Once Upon a Time in America (1983)

 

Der var engang i Amerika

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Koyaanisqatsi (1983)

 

Koyaanisqatsi

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The King of Comedy (1983)

 

The King of Comedy

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

The Right Stuff (1983)

 

Mænd af rette støbning

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

 

The Fourth Man (De Vierde Man) (1983)

 

Den fjerde mand

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

A little too Dutch for me I suppose.

 

Terms of Endearment (1983)

 

Tid til kærtegn

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Utu (1983)

 

Utu

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

 

Vacation (1983)

 

Off-List: Vacation

The National Lampoon’s Vacation movies are incredibly popular in my family. The favourite is the “Christmas Vacation”, but it was “Vacation” from 1983 that started the party. In my family the movie is known simply as “Walley World” and we reference it every time a trip (of any sort) is becoming an expedition. This happens surprisingly often as my inner Clark Griswold asserts itself.

Obviously, this movie, or at least “Christmas Vacation” must earn a place on my 1001 movie list.

The Griswolds is a nice, middle class suburban family as families are most. Except that Clark Griswold (Chevy Chase) is a bit, well, quite a bit, extra. He has his own ideas of how things should be, tries to do everything right, but through a combination of optimism, over-confidence, self interest and poor decision making, he always ends up in a series of disasters. The rest of his family, Ellen (Beverly D’Angelo), his wife, Audrey (Dana Barron) and Rusty (Anthony Michael Hall), their children, have a hard time keeping up with him.

Clark has a two-week vacation and has planned the greatest family vacation ever: A road trip across the US to California to visit the theme park Walley World. The vacation gets a bumpy start when the car Clark had ordered did not arrive and, instead, he is stuck with the “Wagon Queen Family Truckster”. Probably the unsexiest family car in the history of mankind.

Every step of the way, Clark Griswold’s unique qualities lead the family from either near-misses to outright disasters. We are introduced to Ellen’s cousin Cathrine (Miriam Flynn) and her hillbilly husband Eddie (Randy Quaid), recurrent characters in the franchise. The family is coerced to take the intolerable Aunt Edna (Imogene Coca) and her monster of a dog along with them to Phoenix. Going through all the roadblocks would take the fun away, so let me just say that somewhere in Arizona this is no longer a vacation but a mission, a quest for fun. Clearly, Clark Griswold has lost his marbles.

Finally, finally, the family arrives at Walley World, only to find out it out of business for maintenance. Take one guess at what that does to Clark...

I do not know how many times I have watched this movie. No matter how well I know the jokes, I still laugh every time. The humour stands up surprisingly well and I think it is a combination of not running the jokes too far and that we can, at least a little, see ourselves in this family vacation not going according to plan. Clark’s “giving up is not an option” attitude is also a very recognizable spoof on the virtue of persistence. Maybe sometimes it is okay to call it off and cut your losses. I am myself the master of over-ambitious plans and whenever I plan a hike or a trip, I inevitably get that look from the rest of the family, oh oh, Griswold. Yeah, movies work when we can laugh at ourselves.

Everything in “Vacation” works, although I learned that apparently the original ending did not, so that half a year or so after the original shooting had ending, a new sequence had to be shot at Walley World. Only, teenagers grow a lot in half a year and if you look closely, you see that Rusty is suddenly a lot taller. Still, I am happy they did redo this ending because it totally works. Taking the roller coaster at gunpoint is so Clark Griswold.

The “Vacation” generated a long living franchise with varying success. The “Christmas Vacation” and the “Vegas Vacation” are great while the remake of “Vacation” from 2015 is a real stinker.

For us, Walley World is not a place or a movie, it is a concept.

Money (L'Argent) (1983)

 

Blodpenge

The Cannes winner of 1983 was Robert Bresson’s “L’Argent”. This was also his last movie. As Bresson is a familiar name on the List, I knew more or less what sort of territory we are entering here.

The focus of the movie is as the title says, money. Money as the agent of everything that is wrong in the world. The narrative is sort of a chain reaction, starting with a teenage boy who is barred from the kind of allowance he wants and therefore exchange a large counterfeit note in a camera shop. The shopkeeper wants to get rid of those fake money he has and so lets his young assistant, Lucien (Vincent Risterucci) pay for fuel with them. The fuel delivery man, Yvon (Christian Patey) does not suspect a thing, is caught when he tries to pay with them in a cafe. In the ensuing court case Lucien and the shopkeeper denies everything so Yvon gets fired. Out of job, he gets hired for a heist, is caught and sent to prison. Meanwhile, Lucien steals from the shopkeeper, is fired and then goes ahead robbing the shopkeeper. The he goes to prison too. And this is just the beginning.

Seen as a conventional movie, “L’Argent” is a pretty shitty movie. It is heavily stylized which means that all the acting is strangely wooden, and the characters are like automatons, delivering their lines and nothing more. All the characters are also flat and the only thing we learn about any of them, even the principal characters, is about their connection to the money in question. They need money and they are willing to compromise anything to get them.

The error here is of course to watch this as a conventional movie. “L’Argent” is an artistic project that is not here to entertain, but to drive an artistic point. The point here is the corruptive effect of money and by reducing the actors to robots, everything outside the money fades away. It is a singular desire. Defence is singular, the law is singular, violence is simply an extension of means to obtain money if other ways are barred.

Is Bresson then successful with his art project? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder as they say. The jury in Cannes obviously found it successful, though being an aging French movie icon would have been to his advantage here. I am not personally as certain. Because everything else fades into the background, the message here is so singular that it is banal. Money is bad. Money corrupts. Money is the cause of everything bad that happens.

The problem with that is that it is not a discussion or a polemic setup. It is simply a statement. If we learned something about the people that was corrupted or the victims there would have been depth to the statement, but instead it is simply a litany of all the horrible things people will do for money. It is just way too simplified. On top of that it is oldest cliché in the world to blame money and greed and by extension capitalism. Not that I in any way want to defend and clear finance and greed of evil, but, come on, this is really cheap.

When Bresson tried to focus on very basic elements in his movies from the fifties, they worked so well be because they condensed to object to stunning clarity. With “L’Argent” he is trying to do the same thing to our relationship with money, but to me it completely lacks the zing of his early movies and instead it feels tired.

It is an art movie and I like the idea of it, even appreciate it. It just does not really work for me.

The Last Battle (Le Dernier Combat) (1983)

 

Den sidste kamp

I am continuing down the road of mystifying movies. Interesting visually, but difficult to decode what is going on. “Le Dernier Combat” (“The Last Battle”) is a fascinating watch, but I am still, hours after finishing it, wondering what story it is trying to tell. Or indeed what it is I was looking at.

The movie clearly takes place in a post-apocalyptic world. People are few and largely scavengers. All the trappings of civilization are broken and crumbling. Its black and white scenography looks like “Fallout” in grey-tones.  We are following a man, identified in the titles as “The Man” (Pierre Jolivet), who is scavenging to make or fix a small aircraft. In his encounters with other scavengers, we learn that spoken language is non-existent, but we never learn why. The Man escapes a violent clash with the scavengers in his plane and crash lands in a town. This unnamed town is populated by only three other people. There is “The Doctor” (Jean Bouise) in an abandoned hospital, “The Brute” (Jean Reno), a man who wants to get into the hospital and an unnamed and unseen woman held in a room at the hospital by the doctor.

The Man gets into a fight with The Brute, and, injured, seeks shelter in the hospital. The Doctor and The Man become friends, which lasts until The Brute gain entrance and go on a murdering rampage in the hospital.

This was Luc Besson’s first feature movie and as always with his movies, it is visually interesting. The post-apocalyptic world is bleak and frightening and although the actors are just going around in old ruins with a lot of garbage, it carries the sense of places suddenly left year earlier. There is dust everywhere and everything is broken and torn. Literally everything.

The problems I have with the “Le Dernier Combat” come primarily from the narrative. I do not understand what these people want or why they are doing what they are doing. The Man wants to fly, but why and where to? The Brute wants to enter the hospital with an almost childish glee, but why? What is there that he wants so bad? When he finally gets there, the only thing he seems to do there is to kill. The Doctor keeps a girl in a cell. Why? And who is she? Why is it speech has disappeared? We get no answers to any of these questions.

I end up suspecting that Luc Besson had this idea of a post-apocalyptic world where speech had disappeared and went big time into the world building. Then, because after all this is a movie, he needed the characters to do something, anything, but without caring too much about what they actually did.

Later I had the thought that “Le Dernier Combat” works well as a companion movie to the 1981 movie “Le Guerre de feu” (“Quest for fire”). That one takes place before civilization, while “Le Dernier Combat” takes place after civilization. In both cases language is gone, people are hunter-gatherers, encounters at violent or friendly, nothing in between and humanity is reduced to basics. The Doctor’s cave paintings in the hospital is a massive hint in that direction. Again, the narrative is less important, it is the picture of the world that matters.

A definite upside was to see a young Jean Reno. Even in less good movies, Reno is always able to make the movie worthy of watching. Just strange to see him here as the villain. A slightly comic villain?

On the decidedly negative was the strange soundtrack. Not that the music was bad, but it belonged to a VERY different kind of movie. In this context it was somewhere between comic and confusing.

As a tableau “Le Dernier Combat” is spectacular, thought provoking and worth watching. As a story, and indeed as a movie, I consider it flawed and I am therefore hesitant to recommend it.

 

Sunless (Sans Soleil) (1983)

 

Sans Soleil

Now, having just spent 100 minutes watching “Sans Soleil” (“Sunless”), I am entirely unable to explain what I have just been watching. It is not that I did not like the movie, I just have no clue what this was about.

We are watching a lot of footage from a number of different places, among these, Guinea-Bissau, Iceland, Cape Verde, San Francisco and especially Japan. The footage has likely been filmed by filmmaker Chris Marker, though some stock footage seems to be mixed in. The imagery feels random, though there is some connection with the narration. It is just that the narration also feels random.

The English version, I watched, is narrated by Alexandra Stewart who tell a story as if told to her by another person, likely the cameraman behind the images (eg. Chris Marker). This story, supposed to be his impressions and ideas, is a musing on... I do not have a clue. Following the narration is like dropping in on a conversation where you missed the beginning and therefore lack the context, where sensible words therefore become meaningless sentences. There was something about death, about spirit worship, dancing, looking into the camera, playing videogames, living next to a volcano and the Hitchcock movie “Vertigo”. Yet, it may be nothing more than a travelogue of scenes and people and experiences made by the photographer.

It took me about half an hour to come to terms with that I likely would not work out what this is all about and instead just focus on the imagery. This is good, because there is a lot to look at.

The large majority of the scenes are from Japan, a place I am fascinated with. I have a visit to Japan scheduled for July and anything Japanese is interesting. These pictures, at least forty years old (though some maybe as old as the seventies), are of a different Japan than I know, and yet it is also very familiar to the country today. The temples, the ceremonies, the videogames, the trains or just people. Had these pictures been of any other place, they would have been half as interesting. In these pictures, people on the train look empty into the air, today they look empty into their phone. The dedication to the activities is the same, the focus and intensity. Japan is a country like no other.

Did I mention that I watched the Japanese movie “Perfect Days” last week? This would be an interesting double feature.

How the other images fit in I do not know. There were striking pictures of volcanoes in Iceland and dogs in the surf on Cape Verde, but the connection remained obscure.

If I should make a comparison then “Sans Soleil” reminded me of “India Song”, with its obscure narration and striking imagery, with the notable difference that the pictures in “Sans Soleil” are much more pleasant and less pretentious.

Whether the production as such is pretentious, well, that I will leave up to the viewer.

Risky Business (1983)

 

Off-List: Risky Business

For my second off-List movie of 1983, I am again going down memory lane rather than picking something objectively good. “Risky Business” was a big film for me in the late eighties. I was of course too young to watch this on release, but as a teenager I thought it was awesome. In hindsight, I find that infatuation somewhat questionable, but I suppose that is what this movie does, hitting it home with teenagers. At least the male segment.

A very young Tom Cruise is high school student Joel Goodsen. His affluent parents are... a bit dominating, so when they go away on a trip, leaving the house to Joel, he is very much enjoying his freedom. Joel’s friend Miles (Curtis Armstrong) insists it is time for Joel to lose his virginity and calls a prostitute for him. The transvestite that shows up is rather intimidating, but the girl he/she sends instead is any teenage boy’s dream girl. Lana (Rebecca De Mornay) knocks his legs off in an almost dreamlike sequence. That lasts until the next morning when she demands 300$ for her services. That starts a chain of events that pitch Joel against Lana’s pimp, Guido (Joe Pantoliano), several encounters with Lana, and finally sending his father’s Porche into Lake Michigan.

In an attempt to regain the losses, Joel and Lana setup Joel’s home as a one-night brothel, where the affluent teenagers of the neighbourhood can buy some cozy time with some of Lana’s friends. This is a huge success, but with high risks come big losses.

Besides being a well directed and well played movie, I think “Risky Business” worked so well because it taps into several dreams.

There is the obvious one, of the teenage boy full of hormones who gets to have sex with the girl of his dreams. That she is a prostitute in this context only means that the focus is sex. The dark side of that coin is only revealed later when we learn that Lana has an unpleasant history. For Joel and most teenage boys, this is simply a fantasy.

Then there is the entrepreneurial dream, how to take an opportunity and turn it into an economic success. This is so early eighties, with the ruthless yuppie ideal. That Joel and Lana are making their business venture on prostitution is merely piquant, not really offensive (servicing young men). When Joel puts on his shades and a cigarette, he becomes that yuppie.

Finally, there is the age old coming of age story, turning Joel from a boy under the combined thumbs of his parents, into a confident and experienced man. Facing and dealing with adversary, getting a girlfriend and taking responsibility (including being responsible for his own actions) is always a winner.

This combination sold the movie to me back in the day. It has been a long time since I watched it last time and while I can see why it worked, I think I out-grew it. From an adult perspective, what was cool and awesome is now juvenile and problematic, similar to what happened to “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off”. Now I see some layers in it that are darker. Lana is not the happy prostitute, pimping is a brutal business and there is an innocence lost here. “Risky Business” gets some credit for showing that, but it is definitely not what sold the movie to me back then.

I am not a big Tom Cruiser fan and maybe that spoils if for me today, but 35 years ago I could not care less. For a young audience I think it might still work today.

 

On a completely different side note: a few days ago, I went to the cinema to watch Wim Wender’s “Perfect Days”. Very highly recommended.

 

The Big Chill (1983)

 

Gensyn med vennerne

When director and screenwriter Lawrence Kasdan toured the studios with the script for “The Big Chill”, he was turned down by all the big studios. According to Kasdan, they did not see the point of the movie. I am not really surprised. On the face of it, I see where they were coming from. It is a movie that does not seem to have a story arc or a plot and with too many characters to stay in focus. However, when you then dig into it, it manages to work surprisingly well. You just have to through away your expectation of what a movie should be like.

A guy called Alex (whom we never see), has died, killing himself, and his old friends from college show up at his funeral. There is a reception at the nearby home of Sarah and Harold Cooper (Glenn Close and Kevin Kline), where Alex also used to live. Sarah and Harold are living an affluent, yet very conventional life. Also staying at the house is Chloe (Meg Tilly), Alex’ much younger girlfriend. The visitors include television star Sam (Tom Berenger), journalist Michael (Jeff Goldblum), psychologist turned salesman (and Vietnam veteran) Nick (William Hurt), defence lawyer Meg (Mary Kay Place) and housewife Karen (Jobeth Williams) who’s husband leaves the next morning to take care of their children.

All these people (with the possible exception of Nick) seem to have reached a comfortable position in their adulthood and while it sounds like they were a tightknit group in college, the years since have taken them away from each other. Both physically and mentally. Being gathered again they both enjoy each other’s company and are surprised to learn how different they have become. The big chill of the title is supposed to be the effect when a supposedly familiar person says something that reveal a fundamental difference in values or worldview.

Over the weekend the characters interact, talk about their lives, banter and argue. There is no straight line here, it is more like seven balls simultaneously in a pinball game. What we do learn, though, is that all of these people need some readjustment in their lives. Not that they necessarily have gotten lost, but something is missing and the weekend together makes them realize this and even offers an opportunity to fix it. Sort of a coming-of-age movie for adults.

 Realizing this is what makes the movie interesting. Having a lot of Hollywood stars talking, laughing and arguing may have been entertaining in its own right, but when the characters start to not only unfold but also to develop, that is where the movie shows its value, something all those studio heads clearly missed.

Normally I am very sceptic about ensemble movies. In order to give screentime to all of them we often do not get enough of each. Not so here. Being confined to a very narrow space (they rarely leave the house), there is always interaction. One on one, one on two or any combination and they all bring something into the mix, allowing a depth to all the characters.

It also helps that the issues these people are dealing with are relatable adult problems. Not terribly exotic but also not naively juvenile. It is also not so much the cliché midlife crisis, but more a life-caught-up-with-me, what-happened-to-the-person-I-used-to-be kind of issues. I am not saying we all suffer from that, but as an adult, this is relatable.

Of course, I also must mention that it is fun to watch so many of the great actors of the eighties together in a movie that is all about acting. Yeah, they could discuss shopping it Walmart and it would be interesting to watch.

I enjoyed “The Big Chill” a lot more than I expected I would. It is a good pick for the List.

   

Star Wars Episode VI: The Return of the Jedi (1983)

 

Stjernekrigen: Jedi-ridderen vender tilbage

It is always a guilty pleasure to watch the original Star Wars movies. Although the third instalment is the poorest of the three, it still provides a satisfying conclusion to the trilogy.

When we left “The Empire Strikes Back”, Han Solo (Harrison Ford) had been dry-freezed into a carbonite slab to be handed over to the giant gangster slug Jabba the Hutt, so “Return of the Jedi” naturally opens with a rescue mission at Jabba’s palace. This includes Leia (Carrie Fisher) in a golden bikini and a showdown on the rim of the mouth of a giant monster. Jabba’s palace is the scary version of Muppet Show, but at least it is sinister and gloomy.

Mission accomplished, the movie jumps straight to the finale. Here we have three parallel stories taking place simultaneously with plenty of cross-clips. A new death star is being build in orbit around the Sanctuary moon (Endor). Luke (Mark Hamill), Leia, Han, Chewbacca (Peter Mayhew) and the droids go to the moon to deactivate the shield protecting the death star. Luke, however, quickly leaves for the death star to try to turn back his father, the infamous Darth Vader (David Prowse, James Earl Jones), from “the dark side”, and in the third storyline Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Willams) is leading an alliance attack on the death star. Something that will only succeed if the mission to the moon is successful.

The narrative here is super simple. Being the finale movie of the trilogy, this was bound to be a final showdown of epic scale. This we do get, the scale is grand and, as such things have to be, the stakes are great. The way it plays out is unfortunately a little too straight forward. Gone are the twists of “The Empire Strikes Back”.

Gone too is the darkness and pervading doom of the middle episode. Rather than leaving the comic relief to the droids, a job they carried very well in the two first episodes, “Return of the Jedi” is crammed to the brim with comic relief. It is a change of formula that reduces the age (real or perceived) of the audience and makes parts of it more Muppet Show than space opera. The common criticism is the native inhabitants of the Sanctuary moon, the teddy bear like Ewoks. They are cute and sweet and a bit naive, but they are also an eighties version of the Minions and silly is a description that only scratches the surface. Of course, we smile and laugh at the cute little teddies, but honestly, is this the movie we are watching? Is saving the universe depending on cute teddies?  At least at Jabba’s palace, there is a level of darkness, but already there I feel it has gone too far down this mistaken road.

I still feel excitement watching the space battles and the adventure story of good versus evil and we are still lightyears (literally) ahead of the prequels, but learning that both David Lynch and David Cronenberg were considered to direct this third instalment of the Star Wars trilogy, I cannot help wondering what that would have done to this movie. Certain it is, that it would not have been half as cute, but a lot more interesting than what we ended up with.

The version I watched was the cinematic release version, to get the experience cinemagoers would have had back in 1983 and frankly, the technical side holds up well. Sure, there is some green wall sequences (like the speeder rides through the forest) that look a bit clumsy, but there is a texture to the world that later CGI fail to deliver. For lack of a better term, the world looks more real. A sidenote: I had one of those speeders as a toy back then... cool stuff.

“Return of the Jedi” ended the trilogy, and it would take a decade and a half before the universe was revisited. For many of us, these three movies will stand as the real universe, but as much as we complain about the later movies, the downward trend started already with “Return of the Jedi”. The elements we do not like in the prequels are the same elements that makes “Return of the Jedi” the weakest of the three.

Yet, when all is said and done, I still enjoy watching it. There is enough of the things we like, and we do get closure. Just maybe a little too predictable.

 

The North (El Norte) (1982)

 

El Norte

If you thought Illegal immigration is a new thing, then you are mistaken. “El Norte” tells us this issue was pretty much the same 41 years ago as it is today. Only the magnitude can be discussed.

Rosa (Zaide Silvia Gutiérrez) and Enrique (David Villalpando) are siblings in Guatemala. Because their father is trying to set up some sort of protest against abuse from, presumably, the landowners, he is shot and their mother is taken away, presumably killed. The siblings only survive by hiding. Seeing they cannot stay they decide to go to “El Norte”, to the promised land in the North where everybody have flush toilets and a car.

They manage to get through Mexico easily enough, but in Tijuana on the US border they run into trouble. The first agent they find to help them across the border tries to mug them and then they are picked up by immigration and sent back. The second attempt fares better but costs them their only valuables and involves a long crawl through a rat infested sewer. Something that eventually proves fatal.

In the US things are not as great as they could have hoped. There are people who are willing to hire illegal migrants, but the pay is very low and the risks are high. There is the constant threat from the “Migra” (Migration authorities) and without papers there is no health or any other official protection. All of which are issues Rosa and Enrique run into and which lead to a downbeat conclusion.

The striking thing about this movie is, as mentioned above, how timeless this story is. Change the cars and haircuts and this movie could have been made today. In this movie the migrants are fleeing Guatemala, but it could be from anywhere in the Global South. There is a strong motivator to move in the physical prosecution Rosa and Enrique are subjected to, but there is also an obvious economic lure, which plays a large part in the movie. The US is the place these people dream of whenever things are hard. This story could also just as well have played out in Europe. Then the crawl through the sewer would have been replaced by a dinghy across the Mediterranean.

The political point the movie is trying to make is to see illegal migration from the point of the migrant and present the risks, indignities and desperate hopes of these. What of course is not covered here is the other side of the coin, why this kind of immigration is illegal. I think there are some pretty good arguments why governments want to control immigration, but from the point of view of the migrant, all those points are completely irrelevant. The consequence is that they end up in a lawless limbo.

From a production value point of view, I had some misgivings going in as this promised to be a second-rate production, but that is not the case at all. Production value is pretty high and the acting, especially from Gutierrez and Villalpando, is convincing. They strike the right level of naive determination, and we instantly sympathize with them. Both went on to have long careers in movies and TV.

There is a level of melodrama here, it cannot be otherwise or there would be nothing to drive the movie forward, but what stroke me most watching it, was the looming threat of disaster just over the horizon. Every step of the way, from Guatemala and to the end in Los Angeles I get the sense that Rosa and Enrique are walking on a precipice and often they are not even aware of the danger they are facing, blinded as they are of their hopes and needs. It actually made it difficult for me to watch as I constantly counted all the may ways this could end badly and, in a sense, I was not disappointed.

I am not certain I would want to watch “El Norte” again, this is not a feel-good movie, but I guess it classifies as an important movie that tells a story people need to hear.

 

Trading Places (1983)

 

Off-List: Trading Places

The first Off-List movie of 1983 is “Trading Places”, a big childhood favourite of mine. I cannot tell how many times I have watched this over the years and while it may not hold up as well today as it did back then, it never fails to amuse me. This time I watched it with my wife and son and based on his reaction to it, this was his first viewing, it still works.

Randolph (Ralph Bellamy) and Mortimer (Don Ameche) Duke are wealthy commodity brokers (Duke & Duke). Stingy, prejudiced and arrogant, they have the kind of money where it does not matter what people think of them. In between their never ceasing pursuit of making money, they have an ongoing discussion on heritage vs. environment. Eventually they decide to conduct an experiment: They will send their star executive into the gutter, while picking a desperate type from the gutter and make him their executive. The value of the bet: 1$.

The star executive is Louis Winthorpe III (Dan Aykroyd), as arrogant and prejudiced as the Dukes and of “good breeding”. The gutter type is Billy Ray Valentine (Eddie Murphy), presently employed begging money pretending to be a crippled Vietnam veteran.

Louis takes really badly to having everything taken away from him. Without his status and his money, he is nothing and only with the help of the hooker Ophelia (Jamie Lee Curtis) does he stay afloat, sort of. Billy on the other hand eases into the role of commodity broker very easily. With the help of the butler, Coleman (Denholm Elliott), he is soon unrecognizable from the street thug he used to be. This lasts until he learns the truth about the bet (and that there is no-way the Dukes will have a black man leading their business). Now Billy, Louis, Ophelia and Coleman are on the warpath to take down the Dukes.

A modern take on The Prince and the Pauper tale, this is not a novel story, but in my poor opinion the best rendering of it ever done. It plays as a comedy, but except for some scenes on a train, it stays well inside the probable and makes us invested in the story. We are amazed with Billy, and although it is difficult not to feel a bit schadenfreude with Louis, we do feel with him as well. He is just so utterly helpless. Maybe Billy is a little too good a commodity broker for somebody picked up from the street, but explanation would be that street smarts is transferable into the commodity market.

The comedy is mostly slightly underplayed, with hints and asides and of course Murphy doing some of his idiosyncratic shenanigans. By today’s standard the comedy is way-underplayed, but my claim is that this is exactly why it works. The afore mentioned train sequence is the exception. Here we venture deep into silly comedy and according to the extra material the studio wanted to ditch this part. Thankfully, they did not. Silly as it is, it is also hilariously funny and comes at exactly the right point of the movie. Amazingly, after this intermezzo, the movie is able to jump straight back into probable land to provide us with a very satisfying and believable finale. That it is not free fantasy is reflected by the fact that today there is a law against insider trading known as “The Eddie Murphy rule”, based on “Trading Places”.

John Landis had a good streak at the time and “Trading Places” is definitely Landis classic. It is a good example of his type of movies. For Aykroyd, Murphy and Curtis, “Trading Places” was a huge boost to their careers, it is likely they would not have gone where they did without this movie and at least for me, this is the movie I associate all three of them with. I also love how the movie showcases Elliot, whom I mostly know from the Indiana Jone franchise, Ameche and Bellamy. All three belong to the old guard and they bring a lot to the movie. Don Ameche had not acted in a feature for a decade, but went on a roll after this one. I loved his role in Cocoon.

Yet, for all this, the greatest impact of “Trading Places” is the personal one it had for me. I loved it throughout the eighties and nineties, and it was one I always could take out if I wanted a good time and it still is.

Seriously, why was this movie not included on the List?

Videodrome (1982)

 

Videodrome

David Cronenberg is (in)famous for his disturbing movies and “Videodrome”, his entry onto the Lis, gives us a lot of classic Cronenberg to, well, enjoy.

Max Renn (James Woods) is heading a small television station that specializes in seedy stuff nobody else cares to air. This particularly includes porn and violence and when lab technician Harlan (Peter Dvorsky) picks up a grainy signal from Malaysia depicting very real looking sadomasochistic scenes, Max is sold. He gets Harlan to tape as much as possible and learns it is not from Malaysia at all but from Pittsburgh and is called Videodrome. It is also essentially snuff porn as nobody leaves alive.

Max meets Nicki Brand (Debbie Harry, yes, the one from “Blondie”) and the video presence of a professor called O’Blivion on a  talk show and quickly hooks with her. Turns out she is really into this Videodrome stuff, so she leaves Max to audition for the show.

At this point I was convinced this was a decent into violent pornography, the stuff that makes you want to take a shower after even hearing about it, and Max mission to save Nicki from the clutches of a sinister, underground cabal. In the process, of course, Max will learn the error of his ways.

I was wrong.

The movie takes a strong left turn as Max discovers that the Videodrome signal is used for mind control and the function of the actual pictures is to draw the attention of the viewer. All the sex thing is just a red herring. The mind control makes the viewer hallucinate and often drive the victim crazy. Max is targeted for this mind control and while his world is turned seriously weird (a hole is opening in his stomach, things are coming out of the television etc.), he is turned into a killing machine, to kill the enemies of his controllers. Sort of “The Manchurian Candidate” on acid.

By the time the movie ends, I, the audience, cannot tell what is real and what is hallucinations as it all blends together. This is also the impression I am sitting back with. Accepting the premises of the movie, when I try to follow the narrative, at some point I get lost. Is it dreaming, hallucination, reality or insanity? This confusion keeps the viewer off balance, which is good for suspense, but also threatens to send the viewer into resignation as the narrative cease to make sense. It is a tricky balancing act, and I am not entirely certain Cronenberg manage to keep that balance.

There are smart moves though. The first 15 minutes focus on violent pornography emulates the way Max is drawn into the Videodrome world. Videodrome is not about pornography and neither is the movie, but for both it is the hook.It is supposed to fascinate the dirty mind to want to watch more and thus be subjected to what comes after, the real agenda. It also taps into the idea of mass media as an agent for mind control. This is not new at all, and Hollywood is far from done with that idea, but doing it through the tv screen, targeting particular viewer segments through the choice of the carrier signal is, I think, novel. In 83, home video and easy access to seedy stuff was clearly taking off big time and this strange new world was ready for exploration.

Unfortunately, as for most movies exploring technological novelties, it also makes the movie feel dated. The wonders and magic of the tv signal and video cassettes all look antique by now.

What does not look outdated, though, are all the body horror special effects. Hallucinations or real, the scope and execution of all this weirdness is nothing short of amazing. In an age before CGI, getting these things to look real was really hard and I found them convincing. Others may disagree.

I am not certain where I land with this movie. I understand and appreciate the cleverness of “Videodrome”, but I am not certain I follow it all the way to its conclusion. Rather, I feel I dropped off the wagon somewhere around two-thirds in. In all likelihood, there are a lot of fans out there, but I am not entirely convinced.

 

 

The Draughtsman's Contract (1982)

 

The Draughtsman's Contract

A good movie is a movie that stays on your mind for a long time, but is it also good if it stays there because you are desperately trying to work out what it was all about?

We are in England in the late seventeenth century where the artist Mr. Neville (Anthony Higgins) gets a contract to make a series of drawings of the Herbert country house. The drawings are supposed to be a gift from Mrs. Herbert (Janet Suzman) to her husband. Mr. Neville are reluctant to accept the job but when the contract come to include access to Mrs. Herbert’s body, he accepts.

At the Herbert mansion, Mr. Neville commandeers everybody around for the purpose of the drawings and particularly Mrs. Herbert’s son in law, Mr. Talmann (Hugh Fraser), is ruffled by Mr. Neville’s presence. For a long while, the movie is about Mr. Neville drawing, using Mrs. Herbert and arguing with especially Mr. Talmann. That is, until Mr Herbert is found dead in the moat. Mr. Neville is convinced he will be accused of the murder, if for no other reason than everybody disliking him.

Some time later he returns, has sex again with Mrs. Herbert and is murdered by Mr. Talmann.

Okay, clearly there is a lot more going on, but then I will be starting to guess and be on pretty thin ice.

There is an exaggeration in the movie that pervades everything. The dialogue is fast, refined and elaborate and, yes, quite difficult to follow. The outfits, especially the wigs, are even by seventeenth century standards big and over the top and worn everywhere. The foppishness is rivalling Versailles and while it makes the movie interesting to look at, it is difficult not to see all this as a point. Mr. Neville is the exposer of the hypocrisy and idiocy of the idle rich and seems to enjoy that he can commandeer everybody around, mock them and literally screw them over. That makes the movie an exposé of the foibles of the privileged class, something they rarely like.

When I try to get a step deeper, I run into a wall of confusion, primarily from the dialogue. Maybe my English is simply not good enough, but often I would sit back and realize I had no idea what was going on. Again, this may be intended, a lot in this movie appear to be there to confuse us, such as the strange, unexplained living statue, but then again, it could just be my inadequacy.

As a murder mystery, it leaves us mystified. We never learn who killed the man. Instead, we get a lot of accusations thrown around. Everybody seems to have had a motive, yet only one is suitable to take the blame. Again, that may be the purpose.

The more I think about “The Draughtsman’s Contract”, the more I realize there must be a lot more hidden here, that the story is deeper than the foppish circus we are served. That is frustrating, but also interesting, and probably a good reason to watch it again.

Another good reason is the fantastic score by Micael Nyman. At first it sounds like authentic period music, but there is an underlying exaggeration and even a beat that reveals it as a modern score pretending to be of the seventeenth century. It is quite clever and pure bliss to listen to.

Peter Greenaway’s movie has the air of a mockumentary, a distortion of reality to prove a point, which is more or less the kind of movies he made before this one and although it is not playing for laughs, there is a wry humour here that makes me accept my complete confusion.

 

A Christmas Story (1982)

A Christmas Story

Christmas movies are a category on their own. During the holidays, they are everywhere, but outside that narrow period from late November until New Year, they entirely disappear. A few of them do work outside the season (“Die Hard”, “It’s a Wonderful Life”), but most feel... flat... when Christmas is far away. Maybe this is why the List features very few Christmas movies and that most of those belong to that first category. I believe “A Christmas Story” is the first thoroughbred Christmas movie I have encountered on the List, and, yes, it does feel sort of weird to watch it in March.

But let us pretend this is December, it is dark outside, and the coffee table is stuffed with Christmas cookies. Now we can consider “A Christmas Story” in the right frame of mind.

Ralphie (Peter Billingsley) is a 9-year-old boy living with his younger brother, Randy (Ian Petrella), his mother, Mrs. Parker (Melinda Dillon) and his father, the “Old Man”, Mr. Parker (Darren McGavin) sometime in the forties. Christmas time is coming up and all Ralphie wishes for Christmas is the Red Ryder BB gun. This is not a popular choice and everybody, his mother, teacher, even the department store Santa tells him he “will shoot his eyes out”. Ralphie then cooks up a million schemes to get the toy for Christmas, some of those are quite inventive.

While this is the main story, “A Christmas Story” is a meandering tale with tons of small subplots fleshing out the life of Ralphie and his family. We see a boy in his class getting his tongue stuck on the flagpole. Ralphie tries to bribe his teacher. The Old Man wins a hideous lamp shaped like a woman’s leg, setting off “the battle of the lamp” with his wife. Ralphie gets the hate-gift of any nine-year old boys when he gets a pink bunny suit from Aunt Clara and is forced to wear it (the best laugh of the movie). In fact, it is not wrong to say that all these small vignettes are the movie.

Ralphie is a truly annoying little boy, but I suppose that is also the point. As it is told in retrospect, we remember all these great or exciting things form our childhood, but objectively, they were perhaps not that fantastic and we were hardly the angels we think we were. Presenting Ralphie as obnoxious is such a point and works great for comedy, though less good for the ears.

Child-Ralphie’s point of view is of course a child’s point of view and at that age there is a lot of magic, wonder, strangeness and mystery to life. Small problems are big problems and big problems just pass over the head. Life in the Parker home is full of small adventures, disappointments and injustices. What matters from a child’s perspective is just different from that of an adult.

Christmas is of course the central event here and what can be bigger for a nine-year old boy? Reality is... eh, a bit more messed up and that mess is really fun to watch.

Curiously, “A Christmas Story” is not a staple Christmas movie in Denmark. I do not remember ever having watched it before and I wonder why this is. It is a Christmas movie far above the average junk we are fed with during the holidays and I could easily believe this would be a classic elsewhere. Whether it will become a Christmas classic in our home I am not so certain. Both wife and son found the voice of young Ralphie truly annoying.