Once Upon a Time in America (1983)

 

Der var engang i Amerika

It has been quiet on this blog for some time, largely due to my summer vacation in Japan, but also because this entry clicks in at almost 4 hours. With all my other summer activities, this amounts to watching a full season of a tv-series. Things take time.

When I think of Sergio Leone, I invariably think of his westerns. Applying his particular format of super close-ups, composition pictures, long takes and epic scale on any other setting is difficult for me to wrap my head around. Yet why not? To do this on the American gangster movie though, seems like a stretch, until you realize that this is just another sort of western.

Sergio Leone’s swan song is about a Jewish gang in New York. Chronologically, it starts in the early twenties where a group of boys, Noodles (Robert De Niro, Scott Tiler), Patsy (James Hayden, Brian Bloom), Cockeye (William Forsythe, Adrian Curran) and Dominic (Noah Moazezi), do small jobs for the more established gangsters until Max (James Wood, Rusty Jacobs) shows up and their gangster activities become more serious. This is not where the movie starts, though. The opening is an orgy of violence where a series of people are shot or tormented ruthlessly, forcing an adult Noodles to escape to Buffalo and a new identity. This is a worthy Leone opening which is only marred by the incessant ringing of phone that started to get to me badly.

In 1968 Noodles returns to New York and as he walks down memory lane, we follow his “career” in flashbacks. These includes the shocking killing of Dominic, the rise of the gang with Max and Noodles forming a leadership team and Noodles infatuation with Deborah (Elizabeth McGovern, Jennifer Connelly), the sister of part time gang member Fat Moe (Larry Rapp, Mike Monetti). The killing of Dominic sends young Noodles into a frenzy where he kills the murderer and stabs a policeman, earning him several years in prison.

When Noodles is released in 1931 everybody has grown up and the gangster business is lucrative but tough. Max and Noodles disagree on the direction with Max wanting to take chances Noodles are not ready to take.

This is where the movie becomes complicated and where the 1968 thread ties in with the opening in 1933. I do not want to reveal too much of what happens here, but frankly, I am not myself too certain what happens. Suffice to say that Noodles have been living for 35 years thinking he killed his best friend while Max was actually alive and kicking and essentially stole everything that was Noodle’s.

This would not be Leone if the main characters were not a complex combination of good and evil or at least complex. The movie works as a portrait of Noodles, his aspirations and desires. Ruthless and violent on the one hand, but still with a sort of moral compass, especially when it comes to loyalty and the boundaries of what is acceptable. This gets really complicated when it gets to Deborah, a girl he loves and who cares for him, yet refuses to commit to him. There is an infamous rape scene where he has learned that she will leave him to go to Hollywood, “forcing” him to take what is not freely given. This is frankly one of the ugliest scenes in a movie full of ugly scenes and we are somehow supposed to understand why he does it. Yet, I suppose that even he can see that he went way too far and maybe this is what changed him for good.

I suspect that Leone wanted to extend this portrait of a man to a portrait of a nation growing up, that the story of this gang is somehow also the story of America as seen from Leone’s Italian chair. I am not certain how well this analogy works or how flattering it is.

There is no doubt that “Once Upon a Time in America” is a big movie. In every sense it is large and that includes the production value. Every scene is thought through and there are so many details everywhere. It also takes its time, for better or worse. On first release the original movie was cut down from four to two hours and the scenes ordered chronologically and the movie tanked. The version in general circulation today is almost the original length and has been celebrated as a masterpiece. I am not certain I would go this far, but it is a movie that needs to be watched slowly.  

My main objection to “Once Upon a Time in America” is that I am struggling to see the point, but that may be more my problem than the movie’s problem. Maybe I just need to think some more about it.

Koyaanisqatsi (1983)

 

Koyaanisqatsi

“Koyaanisqatsi” is a non-narrative film and should as such be considered as an art film. I knew that going in, so I skipped reading up on the movie before watching, in order to make my own experience with the movie. By leaving out a narrative, the sensation of watching the movie becomes the message and in a sense the narrative. It is a movie to be felt.

The imagery of the movie is either in time lapse or in slow motion with the speed of either varying. We start out with natural landscapes of deserts. Empty land devoid of anything. Then we switch to human made deserts. Sad, ruined land, empty housing areas, nuclear bomb explosions and superhighways. The impression here is that these human wastelands is as devoid of life as the natural wastelands.

Scenes now switch between pictures of human life and machinery, both in time lapse so it appears extra hectic and with stressing music. The scenes with people and the scenes with machinery look uncannily similar as if we are all cogs and wheels in a big machine. It is stressing to look at. Factory workers at high speed, thousands of cars criss-crossing city streets, people coming off an escalator very much like the sausages at the factory. Only when we then switch to the individual human do we switch to slow motion as if juxtapositioning the person with the machine that is our modern life.

The speed of the time lapse keeps increasing until at the climax everything is a blur. Even daily, harmless routines like eating and watching television looks hectic and inhuman. Then, finally we see the grid of the city and the grid of an electronic circuit board, and they look very much the same. We are all small electrons buzzing around in the big machine.

After this we see pictures of individual characters seemingly left outside, stepping away from the paths of everybody else and a rocket exploding in mid air along with a number of other scenes of destruction. The message I get is that we need to step off this race or it will end badly.

The execution of all this is of high quality, the pictures are sharp, the editing skilful and the music is haunting. It is a bit long for what it is trying to do, an hour and half was too much for a single sitting for me, but it is fascinating if rather stressful to look at.

It is also difficult not to be convinced by the movie. Our daily life at high speed is very much like a machine. Something about the time lapse takes away our humanity and when that is combined with the sheer number of people, it all looks like a frantic anthill. I used to go frequently to Beijing and Seoul and there I got that same feeling.

Does this mean that we all need to step off the hamster wheel and break with conformity? I do believe this is the message here, but maybe less can do it. Maybe this is a warning to not let go of our individuality and to find a balance between being a member of the big machine and being ourselves in our own little world.

The end credit tells us that “Koyaanisqatsi” means “life out of balance” (among a number of similar translations) in the Hopi language, so I suppose we need to find that balance and avoid getting eaten up by the machine. Maybe watch “Mordern Times” again...

“Koyaanisqatsi” is an interesting art film. In comparison with “Sans Soleil” which I reviewed a few weeks ago, it is a lot easier to interpret, though the individual picture were far more interesting in that other movie. Or maybe it is just because I am going to Japan in a few days. Still, I do recommend it as one of the better non-narrative movies I have watched.

The King of Comedy (1983)

 

The King of Comedy

“The King of Comedy” is Martin Scorsese’s take on infatuation with fame and the famous. It is also Scorsese’s attempt at making a comedy... sort of.

One night after the filming of his talk show, Jerry Langford (Jerry Lewis, being sort of himself) is accosted by a horde of fans as he tries to get to his car. When he finally gets to his car, there is a screaming woman inside. One of the fans steps in to help get the woman out of the car and Jerry into it, only to join a surprised Jerry in the car. Rupert Pupkin (Robert De Niro), as the fan is called, wants to introduce himself to Jerry Langford as a way into the business and only by promising to set something up does Jerry get away.

We then learn that Rupert lives in his own version of reality. In this world he is already bestie with Jerry, he is a star comedian and universally adored. We also learn that he and the woman in the car, Masha (Sandra Bernhard) are acquaintances and work together to get close to Jerry. Rupert because he wants to be like Jerry and Masha because she sees herself in love with Jerry. The sad truth is that both are in desperate need of help.

Rupert shows up frequently at Jerry’s office where he is politely rebuffed. Rupert, being the fool he is, does not take a hint, even when he is eventually kicked out by security. As his second option, Rupert is convinced that he would be welcome if he shows up at Jerry’s country home. Rupert wants to impress the waitress Rita (Diahnne Abbott) so he brings her along. While she is quick enough to catch that they are not welcome, Rupert has a very hard time accepting it.

Third option is the hard way. Masha and Jerry kidnap Jerry to force a show appearance of Rupert and give Masha a date with the helpless Jerry. While this goes about as stupid as you can imagine, Rupert actually gets his 15 minutes of fame.

This was a very hard movie for me to get through. I think it took me two weeks of pausing and procrastinating to get to the end. I am not good at movies about people ruining their own lives with their stupidity or poor decisions, especially when it is due to mental illness. Rupert has so convinced himself that he is God’s gift to comedy and that Jerry is his best friend that he completely disconnects from reality. We see these delusions in scenes taking place in his mind and it is really really sad and disturbing. He is not just some clown but a victim in its own right. I felt so sorry for Rita, being dragged along to a famous person’s home only to find out she has been duped and is unwanted. I would simply have left, on my own, on foot if need be. The embarrassment is unbearable.

The focus of the movie of course is the infatuation with fame and the famous and that it messes up people. That unfamous, ordinary people think that the grass on the other side is so green and that these famous people are so special. It is a winner and loser game and if you see yourself as a winner, you are one. Except, Masha and Rupert are not ordinary people but mental patients, diagnosed or not, and so the comedy is so bitter that it is not funny at all.

The end of the movie tells us that any sort of fame makes you famous, even idiocy, because the public is stupid too. Acerbic? Sure, but probably not far from reality.

I have had a hard time with Scorsese’s movies in the past and I know this is a trend that will continue. Getting us to like and take interest in unlikable and stupid people is an uphill battle and for me is often a lost one. It is interesting to see a superstar like Robert De Niro cast as someone who delusionally wants to be a superstar, but this is also as far as I follow “The King of Comedy”. As a comedy, it is too bitter to be fun (for me at least) and as a human-interest story it is way too hard on its leads. Pointing to a disturbing relationship between the idea of fame and actual fame may be its main credit, but that does not cut it for me.

While reviewers love this movie (7.8 on IMDB) it totally tanked at the box office. I see why on both parts.

The Right Stuff (1983)

 

Mænd af rette støbning

“The Right Stuff” is the best movie about test pilots and the early space program that I know of. Hand down.

At Edwards Air Force Base in the high Californian desert, the USAF are testing experimental planes and at the local bar the wall is covered with pictures of dead test pilots. In 1947 the object is to break the sound barrier and one of the, still alive, pilots, Chuck Yeager (Sam Shepard) is making the attempt, and succeeds where others have failed, in the X-1 plane.

In 1953 Gordo Cooper, Gus Grissom and Deke Slayton (Dennis Quaid, Fred Ward and Scott Paulin) are new pilots at Edwards, a place where pilots like Chuck Yeager are still dangerously pushing the envelope of what fighter planes can do while their wives are powerless and nervous bystanders.

The Russian Sputnik scare ignites a frantic quest to send Americans into space and we follow how pilots, like the three above, are gathered from different branches, but also the scramble itself to place humans into space. Rockets that explode, arguments on whether a space capsule is a remote-controlled container, or a spaceship controlled by an astronaut as well as the political jockeying around the space program. The focus, however, remains with the seven astronauts who now include John Glenn (Ed Harris who 15 years later would return to the space program in his amazing portrayal of Gene Kranz), Alan Shepard (Scott Glenn), Walter Schirra (Lance Henriksen) and Scott Carpenter (Charles Frank).

I am a bit of a space nerd and I love documentaries, book, exhibitions, you name it, about space and spaceflight. I have visited the Kennedy Space Centre and watched the launch of a Falcon 9 rocket. My science project in high school was on rockets and includes material on ESA’s Ariane 5 rocket. Behind me, as I write this, I have a Sky-Watcher telescope capable of watching the rings of Saturn and the stripes of Jupiter. For me, watching an undoubtably heroic epic like “The Right Stuff” is much less about macho-men with jet fuel for blood, but all about how many details it gets right and “The Right Stuff” is usually very close though sometimes disappointingly far off the mark.

The feel of the movie is that of a dramatized documentary. There is some real footage, authentic characters and anecdotes. It feels very real and for a space buff like me, this is awesome. Gus Grissom gets some poor treatment by the screenwriters, especially in the affair of the hatch opening prematurely on his flight, though the biggest clash with reality is when the movie’s need to created heroism converts, albeit dangerous, routine into spur of the moment reckless heroism. The Chuck Yeager substory suffers substantially from that and this is a bit surprising since he was in fact consultant on the movie and even gets a cameo in the bar scenes.

Jarring as these details are, it does not take away the sense of adventure here, of something big. There is a very basic appeal here in that this is fundamentally a very good story, delivered very well. I watched the Disney tv-series on “The Right Stuff” and despite being much longer and likely more correct, it never manages to inspire as the original movie did.

I have seen the Mercury capsule, one of those fished out after splashdown, and in the rocket garden of Kennedy there are copies of both the Redstone and the Atlas rockets. To think that people climbed into this and sat on top of that is just mindboggling.

But then, if these seven astronauts were only half of what they were presented as in the movie, it goes a long way to explain why they did it. I suppose they had the right stuff. Or were completely mad.

Either way, this will likely be my suggestion for Best Movie of 1983.

 

 

The Fourth Man (De Vierde Man) (1983)

 

Den fjerde mand

If I could give this movie a subtitle, it would be “Hitchcock in Dutch”. Hitchcock on acid with plenty of nudity, gory violence, some gay sex and plenty of religious symbolism, bordering on the blasphemous. Is it good? I do not know, but it is very much Verhoeven.

Jeroen Krabbé (who for me will always be the villain in “The Fugitive”) is Gerard Reve, a fiction writer of renown, but also a man with quite a few... issues. In short order these are: alcoholism, visions, obsession with catholic symbols, with death and his bisexuality. The first half hour of the movie is essentially a rundown of all the things that trouble this fellow.

Gerard is going from Amsterdam to the port town of Vlissingen to give a speech to the local book club. As it gets a bit late, he is offered to stay overnight with the treasurer of the club, the cosmetologist Christine Halsslag (Renée Soutendijk). She is a very delicious woman and a widow, so the night is well spent together, and we get see all of the pretty Ms. Soutendijk, literally. Gerard is also easily talked into spending a few extra days.

In the course of his stay, Gerard wants to write a story abut Christine. He finds out that she is also seeing a handsome young man called Herman. Gerard instantly falls in love with Herman and talks Christine into fetching him from Germany. While she is away, Gerard gets ridiculously drunk and learns, from Christine’s home movies, that she was married not once, but thrice and that they all died horrible deaths.

Christine returns with Herman, plenty of sex ensues and Gerard gets convinced he will be the fourth man.

“The Fourth Man” (“De vierde man”) references Hitchcock extensively. “Vertigo” and “Rear Window” is easy to recognize, but there are elements from quite a few more. The platin blonde girl, the witness to murder, the confusing signs, the even more confused potential victim and so on. The references queue up and I can imagine a sport of spotting them. This is not a spoof of Hitchcock, but more like fanfiction with a lot of oomph. All the elements get an extra notch or two in volume.

This is particularly the case with the Verhoeven staples. Our lead, Gerard is a very flawed character. We may understand him, but with his extreme qualities, it is difficult to sympathize with him. The religious symbols stack up, but also seem to be a red herring. They lead our attention, but apparently to nowhere and at the end may only be a product of Gerard’s delirium.  There is a lot of sex, hints of sex, sex motives and full-frontal nudity of both genders. Very Dutch. The function of the nudity is a bit obscure though, and besides the shock value, I think it is mostly used to intensify Gerard’s delirium.

From a murder mystery point of view, we are presented with the very Hitchcockian question of whether or not murders were committed or if it is only in the head of the potential fourth victim. Yet, I get the feeling that Verhoeven is less interested in this question and a lot more focussed on following, with some glee, the deroute of his protagonist. This is all about a guy going crazy.  

I do like a murder mystery, and I do love some Hitchcock, but I do not share the excitement of watching a guy go crazy. Gerard needed help to begin with and by the end he is a raving lunatic. Is that fun? Or exciting? He is playing with fire and losing, but he was losing from the very beginning and that makes this just a very sad movie with some sex and violence.

After this movie Verhoeven went on to Hollywood and among his later movies was the remake of “The Fourth Man”: “Basic Instinct”. All everybody talked about was how we saw a little too much of Sharon Stone, but frankly, it is peanuts compared to the original.

A little too Dutch for me I suppose.

 

Terms of Endearment (1983)

 

Tid til kærtegn

The winner of Best Picture at the Academy Awards in 1983 was “Terms of Endearment”, yet I never watched it before and even the name of the movie is one I have only heard mention in passing. What I did learn watching it, was that for all its apparent qualities, this is not a movie I would seek out and probably one I would not want to watch again. Maybe I did not miss much all those years.

Aurora Greenway (Shirley MacLaine) is a woman with one concern in her life: herself. Everybody around her is a concern for her only as they relate to herself. An episode in the very opening of the movie is telling. Aurora is concerned her baby girl may not be breathing. Her husband tries to tell her it is just sleeping. She enters the room, crawls halfway into the crib, shakes the baby awake so it starts to cry. Then satisfied the baby is indeed breathing she leaves the room with the baby crying, unattended.

Aurora is widowed when Emma, her daughter is still a child and their relationship is the focus of the movie. Emma (Debra Winger as Emma grows up) becomes a one-person support group for Aurora while she in turn is smothered by her mother. While Aurora’s sole purpose is her vanity, Emma is a more complex size. She always has her mother trying to run her things and so it seems that her fight is to get her own way. She marries Flap (Jeff Daniels) mostly because her mother does not like him and yet she remains close to her mother. For both the women, however, my lasting impression is that they are both very self-centred.

Flap gets a teaching position in Iowa, far away from Texas and Emma and Flap have three children together, but the pattern remains. The children learn that they are second, they need to give space to their mother. Flap, well, he has his work and eventually also an affair there. The suspicion of such an affair is enough to throw Emma into an affair of her own.

Meanwhile in Houston, Aurora is courted by many men, but start seeing her astronaut neighbour Garrett (Jack Nicholson). Garrett actually challenges her and refuses to be used as a mirror for her which is actually good for her and whatever improvement there is on Aurora, is largely due to Garrett.

I realize writing my synopsis that rather than telling of a plot or a narrative, I am merely trying to make a portrait of Aurora and Emma and I guess this is what this movie is all about. It wants us to understand these two people, but the more I learn about them, the more I come to dislike them. Or rather, I disliked them early on and it never gets better. No matter where they end, it is mostly about themselves. Tom, Emma and Flap’s oldest son, is a good image of my dislike. He sees both Aurora and his mother as failing him, his brother and their father. In Aurora and Emma’s life, there is simply not room for them.

This is a movie that is very strong on acting. The sheer number of nominations and wins in the acting categories is a testament to that. But it is also about people I dislike intensely, so rather to earn that sympathy the movie wants me to give them, I feel like kicking them and protect their surroundings from them. I hate to say it, but the “tearjerker” ending felt to me more like relief.

Obviously, a lot of people like and liked “Terms of Endearment”. While it is obvious Oscar bait, it also worked amazingly well at the box office. Whether it is because people really like selfish people or like to watch annoying people ruin theirs and other people’s lives, I do not know. Neither really works for me.

I think I can name quite a few movies in 1983 I would rather have winning.

 

Utu (1983)

 

Utu

Utu is a Māori word that seems to mean something between vendetta and revenge. A formal, almost ceremonial, declaration embedded in Māori culture. That it is also the title of this movie says a lot about it. For somebody like me, unfamiliar with the Maori and their culture, this was an exotic ride.

It is 1870 and New Zealand is going through some of those clashes most colonized areas went through at the time. The Māori, as the original inhabitants of the land, saw the Europeans, the Pakehas, as landgrabbers, murderers and generally unjust, while the colonizers saw the Māori as subhuman vermin, especially those not christened yet. Many Māori were doing service in the colonial forces and for one of those, Te Wheke (Anzac Wallace), the wanton killing of Māori villagers became too much so he deserted and declared Utu on the Pakehas. His rebellion gained momentum as he attacked settlements, and his murder of a firebrand priest is particularly vivid.

One of those attacked was Williamson (Bruno Lawrence). Te Wheke’s band killed his wife and razed his home. For this he went on a single man hunt for Te Wheke with his impressive four-barrelled gun.

The young Lieutenant Scott (Kelly Johnson) was eager to show his prowess in battle, but somewhere between the arrogant and borderline incompetent Colonel Elliot (Tim Eliott) and the Maori girl, Kura (Tania Bristowe), he seemed to be constantly sidetracked.

Finally, Wiremu (Wi Kuki Kaa), was a scout in the colonial forces, a similar role as what Te Wheke had, though instead, Wiremu stayed loyal. He also turned out to be Te Wheke’s brother.

We see skirmishes between the parties, including a battle at night for a lonesome hotel, and enough to see that both of the parties are guilty of atrocities, but also that both parties have right on their side. While the battle only really results in a lot of people dead, real resolution is found in the final scenes where everybody appears to be having cause for Utu, but only through the ceremonial completion of the ritual can peace be restored.

It is obvious throughout that everybody sees themselves as native to the land, just in different ways. Everybody speaks English, but everybody, with the possible exception of the Colonel, speaks fluent Māori too. It seems to be the point of the movie that Māori and Pakeha are actually all the same people when it comes down to it.

Whether this is a naive, revisionist retelling of formative events in the history of New Zealand, or this is a truthful account of both historical event and national outlook, I am not the right one to tell, but it is an admirable point it tries to make and likely a more insightful portrayal of both indigenous people and colonizers than we usually see.

There is a keen attention to detail in “Utu”. Costumes, settings and historical details are meticulous, but more importantly, the Māori are depicted with a richness that makes this more of a Māori film than a western film. There is extensive use of the Māori language, also when Pakehas are involved and there are a lot of Māori actors here, both in major and minor roles. It is, more than anything, these unique qualities that made the movie worth watching for me.

While the production value is very high, this was the most expensive production in New Zealand at the time, there are also places where the movie suffers. Several of the characters feel half-cooked as if “Utu” had been intended as a long television series, but was boiled down to a feature. Kura, Wiramu and Scott all needed a lot more background and motivation. As it is, we just have to accept their actions at face value. This is of course the price of any action movie, but here it felt more like a flaw in the script.

Another, minor, complaint is that I found the score clashing with what we were watching. I know a lot of it was original, but I felt this was music for a different movie or a misunderstood idea of what the score should be. It is somehow too big and civilized for the frontier of New Zealand.

Overall, however, “Utu” is an impressive and worthwhile movie to watch, and it certainly has made me a lot more interested in the “Land Wars” of the nineteenth century in New Zealand.