Prizzi's Honor (1985)

 

Familiens ære

Gangster comedies is an odd sub-genre. Gangsters are a tough lot, brutal and trigger-happy while comedies are intended to be fun. Considered seriously, these two concepts match very poorly, yet there is an abundance of gangster comedies around. They require an uneasy balance, but when that balance is struck right, they can be excellent. “Prizzi’z Honor” aim for a darker humour, to an extent where I am not entirely certain I would call it a comedy anymore.

We meet Charley Partanna (Jack Nicholson) at a wedding in New York. This is a mafia wedding and Charley is a hitman for the Prizzi family. He is associated with the family through his father. At this wedding Charley spots a woman that immediately catches his interest. Through some research he manages to find her and it turns our that he and Irene (Kathleen Turner) has a lot in common and they immediately become a couple with the little issue that she lives in California. And is Polish, not Italian. And is a hitman too.

There is a complicated plot around a casino in Las Vegas belonging to the Prizzis getting swindled for a large sum of money. Charley is sent out to kill the perpetrator and retrieve the money, only to find out that the target is married to Irene. She is very apologetic, returns half the money and claims she was about to get a divorce anyway. All fine, Charley and Irene get married.

This suits Maerose Prizzi (Anjelica Huston very poorly. She used to have a relationship with Charley and still thinks she has a claim on him. She tells her father, Dominic Prizzi (Lee Richardson) that Charley took advantage of her before the wedding. This pisses off Dominic so he hires a hitman to take out Charley. The hitman is Irene.

Irene and Charley now work as a team, and they successfully kidnap a rich banker for the Prizzis in another complicated plot. Unfortunately, Irene shoots a police captain’s wife in the process and eventually the Prizzis, led by the old Don Corrado (William Hickey) decides Irene is a liability.

I got very confused in those convoluted schemes of the Prizzi family and while that likely made me miss key details, the bottom line was clear enough. Charley either belongs to the family or to Irene and therein lies both the comedy and the tragedy of the story. Is Charley a naive stooge being played both by the family and Irene? Or are Charley and Irene simply caught in a game they cannot control? Irene is certainly smart enough to understand that her situation is precarious, but does that makes her mercenary or careful?

From the helicopter perspective the setup is comedic. The Prizzis are so mafia cliché it almost hurts, the confusing schemes with hitmen turned on hitmen and people turning up at the wrong places. Yet, it is never overtly comedic, more played out as a natural consequence of circumstances.  These circumstances included that Charley and Irene met and fell in love.

Although Charley and Irene are both hitmen, and therefore morally on a big minus, it is difficult not to sympathize with them. Their care for each other seems quite genuine. That makes it the more painful to watch things unravel for them and the comedy sours. This turn is more tragic than comedic and this I guess is what makes it a dark comedy.

I must admit I never got entirely into the movie, but that is likely because mafia movies are not really my thing. Nicholson and Turner are both great in this movie. When are they not? Their presence in any movie is a big asset to the movie. William Hickey as the old Don Corrado Prizzi is also stellar, so I only blame the premise of “Prizzi’s Honor”. It was highly acclaimed though, with eight Academy nominations and one win (Anjelica Huston as Supporting Actress) and four Golden Globe wins.

 

The Quiet Earth (1985)

 

The Quiet Earth

This is a curious little movie. “Little” I say because it is obviously made on a shoestring budget with clunky and cheap, though effective, special effects, but it also shows that you can get far, very far, on a good idea.

A man, Zac Hobson (Bruno Lawrence), wake up one morning like any other. He is alone. As he is getting to work, he realizes how alone he actually is. There is nobody at the gas station, nobody on the roads, just empty cars left at random. Zac is getting freaked out about it, but wherever he looks it seems that people have just been there and now they are gone.

Zac heads to a research station where he evidently works. We, very gradually, learn that he is a scientist involved with a project called “Flashlight”, to setup some sort of global energy grid to power everything and that it is this project that has evidently gone wrong.

Over the next few weeks, as Zac realizes how truly alone he is, he vacillates between enjoying himself being allowed to do anything he wants, and utter desperate depression and madness. Humans are social creatures and only when truly alone we realize that.

Eventually Zac encounters Joanne (Alison Routledge). Exhilarated that they are not alone, they set out to look for others and Zac starts to seriously look into the cause and effect of the “Effect” as they call the event that made everybody else disappear. Eventually, they also encounter Api (Pete Smith), a Māori who come across as a bit paranoid. They come to the conclusion that they all had just died when the Effect happened and this is why they are left. Zac finds out that the Effect will occur again at a certain time so they must blow up the research facility.

Watching “The Quiet Earth” as a science fiction story is both exciting and frustrating. Exciting because the sense of being left alone in an abandoned world is very powerful. Through dubbing, all external sounds have been removed, and everything looks as if it has just been deserted. A boiler still cooking, water tap still running and so one. People just... vanished. What do you do then? But it is also frustrating because as a science fiction plot, so much is left unexplained and cryptic in a very unsatisfying manner. Especially towards the end, instead of getting some sort of closure, we, the audience, are left with even more questions. Ultimately, I am left with the feeling that the science fiction plot is unimportant and is only there as a setting for the characters.

Accepting that, “The Quiet Earth” works very well. When Zac is alone, we explore how it feels to be completely alone. When he meets Joanne, we are presented with the question, what you would do if this other person was truly the only other man/woman in the world? What are the dynamics in that? And finally, having a third person come in, what does that do to the interpersonal dynamics? It is the old story of two men and one woman is one man too many. This is the true strength and real story of “The Quiet Earth” where the science fiction plot merely creates the stage for it to play out.

As mentioned in the header, working on a shoestring budget forces people to be inventive and creative and this is such a good example. All the good stuff in “The Quiet Earth” was made with more idea than money. A truck barring the road, a baby stroller left alone, or a boiler cooking dry are all simple, cheap but very effective effects. Keeping the cast down to three people is another way. The computer effects look awful, but then again, this is 1985, anything on a computer looked terrible.

Ultimately, this is an unsatisfying science fiction movie, but a very effective and successful study of human nature and that is of course the end purpose of science fiction.

 

Kiss of the Spider Woman (1985)

 

Edderkoppekvindens kys

Something special often happens when movies (and novels for that matter) narrow down. Reduce the number of characters and/or the set to a single or very few locations and it forces the movie to focus on the dialogue and the acting. Some of the most memorable movies have done exactly that to great effect. “Kiss of the Spiderwoman” is largely about two men sharing a prison cell, so we get a good opportunity here for something special.

The two men are Luis Molina (William Hurt) and Valentin Arregui (Raul Julia). They are in a Brazilian prison during a military dictatorship, Valetin because he is an opposition revolutionary (or just opposition, everybody in opposition is a revolutionary to a military dictatorship) and Luis because of homosexual advances on a minor (or just homosexual advances as that is often criminal enough to a right-wing authority).

The two are an unlikely match, but over the bulk of the movie they become friends, earning each other’s mutual respect. Luis keeps telling of an old movie, he loves, in great detail, a movie we then see while he talks and for nothing better to do Valentin listens. This movie takes place in Paris during the war, about a cabaret singer falling in love with a Gestapo officer.

For about 80% of the movie, this is all that happens. This is a slow burner and to me, it seemed to be repeating itself a number of times. Valentin gets tortured a bit, Luis tells some from his movie, some from his private life, a bit of arguing and back to the torture. I may have zoned out a few times because this part gets a bit blurry for me.

Then, with a jolt, we learn that Luis Molino was placed in the cell by the prison warden to gain information from Valentin, and that of course changes our perspective. Is he going to rat on his prison mate or have they become friends for real?

Let us is start with the positive. As mentioned in the opening, this format allows for great acting, and this is what we get. William Hurt as the homosexual Luis Molina, is exceptional. The movie appears to have some status in the gay community, and this is largely down to Hurt and his multi-dimensional portrayal of the openly gay Molina. It earned him an Academy award. Raul Julia is less spectacular, but his job is also mainly to play up against Hurt and that he does sufficiently well.

We also get an interesting ending, with some important decisions on Luis Molina’s part. It feels a bit like a swan song, but it is delicate enough to work.

What does not work, at least not for me, is the humming through the first hour and a half. The movie seems to go nowhere, and I had serious problems paying attention. Not for lack of acting, but for lack of story. This is supposed to be the core of the movie, but I have problems even recalling what happened in this part. There may be a progress in their relationship, we may be learning a lot about Molina, but the pacing is glacial. If I had not been committed to watch the movie, I would likely have simply stopped watching after an hour. Instead, I stopped every time I felt I was dozing off, to continue when my head was clearer.

“Kiss of a Spider Woman” was made for the theatre and that shows. It has that “kammerspiel” property, but in this case it also becomes a constraint for the movie rather than an asset. The scenes of Molina’s stories break the prison and although they serve as an analogy for what is happening in the cell, they also feel as that much filler. An escape from the constraint of the format.

This is not a movie I feel inclined to watch again, but for a single watching it is worth experiencing William Hurt go all in as the effeminate Luis Molina. I can also imagine this is an important movie in the gay community. There are not that many movies that include homosexuality as more than a stereotype.

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters (1985)

 

Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters

There are hard to find movies and then there are really hard to find movies. I had almost given up finding “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters”, which would make it the first, but finally, on a dodgy streaming service, hiding under being a trailer (at 2 hours...) I found it. I honestly do not mind paying for the movies I watch, and it pisses me off that I have to go to such extremes to watch something. At least the site did not insist on showing me advertisement for porn.

There is a rule of thumb on the List that that movies that are hard to find have disappeared for a reason, read: not worth watching. Luckily, we are not there. “Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” is an interesting movie and certainly a different movie, but it is not an easy movie.

“Mishima: A Life in Four Chapters” is a biopic, but quite unlike any biopic I have ever watched. Yukio Mishima was an author and playwright who was active from the forties until 1970 where his career ended most spectacularly. The biopic focuses on the essential theme in both Mishima’s writing and his life. A theme that hails the values and aesthetics of the samurai caste. The purity, the sacrifice, the stoicism and the idea of the glorious death.

While the movie takes us from his childhood to the fatal day in 1970, it also takes us on a tour through this world of Mishima, illustrated by enactments of some of his plays. While I do not understand all these plays are trying to tell, it is clear that they say a lot about Mishima, the way he thought and the message he tried to raise in his writings.

This all culminates in the fourth chapter, which is not a play, but Mishima (Ken Ogata) trying to convert his words into action, fiction into reality. In this enactment, he and some of his students take over an army base, proclaim their traditionalistic and militaristic program in an attempt to start a coup and then kill themselves, Mishima famously committing seppuku.

This format is better felt than understood and better to watch than explain. It is immersive, but also oblique because it does not explain anything. Even the narration (by Roy Scheider) is poetic rather than explanatory, enforcing the sense of experiencing Mishima rather than understanding him.

While this all takes place in Japan with a Japanese cast, it is more of an American production, with Francis Ford Coppola and George Lucas as executive producers and direction by Paul Schrader of “Taxi Driver” fame. I understand that the official Japan has an issue with Mishima and hence this film and sees him as an embarrassment and maybe he is, but as he is presented in the movie he also represents an idea and aesthetic that is very much Japanese. I guess there is ambiguity in that.

As a biopic I found it very interesting because it never tries to reduce the person portrayed to something we, mere mortals, can comprehend, but tries, for better or worse to show us what made him special. A very difficult art that most biopics miss. For that alone this is worth watching, even if you get lost in everything else.

Brazil (1985)

 

Brazil

It is possible to see a trend in the production of Terry Gilliam from his work with Monty Python to his movies in the eighties. What starts out as silly, anarchistic sketches, takes on an increasingly acerbic character in the Monty Python movies until by the time of Brazil there is a bitterness that is oddly at conflict with the comedy and makes for an uneasy combo. As a long time Python fan, it hurts saying it, but I was not greatly pleased with Gilliam’s “Brazil”.

“Brazil” takes place in a strange nightmarish world and more than anything, it is this world which is the main character of the movie. It is the unholy love child of a threesome of runaway bureaucracy, totalitarianism and consumerism. A system where everybody is a slave to forms, procedures and files, where the individual influence and power is zero and where the only thing anybody cares about is buying and credit ratings. This is a highly technical world where nothing, least of all the technology, works. It was likely all the things Gilliam hated, ramped up to eleven.

This world is both wildly scary and comically stupid. This is the Crimson Permanent Assurance setting sail on the high seas of finance as a pirate ship absurdity, but without the gleam in the eye. The elite are wearing shoes for hats and killing themselves with unnecessary plastic surgery, but it is not funny. Robert De Niro has a small role as the pirate heating engineer, Tuttle, who fears for his life when fixes the mess of the Central Services clowns. The Innocent Mr. Buttle is arrested instead of Tuttle because a bug messed with the printer and now he is tortured to death while the system is concerned that Mrs. Buttle was overcharged for the arrest. On paper hilarious but actually frightening in its inhuman brutality.

Through all this we follow Sam Lowry (Jonathan Pryce), a lowly office worker with a well-connected mother who wants him to advance, mostly to make her look good. Lowry is quite good at his work, but with no ambition of his own. That change when he recognizes a woman from his dreams, the truck driver Jill Layton (Kim Greist). In his dream, he is a winged, angel-like hero, rescuing a damsel in distress from her demonic captors. A dream which is throughout recognized by various renditions of the classic theme of “Brazil”.

The dream and Sam’s reality starts to merge when he learns that Jill is now hunted by the authorities, simply for embarrassing them. It becomes Sam’s real-life mission to save Jill as he saves the girl in his dream and soon they are on the run from the stormtroopers of the bureaucracy.

Everything in “Brazil” extends into the surreal, even Sam’s chase. There is a clear indication that eventually he turns mad and in this dream state his life starts making more sense than the reality he left.

I want to like all the dark humor, all the absurd notions and curious references, such as the Stairs of Odessa, but the bitterness is so overwhelming that the absurdity becomes scary rather than fun. The cleaner who keeps on cleaning in the middle of a shootout, the torturer playing with his little girl, the bureaucrat asking the wife of the arrested man for signatures in triplicates for the receipt of the arrest. It is all so brutal that it is just not that fun anymore.

Apparently, the audience at the time was also rather confused about the movie and it did not do that well. I can see that. While it is long, it has nothing to do with that. Even the confusing plot cannot entirely be blamed. I think it rests with the level of bitterness projected here. This is the helpless feeling of being a dehumanized victim of an uncaring bureaucracy. Not fun, just absurd and maddening.

I wonder what the system had done to Terry Gilliam.

     

The Time to Live and the Time to Die (Tong Nien Wang Shi) (1985)

 

The Time to Live and the Time to Die

When I lived in China, I learned a word, or maybe an expression, that went “Ha-bah” (probably the female form). I understood it as meaning “okaaayy... whatever” and we used it ourselves whenever we had not clue what was going on, which was something that happened daily. “Ha-bah” is exactly what comes to mind when I think of “The Time to Live and the Time to Die”.

I did not understand much of what was happening and even less of what was the point of the movie, so forgive me if I am vague in my description of it.

We are in Taiwan shortly after the Second World War. The family we are following came from mainland China and sort of expect to go back. Wikipedia names one of the children, who seem to go by the name Ah-ha, as the character we follow, but you could have fooled me. There is a father in poor health who die early on, a mother who dies fairly late and a grandmother who dies in the end. I have no clue how many children there are. It could be anything between two and five and do not ask me about their names or what actor played which of them.

The family have limited funds, the house is shabby and while the children are supposed to study hard, the boy(s) seem to be mere street hoodlums.

Time passes, the parents die, and the children grow older and that is about it.

Of course, this takes place over two hours plus, so it is kind of slow motion, but mostly it is the same happening again and again.

This does not mean this movie is entirely uninteresting, because we do get a view into an ordinary family’s life. Small worries, big worries, some shouting, eating, bathing and whatever it is people are doing. I am not certain I have ever gotten so close to a Chinese family life before, although walking on the back streets in Shanghai you do get glimpses of lives you would not otherwise know. I am not certain this voyeur look is enough to keep you interested for two hours, but as I had no clue what was supposed to be happening, I had plenty of time to look at details, such as the rice mats, the bathroom and the half-outdoors kitchen.

Director Hou Hsiao-hsien’s style is compared to Japanese Ozu with his static camera and passive view on what is happening in front of the camera, and it may be Hou is using some of the same techniques, but I think the major difference is that in Ozu’s static view, interesting things were playing out and I was able to decode them. In Hou’s view, whatever is going on is simply not that interesting.

There is of course the very likely explanation that I simply have not understood the movie and that this all is in fact very deep and groundbreaking. I cannot rule out that I am simply too stupid for this movie or too uninterested in Ah-ha’s life and that is my personal failing. With that in mind I think I will leave it there.

Ha-bah.

Den kroniske uskyld (1985)

Off-List: Den kroniske uskyld 

The third off-List movie of 1985 is a Danish movie, “Den kroniske uskyld”, which IMDB translates to “The Chronic Innocence”. It is based on a book by author Klaus Rifbjerg and was a big hit in Denmark when it came out in 1985.

Janus (Allan Olsen) and Tore (Tjhomas Algren) are in their senior year in high school (or the Danish equivalent). Tore has returned from a period living in Jutland and has resumed his role as central character among his friends. Janus is the classic follower, the squire of the knight and generally allows Tore to lead the way.

One of the first things that happens after his return, is that a new girl is showing up. Helle (Simone Bendix) is very pretty and both boys are knocked off their feet. At the high school party, it is clear that it will be Tore and Helle that will be the couple, and Janus who gets the ungrateful role as friend. Being, as he is, always close to Tore, Janus becomes a very close witness to their relationship. Janus is also our narrator and mixed in with the story of Helle and Tore, we clearly sense his own frustration. Something he takes out on the willing, but not very cultured, Inger (Helle Fastrup).

The real monster here, though, is Helle’s mother, Mrs. Junkersen (Susse Wold, whose character never gets a first name). Already when we get the first glimpse of her, there is something sinister about her. Janus learns that she has previously taken over her daughter’s boyfriends and it is clear that Helle is reluctant to introduce Tore to her mother. To no avail, Mrs. Junkersen introduces herself and quickly takes the lead. It is obvious that she is very wealthy, gets what she wants, and is enjoying being admired. Think of a Mrs. Robinson as a spider queen, playing with and eating her prey.

Tore is blind to all this, but Janus sees it and is scared. Never mind his own jealousy, when he sees what Mrs. Junkersen is after he gets worried and protective of his friends.

The story climaxes at the graduation party in the house of Mrs. Junkersen. Here she goes all out vamp, and Tore does not stand a chance with tragic results.

Despite moments of humor this is a fairly downbeat affair. We know already going in of an impeding doom, we just do not know how bad things get. If you are looking for a silly happy ending movie, this is not the one. Yet, this is also a sort of coming of age story, as most teenage stories are. It is a bitter lesson and a brutal innocence lost. In fact, this is less about growing up than of losing innocence. Janus is experiencing his own anger, frustration, fear, jealousy and worst of all a meanness in himself. But he also loses his naivete concerning his friends and their parents. He ends up wiser on himself and other people, while some of the others succumb.

This all sound gloomy, and I suppose it is, but there are also a number of highlights that make the movie easier to watch. For me, this was a window into familiar places 40 years ago. The music was precisely the music we heard at parties back then. The cloth, the jargon, it is all very familiar. Imagine you could buy a pint size plastic cup of tap beer for 20 kroner, yes, I remember that even though it would be a handful of years before I would buy that myself. When they go around in Copenhagen, I recognize the places and so much look the same. It brings it all very close    

There is also a lot of joviality between the adolescents, the banter is fun and the relationship between Helle and Tore is beautiful, even if it feels unfair that it is pretty boy Tore who gets the pretty girl.

I actually never watched “Den kroniske uskyld” before now and it is sort of a miss. I guess I feared it would be a rough ride, and it is, but it is also one of those movies I am happy to have watched.