Stranger than Paradise (1984)

 

Stranger Than Paradise

“Stranger Than Paradise” is a movie that challenges the concepts of what a movie can and should do. While Hollywood has not entirely (some would say not at all) shed the classic story arch and format, by the mid-eighties, this format was even more entrenched. Sure, David Lynch had pushed the boundaries, and a number of arthouse directors did whatever they wanted, but it is my impression that “Stranger Than Paradise” came as a surprise for many viewers. Despite being completely different, it works and very well indeed.

The story unfolds in three acts. In the first, Eva (Eszter Balint) arrives in New York from Hungary. She is supposed to go live with an elderly woman in Cleveland, known as Aunt Lotte (Cecillia Stark), possibly her mother (?), but as she is in hospital, she must stay for ten days with her cousin Willie (John Lurie) in New York.

Willie is a small time hustler or sees himself as one. He lives in a little one-room apartment and does practically nothing. When he finally does something, it is gambling at the races or cheating in poker with his friend Eddie (Richard Edson), an equally vacant type. He has no idea how to deal with Eva and together they just sit in his little apartment and smoke vast amounts of cigarettes. Eventually Eva leaves for Cleveland.

In the second act Willie and Eddie muster enough initiative to borrow a car to drive to Cleveland to visit Eva. Once there, the activity level drops to zero again and they are just sitting playing cards with Aunt Lotte. Eva has a lousy job vending hot dogs and a maybe-boyfriend, but is also bored.

For the third act, Eddie and Willie get the spontaneous idea of taking Eva to Florida, only to check into a motel there... and get bored. Eddie and Willie go gambling at the races and Eva stumbles on some money and heads to the airport to find a flight home.

In a sense, this is a movie where nothing happens. Or more precisely, about people who has petrified into eventless lives. Willie and Eddie think they are cool and have something going but it is comically clear that they are two losers with zero going for them. Their bland, uneventful lives are well represented by the slightly grainy, black and white cinematography and the cold, dark and hazy winter weather. Even Florida has never looked so bleak. I love the scene where Wille and Eddie are sharing a beer in Willie’s apartment, saying absolutely nothing, because they have nothing to say.

Eva is the outsider who likely has a hope of a new an exciting life in the States, but all three places she goes, it is the same bleak bucket of nothing. Even the music she plays is quickly turned off. Her frustration is felt very clearly, sitting on the bed, left to do nothing. She is the only one who takes a job, listens to music, does something, but it changes nothing.

This all sounds bleak and depressing but it is actually funny in that underplayed absurd way that makes you smile and shake your head, but not laugh out loud. The characters are perfectly relatable but also ridiculous in the way we ourselves are sometimes ridiculous and I am certain that we are amused and touched by something we recognize in ourselves.

I suspect that the overall theme is the disappointment that the fabled American dream does not somehow materialize all by itself and that reality is really, really disappointing. Then, again, maybe it does in a weird turn at the end of the movie. I would not say it is a criticism of this American Dream, but a mockery of what people think it is. It is never actually mentioned but the disparity between self-perception and hopes on one side and the actual effort and skill put into it on the other is what makes this movie interesting.

As mentioned in the opening, all this is told without anything like a traditional Hollywood story arch. There is not really a beginning or end, not a mid-crisis or resolution. It is just a state these people move around in. It is a movie that leaves you with a sentiment, not a story, with characters, not character development. And this it does very well.

I watched “Stranger than Paradise” first time years ago and I usually like Jim Jarmusch’ movies. This is no exception, and it is still amusing and thought provoking. Highly recommended.

 

A Passage to India (1984)

 

A Passage to India

“A Passage to India” is David Lean’s last movie. He has been with us for a long time and has several memorable entries on the List. “A Passage to India” may not be his strongest movie, but it is a worthy representative of his career and a suitable swan song.

The story is an adaption of a novel (by E.M. Forster) and clearly a condensation of what is likely a very detailed and complex book. This is evident in the way Lean tries to juggle several themes and narratives, which or may not tie together. I have identified at least four.

Lean loved big cinema. Vistas, colours, busy scenery and outlandish culture. India provides all that and the chance to showcase this appears to have been a big motivation for David Lean. This is a beautiful movie and the setup rivals that of “Lawrence of Arabia”. Even if I did not care about anything else, just to enjoy the pictures would be reason enough to watch the movie.

Secondly, there is a theme about sexual frustration or at least some pent-up psychological issues. Adela Quested (Judy Davis) is a new arrival in India to meet her fiancé, Ronny Heaslop (Nigel Havers), the magistrate of Chandrapore. While eager to meet the “real” India, she is soon overwhelmed by the impressions. Sexual statues, aggressive moneys, echoes in caves and the underwhelming reception by the groom to be. This climaxes when she imagines herself raped. This is clearly an important element of the movie and, I think, is supposed to be key to the story, yet, I do not think it comes across very clearly. A British girls lost in India falls a bit short as a subtext.

Thirdly there is the criminal story. Dr. Aziz (Victor Banerjee) is an Indian doctor who randomly meets and befriends Miss Quested’s companion, the elderly Mrs. Moore (Peggy Ashcroft). When Miss. Quested asks the school principal, Richard Fielding (James Fox) to meet some Indians, Aziz is suggested. Aziz is very excitable and servile and all too pleased to be of service to the British. He sets up a picnic to the Marabar caves which he can hardly afford and while out there, alone with Miss Quested she suddenly disappear, claiming to have bee raped. The British colonial masters are ready to lynch Dr. Aziz in a kangaroo court with Fielding as his only support among the British, when Adele Quested suddenly realizes that she was not raped at all. This is more a story of judicial murder than a criminal case, really, but it is set up as a court drama.

Finally, the court case becomes a proxy for the much larger (and almost unrelated) struggle between the colonial lords and the colonials. India versus Britain. The old world order versus the new and a criticism of the curious western idea of the white mans burden (the obligation of westerners to “help” the ignorant developing world to do the right thing). The British are exceptionally arrogant and the Indians really takes to this case to demonstrate their disgust with the British Raj. It is reflected in Aziz who turns from friendly to disgusted by the British.

My problem with “A Passage to India” is that these four themes individually are very interesting but tie together here a bit oddly, as if the film media is too small for this combo. And despite this overload, the movie seems strangely thin on story. There is plenty of ambience and build-up, but it fizzles out in the end in something not quite satisfying.

This does not change that it is a movie I did enjoy watching (with emphasis on “watching”) and it does demonstrate the craftmanship of David Lean. It is also very much a product of its time, with the post-colonial sweep of the seventies and eighties, the revisionist view of western behaviour and misbehaviour in the rest of the world. I do not want to apologize for these horrific British overlords, but I do think “Ghandi” struck a better balance there and felt a tad more realistic.

A fair recommendation from me.       

Gremlins (1984)

 

Off-List: Gremlins

When I think of horror comedies, the first movie that always comes to mind is “Gremlins”. It was not the first by a long shot, but it managed to hit the balance exactly right. It is horrific enough to keep us in suspense throughout, and, at least as important, it is hilariously funny in that dark, gruesome way horror comedies are meant to be funny. On top of this, we get excellent production value by any standard. This is a movie that age very well indeed.

Billy Peltzer (Zach Galligans) is a young man who lives at home and works at the local bank in small town Kingston Falls. Billy’s father, Randall (Hoyt Axton), is an inventor of the more ridiculous kind as his technical marvels inevitably backfires. As a recurring feature of the movie, it is a constant source of comedy. While away on a business trip, Randall finds a strange but cute little creature, a mogwai, in a Chinese shop. Thinking this is the perfect Christmas gift, he brings it home to Billy.

The mogwai is super cute, but comes with three important rules: Keep it away from sunlight, do not get it wet and do not feed it after midnight. Such rules are of course meant to be broken...

Soon, the little mogwai has multiplied into a horde of not so cute gremlins. The gremlins look like gargoyles without wings and are like evil fairies. They are like mischievous, cunning cats or children and completely without scruples. The way they get a kick out of terrorizing people is both absolutely horrendous and hilariously funny. The stunt they pull on the (awful) Ms. Deagle (Polly Holliday) is typical: They (somehow) know she hates Christmas carols, so they line up a choir in front of her door, mutilating a Christmas song, while one of them sneaks inside to mess with her elevator. The double effect is freaking her out and sending her rocketing through her upper window.

Billy’s mother, Lynn (Frances Lee McCain) fights off the monster invasion in her home like an imitation of Ripley in “Alien” with spectacular kills, such as microwaving and blending gremlins. Still, the most amazing and crazy display is the party the gremlins are having in the bar where Billy’s girlfriend, Kate Beringer (Phoebe Cates), is forced to wait on them. It is both ridiculous, full of logical holes and immensely funny. The gremlins are going all out on all the vices we, as civilized beings, are supposed to refrain from and they are having immense fun doing it.

Billy and Kate have to fight off the invasion and that is of course fraught with danger and suspense, but throughout the highlights both in terms of horror and comedy belongs to the gremlins. They steal every scene they are in. It does not matter that they defy logic in everything they do because of the way they press that combination of fun and terror, timed exactly right. Think too much about it and the story collapses, this is a movie to enjoy for what it is.

“Gremlins” is a Halloween movie relocated to Christmas and as such works for both holidays. In our home, we watch it almost every Christmas as a season staple and we can quote most of the movie. I have a feeling we are not the only ones, and I would go so far as to consider “Gremlins” a true classic. That of course begs the question why this movie is not on the List? I have no other answer than the editors thought they had filled up their quota of blockbusters and comedies for 1984 already. It is also clear that critics at the time was not exactly won over by “Gremlins”, which is just their loss.

“Gremlins” is one of the best movies in an already amazing year and I cannot recommend it enough.

   

Ghostbusters (1984)

 

Ghostbusters

When I was 11 years old, I went to watch “Ghostbusters” in the local cinema. I do not remember why I went alone, but it was the first time I was in the cinema without any friends or family. When the stone creatures came alive, I got so frightened that I left the cinema, not very proud of my self. You might have thought such an experience would scar me for life and maybe it has. Today it is one of my favourite movies of all time, somewhere in top 10 or so.

Doctors Stanz (Dan Aykroyd), Venkman (Bill Murray) and Spengler (Harold Ramis) conduct highly dubious and not quite productive research in the paranormal at Columbia University, when they get thrown out of their protected world for being just that. Stanz and Spengler are tech nerds while Venkman is just a deucebag.  Left to themselves they form a paranormal investigation unit, the Ghostbusters, to catch and remove paranormal pests.

After a slow start, the trio gets busy as something is staring to unravel in the city, starting with a demonic god living in the fridge of Dana Barrett (Sigourney Weaver). Catching ghosts is messy business, involving lots of slime and mayhem, but the Ghostbuster becomes good at it with their beam guns and traps.

As a crescendo builds, it becomes clear that two things are threating the future of mankind: The god Gozer, brought forth by the mating of the Gatekeeper (Weaver) and the Keymaster (Rick Moranis), the destroyer of worlds, and Walter Peck (William Atherton), the dickless, from the EPA, who wants to shut down the Ghostbusters facility. Even with the addition of a fourth member, Winston Zeddemore (Ernie Hudson), this is an uphill battle (literally).

This is a fun story and a very eighties one at that. As “Ghostbuster” follow a well proven story arch, there are not terribly many surprises to the plot, but then again I like those rather predictable eighties movies. What makes “Ghostbusters” stand out is how fun that ride is along that plot.

The fun is partly based on the premise. It is a loony idea to have a bunch of grown men running around in a city in coveralls, chasing ghosts. Just plain wacky. Yet, the only one of the three who is not taking it seriously is Venkman, but then again, he takes nothing serious. Ramis and Aykroyd both go all in with their characters and that in itself is totally hilarious. Then you have a demon inside Sigourney Weaver’s fridge and Rick Moranis as the little accountant who is being possessed by... something badass. Just the thought makes me chuckle.

Moranis’ line “Okay, who brought the dog?” we find can be used on so many occasions and it always makes us laugh.

The other big source of the fun is the play between Ramis, Aykroyd and Murray. A lot of it is the awesome script, but in three lesser hands this could well have fallen flat. I happen to be a fan of all three and having them together is just pure joy.

Then there is the wrapping of the movie. The iconic music, the montage, the crowds, the setting and I get transported back to a better and happier time, even if it was prone to giant marshmallow men and refrigerator dwelling demons.

If there is something wrong in your neighbourhood

Who are you gonna call?

GHOSTBUSTERS!!!

Highly recommended.

It also feels like a good Halloween movie.

 

The Element of Crime (Forbrydelsens Element) (1984)

 

The Element of Crime

In the Danish edition of “1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die”, the local editors have added Lars von Trier first feature movie, “The Element of Crime”. I am not a fan of his, but at least it saves me from reserving a slot for a Danish off-List entry in a year otherwise so bountiful.

In an undefined future or past, a police detective, Fisher (Michael Elphick) is undergoing hypnosis to go through his latest case. Fisher is based in Cairo, but returns to “Europe” to solve a case known as the “Lotto murderer” case. It is never entirely clear on what basis he is working, but he seems to be in competition with a policeman called Kramer (Jerold Wells) and being tutored by his old master, Osborne (Esmond Knight), who devised a method called “The Element of Crime”, through which the detective must embrace the personality of the criminal to fully understand and find the perpetrator.

Fisher finds the trailing log of the suspected murderer, Harry Grey, and embark on a chase together with a prostitute, Kim (Meme Lai), with whom Grey has a child.

Here is the thing: Nothing in this movie makes the slightest sense.

The plot is a neo-noir detective story, while the imagery is acid-yellow pictures of broken, wet sets. The two are barely connecting and, more often than not, entirely disconnected. Most of the dialogue is narration on top of the scenes (presumably from the hypnosis), but even the spoke dialogue is strange, abrupt and disconnected. Attempts to follow the plotline is constantly sabotaged by strange cuts, out of the blue events or imagery totally at odds with the narration.

It is impossible to place the story. Is it past or future? Is it a post-apocalyptic world or is it the wreckage of Fisher’s mind seen though hypnosis? The place is referred to as Europe, place names are German, people’s names are English and so is the spoken language. All the while, I get the impression none of this actually matters.

Lars von Trier says quite clearly in the extra material that this is a movie of fascinating pictures with a story on top for those who requires a plot. This is incidentally also my impression. Von Trier concocted some imagery that looks like a mix of “Stalker”, “Alphaville” and “Last Year in Marienbad” and needed an excuse of a story to present those images. So, he is having a lot of fun making some freakish imagery for us to enjoy, except the pictures are so horribly ugly that it is just depressive. But then again, that stuff is high art.

I cannot say I enjoyed this movie. It feels amateurish because of the disconnects and I think by now I hate the colour yellow in a movie. I knew up front that Lars von Trier is not my thing, but I was curious as to where he started. Now I know and somehow this explains a lot.

An interesting piece of trivia: Meme Lai, easily the best part of the movie, had a career in Italian cannibal movies (turns out to be a thing!). “The Element of Crime” was her last movie. After this she became a policewoman in Brittain. I will let that stand for a moment.

 

This is Spinal Tap (1984)

 

This is Spinal Tap

Everything starts somewhere and for mockumentaries it likely happened with “This is Spinal Tap”. I am quite certain that the verité comedy had already been in place for some time (“Real Life” from 1979 comes to mind), but the format of presenting a movie as a documentary, while actually making fun of the subject is often attributed to “This is Spinal Tap”.

We are introduced to the “filmmaker” Martin Di Bergi (Rob Reiner himself, the actual director of this movie), who tells us that he is a long-time fan of the band and wants to make a concert movie based on their tour of the United States. As the filmmaker, he then proceeds by showing up here and there in the movie, either to comment or to interfere with the tour.

Of the band we particularly follow lead singer David St. Hubbins (Michael McKean), guitarist Nigel Tufnel (Christopher Guest) and bassist Derek Smalls (Harry Shearer) with keyboardist Viv Savage (David Kaff) and drummer Mick Shrimpton (R.J. Parnell) more in the background. The band started out as a very mellow flower-power band in the sixties, but then turned to heavy metal or at least the glam-rock version of it, now having the reputation of being the loudest band in Brittain (cranking volume up to 11!). It is understood that they used to be a really big name but is having less success of late.

The American tour is supposed to be a promotion tour of the new album “Smell the Glove”, but there are problems right from the outset as the American record label does not want to print the cover, which is considered sexist (which, from the description of it, is an understatement). The manager of the band, Ian Faith (Tony Hendra), desperately trying to keep it all together, lands a compromise with an all-black cover that satisfy no-one.

The tour is, to say the least, chaotic. Many venues are cancelled or moved to far more humble locations. We see the band interact, both with themselves and the press, and in both cases we get a lot of the tropes on moronic rock musicians. There are some, but sadly few, clips of them actually playing at concerts. Those parts are great, though, if you listen to the lyrics. Those lyrics are simply amazing.

Midway through the tour David’s girlfriend Jeanine (June Chadwick) shows up. She quickly sets herself up as a band member off stage and challenges Ian to his great chagrin. Her ideas are even more moronic than the band’s own and the whole thing explodes with both Ian and Nigel walking out on the band.

The entire movie is a joke, of course. It is a parody of the touring rock band, mocking all the tropes on those. The band members are more air-headed than most, the lyrics totally out there, the attitudes in place, and of course of money-people who are only there when things are going well.

The interesting thing is that all this is played for real. Everybody stays in character and take themselves seriously. They are over the top, but nobody plays over the top. Add to this that all the dialogue is improvised, and you get this real documentary feel to the movie. A documentary of a crazy, but quite real world. There are times where it gets totally absurd as with the pod on stage that does not open, trapping Derek inside or the 18-inch version of Stonehenge on stage with dancing leprechauns. But it is dealt with by the band as serious incidents, crazy, but real and so it works (not to mention the Jazz-Odyssey incident).

It is this balance of keeping the craziness real that is the key to “This is Spinal Tap”. Had this just been about making fun of rock musicians, this would not have been half as funny. As it is, the verité element is so well developed that we believe in the band even though they are stupider than toothpaste. As it happens, I read that several famous musicians are themselves fans of the movie, notably Sting, because this is the story of their experience, and they can see the fun of it.

Although hours and hours of material was shot, it is cooked down to only  82 minutes and I think that was a wise choice. There are simply limits to how long you can draw out a joke. As it is, I was having a lot of fun watching this one, but I am not certain it would have lasted another hour.

Researching this, I looked up the story of Christopher Guest. It is quite amazing. I want to watch a movie about him, his life and family.

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street (1984)

 

A Nightmare on Elm Street

In 1984, I was eleven years old. Horror movies were way to scary for me and even “Ghostbusters” crossed that line. Needless to say, a movie like “A Nightmare on Elm Street” was way outside what I was going to watch at the time. It was, however, a movie that was impossible to avoid and the posters as well as the street-talk was enough to freak me out. For this reason, I watched it later than most people, which is likely a good thing but today I consider it a true classic, not only for its impact on popular culture but for its inherent qualities.

The high school students Tina (Amanda Wyss), Nancy (Heather Langenkamp), Glen (Johnny Depp) and Rod (Nick Corri) have scary dreams of a creepy man with a burnt face and knives on his fingers, chasing them. Tina is so scared of this she is asking her friends over at night, including her boyfriend, Rod. During the night her dream gets really bad when the creepy guy catches her and cuts her up. While it is happening in her dream, the effect is very real as she is tossed and turned around the bedroom with blood spraying everywhere and Rod starring in shock as his girlfriend is getting torn apart.

Obviously, Rod is being charged with the murder, but Nancy, daughter of the police chief, is convinced it was not Rod, but the creepy guy because he is trying to do the same thing to her. Every time she doses off, he is there, and she only barely avoids getting chopped up herself. It is all she can do to stay awake, and it does not help that nobody believes her. Not her mother, nor the police or even Glen although he appears to have similar dreams.

Eventually we learn that the creepy guy is a Freddy Krueger (Robert Englund), a serial child murderer whom the parents had trapped and burned to cinders. Now he is back in supernatural form to take his revenge on their children.

The scenario of teenagers chased by demons is old like in really really old and both “The Texas Chainsaw Massacre” and “Halloween” has walked this ground. Yet, it feels as if many of the tropes of this genre either originates or were perfected by “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. What they are up against is evil with demonic powers, nobody, certainly not the adults believe them and only by facing the fear (i.e. to grow up) can they overcome the danger.

Freddy Krueger is the stuff of legends, both from his gruesome appearance and through his omnipotency. Residing in the dreamworld, there is no physical laws restricting him, but what makes him really scary is that he transcends the dreamworld into reality. We all have had scary dreams and what is it we tell ourselves when we wake up? Phew, this was only a dream. But what if it is not only a dream? What if the terror can reach us also when we are awake or can harm our real world? That is truly scary.

My son, who never watched the movie before, knows exactly who Freddy Krueger is. “He looks like me”, he says, “I kind of like him”. My son suffers greatly from atopic eczema and while I do not agree there, it does say something about how the character has achieved a life of its own that goes far beyond the movie itself. Freddy Krueger is the boogieman.

“A Nightmare of Elm Street” was made on a shoestring budget. In fact, a lot of it is either made for free or paid with the participant own money, yet it is difficult to see from the results. It is a movie heavy on special effect and with a few near misses they mostly work amazingly well. Somethings do not have to be terribly advanced to be scarry, but with Krueger himself, the prosthetics and the effect are worthy of a far more expensive movie. This is from an age before CGI and yet they pulled off some amazing stuff there. The murder of Glenn is one of the most spectacular I have witnessed in a long time. The budget way kept low by relying on unknown actors but a lot of those have had impressive career after this movie and I think the acting performance is generally a lot better than should be expected.

Sometimes it takes a very low budget to trigger the creativity that makes a great movie and “A Nightmare on Elm Street” became a huge success both as a movie and a franchise and is today recognized as a classic.

In 2010 a remake was made with a very different budget, but, frankly, I prefer the original. I much prefer the horrific ambience to cheap jump-scares.

While horror movies are still not my territory, I do not hesitate recommending “A Nightmare on Elm Street”. This is definitely a movie you must see... before your dreams kill you, wuhahaha...