My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

 

Off-List: My Neighbor Totoro

1988 is one of those years where there is so much good and interesting stuff to add to the List, yet when I noticed “My Neighbor Totoro” was a 1988 movie, I was not in doubt I had to add this one. There are a few Ghibli movies on the list, but, surprisingly, not this one and that despite when you look for Ghibli merchandize, the Totoro figures are the most iconic ones. Did I mention my son is an avid fan of everything Ghibli?

“My Neighbor Totoro” takes place in rural Japan, sometime in the fifties. A university teacher, Kusakabe, and his two children, pre-teen Satsuki and four-year-old Mei, are moving into an old, deserted house. The mother is in the hospital during the entire movie, suffering from some illness that keeps her there and is a constant worry for the family.

The story is very much seen from the eye-height of the two children. They are very energetic, everything they do seem to happen at a frenetic pace, and they have a lively imagination. When they believe they see something, the father is not rejecting it, but plays along. The girls see soot-mites escaping into crevices when they open doors to deserted rooms and rather than being afraid, they take delight in it. They are also spotting (Mei first, then later Satsuki as well) strange creatures dropping acorns in the house and the garden. Mei, following the creatures into a thicket surrounding a giant tree, ends up with a gigantic, furry creature who seems benign and says just one word, “Totoro”. Later, while waiting for a bus to meet her father, Satsuki also meets Totoro. He is simply standing next to her in the iconic image at the bus stop. She lends him an umbrella, and he gets on a gigantic cat bus before her father arrives.

A few days later there is a telegram to contact the hospital immediately. The girls worry something has happened to their mother. Satsuki tries to get hold on their father while Mei simply wanders off towards the hospital. Satsuki is upset Mei is lost but gets help from Totoro and the catbus to find Mei and then get to the hospital. The girls do not enter, but the parents find an ear of corn with a message from the girls on the windowsill.

Miyazaki combines a number of his classic elements in this movie. First of all, there is the world as viewed from the eye height of a child which both involves what is important to a child but also the magic that the child sees in the world. Another element is nostalgia for a time past. Miyazaki is taking us back to his own childhood where he moved from the city to rural Japan and the world he met there. Something he would reference a lot in “The Boy and the Heron”. Finally, the animistic spiritual world of nature plays a large part in “My Neighbor Totoro”. The world the girls see is not just their imagination, but a spiritual grey-zone where they are in touch with forces in nature that are very much part of traditional Shinto beliefs. Not that Totoro himself is a Shinto deity, but Shinto allows for nature spirits that you need to respect. Both “Princess Mononoke” and “Spirited Away” go down that road in a big way.

The girls seem to be allowed access to this world because the possibilities are never denied them. Where other parents may be keen remove such fanciful thoughts from the children, the father and the local old woman known as Granny never deny the girls’ claims and even encourage it. If the girls had been very sad about moving to the countryside, the magic world could be an escape, but that is not the case at all. Instead, the magic is part of the excitement of moving to the countryside and for the girls simply an extra dimension to be in. This world does offer help when they need it, but as an ability, not as an escape. In this way the nature-spiritual world is not a crutch but a bonus and an altogether much more positive thing.

As all Ghibli movies, “My Neighbor Totoro” is on the surface a children’s movie, but one with messages to adults as well. It seems to lack a plot, but that is because it is so much more focused on a state of things. This is less about overcoming a story-arch crisis as about achieving a communion with a spiritual reality.

Finally, not to forget, “My Neighbor Totoro” is a beautifully drawn movie. As in all Miyazaki’s movies the backgrounds are hand drawn to exquisite perfection. Totoro is now an iconic Ghibli creature, and I think many children all over the world are very familiar with it.

“My Neighbor Totoro” is a necessary watch in the Studio Ghibli universe and I highly recommend it.

   

Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (Hotel Terminus: Klaus Barbie sa Vie et Son Temps) (1988)

 

Hotel Terminus: The life and Times of Klaus Barbie

For a while I thought this would be the first time I had to give up finding a movie on the List and in a way it turned out so. Extensive search turned up blank unless I have an American library card, which I do not, or have access to a region 1 DVD player, which again, I do not have. I finally succeeded in finding part 2 of “Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie” on YouTube and that is what I had to settle with. Missing the first half of the movie, I feel unable to give a proper review of it and this will just be my impressions from the second half.

Klaus Barbie was known as “The Butcher of Lyon” for his actions during the second world war. What exactly he did is a bit unclear because it is covered by the first half of the movie, but as an SS officer with that nickname, it cannot have been good. As the war ended Barbie avoided prosecution for his crimes by being spirited away. This is where the second half starts in the middle of the story of how that was possible. Something about that it was an American intelligence agency who got him out using some underground network that involved the Catholic church in Italy. I apologize for being obscure here, but this part was very confusing to me.

Barbie worked in South America for various military regimes. To begin with to fight communists, but eventually to become a power factor in his own right, leading an organization that supplied the regimes with arms through sale of drugs. He was particularly active in Bolivia under the name Altman. In the seventies, his name started to surface, and a number of individuals began to chase him down. Only in 1983 he was finally caught and sent to France where he was, three years later, given a life sentence.

“Hotel Terminus...” is a project by French filmmaker Marcel Ophuls. He previously made the documentary movie “The Sorrow and the Pity” and “Hotel Terminus...” follows in the same path. Here his mission is not to find Klaus Barbie, but try to uncover what happened with him. Not just how he was found, but the entire environment around him. At least in the second half I watched, we see very little of him. A few pictures and short clips from the trial, but no interviews to speak of. Instead, Ophuls interviews the people around Barbie. Often in small snips and cross-clipped with another interview contradicting the first. There is no voice-over or explanatory text beyond the name and title of the interviewed (at least that!), so as a viewer I must infer the connection and context from the dialogue. I have a feeling that even with the first part, this would still have left me somewhat confused.

Some of the characters being interviewed are downright dodgy. They agreed to give interviews for a fee, but their answers are at best useless. Others look very qualified, such as the head of the German Chamber of Commerce to Peru, but held up against other interviews, they appear to by lying through their noses. What is truth and what is fiction? It gives the impression of a conspiracy working just outside our perception with threads not just to juntas in South America but across the globe.

The final part about the trial itself focuses particularly on two subjects: the dodgy defence lawyer who not only has an ambiguous relationship with reality but also appears to be connected to some very unsavoury organizations with a common goal to disrupt the western world (making this quite relevant today), and secondly how much of the testimony against Barbie was rejected, either because of the long time elapsed since the war or because essential witnesses were discredited. For a while I thought this would lead up to that Barbie went free, but alas, he did get a life sentence.

I would like to watch the first half if it ever became available to me. Not because I am eager to watch the crimes of Klaus Barbie, but because I feel I lack the context for the second half and the means to fully understand it. For the same reason I do not want to offer a recommendation for this. I simply cannot judge it fairly.

Cinema Paradiso (Nuevo Cinema Paradiso) (1988)

 

Mine aftener i paradis

I remember when “Cinema Paradiso” (“Nuovo Cinema Paradiso”) came out. On Danish TV, the movie reviewer (Ole Michelsen) was gushing over the movie, but I did not much care for it, being in the wrong age bracket at the time (15 years of age). 10-15 years later I finally watched it and was surprised to learn that I liked it. That is already a long time ago now and I never went back to it until now. Revisiting “Cinema Paradiso felt like coming back to an old friend. Everything looks the same but completely different at the same. Pretty much the topic of the movie.

In present day Italy, an old woman (Pupella Maggio) is trying to reach her son, Salvatore (Jacques Perrin). Salvatore lives in Rome, is a famous movie director and has not been home for thirty years. The mother finally gets through to his girlfriend who in turn tells Salvatore that a man called Alfredo has died. This makes Salvatore reminiscence about old days, which then becomes the bulk of the movie.

We are now back in a small Sicilian town, Giancaldo, shorty after the Second World War. Salvatore, now known as Toto (Salvatore Cascio), is a naughty little boy (8 years?) who works as an altar boy and spends most of the time in the projector room at the church, turned cinema at night, with the projectionist Alfredo (Philippe Noiret). His life at home is miserable with a lonely mother (Antonella Attili) whose husband never returned from the war, but with Alfredo, Toto experiences magic. The priest requires Alfredo to cut away all the naughty parts and Toto revels in these cutaways.

There is a fire in the projection room and Alfredo, although saved by Toto, loses his sight. When a local lottery winner opens a new cinema, Nuovo Cinema Paradiso, Toto, as the only skilled projectionist available, is hired with blind Alfredo to guide him.

Fast forward to the mid-fifties, Toto has become a young man (Marco Leonardi) in high school who still runs the projector. When a new girl, Elena (Agnese Nano) arrive in town, Toto falls in love. Unfortunately, her wealthy family does not approve so when Toto returns after military service and years out of contact with Elena, he leaves for Rome with Alfredo telling him never to come back.

Now, 30 years later, having remembered all this, Salvatore returns to Giancaldo for Alfredo’s funeral. The town both look the same and very different. His life as it was now only lives on in his memory.

This is a movie that relies heavily on nostalgia. It is a remembrance of times past in the Proustian form where the reality we are presented is not necessarily an objective reality but a remembered reality. The things that made an impression, of joy and passion, misery and misfortune and people looking and acting precisely as you want them to be remembered. Salvatore sees all his old friends when he returns, but they are like strangers to him because 30 years of nostalgia removes them from objective reality and, truthfully, who stays the same after 30 years?

While the life remembered is uniquely Salvatore’s, we all share that experience of remembering the past and so we can all relate to the process if not the actual content. We remember what made an impression on us in our childhood, and we remember our father and mother figures or our first love. True, Salvatore’s memories may be a tad more exotic and interesting than the rest of us, a film of my memories would be both sad and boring to anybody else, but they are also made more interesting by the patina of nostalgia, of the longing for a paradise lost. The name of the cinema is not coincidental and the Danish title given to the movie, literally “My evenings in paradise”, is a reference to the personal paradise lost of Salvatore.

It is an incredible movie to watch, especially because it succeeds in dragging you in. Time flies by and by the time it ended I was surprised to see how late it was. Finishing the movie is like waking from a dream that took you somewhere else. I often have a problem with Italians and their very... expressionist... way of acting, but I got past this super fast. Even young Toto’s shrill cry of “Alfredo Alfredo” becomes less annoying after a while and with Ennio Morricone’s awesome and dreamlike scoring, the dream is now our dream.

If there is any complaint it is that Salvatore never returned to his family for 30 years. That kind of makes him a dick.

“Cinema Paradiso” won a ton of prices, not least the Grand Jury prize in Cannes and the Best Foreign Language award at the Academy Awards. That the Academy did not deign to nominate it for anything else, does not speak to the credit of the Academy.

“Cinema Paradiso” remains a great movie and it has aged incredibly well. It is possibly even better today than I remember it, and I can only give it my highest recommendations.

 

Ved Vejen (1988)

 

Off-List: Ved vejen

It has been quiet here on my blog in July, but now I am back from my summer vacation and the first movie is a Danish off-List movie called “Ved Vejen”. I believe the English title is “Katinka”.

“Ved Vejen” is based on a story by Herman Bang and is, as far as I can tell, the only movie ever directed by the great Max von Sydow. It takes place in a small provincial community in Denmark around the turn of the century (that is, around 1900) and is particularly concerned with a woman called Katinka (Tammi Øst). In the opening scenes, Katinka is lying on her deathbed and is soon after getting her funeral, so we know that whatever is going to happen, will end poorly for Katinka.

Katinka is a quiet and thoughtful woman who is married to the stationmaster, Mr. Bai (Ole Ernst), at the little train station. Bai is a loud and big man, very jovial but also a bit insensitive. A new manager, Mr. Huus (Kurt Ravn) arrives to run one of the big farms in the area, and he causes some disturbance in the little community. The women see him as a very handsome man and surprisingly he is unengaged. As he seems uninterested in the eligible girls, he is written off as a bit odd, though very capable. Secretly though, he is falling in love with Katinka and she in him. Both are intensive but quiet types, and both know that this love is impossible for the simple fact that Katinka is married. They are so discreet even that it takes them most of the movie to realize that their feelings are shared. Both Bai and his wife have taken Huus into their home and Bai sees Huus as his friend, completely (and blissfully) unaware of the unspoken love between his wife and his friend. Huus is in obvious pain every time Bai makes a show of his love for his wife, but has enough politeness to be quiet. This dance takes up about an hour of the movie, until near the end, the walls are falling and Huus and Katinka admit their love for each other with the clear admission that this means they must part. Hence Katinka’s wasting and death.

This is the basic story. Everything else is framing. There are many characters introduced and many small side plots, but they all served to frame this basic triangle of impossible love.

It is a very classic plot, timeless even, and their situation would be difficult in any age. By placing the story in the time and environment used here, it is not just difficult, it is virtually impossible. In this time and place, divorce is unheard of and the reason that applies here, love to another man, is considered adultery. That it is the woman in the marriage who loves another man, just makes it so much more socially unacceptable. In this way, “Ved vejen” is related to such Victorian movies as “Room with a View” where social constraints build solid walls around people. Yet even without the social mores, Huus and Katinka’s relationship is doomed. Both are too conscious of the damage they would do. Bai may appear like an insensitive bully, but he sincerely loves his wife, and she does care for him a lot. He does not deserve to be dumped even if he is not worthy of her. I actually like Bai, I could see him as a friend and in those scenes on Katinka’s death bed, we see him completely reduced and broken to lose his wife.

I went into this movie not knowing what sort of movie I would be watching. The Danish output in 1988 was not impressive and this was one I had never watched before. The topic, though, is one I have a very hard time dealing with, so I spent a large part of the movie focussing on everything else in the movie. This was quite rewarding. They went all in to create a believable set for the movie. Often these period pieces look like a dress-up party, but here every detail was strictly period, from simple things like the lamps and trains to intricate things like the dialogue and the sentiments of the characters. This felt like going 130 years back in time. We see the holidays, the town fair, the parties and the daily work and there are so many details. It also helps that there are all these small side stories to latch onto. Most of them has to do with the importance to find somebody to marry, as if going around unmarried is a half death sentence, which of cause underlines the importance of the institution in this environment, but there are also some levity among the stories that helps this from being a complete misery feast.

This does not change that this is a movie to make you feel miserable, unless of course you enjoy impossible love stories. I know a large portion of the human population do love exactly that, but I am not among those and for that reason, I doubt this is a movie I am going to watch again.

So, how did Max von Sydow perform as a director? The direction is flawless. I can only regret he did not direct more movies.

     

Akira (1988)

 

Akira

Ever since my son learned “Akira” is on the List, he has impatiently been asking me when it is coming up. He has watched it several times and tells me this is one of the best and most important anime out there. Finally watching it with me was a big thing.

The story takes place in 2019, 31 years after a disaster destroyed much of Tokyo. Life in Neo-Tokyo is on the brink of chaos with a tenuous balance between a rumbling populace and an increasingly fascistic government. It is a nihilistic world where youth gangs are rampaging and the future looks bleak. Taneka belongs to such a biker gang, driving an awesome, red monstrosity of a bike. When his friend and fellow gang member Tetsuo gets involved in an accident, something strange happens.

Tetsuo is taken away by the military, and we learn they hold a number of oddly gifted children in a research facility. They possess a curious telepathic power and are part of a defence against a mystic entity called Akira, who, we learn, was the cause of the 1988 disaster. Tetsuo, it turns out, also have these powers, except he cannot control them at all.

Kaneda joins a rebellious group, mostly because of a girl, who wants to penetrate the military research facility to challenge the government, but it develops into a struggle to contain Tetsuo before he as well will destroy the city.

It is a wild story like all manga and anime and, frankly, I had some problems following it. In fairness though, I have trouble following most of the anime my son is showing me and this is not the worst. What they all have in common is the intensity. All emotions are 100%, dialogue is either screaming or sinister serious, there is no middle ground. The stakes are as high as possible, the end of the world or unbearable personal humiliation. “Akira” is all of that and for two hours straight, this is an exhausting affair.

Fortunately, there is also something glorious in all this extreme. It is dark and big, machines and technology are massive, explosions are world shattering and everything happens so fast, although there is always time for the characters to cry their heart out or predict the end of the world. This makes it a visual rollercoaster ride through some extraordinary animations and details in drawing. My son dabbles in drawing himself and he tells me that the level of detail in the scenes in “Akira” is among the best ever. It is truly detailed and what impresses me the most is the amount of world building that has gone into this. Sure, it is largely based on Japanese culture, but there is an extrapolation here that resembles “Bladerunner” and with a strong internal logic.

Two years ago, my family spent our summer vacation in Japan and experienced first hand how big manga and anime is there. This is not just a marginal entertainment genre, but something that seems to penetrate everything. I do not remember if we saw anything particularly referring to “Akira”, but given this movie’s celebrated status, it is difficult not to think it had a major influence on how this scene has developed since.

Although there is a conception that anime is mainly for children, “Akira” is not an easy movie to watch. The themes are adult or at least adolescent and the complexity of what is happening on the screen requires both attention and some maturity from the audience. But then again, my old brain may have atrophied, and a younger head is needed. I had to get the ending explained by my son. In the riot of colours and sound I lost track of what happened there in the conclusion.

“Akira” is an impressive movie, but probably not an obvious starter movie in the anime genre. It is adrenaline and high octane, but also surprisingly complex. And, as I am told, an early high point in the genre. That makes it a recommendation.

There are two more anime coming up for 1988.

 

The Thin Blue Line (1988)

 

The Thin Blue Line

Watching “The Thin Blue line” I get the impression that this is a milestone in true crime as a television or cinematic genre. I tried to look up what true crime was before this and the results were a bit vague, but the true crime shows on television since then look pretty much like “The Thin Blue Line”.

Documentarist Errol Morris stumbled on the story of Randall Adams while investigating a different story. Randall Adams was on a life sentence for killing a policeman in Texas, only something was not adding up, and his case is presented here through interviews and reenactments.

The outline of the story is that a car was pulled over one evening in 1976 by the police and as one of the officers went up to the car, he was shot point blank. Earlier that day Adams, who was passing through town had run out of fuel and was picked up by a guy called David Harris. They spend the day together and it was this car that was pulled over and Adams was arrested for the murder.

What Morris finds out is two things. That Harris, a hardened criminal, albeit only 16 years old, had bragged to his friends about killing the policeman and that the authorities seemed very keen on pinning this on an outsider rather than a local boy. There are interviews with both Adams and Harris, both of which makes it quite clear that Harris was the actual murderer and not Adams. The interviews with the police and the prosecutors gave the impression that they were dead certain while the defending side had been stonewalled and largely ignored. It was even mentioned that Adams was a better suspect because he was old enough to be eligible for death penalty.

We do not get far in “The Thin Blue Line” before we see this picture. It is not as if Morris has some twists for us. Instead, the picture just gets clearer and clearer. Yet, all the reenactments keep using Adams as the villain to the end, likely to demonstrate how unwilling the prosecution was to let go of this idea.

Morris has been criticised for being unreliable and biased and that there are also inconsistencies on the defendant’s side that are not explained here, yet it is hard to argue with the last scene, a tape recording of David Harris admitting to the murder, which, of course, makes Adams wrongly accused.

I had some trouble following the story. My copy had no subtitles, and the Texan drawl was very heavy on some of the characters, forcing me to guess at what they were talking about. Secondly, Morris never present the names and titles of his interviewees. I had to infer that from the connection. Some I can guess, simply because we got back to them so many times, but there are also those I still do not know who was in the story. That may be a point from Morris side, but not very helpful.

There are not that many documentaries on the List, and I sometimes wonder if those that are included, are there because they function as a movie feature in an artistic sense rather than just for information. If that is the reason “The Thin Blue Line” is included due to the style used to present the story. Is this the birth of the modern true crime show? Or is it a case of Morris messing with our heads and that is the artistic value? I like to think and indeed I hope it is the former and that Adams was released because of this. Morris drives a strong case, and I would hate to learn that it was all bull.

The unveiling of injustice is an interesting subject matter and as such this is an interesting view. As true crime though, all it takes is to open Netflix. We are swamped by those shows and I am frankly a bit tired of them.

    

Married to the Mob (1988)

 

My Wife Wants Me to See This: Married to the Mob

The third movie my wife got to chose for 1988 is the romantic comedy “Married to the Mob”. This is one of her favourite movies, so I have promised to give it a nice review.

Again, this is a movie with a strong, female lead. Angela de Marco (Michelle Pfeiffer) is the cliché wife of an Italian-American mob henchman, Frankie "The Cucumber" de Marco (Alec Baldwin). Like all the wives in her circle, she lives an idle life of housewife’ing, looking pretty, and all the creature comfort illegal money can get. Except, Angela is sick of it, all of it. Angela wants out. When Frankie is shot for frequenting the same whore as his boss, Tony "The Tiger" Russo (Dean Stockwell), Angela sees an opportunity. She gives everything away and leaves for New York with her son. This move is also strongly motivated by the amorous, but unwanted, interest of Tony.

Angela has also attracted the attention of the FBI. She was the wife of the murdered Frankie and she was seen kissing (or being kissed by) Tony. Clearly, she must have something to do with it. The lead investigator is the competent, but slightly juvenile, agent Mike Downey (Matthew Modine).

The new shithole apartment in New York is now getting crowded with unwanted guests from both the mob and the FBI, while Angela is simply trying to move on with her new life as a hairdresser. Predictably, this leads to awkward and comical situation with Tony looking for Angela, Connie (Mercedes Ruehl) looking for Tony (the only person Tony is afraid of) and Mike taking close surveillance very literally. This gets even more complicated when Mike falls in love with Angela.

Of course, this cannot go on and when it blows up, it really blows.

This is a romantic comedy with stress on both words. The romance is a very key component, and that counts for the miserable one with Frankie, the unwanted one with Tony and the dreamy one with Mike. The same is true for the comedy. Practically everything plays for comedic effects. This is not just the New York apartment that serves as a Marx Brothers stateroom, but everything else too. The gangsters do kill people, but they are also over the top gangsters who enjoy songs to their praise, sport silly nicknames and over-do the whole Italian mob family thing. It works though. Yes, they are a bit silly, but it is also fun. The greatest character, though, is Connie. Connie constantly suspect that Tony is unfaithful (which he is) and she is a huntress on the prowl when she smells foul play. She becomes literally feral when she goes after Tony and woe that person that gets in her way. Watching the badass gangster boss being afraid of his wife is priceless.

By 1988 the Italian gangster film is a well-established trope. It is already a log time since “The Godfather” and mobsters are getting to be a bit of a joke. “Married to the Mob” takes all these tropes and clichés and makes fun of them and because we are so familiar with the tropes, they become so funny here.

It also changes the viewpoint to a female position. This allows for angles we otherwise never see. What do all these mob-spouses actually do? It also allows for a strong and interesting female lead, something all the movies in this category has in common (not surprisingly, my wife likes movie with strong female leads). It is great to have such movies and a movie like “Married to the mob is an example of the options that gives the movie maker. Michelle Pfeiffer grabs this opportunity and gets the best out of it.

Director Jonathan Demme went on to make other movies with strong female leads such as “Silence of the Lambs” (NOT a romantic comedy), but before “Married to the Mob” he directed the fantastic Talking Heads concert movie “Stop making Sense” (reviewed on this blog). He brought along David Byrne who made a great musical score for “Married to the Mob”.

It is very difficult not to like “Married to the Mob”. If you accept it as a romantic comedy, and it never claims to be anything else, it will not disappoint. Probably a good date movie too.

 

Ariel (1988)

 

Ariel

Finland is an amazing country. There is a certain seriousness and sincerity about Scandinavians in general, but even for us, the Finnish stand out with their deadpan attitude. Few has been able to present this deadpan delivery as well as Aki Kaurismäki and this is reason enough to love his movies.

Taisto Kasurinen (Turo Pajala) is a miner whose mine closes. Sitting in a café, he listens to the rant of a colleague who then goes to the bathroom to kill himself. Taisto leaves his ramshackle house in his big, old convertible and drives south to the city.

Taisto gets robbed of all his money, takes on day-to-day work at the docks and stays in the dorm of a hostel. Irmeli (Susanna Haavisto) works as a hotel maid, night watch, butcher and as a parking attendant and in this function she is giving a ticket to Taisto. Impressed with his car, she jumps in with him and soon they are in her apartment, swearing eternal fidelity to each other.

What follows next is a string of poor luck for Taisto. He cannot find a job, is kicked out from the hostel and he is arrested and convicted for assault on one of the bandits who mugged him early on. In prison he befriends the bleak long-term prisoner, Mikkonen ( Matti Pellonpää). Together and with the help of a file from Irmeli, they escape. To get fake passports they take a job to rob a bank. The passport gangsters double cross them and Mikkonen dies in the ensuing gunfight. Taisto, Irmeli and her son flees on the ship “Ariel” to Mexico.

This summary sounds staccato because it is. One action takes the next in short scenes. Hardly a word is uttered, things just happen in rapid order. This makes it possible to pack all this into a 72-minute running time.

The subject matter is serious enough. This is the old tale of an innocent person who hits misfortune and through a series of coincidences finds himself in big trouble. This is social realist in the sense that it presents a certain hopelessness and vulnerability of the dispossessed and a hardness by the surrounding society. As such it is a social critique. But it is also a fairy tale. Things happen almost magically in the movie. Irmeli showing up out of the blue. Mikkonen as a helping agent who helps him escape and get passports. The misfortunes that practically fall out of the sky.

What makes the movie special, however, is the deadpan delivery. This is on every level. The way the scenes follow each other, what happens to the characters of the movie and not least their reactions and dialogue. Never do we see a hint of emotion in the dialogue, whether for love or anger. Everything is said in a clipped, businesslike manner. This deadpan is taken so far it becomes hilarious and what should be a serious movie becomes a comedy of sorts.

I have Aki Kaurismäki strongly suspected for deliberately making fun of this idiosyncratic Finnish deadpan style. Any doubt should be wafted away when considering some of his other movies. His Leningrad Cowboys project uses deadpan humor very deliberately and it is not alone. I totally dig this humor. It is certainly not for everybody, and I can easily imagine this going over the head of many people, but to me it is a riot. I was howling from laughter during the flirting scene in the car and the prison escape was pure slapstick. Even a small thing like Taisto finding a bigger picture to compete with his neighbor’s in the hostel is so subtle and elegant deadpan humor that I am still smiling.

“Ariel” is not a big movie and technically it is not very advanced, but if you like Finnish deadpan delivery as much as I do, this is a gem.

Bull Durham (1988)

 

Bull Durham

I do not know the first thing about baseball. For one, I was born and live on the wrong continent for that sport and secondly, any attempt at grasping it has hit a wall, every time. The rules, the lingo, the names and the concepts, it is all nonsense to me. That is not unique for baseball, I feel the same way for many other sports. American football is an even darker zone. In the case of “Bull Durham” this is a problem because this movie is all about baseball.

Most sports movies are watchable despite the mumbo-jumbo of the sport in question, because they are built on a framework story that goes beyond the particular sport. Here it is a mentorship story (I think). A team called Durham Bulls is playing lousy, but has a talented player, a pitcher I learned it is called, by the name Ebby Calvin LaLoosh (Tim Robbins). As this talent is hiding, the owners (?) of the team has found an older player called Lawrence "Crash" Davis (Kevin Costner) to mentor Ebby. Ebby is not terribly smart and Crash is a bitter man who (I think) did not quite make it, so they are hitting it well.

The love interest of the movie is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon) who is some sort of baseball groupie. I did not understand half the things she said, but understood she takes on a new player as lover each season and this one it is either Ebby or Crash. A good chunk of the movie is devoted to this triangle. There is also another girl, Millie (Jenny Robertson), who is less selective who on the team she takes to bed.

Crash’s methods are of course unorthodox, but they work and Ebby, now sporting the name “Nuke” makes it to a big team, which means there is no real need for Crash anymore.

Of course, a lot more happens but I did not understand much of that. The ratio of sports stuff to general stuff is very high here, much higher than normal, which likely pleases fans of the sport to no end, but is frustrating to the rest of us. There is an underlying celebration of fandom to the sport, of people who go all in for it, even if they are no good at it or just spectators. In that sense, it could have been any other sport, now it just happened to be baseball. The characters hang so much of their life, purpose and interest up on the sport and it is as if the movie asks if this is a fantastic thing or perhaps a bit problematic.

I feel it is difficult to discuss the movie, because I am obviously missing so much of it. The decision of Annie to go with Nuke or Crash seems tied to their endeavours in the games... maybe. I sense she sees them as her price, as if she is winning something by having a successful player under her control and, following that, it annoys her no end when they are not complying with her. Maybe that is a lesson to her, maybe she needs to grow up or find something in her life that is less connected to baseball.

Same thing with Crash. The bitterness he feels could be linked to almost making it, but it could also be that he feels manipulated and powerless to avoid or resist the control of other people. The team owners and Annie may here be the same thing, but I could be entirely wrong. In the end, certainly, Crash and Annie seem to find a kindred spirit in each other.

I have no idea if this is a good sports movie. I will let fans of the sport decide that. Susan Sarandon is usually watchable and Costner is... well a matter of taste. I cannot say he is doing anything wrong here. “Bull Durham” is not a movie I remember from my youth, and I would not be surprised if it was never released to cinemas in Europe. Baseball is practically non-existent here. I did not feel much smarter watching it, but I am clearly not the target audience.

 

Working Girl (1988)

 

My wife Wants me to See this: Working Girl

For my new category of “My Wife Wants Me to See This”, my wife recommended me to watch “Working Girl”. She loves “women at work” movies and “Working Girl” is supposed to be the mother of all those movies. Sort of a “The Devil Wears Prada” long before that was a thing.

Tess McGill (Melanie Griffith) is a woman of modest origin who takes the ferry every day from Staten Island to Manhattan to work. We learn early on that she does not hold a job long and that this may have something to do with that she does not accept the bull she gets exposed to. She really wants to climb the corporate ladder but all she gets a chance for are secretary jobs. As an example of the exploitation she is exposed to, she goes to what she thinks is an interview but instead gets hit on by a hot-shot businessman in the shape of Kevin Spacey in a oddly prescient role.

When she lands a job as secretary for the young and powerful Katherine Parker (Sigourney Weaver), Tess thinks this might be different. Katherine speaks very finely about mutual trust and about supporting each other, but when Tess submits an idea to her, Katherine runs with it and claims it as her own. Tess only finds out about it when Katherine breaks her leg skiing in Europe and is away for weeks.

This is where Tess takes it upon herself to exploit her idea and pretends that she is an authority person of the company. She gets a business partner, Jack Trainer (Harrison Ford), who happens to be Katherine’s boyfriend, on board and starts navigating the high seas of finance. This all works surprisingly well until Katerine returns a little before expected.

“Working Girl” is built on the framework of a romantic comedy and a classic eighties version of those. This means that it has story arc, protagonist types, crises and the lightness of tone in common with most rom-coms of this era. There is even a transformation element. It is the content that is filled into this skeleton that makes “Working Girl” special.

The two main elements are the glass ceiling on the workplace and what is permissible in order to break that glass ceiling. Tess hits the glass ceiling in three different ways. She is a woman and in this movie all women except for Katherine Parker are lowly assistants/secretaries while the men are all high-powered businessmen. The patriarchal world order. Secondly, she has training, but her training is not prestigious and without an elite university/college degree, she constantly sees herself bypassed. Thirdly, her background is modest, which is not in itself a problem on the job market, but she is held back to her lowly origin by friends and family. They see her as an opportunist who forgets where she comes from. Which of these elements are the more important is not so relevant. We learn that the combined effect is an almost impossible barrier to breach.

When Katherine breaks the trust and reveals herself to be just as bad, if not worse, than her make counterparts, Tess finds the excuse to bend the rules. How far can you then bend those rules? We understand that Katherine Parker is a bad boss and probably deserves a knock or two, but is it okay what Tess is doing? She is essentially assuming Katherine’s role. She is engaging a business partner (Jack) on what is basically a whim and makes him work long hours for it and she bypasses normal channels to crash a wedding to make her pitch for the potential client. This is not just bending the rules, this is a loose canon running wild. Because this is a movie, we like Tess and allow her more room, but objectively, you must weigh the unfairness of the glass ceiling with the anarchy Tess is unleashing.

Two of her victims, Jack and the client, forgive her with the understanding that the values she represents are good. Hey, why stick to rules if breaking them helps you get somewhere? Yet, there is something disturbing about it. It is a rom-com and the permissible space is larger than in real life, but for many people in the workplace, this is a very real situation and reality is less forgiving.

This is “Working Girl”’s contribution and why this is more than just another romantic comedy. Of course, it helps that it is well acted and fun to watch and certainly one of those movies that are worth repeated views.

My wife identifies quite a bit with Tess McGill and I understand why she loves this movie. I like it too.

 

The Vanishing (Spoorloos) (1988)

 

Spoorloos

“The Vanishing” (“Spoorloos”) was not exactly what I expected it would be. I thought this would be sort of a True Crime thing with a lot of police procedure or perhaps something like the popular TV show (called “Sporløs” in Danish, the direct translation of the Dutch “Spoorloos”) where missing people are traced. The opening may well lead us in that direction, but, man, this takes a left turn!

Rex (Gene Bervoets) and Saskia (Johanna ter Steege) are a young, Dutch couple taking a vacation to France in their shabby old car. We have an early incident where their car runs dry on gas in a tunnel and Rex leaves a screaming Saskia alone to get some fuel (Saskia will not leave without a flashlight). She is upset and Rex promises never to leave her alone again.

They stop at a gas station where Saskia wants to pick up some drinks and she never returns. Rex cannot find her anywhere.

In a normal police procedure movie, we would now start the chase for the missing person. The puzzle, the interviews, the clues. Here, instead, we go straight to the perpetrator, and we are not for a second in doubt he is the guy. In fact, we go some time back in time and learn how Raymond (Bernard-Pierre Donnadieu) slowly practices the abduction. How he tests the drug and time the elements. His early attempts are almost comical as they abort for silly reasons and him being a terrible amateur, but he is persistent and, as we learn, eventually successful. We also learn that he is a family father and to all outward appearance, normal.

Jump three years and Rex is still looking for Saskia. He has a new girlfriend, Lieneke (Gwen Eckhaus), but that is not really working as Saskia is always foremost in his mind. Rex gets postcards from someone who want to meet about the abduction, but that person (Raymond) is never there. Finally, Raymond shows up at Rex apartment in The Netherlands, offering to tell Rex what happened to her, but he must come along with him to France.

This is where the story gets really weird. Along the way, Raymond tells Rex all about why he does things, essentially to prove fate is not inevitable, with plenty of detail from his life. When they get to the fatal rest area where Saskia disappeared three years earlier, Raymond is offering Rex to experience what she did. He just needs to drink a cup of spiked coffee. Yeah...

The point here is that this is not a police procedure film or even about searching for a missing person. Instead, these are two other stories. One is about being so devoted to another person that you will literally do anything for that person, even when it becomes extreme. Rex promised Saskia never to leave her alone again and that is serious business.

The other story is that of a psychopathic murderer who kills from a principle, simply to prove a philosophical point, that he can break destiny. That he also does that with impunity just makes it even more distressing.

This can be classified as a horror movie, partly because the vanishing of a loved one is anybody’s worst nightmare and partly because the manner of the murders is truly horrific. I recently read a short story by Edgar Allan Poe on this very theme, and it gave me the creeps. There is also something very unresolved that adds to the terror. That two people can disappear, and nobody will ever learn what happened to them.

I found it a frustrating movie. I may well recover from the disappointment that it just skipped everything that is cool about a missing person story, but that entire journey to France by Rex and Raymond is totally surreal. Who in their right mind would go along with that? And why on Earth would Rex accept that choice Raymond is giving him? I do not buy that bullshit about Raymond having figured out that Rex must accept. Raymond may think so, but Raymond is nuts. Rex is supposed to be a mentally sound person. It makes no sense.

The surrealism also clashes with the ultra-realism of the filming (or maybe simply becomes extra surreal because of it). The texture of the movie is what you get with a cheap video camera, as if this was found footage rather than design.

“The Vanishing” was intended to be the Dutch submission for the Best Foreign Language Academy Award, but it was rejected because there is more French than Dutch in it. Guess it is not a foreign language then...

I am weirded out by this movie, so I am not certain this is really a recommendation, but it is certainly something different.

 

Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Mujeres al Borde de un Ataque de Nervios) (1988)

 

Kvinder på randen af et nervøst sammenbrud

Comedies about people going crazy rarely work for me and that special type of Mediterranean comedy with a lot of shouting and arm-waving tend to just annoy me. “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown” (Mujeres al borde de un ataque de nervios) is both, but to my own surprise it totally works for me.

Pepa (Carmen Maura) is a voice actress of some renown who has been left by her lover, the middle-aged Ivan (Fernando Guillén). She is depressed about it and considers various ways of ending her life, including burning down her apartment. Ivan has broken up on an answering machine and left a message to pack his things in a suitcase. Upset, Pepa tries desperately to contact him, and she spikes a can of gazpacho with sleeping pills to pin him down.

 A friend Candelia (María Barranco) tries desperately to contact Pepa and leaves about a million messages on her answering machine, eventually showing up in person. Candelia has been sleeping with men who then turned out to be Shiite terrorists. Now she is afraid she will be named an accomplice. Pepa though has no surplus to deal with Candelia, until Candelia attempts to jump off the roof-top terrace.

Meanwhile, Ivan’s wife, Lucia (Julieta Serrano), a deranged woman recently released from a mental hospital, is looking for Ivan, convinced he is with Pepa. Her son, Carlos (Antonio Banderas) and his girlfriend, Marissa (Rossy de Palma), coincidentally shows up in the apartment, looking to rent it and Marissa drinks from the spiked gazpacho, falling into deep sleep. Trying to help Candelia, Pepa contacts a lawyer, Paulina (Kiti Mánver), who helped Carlos mother, only to learn, in turn, that Paulina is Ivan’s new girlfriend and they are on the way to Stockholm on the plane targeted by the terrorists.

What a mess.

Writing this synopsis, this all sounds like a soap-opera and I guess it is, except it is all so completely out there absurd, almost like the old sit-com “Soap”. These are all a lot of women going crazy. They are barely keeping it together, worked up as they are by what they perceive as extreme emotional stress. Lucia chasing her philandering husband, Pepa on first losing her lover, then trying to get rid of him, Candelia fearing the police and Paulina, running away with Ivan. Even Marissa, who sleeps through much of the movie is stressing out, not least because she find Carlos asleep with Candelia.

I would normally, as mentioned in the opening, not find this type of comedy funny, but here it is. All these crazy women are navigating in a seemingly normal world that keeps throwing curveballs at them and it is the absurdity of it that generates the comedy. In their own right the characters are actually tragic, it is misfortune that sends them out there on the verge of disaster, but in combination, the craziness becomes hilarious. These women are willing to go pretty far.

The men of the movie are largely uninteresting. Ivan is like the McGuffin, the object this is all about, but an empty cipher. Carlos is busy going the same way and the policemen, taxi driver etc. are merely elements in these women’s crazy situation.

“Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown’” was nominated in the Best Foreign Language category at the Academy awards and made Pedro Aldomodovar internationally known. I am not a big fan of him as a person, but his career has since produced exceptional movies, and this one is one of the best.

I did not expect to like “Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown”, but I found myself loving it and it made me laugh. That is a success for a comedy.

Beaches (1988)

 

My wife wants me to see this: Beaches

It is a new year for me, 1988, and the first movie is in the category of “My wife wants me to see this”. The movie is “Beaches” and it is one of her favourite movies. I never saw this movie, so now I am fixing that.

In the frame story, a singer, CC Bloom (Bette Midler), receives a note while rehearsing for a concert. She abruptly leaves the stage and desperately tries to get to San Francisco as fast as possible. Most of the movie consists of her flashbacks while driving north from Los Angeles.

11-year-old Cecilia (CC) meets Hillary Whitney (Barbara Hershey) on a beach in Atlantic City when Hillary is lost and CC is hiding under a boardwalk, smoking. They become instant friends. CC brings Hillary along to an audition and Hillary invites CC into her hotel for an ice cream soda. Hillary returns to San Francisco and over the years they write each other regularly.

Fast forward to them as young women. CC slums it out in Bronx and earns her living on small singing job. Hillary went to college, but is running away from her life in a gilded cage. Showing up in New York, she moves in with CC and for a time they live together. CC gets a break on a small theatre but the director, John Pierce (John Heard), seems more interested in Hillary, which causes some friction. Hillary returns to San Francisco when her father turns ill and stays there afterwards, getting married. Meanwhile, CC marries John and gets her big break on Broadway.

When the girls again reunite, there is a big fall out. Each accusing the other of compromising and they stay out of touch for a while. This changes when Hillary becomes pregnant and catches her prick of a husband cheating and CC is getting divorced and slumming it on terrible jobs.

11 years later Hillary gets a heart condition that dooms her. CC and Hillary’s now 11-year-old daughter Victoria (Grace Johnston) takes care of her in their beach house. The message CC received in the beginning is that Hillary has collapsed.

“Beaches” is a movie about friendship among women. The ups and downs, the ability to be friends despite differences and how important it is to be there for each other. It is natural that this would have a very strong appeal on women and maybe less so for men. As such “Beaches” therefore have a reputation as a “Women’s movie”, which probably explains why it always went under the radar for me, to the extent that I did not even knew it existed until my wife mentioned it.

There are some parallels to the slightly later “Thelma and Louise”, but the drama in “Beaches” is of a more personal sort. CC and Hillary are from opposite ends, literally. Geographically apart, socially apart but also in temper very different women. CC is a loud woman who wears her feelings on her sleave and is constantly looking for attention and confirmation. Hillary is a quiet type who suppresses herself to do what needs to be done and get there through persistence. That such people even has anything to say to each other is a wonder, but that is a point of the movie, that they are complimentary to each other and therefore need the other person in their lives. It is those differences that creates the drama and it is their friendship that enables them to deal with that drama.

The men in the movie are mere tools to this story. Not really import but there to explain elements of their lives. John Heard’s theatre director is the most developed of those, but his function is mostly to explain the character of CC and cause friction between the girls. Most sad is the fate for Dr. Milstein (Spalding Gray), who is there as a brief love interest of CC until she is called back to the stage.

There is no questioning the casting of Bette Midler and Barbara Hershey as the friends in this story. Both are very convincing and Midler, whom I always like, handles the performance parts great. Her character grates on me, but that is likely more me being averse to this sort of extremely extrovert characters. Midler handles that character perfectly.

I am obviously not the target audience of “Beaches” and some of the elements fly by me with little impact, but I do respect and acknowledge what it is trying to do and believe it is doing a good job of that. While I may think it gets a little deep into melodrama and the telenovela genre, my wife tells me it holds up really well and is still a favourite of hers.

Wall Street (1987)

 

Wall Street

It is entirely fitting to review “Wall Street” and “Fatal Attraction” back-to-back. Both are iconic 80’ies movies, both feature Michael Douglas in starring roles and both are concerned with madness. In “Wall Street”, the madness is that of the financial markets.

Bud Fox (Charlie Sheen) is working in a stock market company doing cold calls to potential buyers. This is obviously a very junior role and with his fancy education and high ambitions, he is very hungry for more. He dreams of landing one of the big clients and few are bigger than Gordon Gekko (Michael Douglas). Fox is very insistent on getting that crucial interview with Gekko, but when he finally gets it, Gekko is unimpressed. Only when supplying inside information on the Bluestar company, where Fox father, Carl Fox (Martin Sheen), works, does Gekko get interested.

Bud Fox lands Gordon Gekko, but on the terms that Fox finds “secret” information, things nobody else knows, to give Gekko an edge. This is highly illegal, but Gekko is very persuasive and Fox is hungry for the wealth and success. Gekko even “grants” him a nice girlfriend, Darien Taylor (Daryl Hannah).

This lasts up to the point where Fox convinces Gekko to invest massively in Bluestar to turn the company around, only to find out that Gekko secretly plans to liquidate the company and cash in on the assets. Fox is not fond of that idea and sets out on a rescue mission.

One thing you need to know about Oliver Stone is that he always makes political movies. He is always going after something and in this case, it is the moral bankruptcy of the financial markets, symbolized by the New York Stock Exchange (Wall Street). Where his political points are sometimes a bit (or a lot) iffy, I would say he got one of his better cases with this portrayal of the players on the financial markets. I am a complete outsider, but whenever I meet these “golden boys”, I get that Gordon Gekko feel, that convinces me that this is not that far fetched. I think Stone was onto something here and that in terms of zeitgeist in the mid-eighties, this was right on target.

The Gordon Gekko character has become a by-word for an amoral financial shark. He is the image we get when we hear or think of crooks in high finance. In the movie he delivers several speeches outlining his extreme capitalist philosophy, which is a Darwinian survival of fittest where fittest mean cunning, daring and most unscrupulous. His speech at the Teldar general assembly is essentially the political program of the extreme liberal right and a defence of raw capitalism. It is delivered to create excitement, and this is how it is received, but when you look at it from a distance, it is truly scary. Douglas won an Academy Award for this portrayal and that was fully deserved.

As in “Fatal Attraction” we have a flawed hero. In “Wall Street”, the temptation is money rather than sex, but the effect is the same. Bud Fox willingly compromises his principles and it is only when his family is threatened that he gets his moral compass set. As Dan in “Fatal Attraction”, it is too late, Bud Fox must face the consequences, but he gets a chance to fight for the right thing. It is a deep hole to climb out from.

Daryl Hannah is a strange cast. She gets top billing, likely because of her name, but she is almost invisible in the movie. She is merely one of the perks Fox gets for working for Gekko. There is no chemistry or enthusiasm, and I get the sense that they could have picked any second-rate actress for this role and not an A-lister.

On the other hand, I was very excited to see John C. McGinley as Fox colleague at the stockbroking company. Ever since “Office Space” I have loved every role he has played. He is awesome and no less here.

I was also very happy to hear Talking Heads “This Must Be the Place” featured twice in the movie.

“Wall Street” is an iconic eighties movie, but it is more that just a symbol or a political manifest. It is actually a really good movie. Highly recommended. This is also my last 1987 movie. On to 1988.

  

Fatal Attraction (1987)

 

Farligt begær

This is a very hard movie for me to watch. Relationship dramas bother me. Triangle dramas in particular and if it involves philandering it gets really bad. Add to this some sweet children and I am shutting down. “Fatal Attraction” hits all the wrong buttons for me and only in the end with its phyco-bitch on the rampage sequence, I am getting partially into the game again. I cannot say exactly why it is so, maybe something for a shrink to look into, but it means that I am prone to disregard all the obvious qualities of the movie and simply hate watching it. I watched it once before and this second time just confirmed everything.

Obviously, I cannot give “Fatal Attraction” a fair review.

Dan (Michael Douglas) and Beth (Anne Archer) Gallagher live in an apartment on Manhattan with their 6-year-old daughter Ellen (Ellen Hamilton Latzen) and a dog. To all appearances a happy family. Dan is an attorney and, in that function, meets Alex Forrest (Glenn Close). During a weekend where the rest of the family is away, Dan has an affair with Alex. It is supposed to be in full understanding that Dan is married, but when Dan tries to leave it, Alex clings on. This will grow progressively more extreme as the movie goes on but starts on a high with her slashing her wrists to make him stay. She shows up at the office, calls him constantly, first at the office then at home. When he changes number, she shows up pretending to want to by their apartment and she claims she is pregnant with his child.

Dan quickly realizes that that he prefers to stay with his family, but Alex wants him and nothing he can do or say to her makes her change her mind. When the family moves upstate to a new home in the countryside, Alex follows them and her attacks on the Gallaghers include kidnapping and a boiled bunny.

Eventually Dan must tell Beth what is going on and that does not go down easily. The family is under assault both from the outside and the inside.

It is possible to convince yourself that this is a movie about a family being terrorized by a crazy psycho-bitch. Fairly straight forward, the woman has been offended and now the family must pay and as she is out of her mind, her attacks are off the scale.

I think this is mostly the extra drama. The real drama is Dan cheating on his wife and this coming back to bite his ass in a big way. A cautionary tale about philandering. In this light, Dan is not the good guy even if he is the central figure. He is the homewrecker who thinks so little of his family that he risks it for a weekend of fun. Alex is mad, but she is also the avenging angel (or demon) of justice to make him pay for his arrogance. Beth and in extension Ellen are the real victims here. They have done nothing to deserve what is happening to them and when she kicks out Dan, I understand her all too well. Asshole.

And then, of course this could be a story about forgiveness. Is a crime is so big it cannot be forgiven, or if forgiveness is a necessity if it is needed for basic survival. Beth will never see Dan in the same light again, but maybe this is part of growing up, leaving innocence behind. Dan is philandering, but she killed somebody.

The tension of the triangle was overwhelming for me. I could watch around 20 minutes before taking breaks, and I feel pathetic for it, but that is what it is. This may be seen as a special achievement of the movie: if there was nothing at stake, why make the movie? But that is a tension for other people to enjoy. For me it was torture.

No doubt this is a movie with many qualities; it was nominated for 6 Oscars including three of the big ones. It is also one of those movies many people will mention as a landmark even today, but please please do not make me watch it again.

The Dead (1987)

 

The Dead

John Huston’s last movie, “The Dead” was directed by him practically on his deathbed and that is important to know when you watch the movie. Very far into the movie, I did not understand the point of it, until I realized that this was Huston’s elaborate farewell.

It is early days in the 20th century, January 1904, in Dublin, Ireland. People are arriving for a party hosted by three spinsters, Kate (Helena Carroll, Julia (Cathleen Delany) and their niece Mary Jane (Ingrid Craige) Morkan. Most of the men appear to be single and at least middle-aged and the female guests mostly music students of the spinsters. Notable exceptions are Molly Ivors (Maria McDermottroe), an activist who leaves the party early, and married couple Gretta (Anjelica Huston) and Gabriel (Donal McCann) Conroy.

The party starts with some dancing to music from the music students and we are introduced to Freddy (Donal Donnelly), who has a reputation for drunkenness and indeed shows up late and drunk, but is tolerated because of his mother. The dancing is replaced by a lengthy dinner through which we are privy to several conversations and finally the guests leave and we follow the Conroys home to their hotel.

Watching this, the point of all this eluded me. It looks like any other upper middle-class dinner party of that era with the more or less empty talk, a few recitations, some music and some singing. Freddy’s interruptions that are too loud, too insisting and with the lack of the sense of situation expected of everybody, is the closest we come to drama. This is blamed on his drunkenness, but I sense autistic traits in his character that makes my heart bleed for him, yet Freddy does not seem to be the point either.

It was only when the Conroy’s were back in their hotel room that the movie came together (and explained the title). This is effectively an eulogy by Huston onto things past and gone, life and a world that is over. It is based on a James Joyce short story, but it could have been written by Huston himself.

Most of the guests live in the past and celebrate the past. They live on what or who they were and act as coming out of an earlier age, not entirely understanding the present world they live in. The poems recited and the songs performed hark back to a world lost and gone. When Gretta hears a particular song upon leaving the party she succumbs to memories of a young lover from her past who sung that song to her and died, maybe because of her. When Gabriel stares out the window on the snowy, dark landscape he appears to be saying his farewell to a world that was and is now dying.

It is in that light, I think, “The Dead” should be watched and while that is a downer, it also feels like a fitting end for Huston himself who died an old man months before the release of “The Dead”. Without this purpose, “The Dead” feels pointless and boring, like those parties you cannot wait to leave, but must stay and endure for the sake of politeness. Luckily it is a fairly short movie, but that did nothing to suppress that feeling. For me personally, it did not help that the copy I watch did not have subtitles which was a problem with the heavy Irish accents of many of the characters. I found myself often consulting Wikipedia to learn if somebody said something important, which they invariably did not.

I would like to say it is a beautiful movie, but I think that is a stretch. It has a beautiful and poignant point, but is mostly a movie to endure rather than enjoy. Calling it boring is harsh, but let is just say I was happy it was short.

  

800 Movie Anniversary

 

800 Movie Anniversary

I have now reached the 800 movie mark on the List. Of course, with all the extra movies I am reviewing I am actually long past that point, but counting official entries, this is where I am now. I passed 700 on October 12th, 2023, so it has taken me two and a half years to climb this interval. Not very impressive, really.

On the other hand, I am really enjoying being immersed in the eighties. To me, this is a golden age in so many ways, not least because this was my formative childhood. I therefore decided that the awards I will make this time is for movies that encapsulates the eighties one way or another. This was a hard pick, and I had to keep telling myself that this is more about zeitgeist than quality. My top-10 list of movies would look quite different. Also I stopped at 87. This is after all as far as I got on the List.

 

10. The Terminator

What was the eighties without the buff duel between Arnie and Sly? The Terminator perhaps best represents this.

11. E.T. The Extra-Terrestrial

E.T. may be the quintessential family film of the eighties. The optimistic note of the movie is so typical eighties that you probably could not have made it at any other time. Project Hail Mary owes a lot to E.T.

8. A Nightmare on Elm Street

While this may not be the best horror-gore movie of the eighties, it perhaps best typifies the genre and Friday, the 13th is not on the List.

7. Dirty Dancing

Dirty Dancing is not on the List, and it does not even take place in the eighties, but it is sooooo eighties! The music, the mood, the message, the structure. This is the very definition of a romantic song and dance movie of the eighties.

6. Ghostbusters

The eighties were super strong on comedies, and few did it better than Ghostbusters. The special thing about Ghostbusters is how rooted it is in the eighties. Not only does it run the standard eighties formula, it is also full of the pop-culture of the eighties.

5. Raiders of the Lost Ark

Here I was a bit in doubt. The Indiana Jones franchise takes place in the past, but this is very much a movie of its time. You could say it is the eighties displaced to the thirties and maybe a case of the movie being so big that it made the eighties. Certainly, the decade is full of more or less successful copies.

4. Beverly Hills Cop

If Ghostbusters is not the most quintessential eighties comedy, then it must be Beverly Hills Cup. Murphy’s Axel Foley takes the ride from the seventies in Detroit and land in ultra hip eighties LA. The decade is almost the main character.

3. Top Gun

Top Gun is a good example that being very eighties is not necessarily a good thing. This is so eighties, it is a hoot. It is almost a mockery of an eighties movie if I was not convinced they actually meant it seriously.

2. Back to the Future

Again, a movie that mostly takes place in another time, but by juxtapositioning the eighties against the fifties it manages to very effectively highlight the eighties. This is literally displacing eighties characters into the past.

1.     1. The Breakfast Club

If you were young in the eighties, there is a very good chance this was the movie that formed you. No other movie I can think of encapsulates being young in the eighties as The Breakfast Club does.

 

I had a thought to place Blade Runner on the top-10. In high school, this was the movie highlighted as representing the post-modern style in cinema, something typical of the eighties, but thinking about it, Blade Runner was so far ahead of its time that it should belong to a complexly different decade. At least the nineties or even later.

 

Red Sorghum (Hong Gao Liang) (1987)

 

Red Sorghum

“Red Sorghum” is a Chinese film. Not a Hong Kong production, but a movie from mainland China. This is from a period where the technical capabilities became absolutely comparable with what was made elsewhere, but when there is still a political imperative that is not to be avoided. Combining these two elements we get a movie that is cryptic, interesting and ham-fisted at the same time.

The narrator of the story, whose voice appear from time to time in the movie, tells us that this is a story about his grandparents. Evidently it takes place in the period of the 1920’es to the 1940’es, which makes it prior to communist takeover and at least in the latter part during the Japanese occupation. His grandmother, Jiu (Gong Li) is sent off to marry a rich winery owner who also happens to suffer from leprosy. Needless to say, Jiu is not happy about this. One of the employees at the winery, whom the narrator names his grandfather, but whose name in the movie I forgot (Jiang Wen), takes an interest in Jiu. He sleeps with her in something that to me looks a bit like rape and it is implied that he may be the one killing the winery owner. In any case a sort of anti-hero.

Jiu takes over the winery and starts running it a bit like a cooperative, but with her as executive lead. Sort of the Chinese communist ideal. There is some story about Grandfather getting drunk, telling everybody he has a claim on Jiu, then when Jiu gets kidnapped by bandits he rage on them and after that, being angry he pees in the wine, which, curiously turns it really good (I guess I want to avoid Chinese sorghum wine...).

When some years later the Japanese arrive, they abuse the local population and demonstrate cruelty on a level where the winery commune forms a resistance cell to fight off the Japanese. The narrator’s father, a little boy loses his mother in the fight and is left with his grandfather.

The red sorghum of the title refers to the fields of red sorghum surrounding the winery. It is tall and mysterious, hiding things and is the source of the sorghum wine they are producing.

The general story is one that fits in very well with the communist China narrative. The local countryside population is suffering under greedy landowners. That the winery owner is suffering from leprosy represents the rot of the wealthy class. His death is the revolution and the winery, a mini-China forms a cooperative under gentle and loving, but firm leadership. The winery employees must be educated. The Japanese invasion was both a real, formative event for China, but also represents the external threat that China / the winery needs to defend against and to make sacrifices for in the process. The grandfather is the re-educated Chinese helping the young generation into a future.

This is rather ham-fisted and would in itself, perhaps, be uninteresting to a western viewer. What makes “Red Sorghum” interesting after all is how it presents itself. There is a production quality underlying this movie that makes it astonishing to look at. The big sorghum fields, the sun-parched winery, the endless skies and the construction of the setting of the movie. There are also impressive and convincing performances all around. Especially by Gong Li, who would develop into one of the biggest Chinese actresses, at least seen from a western perspective, but also all-round by the staff on the winery. I sometimes feel watching Hong Kong movies a disconnect from reality as if actors are acting that they are acting, if that makes sense. This is absent in “Red Sorghum” and the naturalistic acting here as far more convincing. Director Zhang Yimou would become one of the premier directors of China and this is his promising beginning.

Yet, all this is still very Chinese and while I understand the overall picture, I feel that so much is lost in the cultural translation. There are odd elements, things that are said or done and contexts that makes little sense to me. I lived in China for half a year back in 2008, so I recognize these things as Chinese idiosyncrasies, but they still baffle me. I therefore cannot say that I fully understand the movie and indeed I felt lost at times, but that is, I suppose, to be expected.

Despite that, this is a movie worth spending time on, if for nothing else than to enjoy the spectacle and the window into a transitional period of China, whether is be the 1920-40’ies or the 1980’es.

 

Moonstruck (1987)

 

Lunefulde måne

Laughing at exaggerated cultural stereotypes is not exactly acceptable in this day and age, but it was in, apparently, in the eighties and “Moonstruck” goes all in. As in everything is permissible as long as we understand this is a comedy.

We are in the Italian community of New York and Loretta Castorini (Cher) is a 37-year-old widower who lives at home with her parents, Cosmo (Vincent Gardenia) and Rose Castorini (Olympia Dukakis), her grandfather (Feodor Chaliapin) and perhaps a few more family members, this is not entirely clear to me. Loretta is convinced that it was bad luck that caused her first husband to die after only two years, so when her boyfriend Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello) propose to her, she insists that everything must be done according to the traditions. Johnny just needs to go back to Sicily to tell his dying mother about the marriage.

Meanwhile, Loretta promises to seek out Johnny’s brother Ronni (Nicholas Cage) to settle a five-year-old feud so he can attend the wedding. Ronni is VERY upset. He blames Johnny for ruining his life by distracting him, so he lost his hand in a meat slicer. It is five years ago, but to Ronni it is like yesterday. Loretta’s attempt at placating Ronni develops into... an affair. All of a sudden, Loretta is invited to a date at the Opera and going through a makeover to look a little more like... Cher. At the Opera, Loretta meets her father with a woman who is definitely not her mother, while at home Rose meet a university teacher who we have already seen twice being ditched by a student date.

Truly a messy situation and in any other connection, this sounds like the recipe for a family meltdown. Alas, this is an Italian family, so we are to understand that this sort of thing happens all the time, it takes a bit (lot) of shouting and then everybody are happy again. It is natural to give into your passions as long as you remember family is important and everybody actually love each other even when they are throwing things at each other.

I am Scandinavian and this mentality is... rather far away from me, but I think that is the point here. These Italian Americans are described with emphasis on all these cultural stereotypes, so far over the top that most people, maybe even Italians, would find them crazy and amusing. This is cultural stereotypes as a joke. Italians are a bit crooky, full of passion, screaming their lungs out, intense lovers and family people above all and here it is used for comedy.

The crazy thing is that it is totally working. This is hilariously funny. Somewhere between the absurdity and the recognizable, we can both follow the characters and are completely left by the wayside by their crazy lives. The movie is obviously made with a sympathetic eye to Italian culture, and it is laughing with, more than laughing at, the Italians, which leaves a feel-good taste where this could have been really bad. I had a great time watching this and that was totally unexpected.

This feels like an Italian version of “My Big, Fat, Greek Wedding” in that the comedy is almost entirely based on extreme cultural stereotypes, but “Moonstruck” is a cleaner movie in that it almost entirely dispenses with plot and focuses of this particular situation across just two or three days. It gives the movie more time to focus on the characters and that is to the benefit of the movie.

Cher is almost the only actor without an Italian background, but she pulls it off surprisingly well. I believe her to be Italian. Her only problem is that her Cinderella transformation is not so convincing when she already looks very pretty before it happens. Cage reminded me of his character in “Raising Arizona”. He is rather good when he is a maniac. It is when he is supposed to be sincere, he gets unconvincing.

I had no idea what I went into here and that is that best way to approach a movie, no expectations at all. Here I was highly rewarded and had a good time watching it.