Cocoon (1985)

 

Off-List: Cocoon

The first off-List movie of 1985 is “Cocoon”. This is, again, a family favourite from my childhood, one of those movies I watched multiple time back then and which I am therefore disposed to in a way that I can hardly consider it objectively.  Also, it belongs to that group of sweet eighties movies that makes me long for a different age where everything was less... grim.

In two separate tracks, we follow Jack Bonner (Steve Guttenberg), the captain of a boat that takes people out fishing and a group of elderly people at a retirement home, particularly the trio of Art (Don Ameche), Ben (Wilford Brimley) and Joe (Hume Cronyn) and their wives, Mary (Maureen Stapleton), Alma (Jessica Tandy) and girlfriend Bess (Gwen Verdon).

Jack is on the verge of losing his boat when he scores big time. A group of underwater archaeologists wants to rent his boat for a few weeks. This is pretty awesome, and he even starts hitting on one of them, Kitty (Tahnee Welch) until he learns they are actually aliens.

 Life at the retirement home is dull, it is mostly a place where you wait to die, but Art, Ben and Joe have found their little escape. Now and then they sneak over to the empty neighbouring house where there is a heated pool to have their fun. One day, however, they learn the house is empty no more, yet they are not willing to give up on their little treasure, so they sneak in and continue to use the pool.

Slowly the pool is filling up with big rocks and although at first they are slightly disturbed by this, they do feel great. In fact, they seem to be finding their youth again. Of course, they get caught in the act and realise the people they have been trespassing on are... aliens.

“Cocoon” is a feel-good movie, but with a bitter-sweet flavour that makes it a relevant movie. The core of the story is that of these elderly people finding their youth again, blooming at a time where this should be just a distant memory. There is something extremely invigorating, literally, at seeing them getting this happy. It challenges the unfairness that we all must fade away eventually, but it also returns the question if refound youth (and potentially eternal life) will not upset a few things. There is a price to this, even if it is not at first obvious.

“Cocoon” is also a hilariously funny movie. Guttenburg was at this time involved in tons of comedies, but the stars of this movie are the old folks. They were fun before they found their youthful energies, and unstoppable after. There is something incredible endearing about them that makes you want to be their friends.

The winning argument for me today, however, is to see this as a sort of comeback for all these elderly Hollywood stars. Every single one of them has a CV that would make anyone proud, and I have watched them here and there in earlier movies. Hume Cronyn and Jessica Tandy had at this point been married for more than forty years. To watch them all giving stellar performances here in the autumn of their lives touches me very deeply.

When I watched “Cocoon” as a child, what I loved was the adventure, the idea of aliens returning to earth to rescue those left behind thousands of years ago and to give the opportunity to travel with them to space and it bothered me that Ben’s grandson, David (Barret Oliver) was not allowed to join that adventure. This adventure still works today, although eclipsed by those points mentioned above. This is largely due to the always excellent work of one of my favourite directors, Ron Howard.

“Cocoon” takes me back to a better time, but it is not a movie that feels old. We watched it as a family movie, and it works all the way round. Highly recommended.

Ran (1985)

 

Ran

“Ran”, the last movie made by Akira Kurosawa, is frequently hailed as one of the best movies of all time and keeping in mind the very impressive catalogue of films Kurosawa made, this is a tall order to live up to.

At the opening of the movie, Hidetora Ichimonji (Tatsuya Nakadai), an aging warlord, has gathered his three sons, his trusted advisors and two vassals on a hilltop after a hunt. He is retiring and passing on the leadership of the clan to his eldest son Taro (Akira Terao) while each son is to take stewardship of his three castles. He also wants them to stand united which Taro and Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu) agree to, while the third son, Saburo (Daisuke Ryu), complain that this is not going to happen. For this Saburo and the advisor, Tango (Masayuki Yui) are banished.

Taro’s wife Kaede (Mieko Harada) manipulates Taro into banishing Hidetora and his retinue to take the title of Great Lord for himself (a largely honorary title now he already has assumed leadership). Hidetora seeks refuge in the empty third castle (Saburo being banished), but it is a trap and it is soon attacked by Jiro’s and Taro’s forces combined. All of the defenders are killed except for Hidetora, who is now mad. Hidetora is joined by Tango and the court jester Kyoami (Shinnosuke Ikehata) to wander the land. In the battle Taro is killed by one of Jiro’s generals.

Kaede now moves on to Jiro, making him renounce his wife Sue (Yosiko Miyazaki) and getting her killed. When Saburo shows up to claim his father she also urges battle, although it is certain disaster.

In the end, everybody dies. That is hardly a spoiler.

There are two elements that make “Ran” stand out. The first one is that of style. “Ran” is Kurosawa’s take on Shakespeare’s “King Lear” transposed to Japan, but acted out in the No play tradition of Japan. This curious combo gives it a theatrical character which makes it look very much like a stage play, complete with exaggerated gestures, slow deliberate movements and formal dialogue. It is not a 1 to 1 adaption of course, but stylistically it removes itself from realism and into the mythological stylicism of a theatre performance. It is entrancing and interesting but can also be a challenge to follow. The apparent slow pace and emphasis on dialogue threw my son. He lasted barely 10 minutes. I found it interesting, but understand how it can be polarizing and my guess is that much of its accolades come the stylistic choices.

The second element is that we see only half the story. In the story we experience, the Lady Kaede is an evil villain who orchestrates the destruction of everybody, Hidetora is the poor victim, and his sons are dupes, getting manipulated. We learn, however, that in his rise to power Hidetora did horrible things. He burned down castles and killed countless people, among these Kaeda’s family as well as Sue’s. He took over their castles and made his sons marry the daughters of the former owners. What we see as the viciousness of Kaede is actually her revenge and it is difficult to ague that it is not a just revenge, but because it is in the past (and we did not see it) it is only a cerebral revenge. Emotionally, we are in the present and disconnected from the past. The revenge is now the evil and Hidetora, stripped of his power, is a sad victim, losing everything he had.

I find this play on the viewer exceptionally creative. I am not familiar with the King Lear story, so I do not know if Kurosawa can tale credit for the idea, but it is carried out to perfection.

Personally, I found only two distractions in the movie. Samurai warfare and repeater guns seems like an anachronism and makes it hard to place the story historically, but then again, it is all very stylized, so who cares. Secondly, the drums of the scored kept bring me to “Monty Python and the Holy Grail”. As this made me giggle at inappropriate times, I found this to be a poor scoring choice.

“Ran” is a good movie and it is a very interesting movie, but, for me, it does not rank among the best ever. I also think Kurosawa made two or three movie I found better that “Ran”. Then again, that still places it in very good and august company.  

 

The Breakfast Club (1985)

 

The Breakfast Club

It is a new year for me, 1985, and the first entry is “The Breakfast Club”.

In my youth, there was no way around “The Breakfast Club”. This was a movie everybody had watched, and everybody were referring too. In social circles, but also in media and in countless tv-series and movies. Of course I watched it too, but it took me a bit longer to recognize the significance of it than most. I guess I was not much of a rebellious youth at the time.

“The Breakfast Club” takes place in the course of a single Saturday and except for a few bookending scenes, takes place entirely inside a high school with only seven characters appearing. Five of these characters are high school students there for detention, each representing a different type in the school. There is the “Princess”, Claire (Molly Ringwald), the “Basket case”, Allison (Ally Sheedy), the “Athlete”, Andrew (Emilio Estevez), the “Brain”, Brian (Anthony Michael Hall) and the “Criminal”, John (Judd Nelson).

The entire movie is about the interactions of these five teenagers during detention. It plays out as a “kammerspiel” (sorry could not find an English translation, look it up) in the Strindberg tradition, not unlike “12 Angry Men”. To begin with each character is their type, provoking each other by playing on their stereotypes. John manages to throw the discipline teacher, Richard Vernon (Paul Gleason) into a frenzy, he picks a fight with Andrew and is extremely provocative towards Claire, whom he seems to find a sadistic glee in getting flustered. Allison is plain weird and generally ignored and Brian, the geek, is simply discounted by the others.

Something happens over the course of the movie. While their assignment of the day is to write an essay about how they see themselves, they actually learn things about each other that shatters their preconceptions. Each have their crosses to carry that seem invisible to others and each of them are a lot more than their stereotype. It is a process, but not a guided process. They fight, they shout, tease, mock, but they actually also listens, and that is the exciting thing. They all experience that when you start learning something about other people, it is very difficult to reduce them back to stereotypes.

Each character has a depth that we are unaware of going in and learning this depth, we the audience, are also listening and learning and getting an unexpected understanding of these young people. In hindsight we may think that their problems are predictable, but so what? To these children, they are deadly serious problems. It is why they are in detention, and they are uniquely able to mirror themselves in the issues the others are struggling with. They also realize that they can bond in unexpected ways. Their dance-off or their roaming through the school are good examples.

The question of whether this understanding and bonding is confined to this room or can be extended to the “real” outside world is popped by Brian: “What happens on Monday?”, but instead of the rose-hued, yes, we will all be friends, the five of them have no illusions. This doubt can be construed as depressing defeatism, but I see it as refreshing clarity. They are changed by this experience, maybe even profoundly, but on their own terms and without obligations.

I had a discussion with my wife on whether the movie has aged well. My point was (and is) that these issues are universal and change hair and cloth fashion, this movie could be made today, that it has aged very well indeed. Her argument was that this movie would be wasted on youth today. That the depth and pace and sentiment of the movie would be too deep, to slow and too profound for the tik-tok generation. She may be right and that saddens me greatly. In the compartmentalized world today of echo chambers, the central message of going beyond type and actually listen, is sorely needed. “The Breakfast Club” is an excellent exponent of it and I would encourage any teenager (anybody, really) to watch it.

The five actors became known as the brat-pack and “The Breakfast Club” springboarded them into excellent Hollywood careers. Checking their filmographies you get lists great movies and tv-series over the past forty years. And John Hughes? Well, he was the king of the teenage movie, a status he still holds, fifteen years after his death.

If you have not watched “The Breakfast Club”, you need to fix that gap immediately.  

 

The Natural (1984)

 

The Natural

The last movie on the List from 1984 is “The Natural”, a big and crafty production that I had some problems following and one I would be the wrong person rate.

Roy Hobbs (Robert Redford) is (at first) a young farm boy with some skill for the game of baseball. On the way to a “tryout” with a professional team, Hobbs makes himself be noticed and upon arrival in Chicago he is shot by a woman he met on the train.

Fast forward 16 years (to 1939) Hobbs starts playing for the New York Knights. The manager, Pop Fisher (Wilford Brimley), is convinced that the unknown player in his mid-thirties is a bad joke, but the team is losing game after game and eventually he gets the chance. Hobbs takes it and proves himself an excellent player (I suppose).

This makes Hobbs a problem for a guy called “The Judge” (Robert Prosky). In a deal with Pop Fisher, he will take over the team if the Knights does not win the tournament (?). The Judge is a dirty guy so he has rigged the game by paying off certain players, so the team keeps losing. Hobbs must be stopped. First the Judge tries to pay off Hobbs. This fails. Then he sends him in the arms of Memo Paris (Kim Basinger). This works much better, Hobbs cannot focus on the game. Then appears childhood friend Iris Gaines (Glenn Close), the spell is broken, and he can play again. As a third resort, Memo poisons Hobbs. This almost works. Only by a heroic effort and risking his life can Hobbs join the final, decisive game.

I know absolutely nothing about baseball. In Denmark, that game is non-existent. The little I recognize is what I have picked up from movies and that only go as far as “try to hit the ball”. The Natural is very much a sports movie and I understand it is trying to celebrate the sport. That means there are entire passages of baseball in the movie, a lot of talk about details of the game and references to a culture around it, all of which are completely alien to me. Anything that relates to the game of baseball I will therefore henceforth refrain to comment upon. Needless to say, “The Natural” was never released in Denmark and I never watched it before.

Fortunately, I do think the game itself is not at the core of the story. I see it as a story about guy with a dream that he never gave up on, even if it looked impossible. It is a story about loving that dream above all else and not be corrupted to betray the dream. Robert Redford’s Roy Hobbs is that down-to-Earth dreamer who wants to chase that dream before it is too late, and he does it with charm and an almost aloof saintliness. If anything, he is too clean, but very, very likable.

It is also a movie about corruption in professional sports. Match fixing, bookmaking scams and dirty transactions in order to make money on other people’s passion. As I understand it, this not a new story and very likely still going on, but placing the story in an age of gangsters and dodgy characters, I suppose we accept it as part of the times.

I tried to find out if this was in any way a real story, but only got as far as this being based on a novel. It seems like a story that could be based on real characters and that would be interesting I suppose, but as it stands it is a fable about the above themes, and it works fine as that. I do not find the story particularly revolutionary, but it is nice to watch a movie with a guy you can really root for and see him come through in the end. Maybe a bit predictable, but nice.

There are a lot of famous actors here, such as Robert Duvall and news reporter Max Mercy, and even a very early part for Michael Madsen You can tell this is a big production and I sense a lot of production quality here. My guess is that this ranks high for fans of baseball. For me, it was merely a decent movie featuring a sport I do not understand.

     

Beverly Hills Cop (1984)

 

Frækkere end politiet tillader

“Beverly Hills Cop” is another 1984 classic, which, to my pleasant surprise, actually made it onto the List. This is a movie I watched countless time in my childhood, but I believe it must have been a few decades since last time I watched it. It is still fun to watch, but I remember it as being much better than how I found it now. To me, it has not aged well.

In Detroit, Axel Foley (Eddie Murphy) is an undercover police officer who is known for his controversial stunts that sometimes backfires. One evening he finds an old friend of his, Mikey Tandino (James Russo), in his apartment. Mikey clearly has something he wants to share with Axel, but never gets to fully explain before he gets shot and Axel knocked out by unknown gunmen.

Axel Foley is told in no uncertain terms to stay out of this case, so he takes “vacation” and follow Michaels trail to Beverly Hills. This is right here the basis for much of the comedy in “Beverly Hills Cop”, the bummed out, black policeman in uber posh Beverly Hills. Anybody familiar with Eddie Murphy will know this is a situation he can get a lot out of (a good example is “Trading Places”).

Axel quickly manages to get arrested by the local police who do not wish to have this potential disaster in their precinct. Detective William Rosewood (Judge Reinhold) and Sergeant John Taggart (John Ashton) are to babysit him until he leaves town, but Axel manages to get them on his side to find Mikeys murderer. The murder is, of course, only the tip of an iceberg of much bigger crime...

As a crime story, “Beverly Hills Cop” is one big cliché. Everything from the villain to Axel’s angry boss through the investigation, which is a combo unlawful entry and sheer provocation, is something we have seen both before and after in many versions. Be it a private eye or an actual police detective, the story is almost as old as the film media. Let us just say that it is not the excitement of solving the criminal case that keeps us awake watching this movie.

The reason we, or at least I, still enjoy watching this movie has a name and is called Eddie Murphy. It is strange to learn that “Beverly Hills Cop” was not actually written for Murphy, but actually intended for Sylvester Stallone. It was only when the action his version would involve got too expensive for the studio that they turned to Eddie Murphy and rewrote it to fit him. When you watch “Beverly Hills Cop”, it screams vehicle to high heaven. Every scene Eddie Murphy is in, and that is somewhere above 90%, he totally steals the picture. Reinhold and Ashton, good actors in their own right, are reduced to stooges for Murphy’s hijinks. Fortunately, Eddie Murphy is good and many of his stunts are funny. He is maybe a bit unbelievable as a cop, but, hey, this is the eighties, social realism got left behind in the previous decade.

Three or four decades ago, “Beverly Hills Cop” gave me hysterical laughing fits. Watching it now, they are reduced to a chuckle and that I found disappointing. The gags are simply not that funny anymore and without the fun, the rest of the movie looks poor and barely sticking together.

The soundtrack is still good though. Faltermeyer’s Axel F theme is one of those classic scores you never forget and in a strange coincidence, “The Heat is Up” was selected last Friday at the company Christmas lunch as the theme song of the Energy Systems department... This music still lives.

Recently, a new, fourth, Beverly Hills Cop instalment was released. I have not watched it yet and I worry. This was a franchise that took a steep downhill after the success of this first instalment.

 

The Killing Fields (1984)

 

The Killing Fields

This took a long time to get through. Not because it is bad but because it is devastating to watch. “The Killing Fields” pulls no punches and leaves you an emotional wreck. It also makes you loose hope in humankind.

Sydney Schanberg (Sam Waterston) is a New York Times journalist working in Cambodia together with photographer Al Rockoff (John Malkovich) and interpreter Dith Pran (Haing S. Ngor). It is 1973 and Cambodia is a mess. We see them cover what looks like a US airstrike and being somewhat at odds with the American presence in the country. Fast forward to 1975, the Khmer Rouge is taking the capital and Pran gets his family evacuated while the trio stays to cover events. Pran saves the two Americans from being killed by the Khmer Rouge, but when the city, including the French embassy where all westerners are interred, is emptied of Cambodians, they fail to protect Pran who is taken away to a work camp.

Back in the America Scharnberg drives a campaign to find and rescue Pran but to little avail. He also takes care of Pran’s family. Meanwhile, Pran is experiencing life under Khmer Rouge from the inside. He witnesses the destruction of society, the corruption of children and mass slaughter of civilians. In the agrarian-maoist system of the Khmer Rouge, anybody with a hint of education is suspect and Pran survives by pretending to be a very simple person.

“The Killing Fields” tells two stories. The apparent story of Scharnberg and Pran is the human interest story that the plot is hung up on. It is compelling because of the nightmare Pran goes through, but the quest of Scharnberg to pin the misfortunes of the Cambodians on the US government is rather unconvincing. Or, rather, Scharnberg himself is convincing in his almost religious zeal, but compared to the US fumbling in Vietnam, the actions in Cambodia seems trivial. If anything, it would be the inaction that is the problem here.

The second story is the tragedy of Cambodia itself. The complete meltdown and destruction is described both in poignant detail and confused context, leaving the viewer in bewildered horror of the sheer brutality of what happened. It is to my mind one of very few movies to describe this tragedy and that is just way too little. Yet, “The Killing Fields” makes up for this lack up public attention by driving the point all the way in. We see it in the small with casual executions and the complete disregard for the value of human life and in the massive scale of mass murder. When Pran walks through a swamp littered with the rotting remains of thousands of people we start to grasp the scale of this insanity and it forces you to really look while all you want is to look away. This is mass graves where not even the grave is offered. We also see it in the faces of children, the dehumanization that on a mass scale turn children into monsters. This is heartbreak in the extreme and I would have to press stop and wait another day to continue.

We see it all, mutilated bodies, executions, maimed children, despair and suffering. This is documentary, but shows us details documentaries would balk at. It is soul-numbing and yet you feel every punch. It manages to tell us that each of these millions of dead is a heartbreaking tragedy, yet is disposed of as casually as if it was a videogame by the Khmer Rouge.

I am hopelessly uninformed about the Cambodian tragedy. I tried to read up on it for this movie, but I cannot say I understand much of the politics involved. Something about that the Khmer Rouge was backed by China, who also backed Northern Vietnam, yet the Vietnamese and the Khmer Rouge were fighting it out between them. But all this matters little and even less for the movie. What matters is the complete corruption of humanity and the devastating tragedy.

Haing S. Ngor was a doctor in Cambodia before the civil war and spent four years in captivity. In his role as Pran, he was in a sense reliving the nightmare of his life and I cannot help thinking that this is why he is so convincing, and I wonder how it felt to him to go through all that again.

I am also very impressed with how real and authentic all this looks. In an age before CGI, we see details that you can only think of as being real, yet it cannot be, can it? Impressive and scary.

“The Killing Fields” won 3 Academy awards, including an acting award for Haing S Ngor, and was nominated for another 4. All very deserved.

It will take some time to get over this. Not for the faint hearted.

     

Stranger than Paradise (1984)

 

Stranger Than Paradise

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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