight combat filler in a movie. Something that must be in an action movie, but for my sake can be done with as quickly as possible. Not so in “Top Gun”. They are exhilarating, tense and liberating. They are macho power and cat-like elegance, testosterone on afterburner. I read that the recruitment offices for fighter pilots were stormed after the movie came out and I understand why. I feel... elated watching these machines fly.

The testosterone is flowing freely all through the movie, whether it is the banter, the volleyball game, Cruise’ motorcycle or his courtship. Women in this movie are essentially reduced to admire these he-men. In the eighties I thought that was pretty cool. Watching it again, it is unintentionally comical and I had a few good laughs. A lot, actually.

Luckily the wrapping is first class. The cinematography does all it can to emphasize the heroism with sunset shots and power framing, not only of the planes but also the characters. It is a shame it was “wasted” on so poor a plot and script, but it does make it easier to swallow when everything looks so good.

The soundtrack in another strong asset of “Top Gun”. Practically every tune of the movie found its way into pop culture, whether it is Faltermeyer’s motifs or Berlin’s “Take my Breath Away”. Maybe dated music today, but you hear a few seconds of these tunes and you are right back in the eighties.

As a movie, “Top Gun” has not aged well, but as an exposition on fighter planes it is unrivalled and like the Tomcats, it stands as a proud monument to the eighties, cheese and all.

Salvador (1986)

 

Salvador

This was a difficult one to get through. A combo of unlikable characters, depraved violence and human misery makes this a movie I did not want to get engaged in and yet it is difficult to ignore it.

Richard Boyle (James Woods) is a washed-up journalist who finds his life options reduced to return to El Salvador, a place he previously enjoyed (meaning women, drugs, alcohol and anarchistic laws). He brings along his friend Dr. Rock (James Belushi), a San Francisco DJ on the promise of those very things.

In El Salvador a civil war is brewing and while Boyle’s sympathies are on the side of the guerilla, he mingles with the right-wind government for stories and favours. He is also part of the US community in the country centred on the sympathetically described ambassador (Michael Murphy).

As the movie progresses things worsen. Boyle and his journalist friend John Cassady (John Savage) find piles of dead bodies, victims of the death squads, Boyle’s girlfriend’s, Maria (Elpidia Carrillo), brother is arrested and killed, the Archbishop of El Salvador is murdered and the civil war heats up into a shooting war with fighting in the streets. US agents are supporting the military leaders behind the back of the ambassador on the argument that the guerrilla is socialist and therefore communist. In short, everything unravels.

Especially poignant is the rape and murder of four nuns, one of which was Boyle’s friend. Boyle himself is becoming a target and must flee.

I am not certain of the veracity of this movie. The behind-the-scenes featurette seem to claim that everything is 1-to-1 reality. The real Richard Boyle is even co-scriptwriter. On Wikipedia, however, much of it is claimed to be exaggerations, particularly concerning Boyle and those around him. I do not know anything about the civil war there, but I find it difficult to not believe the general chaos, destruction and human misery. It seems to be par for the course with military dictatorships. Boyle, though, is described as an utterly despicable character. Egoistic, lazy and arrogant, it is very hard to find anything redeeming about him and given he was written partly by the real Boyle, he comes through almost cartoonish. Certainly, I disliked him from the first minute and when he eventually got in trouble, found it hard to care.

Boyle does get to the point where here cares for something else. These being Maria and the people of El Salvador as a whole, but even then, his attitudes make it difficult to accept this as redemption of the character. By then I had long stopped caring about him.

The depiction of the horrors in El Salvador is very much in your face. What is happening there is ugly and brutal and so devoid of humanity that it must be what hell is like. There is a brutal awakening also when we learn that the guerillas are no better than the military in brutality. Whoever wins will rule a desolate world.

All this may be an argument for watching the movie, that this is important, but what is really the message here? The message I get is that this is a mess you need to stay away from. No matter who you chose to support, you will be part of the destruction because there are no saints. Saints are being raped and butchered.

If the protagonist had been less bankrupt, I could have followed the movie and even recommended it. As it was, I could not wait to get it over with, cross it off the list and be done. Apparently, the audience at the box office thought the same and the movie tanked. My guess is that Oliver Stone learned his lesson before he went on to make “Platoon”.

 

Tampopo (1986)

 

Tampopo

“Tampopo” is a movie that defies all description. It calls itself a “noodle western”, though the only thing I can say with certainty is that it is a celebration of food. And that is not such a bad thing.

The frame story is centred around a small ramen restaurant. The owner and sole chef is Tampopo (Nobuko Miyamoto), a woman with a child. A truck drives up to the restaurant and the two drivers Goro (Tsutomu Yamazaki) and Gun (Ken Watanabe) walks in. The restaurant is in shambles. It is full of drunks and bullies, the place is decrepit and, worst of all, the ramen is not good. Goro takes a liking to Tampopo and sets out to help her get it right.

This project involves physical exercise to get the process right (think “Rocky”), finding the right broth and the best way to do noodles. Gradually the team grows with a broth expert (a homeless doctor), a noodle expert (the chauffeur of a banker) and a contractor (one of the original bullies). It is an odyssey that takes them many places until, finally, the ramen and the place is excellent. When everything is set, Goro drives on, into the sunset.

Throughout the movie, we get small vignettes that are either tangential or entirely unrelated to the frame story. The only common theme is food and specifically the enjoyment of it. There is the lowest ranking saleryman ordering an exquisite meal at a French restaurant, an old man instructing how to eat ramen, sex with food, eating oyster with a kiss and so on.

As mentioned already, this is all about food and as a viewer it is difficult not to get hungry watching this. All this eating and enjoyment of eating, striving to make excellent food and the pleasure of succeeding. We all love ramen in our home, and this food absolutely spoke to us. I can totally relate to getting a good ramen. I have also been to Japan and eaten ramen from just this kind of restaurant, and it is an extraordinary experience. Yam!

This is also a comedic movie. There is an undertone of not taking itself too serious (except that food is important), and at times it is almost breaking the fourth wall with characters referring to themselves as being in a movie. Several of the settings also plays for comedy and they are funny. I love the red faces of the business executives when the salaryman gets a much better meal than they do. Or the man with a toothache offering an ice-cream to a little boy with a sign on his chest not to offer him sweets. The vignette with the elderly woman touching food in the supermarket while being chased by the proprietor had me rolling with laughter.

The noodle western label comes from the unabashed referencing of classic Western themes. This is essentially “Shane” transplanted to a noodle bar in Japan. Goro is Shane, coming out of nowhere to set things straight at the little homestead/noodle bar. He is even wearing something akin to a Stetson and has some likeness to Charles Bronson.

It is easy to get confused watching “Tampopo”. Until you realize food is the only thing tying many of the scenes together, it feels like the movie is all over the place. I forgive it, though, because the food really is tying everything together nicely and because it is all told in so endearing a way that you cannot help loving it for all its zany elements and weird detours. It is a fable about the enjoyment of food and that message goes straight in. I get hungry just writing this. Loved it!

 Better get something to eat...