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.