The Fly (1986)

 

Fluen

With David Cronenberg at the helm, you know you have entered the land of body horror movies, and there is probably none more iconic than “The Fly”. The transformation from man to... something unspeakable... aborted my earlier attempts at watching this back in the nineties, so while I have watched the first part a few times, this was a first for completing it.

Ronnie Quaile (Geena Davis), a journalist, and Seth Brundle (Jeff Goldblum) meet at a social event. Seth is socially awkward but keen to make an impression on the pretty journalist, so he invites her home to his lab/apartment to show her his invention: Two teleportation pods.

They fall in love, and she documents his progress getting the machines to work on living things, something that has in the past not worked so well. Just at the machine is ready Seth is overcome with jealously and alcohol when Ronnie goes to see her former boyfriend/boss. He decides to test the telepods on himself... and is successful. Except, he was not alone in the pod. A fly had entered the pod and merged with him upon recreation.

While Seth is at first feeling invigorated, the fly part of him eventually starts to manifest itself and Seth is turning into an entirely new creature, a Brundlefly. Needless to say, this causes some strain on the relationship between Seth and Ronnie.

This is a movie with a lot of flaws in the plot and the script. There were several times where I was wondering how many times they read through the script before starting filming. How exactly was it that Davis’ character developed so solid a relationship with Goldblum’s character in so short a time that she kept coming back to him as he was transformed at the risk of her life? How was it that teaching the computer about the poetry of flesh would stop it turning living things inside out? Or what about the million microbial lifeforms also riding along with human beings? Should they not be fused into the primary creature as well?

All this is sort of irrelevant because this is not why you watch “The Fly”. You see it because Jeff Goldblum is turning into some strange fusion of human and fly and that is done with emphasis on all the gory details. I cannot think of a more explicit and scary transformation in movie history, though my experience on body horror is a bit limited, and it is all done without CGI. Even those early phases where weird hairs start to grow from his back or he is experiencing these strange bursts of energy and strength, are scary. But it gets so much worse. Things coming out of his nails, his ears are coming off, he vomits acids to digest food externally before sucking it in and all the while his behaviour is getting increasingly excentric.

Even today, this was a tough ride for me. This is disgusting and fascinating in equal measure, a slowly unfolding disaster, a nightmare playing out right before our eyes. “The Fly” won the Academy Award for Best Makeup and that was one of most deserved wins in the history of the awards.

The rest of the movie has a nice wrapping too. Davis and Goldblum are excellent actors who gets the most out of a mediocre script (they were a couple at the time) and Howard Shore did a nice soundtrack. It just does not change that the one thing you think about when they movie is done is that horrid creature Seth Brundle becomes. For this, “The Fly” is movie history and this is classic David Cronenberg.

It is also why this is a must-see movie, but not right after dinner. Not if you like to keep your meal on the inside.

The Name of the Rose (1986)

 

Off-List: The Name of the Rose

The third off-List movie of 1986 is “The Name of the Rose”. The is a movie I remember watching and liking back in the nineties, based on a book by Umberto Eco that I also liked tremendously. I do not remember which I experienced first. To me the two memories have blurred together and that to me is a sign of a successful adaptation.

It is the year 1327 (before the great plague) and church people of several orders a meeting at a renowned but remote monastery in the mountains of Italy. The point of the meeting is to discuss what sounds like a trivial detail, but something these church people find tremendously important. One of the visitors is William of Baskerville (Sean Connery), a Franciscan monk with a novice, Adso (Chistian Slater), the narrator, in tow. William has a reputation for solving mysteries so when monks are mysteriously dying in the monastery, the Abbot (Michael Lonsdale) asks William for his help, especially as the timing with illustrious visitors coming, is not so great.

William is indeed quite the detective and by applying logic, observation and what went for science in those days, he is making progress. He is not helped, though, by the fact that the deaths seem to be following the prophecy of the end of the world and that voices in the monastery, especially the old, blind monk Jorge (Feodor Chaliapin Jr.), are busy calling it the work of the devil or God’s punishment. Things are not getting easier when the inquisition arrives in the form of Bernardo Gui (F. Murray Abraham), an old enemy of William and a man good at finding easy and convenient solutions with the help of torture and superstition.

The clues are leading William to the secret library of the monastery. It is hidden inside a labyrinth in a colossal tower. There is a book here that seems to kill and William is set on finding the answers despite the opposition he is facing. While Bernardo Gui is busy burning heretics and witches, William and Adso are fighting for their lives in the tower.

It is possible to reduce “The Name of the Rose” to a detective story and it would still be an exciting one. William of Baskerville is a hint at both William of Occam (Occams razor!) and Sherlock Holmes. Add some James Bond and some gory murders and we are pretty much home.

But this is so much more. There is a lot of authenticity in the sets and the environment and for a history buff like me this is first rate. This is dirty and grimy and with a sense of detail that feels real. Not the Hollywood interpretation of medieval times, but the ugly reality of actually going back there.

Mostly, though, “The Name of the Rose” introduces to us some of that religious idiocy that was so pervading in those times. William’s deductive methods are completely at odds with the church tyranny of Bernardo Gui. The sentiment that knowledge should only be preserved, not developed and that some knowledge is too dangerous because it might challenge church authority are so symptomatic of the infallibility of religion and the sway the Catholic church had over people of the time. It is not terribly different from other totalitarian systems throughout history, but sometimes you need to see it play out in a remote historical setting to really appreciate the scope and consequence of it. It is horrific and unfair, it is a power play and it is a lose-lose situation in which the individual is powerless. The peasants are depicted as dirty brutes, wallowing in their pigsties of hut, never speaking but in grunts. It is the perfect picture of how the monks in their arrogance are looking down on the peasants and demonstrate perfectly their hypocrisy when they themselves are squealing around like headless chicken in the face of the threat of the devil among them.

It is quite clear what the position of the movie is on the church, and this is also how I remember Umberto Eco’s book. Yet there is this love of the detail, of the achievements of the monasteries and the culture they did represent without which this story would never have been made.

This is a clever movie that requires something of its audience and gives back so much. There is an intellectual element here that makes this a rewarding but also frightening experience to watch. Dogma is dangerous at any time, but especially religious dogma when religion has the power to enforce its will.

Needless to say, this is still a fantastic movie and one that has not lost a step since 1986. I am surprised to not find it on the List, it really does belong there and at least I can include it on mine.

The Decline of the American Empire (Declin de l'Empire Americaine) (1986)

 

Generationen der blev væk

It took me quite a while to wrap my head around “Le Déclin de l'empire Américain”. Not that I did not understand what was happening and I did find it funny, but the big why was eluding me. I may have come closer, but it is just possible it is one of those movies you respond to without knowing exactly why.

On a summer day outside Montreal, we are following two groups. The men, Remy (Rémy Girard), Pierre (Pierre Curzi), Claude (Yves Jacques) and Alain (Daniel Brière) are preparing a dinner party at the home of Remy while the women, Dominique (Dominique Michel), Louise (Dorothée Berryman), Diane (Louise Portal) and Danielle (Geneviève Rioux) are at the gym.

All eight are associated with the university, mostly on the faculty and all of them consider each other friends. With two exceptions, they are rapidly approaching middle age.

For the bulk of the movie, we listen to the conversations of the two groups, which in both cases revolves around a single topic: Sex. Most of them seem happy to share their philandering which covers every variation under the sun. Remy and Pierre stand out for having an entire industry of affairs, including within the friend group, with the only difference that Remy is married (to Louise).

As the stories are told, we see them in flashbacks and it is clear that many of the women’s stories feature Remy, though nobody tell Louise. She knows he has something going when he is travelling, but is certain she is enough for him when he is in town. That does not prevent her from having affairs though.

Claude is homosexual, but not particularly different and Danielle actually work as a prostitute next to her history studies.

For the last third of the movie the two groups meet for a dinner party and a few revelations.

The thing that strikes me with this movie is the gap between talk and reality. All their talk is of fantastic sex and adventurous escapades, yet when we see what actually happened it is usually less than fantastic and Remy, the usual male act, is rather pathetic and hardly a Don Juan. In fact, the sex and affairs seem more out of boredom than anything else.

Secondly, they all talk about sex and affairs as very liberated people. As if everything is fine. Yet, when the price comes, when the infidelity is revealed or in Claude’s case, a mysterious sickness, the pain and the regrets are the same as any other person. Pierre is happy screwing around left and right but he knows he will never get any children. The carelessness is not at all as careless as they want to make it seem.

Maybe the hypocrisy is what makes the movie funny or maybe it is that schadenfreude that these privileged people with their high ideals and liberated talk are as vain, stupid and conventional as the rest of us.

For me, that last part when they have to face up to reality was the bast part and it did make me laugh quite a bit. As comedies go, this is more high-brow than the common fare and requires more of the viewer. Especially, it is important to follow the dialogue. But it is a rewarding movie to watch, and I understand it spawned a few sequels, whom I only know by title, but will be inclined to watch.

I also was a bit envious of the meal they were having. That dish looked good.

She's Gotta Have It (1986)

 

She's Gotta Have It

Everybody starts somewhere and for Spike Lee, it was with “She’s Gotta Have It”. Or, at least this was his first feature length movie. As most such debuts, it is a low-cost affair, but one with a lot of qualities. It is also a sort of comedy, something I did not see coming.

The movie is aimed at explaining a woman called Nola Darling (Tracy Camilla Johns) and alternates between interviews with the characters and the actual story. In this manner it foretells the much later style of reality TV. The special thing about Nora Darling is her sex life. Rather than the usual serial monogamy, Nora practices parallel polygamy. At any time, Nora has several partners openly, mainly for the sex.

Suitor 1 is the gentle and polite Jamie (Tommy Redmond Hicks) who adores Nora and is ready to commit himself fully to her.

Suitor 2 is the street-smart but gangly Mars (Spike Lee himself), who is fun, or tries to be, but also rather needy.

Suitor 3 is the wealthy male model Greer (John Canada Terrell) who may have the looks and money, but is very much impressed with himself and rather intolerable.

Nora is enjoying being with all three of the men, but the men find it very hard to accept to share her with the others. Half their talk with Nora is trying to impress her, in their specific style, and the other half is complaining about her other men. From the general portrait of Nora, we learn that she has difficulty committing herself to anything but prefer to float around between things and just take what is coming. Pretty much like her relation to men.

Of course this must come to a head at some point, and the conclusion may be considered surprising except that it drives the point of the movie.

 It was a surprise to me that this was a comedy. The Spike Lee movies I know tend to lean on the heavy side, but this one is a lively affair with some pretty outré characters and situations. The narcissistic Greer is a hoot. Every time he opened his mouth I was giggling. Lee himself as Sam is also a comical character though on a slightly more subtle level and in both cases, it is amusing to see how Nora uses them. They appear super cool but are really dupes.

With Jamie it is different. His character does not play for comedy, but represents something else. He is the good guy, but understood in terms as the conventionally good guy. He is the person with the right opinions, saying and doing the right things, but those conventional values is everything Nola is not, and this is where the movie gets interesting. Who is it that says that Nola’s way of life is wrong? It is unconventional, but is conventional right? The normal story we get is that men are allowed to stray outside conventions, but here it is a woman and she is strong enough to stick to it. What we are challenged with is if conventions are really right. Should Nola conform or should the world accept Nola? And if something is okay for, why not for women?

The style of “She’s Gotta Have It” is gritty in its black and white cinematography and the documentary tone goes a long way to cover up and make believable the less than stellar acting performances. This feels like a movie made by friends on a shoestring budget, but in a wrapping that makes this acceptable, even preferable and supports the veracity. This looks like reality TV long before that was a thing.

Spike Lee has been called the Woody Allen of Afro-American cinema, and I can definitely see that. Everything from soundscape to cinematography and script screams New York, and this is a New York not that different from that of Woody Allen.

A very strong debut of Spike Lee. I look forward to watching his other movies on the List.

  

Short Circuit (1986)

 

Off-List: Short Circuit

The second off-List movie for 1986 is “Short Circuit”. I am of the general opinion that there are far too few comedies on the List, and I have a soft spot for these eighties comedies even if they do not necessarily qualify as great. “Short Circuit” was a big movie for me in my childhood, and I think it holds up better today than most comedies.

At the commercial research facility Nova five autonomous military drones are presented to the military. As this is the eighties, the drones are semi-humanoid with tracked drives and a face like a Mars rover. They are also mounted with a high-powered laser of Star Wars strength. The military is impressed with their capabilities but in the aftermath one of the drones are hit by lightning which resets its memory and does... something else. Like Frankenstein, the lightning seems to have imbued the drone with life. The drone, Number 5, goes AWOL and through accidents finds itself lost in a food truck.

The owner of the food truck, Stephanie (Ally Sheedy), first take the drone for being an extraterrestrial alien, but by the time she realizes it is a military robot, Number 5 has convinced her he is something more.

Meanwhile, the Nova facility is in an uproar. The top manager, Howard Marner (Austin Pendleton) is keen to get his expensive hardware back. His head of security, Captain Scroeder (G. W. Bailey), is eager to blow up the drone with excessive force if necessary. Engineers Newton Crosby (Steve Guttenberg) and Ben Jabituya (Fisher Stevens) want to secure the drone unharmed as their precious creation.

And so, the hunt begins. Who will get the drone or will Number 5’s newfound intelligence and newfound allies save it?

What makes “Short Circuit” such a charming movie is the character of Number 5. He is naive as a child, smart as a genius, but also lovable as a human being is supposed to be. This, being a “good person”, more than anything makes it the heart of the movie and then it does not hurt that it is funny to boot with a pile of great one-liners it clearly learnt from trashy TV shows and has very expressive “eyebrows”. Movies, especially Hollywood, has classified the “Alien” as either a scary and powerful danger (“The Terminator”) or the lovable creature teaching humans on what it means to be human (“E.T.”). Number 5 is clearly in the second category although it is created as belonging to the first. The transition is attributed to it “becoming alive”, but is really by equipping it with humanity.

From a comedy point of view, it was a scoop to make G. W. Bailey be Captain Scroeder. He is essentially the same character he played in “Police Academy” and that makes him a fantastic butt of the jokes and pranks pulled on him. It is tempting to see Steve Guttenberg in the same light, but rather than being a street-smart romantic, he is being the isolated, shy engineer. It is difficult for Guttenberg to be entirely convincing in this role, but he gives it a shot. His scenes are, however, usually stolen by Fisher Stevens who, in Indian brownface, mess up the English language every time he opens his mouth. I know it is hopelessly politically incorrect and I should be cringing badly, but it is hilariously funny.

“Short Circuit” is fantastic family entertainment. That category of films has since then suffered badly and the label today is more a warning to stay away than anything else, but forty years ago it was possible to make good family movies. As a thirteen-year-old boy I loved the movie and loved the charming robot and today, 39 years later, I still love this movie. I find different things fun and charming, but it is the same magic. In an age of drone warfare and AIs and autonomous driving this is a surprisingly relevant movie and it is great with a positive spin for a change on those topics.

Take your children to watch this movie. You will all get something out of it and likely have a good time.

 

Hannah and Her Sisters (1986)

 

Hannah og hendes søstre

Before this project, if asked what a Woody Allen movie is like, I would have described it as something akin to “Hannah and Her Sisters” despite never having watched it before. And precisely for this reason I would not voluntarily have sat down to watch one. Today, my opinion on his movies is more nuanced with some of them actually being among my favourites, but I am afraid “Hannah and Her Sisters” will not make it to that status.

The setup is a group of people in New York (of course) centred around three sisters, Hannah (Mia Farrow), Lee (Barbara Hershey) and Holly (Dianne Wiest). There are three main story arches and the movie switches between the three of them and let them meet at various points.

In one of these lines Elliot (Michael Caine), Hannah’s husbond, is trying and succeeding in having an affair with Lee. Elliot is basically a horny middle-aged man and when he realizes what he has done he is caught in a pickle of remorse and indecision but at least it made Lee leave the intolerable Frederick (Max von Sydow), a man incredibly impressed with himself.

Holly is a washed-up ex-drug addict. She is trying to become an actress (of course) and fails. Her attempt at catering goes south when her partner, April (Carrie Fisher) takes both her prospective boyfriend and acting assignment. Only when she turns to writing, it seems to work for her, except those around her clearly blame her for witing about them.

Finally, Hannah’s ex-husband, Mickey (Woody Allen) is going through a crisis when he thinks he has a brain tumour. Mickey is Allen classic so he is super neurotic, super self-centred and talking like a waterfall. When he learns there was no tumour, he quits his job at a television show and starts to look for the meaning of life.

The key word all round is that all these characters are insufferable. Everything is about themselves, their personal needs, their personal animosities and their need to be recognized. Some of them are weak, like Holly, some are strong like Frederick, and some are even somewhat amusing like Mickey, but they are all clowns, and their lives seem to balance on the edge of self-inflicted disaster.

For me, this makes it very difficult to relate and sympathize with any of them and I know it is me misunderstanding the purpose of the movie. This all plays out for comedy, and we are supposed to laugh at all these people making a mess of their (and each other’s) lives, but I usually have a problem with that sort of comedy and instead look at the characters with a mixture of dislike and pity. Underneath this attempt at comedy, I sense the tragedy of self indulgence.

What does work here is the scenery and the soundscape. Both are, again, Allen classic. This is more New York than “Sex and the City” and the soundtrack has that jazzy thirties vibe Allen is so well known for. We all know he is in love with the thirties, and this is just another proof.

It is also an impressive cast we get here, a cast that, except for Allen himself, is acting against type. Caine is literally pathetic, von Sydow is arrogant beyond belief and Maureen O'Sullivan, as the mother of the sisters, is a loud alcoholic. They do it all very well as do the girls. I just do not like their characters.

“Hannah and Her Sisters” went on to win three Academy Awards (Michael Caine and Dianne Wiest for supporting roles and Allen for Best Original Screenplay) and was nominated in another four categories including Best Picture, so clearly somebody liked it better than me.

To me, the highlight was Woody Allen trying to join the Hare Krishna. That is actually a funny thought.

 

Blue Velvet (1986)

 

Blue Velvet

It has been quiet here on my blog for the past few weeks. We have been moving into a new apartment, so movie watching has been taking backseat while we are getting ourselves installed. To top that off, we spent last week in Prague and visited, among many other things, a David Lynch exhibition. It is therefore very fitting that the next movie on the List is his “Blue Velvet”.

I like watching David Lynch’ movies. There is almost always an underlying mystery and while I know I will never fully understand it, this mystery provides a depth that goes far beyond the apparent story. In this respect “Blue Velvet” is middle of the range. It is more complex than “The Elephant man” and “Dune”, but not as obscure as “Eraserhead” and “Mulholland Drive”. It is sort of on par with “Twin Peaks” and that is not the only similarity with Lynch’ famous TV-series.

Young man Jeffrey (Kyle MacLachlan) has returned to his hometown because his father had an accident. Left with little to do, he is sent off on an adventure when he finds an ear near his home. The police detective (George Dickerson) is a friend of his father, and this leads Jeffery to Detective Williams’ daughter, Sandy (Laura Dern). Jeffrey is fascinated with the mystery and when he learns that this may be related to nightclub singer Dorothy Vallens (Isabella Rossellini), he finds a way to enter her home.

Soon, Jeffrey is in way over his head. Dorothy is at the mercy of a brutal and rather unhinged man called Frank (Dennis Hopper) who seems to have kidnapped her son to keep her submissive. Jeffrey is getting close to Sandy, but also attracted to Dorothy whom he wants to help and in the middle of this is Frank. It is a rabbit hole, and the deeper Jeffrey gets into this hole the stranger and more disturbing it all get.

As a criminal mystery this is a slow burn with a plotline that appears fairly straight forward, but things are happening that are anything but straight forward. The world of Frank is a dark place, populated by strange and awkward types and feels almost unreal. Not everything that happens here makes sense and it seems to be spilling over into the outside world. Who is inside it and who is outside? It is quickly clear that something else is going on, something that may have little to do with the apparent story.

I make a point of not reading other viewer’s analysis of what is going on before writing these reviews and you may want to skip the next session if you want that mystery for yourself. On the other hand, my analysis is far from complete and I may be totally wrong, so what is the harm?

Sandy and Dorothy seem to represent two opposites. Sandy is virginial and pure, innocence personified while Dorothy represents the dark, fallen and spoiled. She is sin, blood and sex, but she is also a victim. Jeffrey is attracted to both as if they represent two opposing parts of him, the civilized and pure and the almost bestial lust and craving. Dealing with these two women is Jeffrey coming of age so to speak, finding himself. The Id and Super-ego in Freudian terms.

Frank is a demon, the devil maybe. His world is depravity and violence, breaking the rules and temptation. He has Dorothy in his power and he is threatening to swallow Jeffrey. The place Frank takes Jeffrey is a demonic parallel world disassociated from the surface world and the staircase to Dorothy’s apartment is the entrance to this hell, but also a portal for Jeffery to realize his subconscious desires.

With Sandy it is usually daytime and bright colours. There is an ease and happiness to those scenes, while all scenes with Dorothy, and particularly Frank, are  night scenes with a lot of red and heaviness. There is a lot of symbolism here that could be heaven and hell, but is more likely the civilized consciousness versus messy and dark subconscious. Where the two meet things get truly messy.

If this all sounds like Twins Peaks, I do not think that is a coincidence. A lot of the imagery and themes are the same, the soundscapes are similar and even the role of Kyle MacLachlan is almost the same. This is truly Lynch territory.

I think there is something about the ambience of Lynch’ movies that appeals to me. As a viewer, I am placed in that mysterious and ominous place that is scary but also strangely fascinating. I watched the first season of Twin Peaks back in the day in the middle of the night on a hospital and that totally works, for the record. “Blue Velvet” takes me to that place and therefor it ranks pretty high with me.

Definitely recommended.