His Hair was Perfect

Film: Wolf
Format: Streaming video from Tubi TV on Fire!.

There’s something very teenager-y about a lot of the classic movie monsters. Nowhere is that more the case than with werewolves. Werewolves are the ultimate teenagers—they get filled with urges that they can’t control and they sprout hair all over their bodies. The fact that in Wolf it happens to a late-50s Jack Nicholson is beside the point. The fact that he becomes more or less a creature of his urges like the average horny 16-year-old boy is what makes it a classic werewolf story.

New York book editor Will Randall (Nicholson) is driving in New England and hits a wolf with his car. This is very much out of the normal range for wolves, and when he gets out to check on the animal, he is bitten. In a movie called Wolf, you can pretty much bet that the wolf that bit him wasn’t a normal wolf, and of course that’s going to be the case. We also discover that the publisher he works for has just been purchased by a billionaire named Raymond Alden (Christopher Plummer), who is making some changes. One of those changes is offering Will a significant demotion or no job; Will is being replaced by his protégé Stewart Swinton (James Spader). This is also where Will meets Laura Alden (Michelle Pfeiffer), Raymond’s wayward daughter.

Nuke 'Em 'Til They Glow

Film: Silkwood
Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

Intellectually, I know that Silkwood is based on the real life of Karen Silkwood. That doesn’t stop the film from feeling like it was written specifically to punch a hole in the nuclear power industry. This movie is Norma Rae with drawn weapons. It’s a film that benefits greatly from a script handled by the great Nora Ephron and a couple of gritty performances including the most understated performance of Cher’s career. It’s a hard movie not to like even if it constantly feels manipulative.

Karen Silkwood (Meryl Streep) works at a nuclear plant in Oklahoma. It should be a place of high security, but it seems to be essentially a factory. The plant is a fuel fabrication site where she makes plutonium fuel rods for nuclear reactors. The plant is behind schedule, forcing everyone to work double shifts, and corners are being cut on almost every aspect of safety. The constant threat of exposure to radiation leads Karen to become involved in the union, much to the consternation of her live-in boyfriend Drew (Kurt Russell) and her other live-in friend, Dolly (Cher).

Mother and Daughter

Film: Postcards from the edge
Format: ThisTV Chicago on rockin’ flatscreen.

Right around the time she was in Terms of Endearment Shirley MacLaine began a string of films in which her defining character trait was to be as intensely annoying and self-absorbed as possible. This is a role she seems to have perfected by the time she got to her supporting role in Postcards from the Edge. Fortunately, she’s only in a supporting role here and we spend the bulk of our time with the incomparable Meryl Streep. Unfortunately, it’s a major supporting role, so we’ll still be spending a great deal of time watching Shirley MacLaine essentially play the same character she has over and over yet again.

Postcards from the Edge is based on Carrie Fisher’s semi-autobiographical novel of the same name. The book (which I haven’t read—I’m reporting what I’ve heard here) is about drug addiction, the movie industry, and the relationship between a drug-addicted actress living in the shadow of her ridiculously famous mother. Fisher is the daughter of Debbie Reynolds and also had a drug addiction issue. So there are certainly parallels here between her real life and the film. However, that’s not really important in judging the film itself.

Hail to the Chief

Film: Primary Colors
Format: Streaming video from Hoopla Digital on The Nook.

There are a good number of political dramas on the various Oscars lists that I’m watching. I don’t generally seek them out, but Primary Colors is one that I actually saw in the theater. I remember it; my wife was about five months pregnant with our first daughter and I was pretty much willing to do anything to keep her happy. This is the first I’ve seen it in 17 years, and yet I remember specific things about the film. That bodes either good or ill, depending.

Fortunately, it bodes pretty well. I remembered Primary Colors favorably, and I liked it on this watch, too. This is more or less the story of the governor of an unnamed small Southern state running for president in the 1990s. The governor, Jack Stanton (John Travolta) seems to connect well with the general population. His wife Susan (Emma Thompson) is emotionally damaged but tough. He appears honest, caring, and forthright. He’s also an inveterate womanizer with scandals bubbling up, allegations of drug use, and was a draft dodger during the Vietnam War. In other words, this is more or less the story of the first Clinton campaign without it being specifically called that overtly.

Working Girl

Format: DVD from NetFlix on laptop.

You know how you can tell when a movie is from the seventies by looking at the wardrobes of the people in it? By the same token, you can tell that Working Girl is straight out of the 1980s. It’s not the wardrobe specifically, but the hair. Working Girl features the most ‘80s hair in film history. It’s difficult to fault the film for that, but it’s very difficult to ignore the fact that, for example, Joan Cusak is a good six inches taller with the hairdo. Come to think of it, it’s difficult to ignore her three-toned eye shadow as well.

So how to explain Working Girl? Working Girl is what Wall Street would be if you swapped genders and made it a rom-com. Sort of. Actually, that’s very much selling the film short, because Working Girl is smarter than that. Still, in addition to the big ‘80s hair and shoulder pads and garish eye makeup, this is a film that is heavily mired in the 1980s corporate environment of acquisitions, mergers, and corporate raiding. It’s going too far to call it a quintessential ‘80s film, but it’s certainly one worth pointing at as a solid way to define the decade.

Family Gatherings Must Be Weird

Film: The Graduate
Format: DVD from Rockford Public Library on kick-ass portable DVD player.

Certain films slip under everyone’s radar. Every film geek and snob has a film or two that they haven’t yet seen for one reason or another. Me? I have a whole list of those films. One of the ones at the top was The Graduate until just now. For the generation before mine, the older section of the Baby Boomers specifically, this is a pivotal film in many ways. One could argue it as one of the most important films for that generation pre-Woodstock, and I don’t think that argument would be amiss.

Because it is such a pivotal and important film, it’s a difficult one for me to judge, because I my initial response to this film is to dislike it mildly rather than be completely enraptured by it the way I’m supposed to be. It’s kind of icky. It’s supposed to be a blend of comedy and drama, and I get that it could be seen that way, but so much of it is unpleasant that I have trouble seeing it that way. It’s not unpleasant in the way a number of films I’ve seen in the past two years is, but there is sort of an oily film over it.

Benjamin Braddock (Dustin Hoffman) has just returned from college where he was quite the big man on campus. Now back, he is completely without direction, uninterested in getting a job and unequally uninterested in graduate school. He’s also very young—a college graduate and about a week from turning 21. At a party celebrating his return, he offers a ride home to Mrs. Robinson (Anne Bancroft), who attempts to seduce him and tells him that she is “available” to him whenever he wishes. Just to make things jolly and fun, her husband (Murray Hamilton, immediately identifiable by his voice) is the law partner of Ben’s dad (William Daniels).

This goes on for awhile. Ben drifts aimlessly (and quite literally in the family swimming pool) and has copious amounts of sex with Mrs. Robinson. He discovers that he really has nothing in common with her. She’s essentially a bored housewife who drinks and smokes constantly and is looking for a little something more in her life, thus Benjamin. Ben, on the other hand, is pretty much disgusted with himself for sleeping with his father’s partner’s wife, but can’t break away because he doesn’t have anything else to do. This changes when he is forced to take the Robinsons’ daughter Elaine (Katherine Ross) out on a date. After a very rocky start, the two end up falling for each other, making one creepy and strange love/sex triangle. Like I said, there’s sort of a film of oil on this movie.

And yet, in a very real way, I understand exactly what all of the hoopla is about. Liking this movie is all about the “when.” This is a movie that needs to be seen at a particular point in life, at a particular time or age, and I’m well past it. It reminds me in many ways of The Catcher in the Rye. People who read that book at 15 or so love it and identify with Holden Caulfield for the rest of their lives. I read that book in my 20s and wondered what all of the fuss was about. Furthermore, I wanted to reach into the pages and bitchslap that little snot.

And that, for me, is The Graduate. I’m in my 40s now, and find nothing appealing or interesting about these characters. Benjamin Braddock is a creep, a jerk. He does little but feel sorry for himself and whine about it. The world essentially gets handed to him on a plate, and none of it is good enough or interesting enough to do anything for him. Elaine is a mush and a bit of a twit, a pretty face with nothing behind it. And Mrs. Robinson is, bluntly, a selfish bitch.

But here’s the thing: all of that is completely intentional. I get precisely what the point of this film is, I think, or at least a possible reading of everything in it that makes coherent sense. I’m not going to say that everybody else has it wrong, but I will say that the people who find Ben appealing and somehow laudable have it dead wrong. He’s a punk and he’s supposed to be a punk. Ben does nothing but screw up, and that’s exactly what he’s supposed to do here. The film isn’t about Ben “rescuing” Elaine or about the affair with Mrs. Robinson, or Oedipal issues. It’s about listless people adrift in the world doing things because they can’t think of anything else to do. Ben and Elaine and Mrs. Robinson are pitiful and pitiable because they can’t really be anything else.

And so, for that, this film is genius.

I don’t love this film, and I’m not sure at this point if I even like it. I do, however, respect the hell out of what Mike Nichols has accomplished with it. He has, for lack of a better word, tapped into that feeling of ennui, that complete lack of a point that everyone experiences at one time or another. Everyone is Ben Braddock at some point in life.

I’m not that guy anymore, although I’ve certainly been him in the past. I think if I had watched this film during those years of my life, I may well have placed this as one of my favorite movies ever. I’d see Ben Braddock as something of a hero, or at least as a sort of cinematic spirit guide. But I missed my chance. And so this will remain a film for which I will have a deep and abiding respect, but it’s platonic. Try as I might, I just can’t love it.

As a final note, almost all of the most famous moments from this film come in the first 20 minutes. It's kind of a letdown when everything you know of a film happens right away; it's almost like there's nothing to look forward to.

Why to watch The Graduate: Arguably the most iconic film of the 1960s, and everyone borrows from it.
Why not to watch: There’s something unappealing about the characters and especially the situation.

Marriage Gone Bad

Films: Ucho (The Ear); Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf
Format: Internet video on laptop (Ucho); DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.

[These two reviews have been included as a part of Pussy Goes Grrr's Juxtaposition Blogathon!]

I find films that take place behind the Iron Curtain fascinating. I can’t help it. There’s something about them that I instantly find compelling. I’m sure the reason for this is that the ones that I get a chance to see tend to be the better ones—the bad ones don’t get exported. Regardless, it’s undeniable that I find the existence of people in that sort of repressive, overwhelming environment riveting.

Ucho (The Ear) is a Czech film that fits this description perfectly. While there are a number of bit parts in this film, and a few people who become prominent for about 10 minutes in the middle, the bulk of the film centers entirely around two people, a married couple. These are Ludvik (Radoslav Brzobohaty), a government official and his wife Anna (Jirina Bohdalova), the hard-drinking daughter of a pub owner. As the film starts, the pair is returning home from a party, but their gate is locked, and neither one appears to have the key. Eventually, they get into the house, and they discover that things are…different.

The power is out, for one thing. So is the phone. Things are missing, or are subtly moved around. This, coupled with some remembered conversations at the party causes the couple to start moving much more warily around the house. Ludvik’s superior has been arrested along with several other men in the same government area that he works in. Naturally, the question that Ludvik is asking is whether or not he’s next. Anna doesn’t seem too concerned with what will happen to Ludvik aside from the fact that it will affect her life greatly—and she is concerned about that. And both are convinced that while they were at the party, bugs have been planted in the house.

What we see as the film progresses is all of the frustrations of the last ten years of this marriage boil up to the surface and break open, aided by the intense paranoia and fear that Ludvik might be dragged off to prison for any reason at any minute. We learn, for instance, that Anna’s drinking isn’t simply because of the party; she drinks all the time anyway and would probably be drunk even without the party. We learn that it’s likely that Ludvik consented to marriage with the wanton Anna rather than his virginal former girlfriend because Anna came with a sizable dowry.

What is most fascinating to me in this film, especially because of how effective and believable it is, is how quickly Ludvik and Anna go from anger and hatred to mutual protection. As their feelings bubble out, it’s easy to think that there is no love lost between them; this is especially true when Ludvik becomes abusive of his wife. And yet, every time there is evidence of tampering in the home, or every time one of the pair thinks of something possibly incriminating, they immediately bond together. Anna yells at him for burning files in the bathroom and throwing them in the toilet, but immediately takes over and does the same thing when he takes a break.

The “ear” in this film isn’t a literal one but a figurative one. These are the spying devices most likely planted around the home to catch conversations that might well go against Czech policy or otherwise contradict the country’s leader. Throughout the bulk of the film, we simply assume that these exist somewhere in the film’s world. This in turn makes the conversations between our two characters highly charged emotionally, but also filled with hyperbole, double-speak, and a lot of veiled allusions to what is probably going on around them.

The end (which I won’t reveal) is chilling.

Ucho was suppressed the minute it finished filming. The film did not get a release until 1989 despite being made in 1970. It is hardly surprising that the Czech government suppressed this film, since it’s hardly a positive portrait of anything going on in Czechoslovakia. It’s a worthy film, though, and intense enough to still be more interesting than a film with two people walking around their house has any right to be.

The film that Ucho is most commonly compared with is Mike Nichols’s debut, Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf? for the marital dynamics, not the who “suppression by the government with bugs” thing. And, boy! There sure are some similarities here! George (Richard Burton) and Martha (Elizabeth Taylor) are a married couple who have two pastimes—they drink and they fight with each other. George is a history professor at a small college and Martha is the daughter of the university president. After a party at her father’s house, Martha has invited a new professor named Nick (George Segal) and his wife, who goes by Honey (Sandy Dennis) back to their house so everyone can keep drinking.

What results is less a film with a plot and more a set of character studies, with the characters studied being the marriages. George and Martha have a marriage that consists of aggression fueled by drinking and drinking caused by unbridled aggression. They do nothing but pick at each other constantly, attempt to embarrass each other and attempt to break each other mentally and emotionally. As the film goes on, it’s not so much that cracks appear in the marriage, but that the marriage appears to be nothing but cracks.

What becomes evident quickly is that Nick’s and Honey’s marriage is also riddled with cracks that they were unaware of. Nick is relentlessly and aggressively ambitious, and will not hesitate to sleep his way to the top with the daughter of the university president. That’s Martha, for those of you playing along at home. And Honey seems to have a thing for brandy.

We learn all of the dirty details of these people in the course of the evening. We learn that George has been a part of the history department at the college for years, but will never be in charge of the history department because he doesn’t have the ambition, drive, or talent to head the department. In Martha’s eyes, this makes him a failure and completely worthless. We learn eventually that Martha’s world is one of dark fantasy. Her pleasures are one overriding fantasy and her constant cruelty of her husband.

What makes this film work, though, is that through all of this—through all of the horror and pain of this terrible, twisted relationship, these two people are entirely dependent on each other. They cannot survive without each other. George genuinely loves Martha, something she freely admits. She also admits that she isn’t worthy of it, and that some day she will push things too far and that this twisted life will come crashing down—and that it’s what she deserves.

This is a difficult film, one that I feel enriched in having seen, but one that I will probably not watch again for a very long time. It is brutal and unrelenting, a punishing film that seems intended to push boundaries as far as they could go in 1966. It succeeds in doing this, too. It’s a compelling watch—it’s just ugly to see these people go to smash in front of us.

The movie is based on the Edward Albee play of the same name, and it’s pretty faithful in general. While it has certainly been staged a number of times, I can’t envision it being staged more effectively than this filmed version. All four of the performances rank among the best of the respective players’ careers. Consider how rare it is to have four actors simultaneously perform at the tops of their respective games on the same days. For no other reason, this film is worth watching for that. It’s punishing and awful, but it is awful in the original sense of the word.

Why to watch Ucho: It’s tense as hell.
Why not to watch: The world it depicts is mostly gone.

Why to watch Who’s Afraid of Virginia Woolf?: It’s a classic for a reason.
Why not to watch: Being around drunk people for a long time kinda sucks.