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...

 

The Official Story (La Historie Oficial) (1985)

 

La historia oficial

“The Official Story” (“La historia oficial”) is something as rare as an Argentinian movie. I believe this may be the first on the List and I do not know of any more coming up. The topic, a political drama, is less rare, but as usual of high relevance as it relates to real event reaching outside the local environment of the movie.

It is 1983, the last year of the military dictatorship in Argentina. Alicia Ibanez (Norma Aleandro) is a high school teacher and married to a government official, Roberto (Héctor Alterio). They belong to the upper middle class in Buenos Aires and through Roberto’s position, on the side of the junta. Together they have a 5-year-old adopted daughter, Gaby (Analía Castro).

Alicia’s world is rocked when her old friend Ana (Chunchuna Villafañe) returns from exile in Europe. Ana was arrested by the junta and tortured in prison for having had a relationship with a dissident. In prison she learned that mothers had their children stolen to be given away to members of the ruling class. This plants the worry in Alicia’s mind that her Gaby may be a stolen child. She starts to investigate and gets in contact with a world hitherto unknown to her of disappeared people and underhand dealings and learns that her husband is not innocent.

This is the story of Alicia and Roberto and how the trust between them is broken. A couple that changes from an intimate unit to separate beings who cannot or do not want to be honest with each other. It is poison to their relationship and turns their world upside down.

But this is also the story of Argentina during and to some extent after the military junta. How the compact of the nation is broken and violated to the point there is no trust and only suspicion and violence. This is presented on several levels as through the story of the disappeared and their mothers demonstrating in the street, in Alicia’s classroom, in Roberto’s family and represented by Alicia and Roberto themselves. Their positions are the positions of the Argentinian people.

Taking another step out, there is a universal story of polarization and mistrust that keeps on being relevant. When people lose the ability to talk about thing, to agree or at least agree to disagree, then violence, mistrust and the collapse of civilization and morals happen. When the opponent is no longer a human being, then nothing will restrain you in the name of your cause.

I think it is this universality which is the strength of the movie. While it works on a personal plan as a story about a relationship in crisis, it also speaks strongly to Argentinians as they can relate deeply to this, but even to us outsiders as we may have our own divisions to struggle with.

I am myself rather suspicious of political movies, because they want me to take a position that is not necessarily my own and on such a highly explosive topic as covered here, this could be extra problematic. While it is obvious the filmmakers are opposed to the junta, I think they exhibit a level of understanding for both sides that is commendable and are sufficiently able to apply that universality, without which such a movie would be divisive rather than healing.

As entertainment, this is a slow-moving movie and you have to be prepared for that. What it suffers in pacing, it wins in intensity. As the crisis comes to a head you feel you know the characters and understand their dilemma. Without this understanding it would be difficult to accept Alicia questioning her right to her child. What mother would do that? Her dilemma becomes believable only because of the slow build-up. In this same manner would Roberto’s blank refusal to discuss the matter be a vilification of him as simply being cruel if we did not understand what is at stake for him. If he were to admit the child was stolen, it would undermine everything he worked for and believed in.

“The Official Story” won the Academy Award for best foreign language movie and I understand why. It is a powerful movie.

 

Peking Opera Blues (Do Ma Daan) (1986)

 

Do Ma Daan

When I think of Hong Kong movies, martial arts is what comes to my mind. Lots of wires, kung fu and sword fighting that looks more like dancing than mortal combat. What I do not think of is comedies. Maybe for good reason, comedy translates very poorly, but “Do Ma Daan” (“Peking Opera Blues”) is such an entry on the List. Whether it is successful I think depends on the viewer.

It is 1913 and China is politically a mess with warlords coming and going and revolution brewing under the surface. General Tsao (Kenneth Tsang) has just ousted General Tun and is into some hanky panky with foreign bankers. His daughter, Tsao Wan (Brigitte Lin), is secretly a revolutionary and want to steal the documents to help the revolution. In this endeavour she is helped by Pak Hoi (Mark Cheng), another revolutionary. Sheung Hung (Cherie Chung) is a courtesan of General Tuns whose quest for a treasure of jewellery leads her to (and past) Tung Man (Cheung Kwok Keung), a soldier and cross paths with Wan and Hoi. The local opera house is the eye of the storm and here the acrobatic daughter, Bai Niu (Sally Yeh), of the owner fall in with the other.

Somehow a lot of things seem to happen, getting the documents, avoid being taken by the secret police, getting in and out of the opera house and getting entangled in the various armies. Beside the quest for the documents, there is Hung’s quest for the jewellery, Niu’s ambition to act in the all-male opera troupe and some romantic combinations.

It should be mentioned here that Peking opera is quite different from western opera. Like in very different.

It was very difficult to find this movie. The version I eventually dug up had English dubbing, complete with English names for the characters but acted on a budget. The dubbing was so bad that a large share of the comedy was the involuntary sort coming from these terrible voices. A movie like “Kung-Pow” is having a lot of fun with this sort of dubbing, but the real thing is... quite an experience.

Another large share of the comedy comes from the martial arts. No Hong Kong movie without martial art and in an action comedy like this one we get plenty. Much, if not most, is so exaggerated that it is funny. It is hard to tell if it is intentionally comedic or just becomes that way in a movie that does not really care if things make sense. The parts that definitely play for comedy work poorly though and that is not very surprising. A lot gets lost in the cultural translation.

It is rather incredible how much plot, action and characters “Peking Opera Blues” manages to squeeze into its 105 minutes running time. It is a very fast movie, quickly moving into the next scene. Look away for a moment and you are lost.

This is an odd mix of helpless amateurism (in large part due to the ridiculous dubbing) and very skilled physical acting and pacing. I am caught between ridiculing and admiring the movie and it ends up in this strange zone where I cannot tell if this was a good movie or not. I did enjoy watching it, but often for the wrong reasons and so I believe it is very much up to the individual viewer.

The Book is gushing about “Peking Opera Blues” and I am happy I only read the entry after watching the movie. What I actually watched was not bad, but very different from what the entry would have lead me to expect.

 

Caravaggio (1986)

 

Caravaggio

A historic drama from the seventeenth century about real people I did not know sounds like my jam. Unfortunately, this was an all-round disappointment.

Michelangelo Caravaggio (Nigel Terry) was an actual Italian painter during the Baroque period (early seventeenth century). This is supposedly A version of his story, stressing the “a”, told in episodic form. This means non-linearity long before Christopher Nolan made it a Hollywood standard. One storyline finds Caravaggio on his deathbed, suffering from lead poisoning. Another follows him in his youth where he enters the household of Cardinal Del Monte (Michael Gough), partly to paint, partly for sex. Later in life, he meets Ranuccio (Sean Bean) and Lena (Tilda Swinton), both as models but also for sex. He also takes on a mute boy, Jerusaleme (Spencer Leigh) as an assistant.

There is a lot of painting (marginally interesting) with people striking poses (not interesting) and screwing around, everybody with everybody (dirty, ugly and creepy). Eventually Lena is murdered for getting pregnant with a rich patron.

That is essentially what I got out of it.

I suppose my main problem is that I went into this movie on the wrong premise, thinking I was to watch a historic drama, but instead this was a surreal fable with an obscure point. When electronic pocket calculators, cigarettes, motor bicycles and electric lights started to appear, I was completely thrown. Obviously, this is not a historic account. Causality is thrown out the window and nothing is supposed to make logical sense. Director Derk Jarman clearly wanted to make an allegory in the style of “El Topo” or “Satyricon”, both themselves from a period in film history where the movies seemed to be on LSD.

This basically means that the apparent plot is indifferent and the real story must be found in symbols and metaphors. Because of the former, I gradually lost interest in the story. Nothing made any sense to me and even worse, I stopped to care. It is always a bad sign when you start checking the timer and here it felt like a countdown to relief. For the latter, I never got around to decode the actual story. There are hints that Caravaggio is a Christ figure, at least the last pose is of him dead with the wounds of Christ, but otherwise the whole thing felt like an excuse to showcase sex. Not the sex of love, but as a depravity. Now, depravity is in the eye of the beholder, but Jarman goes a long way to present the sex in this context as ugly, filthy and guilt-ridden. Sex between older men and boys, Sex between men and women and especially men and men. Religious people indulging in sex and so on.

The general impression is one of nausea. I felt literally filthy watching the movie. If there is something else in the movie, I can live with that, I am not that much of a prude. The problem here is that there is nothing else. The story line has no relevance, the actual plot is too obscure for me, and I felt nothing for the characters, in large part because the director is so busy using them for symbolic effect that he neglected fleshing them out. Even the main character, Caravaggio we end up knowing very little about, and what we do get to know is implicitly false because causality has been lost.

I suppose the highlight is that we get to see a young Sean Bean and equally young Tilda Swinton here, but I doubt these are the roles they will be remembered for.

I do understand why “Caravaggio” would be celebrated by critics, especially in art circles. There is so much critics-bait here, but it is also typical for why that class of movies has such a poor reputation in the general public. I think David Lynch is cool, the weirder the better and I dig Jim Jarmusch, but this stuff here is not my jam. Not at all.