Mythbusters

Films: Orphee (Orpheus); Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus)
Format: VHS from Blackhawk College Library through interlibrary loan on big ol’ television (Orpheus); streaming video from NetFlix on laptop (Black Orpheus).

As a kid, I was fascinated by Greek myth. Of course, I was more attracted to the violent myths filled with heroes and monsters than I was to the more love-oriented myths, but even these I found interesting. More than anything, I was struck by how unfair many of the myths seemed and how tragic a number of them were. People repeatedly got caught up in things much larger than they were and ended up crushed by these forces. Such is the myth of Orpheus, which has been filmed several times.

In the most famous version of the myth, Orpheus is the greatest poet and musician in the world, so talented that animals stopped to listen and trees and rocks came alive and danced. He and his wife Eurydice loved each other completely, but a satyr was taken with her beauty and pursued her. Eurydice fell into a nest of vipers and was killed, causing Orpheus to fall into a terrible depression. His playing convinces Hades to release Eurydice back to life, but only on the condition that Orpheus does not look at her on the trip back. The two wander through the Underworld until they reach the exit, when Orpheus glances back, losing Eurydice forever. Swearing off women forever, he is eventually torn to pieces by the maenads (followers of Dionysus), and his head—still singing—floats down a river on his lyre. Gruesome, and kind of cool.


A myth like this one is ripe for interpretation, and in the 1950s, it was interpreted at least twice. First is Jean Cocteau’s Orphee (Orpheus), the middle film of his Orphic Trilogy. Cocteau takes a great deal of liberty with the basic story here, covering the Orpheus and Eurydice myth only on its edges in that we do have a character named Orpheus, he’s married to Eurydice, and there’s some death going on here. But Cocteau decides to essentially rewrite the myth in this version. Here, and this is a great indication that this isn’t taking place in Eisenhower’s America, Orpheus (Jean Marais) is a poet and is renowned enough to have groupies. However, he has fallen somewhat out of favor with the locals. The new poetic flavor of the month is a young man named Cegeste (Eduoard Dermithe).

In a brawl at a café (which sounds like a contradiction in terms, or that “brawl” is to sound more masculine than poets hurling epithets at each other), Cegeste is killed when he is run down in the street by a pair of motorcyclists. His patron (Maria Casares) who is considered a princess but is actually Death takes the body of the young poet back to her house, bringing Orpheus with her as a witness. However, since she is actually death, she takes Cegeste into the underworld, leaving Orpheus with her chauffeur/dead guy servant Heurtebise (Francois Perier).

This sets up one of the strangest love trapezoids ever conceived. Princess Death finds herself obsessed with Orpheus and visits his room every night. Orpheus is equally obsessed with Princess Death, essentially forgetting about his wife, Eurydice (Marie Dea). He’s also obsessed with a strange radio broadcast of nonsense sentences that, as it turns out, are the poetry of Cegeste (as well as a nod to the BBC broadcasts during WWII to the French Resistance). Heurtebise finds himself enthralled with Eurydice. For both Princess Death and Heurtebise, loving a mortal is a terrible crime, and they risk severe punishment.

Eventually, giving in on her impulses, Death sends her motorcycle assassins to kill Eurydice, and she takes her to the Underworld. Orpheus follows, but it’s evident that he isn’t necessarily following to bring Eurydice back to the world of the living, but because of his obsession with Princess Death.

It’s damn strange. Death frees Orpheus from his bonds to her, and a tribunal in the Underworld allows Eurydice to return to the living, but only if Orpheus never looks at her again. Should he see her, she will die. And then…

*** HEADING TO THE UNDERWORLD ***

It’s revealed that all of this is a dream. Eurydice wakes up and she’s alive, and Orpheus is alive, and they’re going to have a child. However, since we essentially witness Orpheus return from the Underworld through reversed film (which is actually quite effective here), it’s evident that it’s not really a dream, but is being perceived as a dream. It feels like a dream and everyone calls it a dream, but it happened, and there are real consequences for Princess Death and Heurtebise.

*** BACK TO THE LIVING ***

Cocteau’s film is strange and unnerving. He does very interesting work with mirrors throughout the film, mirrors being the way to enter the Underworld. Despite the film’s age, the effect of going through the mirrors is interesting and still works pretty well. I’m less sure that the entire film works, though. It’s a difficult film to understand, particularly with the surrealist elements that take up much of its space. It is visually interesting, but I like my myths as they are, thank you very much. I’d prefer my Orpheus story to stick as close to the original as possible.


This, more than anything, is why I was not disappointed with Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus). Marcel Camus’s film sticks very closely to the original myth, keeping much of the story the same but modernized. It’s the setting that makes this film something special, though. Rather than dreary cafes and bombed-out ruins from World War II, Orfeu Negro takes place in Rio de Janeiro during Carnival. Even better, it’s in color. This isn’t a knock against Cocteau’s film—the black and white of that film is crisp and suits the mood. But here, in Brazil during the craziest festival of the year, it’s color all the way.

Our main character is, naturally, Orfeo (Breno Mello), a streetcar driver who also plays the guitar and writes his own music. As with the mythical Orpheus, he is greatly loved by all of the women in the area. He is attached to Mira (Lourdes de Oliveira), a pretty but extremely high-maintenance woman who demands that Orfeo marry her. At the same time, Eurydice arrives in Rio on the run from a man she is convinced is trying to kill her. She meets Orfeu briefly, but leaves to find her cousin, Serafina (Lea Garcia), who happens to live next door to Orfeu.

Despite Orfeu’s connection to Mira and Mira’s demands on him, Orfeu finds himself attracted to Eurydice, and he quickly realizes that Mira is far too demanding, mean, and unpleasant. He spends a magical night with Eurydice, much to Mira’s anger. The next day is Carnival. Serafina wishes to spend the day with her boyfriend, and convinces Eurydice to take her place in the costume. This way, Serafina gets what she wants, and Eurydice can spend the day dancing with Orfeu on the streets of Rio. The veil helps with this, and it helps to keep Eurydice out of the sights of the man who wants to kill her, who has followed her, and is dressed as a skeleton.

Since this story follows the myth quite closely, this means that Eurydice is doomed, as is the love between her and Orfeu. It’s here that Camus gets the most inventive. Charon, the boatman, is represented here as a government official in the bureau of missing persons, and he leads Orfeu to the morgue where Eurydice’s body lays. When Orfeu tries to make contact with his love, he does so at an Obeah ceremony. An old woman is inhabited by Eurydice’s spirit, and disappears when Orfeu turns to look at her.

The sell for this movie is the glory of the carnival—the costumes, the dancing, and the music. It’s truly something to see, and frequently, the film continues on a scene of dancing and music after our principal characters have left the area.

There are other nice touches throughout the film. When Orfeu plays his guitar for a pair of young boys, the boys silence the animals in the area so that they can enjoy the music, a nice reminder of the original myth. The boys also ask if it is true that Orfeu sings to the sun in the morning to cause it to rise, and he admits that he does. He also tells the boys that he is not the original Orpheus, and that when he is gone, another will take his place. This comment is realized in the final shot of the film.

This film is truly special and beautiful. Some shots go on a little too long, and the non-stop music and dancing can be wearying. Regardless, Orfeu Negro is a visual delight, and the fact that it stays true to its source material intelligently is an added bonus.

Why to watch Orphee: A unique take on a classic myth.
Why not to watch: Utter confusion for most of it.

Why to watch Orfeu Negro: A vibrant retelling that sticks to the main themes and plot of the original myth.
Why not to watch: Some scenes go on too long.

The Butler Did It

Film: My Man Godfrey
Format: DVD from personal collection on kick-ass portable DVD player.


No one has ever told me that I don’t think enough. Especially when it comes to things like film, I have a tendency to overthink, to read too much into what I’m seeing than I should. Freud is alleged to have once said, “Sometimes a cigar is just a cigar,” a reminder of which I need a frequent reminder. When I see a film like My Man Godfrey, I tend to spend too much time thinking about it and not nearly enough time simply enjoying it for what it is.

I can’t help that. Because of this, what should be a little happy-go-lucky screwball comedy becomes, in my world, a film closer in many ways to tragedy. It suffers from the necessity of a Hollywood happy ending, which turns the film from a subversive little comedy into something it shouldn’t be. Essentially, the wrong people win here. The film builds up to what should be a completely devastating commentary on the social and economic situation of the Great Depression…and then it punks out and gives in at the end.

We start with the Bullocks, a sort of quintessential screwball comedy family: dad (gravel-voiced and tubby Eugene Pallette), mom (Alice Brady), older daughter Cornelia (Gail Patrick), and younger daughter Irene (Carole Lombard). The women are participating in a scavenger hunt, out with the rest of the posh crowd looking for things that, as we are told, no one really wants. One of these things is a “forgotten man.” Cornelia spots a transient living in the city dump and wants to bring him along, but he pushes her into an ash pile. Instead, he wanders back to the party with Irene, winning her the prize for being the first one in with a human being for everyone to poke at and make fun of, and he leaves, justifiably outraged at being put on display as an object d’arte for rich people. However, Irene realizes exactly how degrading this process has been, and offers the man a job as a butler, and gives him some money to clean himself up.

This man is Godfrey (William Powell), who actually comes from a rather posh Boston family, but has dropped out of society for a variety of reasons. He takes the job and proves to be an admirable butler, since he’s the type who grew up with a butler and thus knows what is expected. He interacts with the family in a variety of ways. Irene has fallen desperately in love with him, and tries to mask this by claiming that he is her protégé. Cornelia aspires to be suspicious of Godfrey, but really manages little more than trying to spite her sister because she can. Mom is deliriously stupid and barely able to handle a conversation, while Dad does nothing but complain about money, hint at the family fortune being pissed through, and complain.

The middle act concerns both Irene’s desperate cry for attention from Godfrey and Cornelia’s attempts to, essentially, destroy the man for no reason other than the fact that Irene is infatuated with him and because she can do it. She learns that Godfrey actually has a past in society and she hides a string of her own pearls in Godfrey’s room, hoping to get him arrested when she claims they have been stolen. She’s foiled in this, a moment in which Irene takes nearly psychotic pleasure.

All of this builds up to what should be an incredibly satisfying conclusion. This is wry and intelligent social commentary up until the last fifteen minutes or so. Godfrey is a real man, a man who has seen the world from both sides of the glass. The wealthy Bullocks have absolutely no concept that other people have nothing. They question not that Godfrey was found living in the city dump, but why he would “choose” to live there, as if he had a choice at the time. Had La Cava stuck to his guns on this, My Man Godfrey could have been a real commentary on what the experience of real people was like at the time. But pressures from the studio or a necessity to stick with the formula gives us a formulaic happy ending to the point where Godfrey is essentially captured in marriage not of his choosing at the end, and a return to the society he escaped from in the first place.

And so, ultimately, I find this movie infuriating. I should have liked it and would have liked it had La Cava stuck with where he was going instead of making the turn into Happyville. It was close, but ultimately missed the runway and crashed on landing. Dang.

Why to watch My Man Godfrey: Screwball comedies are their own thing.
Why not to watch: An overwhelming desire to punch almost everyone on camera and an infuriating ending.

Don't Have to Ask, Don't Need to Tell

Film: Top Gun
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.


Once upon a time, just after I graduated from high school, when I was a Steve but not yet a Movie Guy, the movie Top Gun was released to a decent amount of critical acclaim. Back in those days, I was far more interested in drinking and having a good time than I was in watching film or intellectual pursuits. I went to see Top Gun with a group of my drinking buddies. The purpose wasn’t to watch the movie, but to “have a good time.” That being the case, we snuck a massive amount of beer into the theater. Thanks to my Army surplus pants and the liberal use of washcloths to deaden the clinking noises, I got in 18 Little Kings myself. I don’t remember much of the movie, although I do vaguely recall something having to do with airplanes.

Top Gun came right in the heart of Ronald Reagan’s second term in office, back in the heyday of the ‘80s when pro-America meant crapping on the poor, ignoring that AIDS existed, and building bigger and better weapons. I can’t help but imagine that this film gave Michael Bay his first cinematic hard-on and gave us all of the movies in his dubious canon. The intended message of this film, Kenny Logins soundtrack and all is undoubtedly one of American kickassitude and military superiority, and apple pie and the rest of that, although the real message is considerably different. We’ll get to that in a bit.

We’re introduced to our main character as he is flying. This is Maverick (Tom Cruise), a hotshot pilot of great skill and little impulse control and the man who sits behind him in the cockpit, a family man with the unfortunate callsign of Goose (Anthony Edwards). The two are flying a mission off an aircraft carrier with another plane headed by Cougar (John Stockwell) and Merlin (Tim Robbins…yes, that Tim Robbins). They encounter a couple of enemy MiGs, Maverick scares them off, Cougar loses his nerve and drops out of flying, and thanks to this, Maverick and Goose are sent off to Top Gun, the naval training school for the absolute best Navy pilots.

Once here, we meet a slough of character actors from the 1980s. Primary among these is Top Gun instructor Jester (Michael Ironside) and the winner of the first Top Gun trophy, Viper (Tom Skerrit). Maverick’s main competition at Top Gun is Iceman (Val Kilmer) and his backseat driver, Slider (Rick Rossovich). Maverick makes an ass out of himself in front of a woman at a bar, and she proves to be a civilian instructor codenamed Charlie (Kelly McGillis). Oh, and Goose is married to Carole (Meg Ryan). Seriously, all we need now is Stallone and Michael Biehn.

As Maverick and Goose hotshot around, we learn a number of things about them. We learn that Goose generally attempts to be Maverick’s conscience and fails miserably at it. We learn that Maverick acts the way he does in part because his father vanished in a jet under mysterious circumstances. We learn that Charlie can’t keep her hands off Maverick after he douches around her a lot. And we learn that as soon as we see a nice guy (Goose) happy, that we can expect him to die pretty soon after that, which is precisely what happens. It happens in a training mission when a freak incident happens that causes Maverick to lose control of his aircraft and Goose is killed when his ejection seat knocks him into his own canopy. The inquest clears Maverick of wrong doing, but of course he loses his nerve, and so for awhile we get to watch Tom Cruise act not like his typical self but as the Tom Cruise who doubts himself when suddenly everyone else believes in him. We’re supposed to flash back to Cougar at the start of the film here and think that it’s just possible that he’s lost his nerve for real…but of course he hasn’t.

And then, of course, there’s a real combat mission and the Navy needs Maverick and Iceman to fly it and everything works out, as if you didn’t know that going in. It’s a Tom Cruise movie from the mid 1980s, so no other ending was really possible.

Top Gun is Tom Cruise at his Tom Cruise-iest, his most douchey. It also features Val Kilmer at his douchiest as well. These are the guys who shoved band geeks into lockers in high school and got applause for doing so continuing to act like the world owes them everything they want. In short, it’s a film that could only have come from the time and place that it did.

The selling point for this movie wasn’t the ridiculous and straight out of Hollywood love story between Maverick and Charlie but the air combat sequences. These are pretty good if frequently confusing, but still pretty damn cool overall. I don’t really groove on airplanes that much, but there is a steroid-fuelled joy to watching stuff fly really fast, missiles launching, guns firing, and airplanes exploding.

That said, Top Gun is the most homoerotic film I have seen since I watched Satyricon last year. Iceman and Maverick hate the hell out of each other the way young boys show how much they hate girls by dumping their books. By the end of the film, they’re seconds away from dry humping each other on the flight deck. This is not the most homoerotic moment of the film, though; that happens when Maverick, Goose, Iceman, and Slider are playing beach volleyball shirtless (except for poor Anthony Edwards) while Kenny Logins sings “Playing with the Boys.” It’s gayer than a set of Paul Lynde Underoos, even more than the pilots walking around dressed in tighty-whiteys and towels or Val Kilmer making biting motions at Tom Cruise or the song over the credits singing about “blue steel” and “tak[ing] me on your mighty wings TONIIIIIIIIIIIIIIGHT.”

Honestly, I’m not surprised. Many of the most masculine things have this layer of homoeroticism in them, and the military is no different than wrestling in that regard. I just don’t remember it being this punch-in-the-face evident. Don’t ask, don’t tell, wink wink, nudge nudge.

Why to watch Top Gun: Flight sequences.
Why not to watch: Everything else.

What Not to Do in a Haunted House

Film: Paranormal Activity
Format: Streaming video from NetFlix on laptop.

Let’s talk about horror movies. It’s easy to classify horror movies in a bunch of different ways. One person, for instance, might classify them in terms of believability. A horror movie like Poltergeist ranks low on the believable scale while The Silence of the Lambs could possibly happen. They can be classified by the type of monster—slasher killer, zombie, vampire, etc. In my world, though, there are only two types of horror movie. There are movies in which the characters act intelligently and movies in which the characters act like idiots.

This brings us to Paranormal Activity, one of the newest entrants onto The List. This film is noteworthy because it’s another example of a film that made a truckload of cash on a shoestring of a shoestring budget, the entire thing being filmed for an alleged $15,000 and making something like $9 million in its first week. Those are numbers that make film execs sit up straight in their chairs.

This is the story of a young unmarried couple living in a starter home in San Diego. They’ve suddenly be plagued with what appears to be a haunting. We learn quickly that Katie (Katie Featherston) has experienced this before when she was a child and off and on since then. Her partner, Micah (Micah Sloat, and pronounced MEE-kah) is disturbed that he didn’t know anything about this before he moved in with Katie. They bring in an expert on the paranormal (Mark Fredrichs), who tells them that there is something going on and recommends that they don’t try to make contact with whatever entity is in the house—and that the entity is obviously focused on Katie.

Katie’s problem is that Micah is not taking things seriously. He takes things seriously enough to start filming things around the house, particularly their bedroom at night, and we soon start to see evidence that something is indeed going on. The door moves on its own accord one night, and another night they are awakened by a scream. Micah manages to record some EVP growls as well.

Things really start changing when it becomes evident that Katie spends some nights standing next to the bed staring at Micah. When Micah goes against her wishes and brings in a Ouija board, things start to change again. The planchette moves on its own and the board lights on fire for a few moments before going out. So there’s no question that there is something very dire going on in the house. Micah’s experiment with baby powder that reveals non-human footprints in the hallway shows that it’s likely that whatever is plaguing Katie is demonic.

And this is where I start to have issues with films like Paranormal Activity. With all of this evidence piling up that there is something going on in the house and with Katie, and their reaction to all of this is to stay in the house and continue to act like this is a problem that they can solve and work out on their own. In short, they act exactly like someone with an ounce of intelligence would not act; a sort of unnatural bravery that exists in movies and nowhere else.

Is the film scary? Certainly there are some parts of it that are decidedly creepy and disturbing. While made on a small budget with essentially first-time actors, the film is still professionally made and exhibits a level of quality that distinguishes it from an amateur production. From a personal standpoint, it helps that frequently the camera is placed on a tripod so I don’t have to live with the shaky camera thing, which tends to give me motion sickness (as in Blair Witch or Cloverfield). It’s not the low budget that bothers me here—it’s the way the people react to the events surrounding them.

In a film like this one, the characters in the film essentially deserve what they get. A horrible, terrifying, frightening event happens in their house in the middle of the night, and then they spend the next night in the same place, changing nothing. I understand why the parents in Poltergeist stay in the house; their daughter is missing. I don’t understand why Micah stays in the house at night with Katie, when everything seems to be connected to her. Both Katie and Micah deserve their fate.

This leaves me in something of a quandary. Oren Peli is a smart filmmaker, and this film is evidence of that. Rather than making it obvious that this is a film made on the cheap, he has created a film that looks far more expensive than it really is. Rather than making it obvious that this film was made with no budget, he works within the small budget he has. Paranormal Activity delivers scares in the old fashioned way, reminiscent of The Haunting in that for most of the film, nothing is shown and much is done with sound. That’s all to the good.

But the characters act so stupidly, so blindly walking into their fate, that I have trouble thinking they deserve better in the end. If Peli really wanted the ending he has on this film, he should have figured out a way to get there without giving Micah the self-preservation skills of a deficient lemming on the side of a cliff.

Why to watch Paranormal: Smart filmmaker.
Why not to watch: Dumb characters.

There's No Crying in Baseball

Film: Bull Durham
Format: DVD from personal collection on big ol’ television.


I’ve been making a concerted effort this month to really work on getting through not only some difficult films, but ones that are difficult to find and difficult to watch. I’ve been trying to challenge myself with films this month, and while that’s a good thing, it’s also exhausting. Since I had a full day off work today, it would’ve been sad had I not watched anything (that’s my Tuesday through the middle of March), I took a break in another way by watching a film I’ve seen a dozen times and love. In this case, that’s Bull Durham.

If you’ve never seen a minor league baseball game, or played a sport at any level, Bull Durham might pass over you in some respects, but maybe not—my wife likes this movie and was never much of an athlete. Frankly, I was never much of an athlete, either. Anyway, the film takes place across the length of one baseball season in Durham, North Carolina with the down-and-out Durham Bulls. On the team is a new bonus baby named Ebbie Calvin “Nuke” LaLoosh, who we’re told has a “million-dollar arm and a five-cent head.” Nuke is a hell of a pitcher, provided he can get the ball across the plate.

Brought in to take care of him, to nurse him through the ups and downs of being a minor league pitcher and attempt to turn him into a major league pitcher is minor league lifer “Crash” Davis (Kevin Costner). Crash is tired of being in the minors, disgusted with being back in A-League ball, and sick of the whole thing. But the draw of the game is too much for him, and he agrees to stick it out because as his new manager (Trey Wilson) says, it’s a chance to come to the park every day and get paid to do it. And there’s the fact that he’s close to setting the record for the most home runs in the minors despite the fact that the thinks setting that record would be a “dubious distinction.”

Also interested in these two ballplayers is Annie Savoy (Susan Sarandon). Annie, who works at the park during the summer and teaches part-time at the local junior college otherwise, is a baseball junkie and groupie. Her pattern is to hook up with one player every season and teach him the ins and outs of baseball and life (and gratify both of them sexually) until the end of the season, whereupon the player becomes a man and Annie moves on to her next player. Early in the film, she chooses Nuke when Crash walks out after one of the great speeches in film history, but there’s some evidence that both Crash and Annie think she made the wrong choice.

Anyway, the rest of the film concerns this odd little love triangle. Annie teaches Nuke what it means to be a man (yes, that way) and Crash tries to show him what he needs to do to succeed in the world of baseball. And there’s poetry, sex, fighting, baseball, a lot more sex, and perhaps a smattering of wisdom.

I’ll come clean here—I don’t have any love for baseball. It may be America’s pastime and the American game and on and on, ad infinitum, ad astra, but baseball frankly bores the crap out of me. I can’t watch a game for longer than a couple of batters before I wander away. But there is a real joy to this movie that is almost inexpressible. You can find something to enjoy here if you live and die with baseball or don’t ever watch a game.

There’s a lot here to love. For starters, the script feels right on, which is helped greatly by the fact that the writer/director Ron Shelton played in the Texas League. The characters come across as real as well. Most importantly, the events really come across as real. This is not a stereotypical sports film in which a team of wacky misfits who don’t have a shot at winning the big game come together and win the big game over a group of vastly superior players. Nuke ends up going to the big leagues, but does so after a loss, and Crash isn’t brought up with him as some sort of reward for his great service. Instead, his job with Nuke done, he’s cut from the team, just as he really would be.

In other words, Bull Durham is everything you want in a movie on its surface. It’s a funny film with a number of classic scenes and classic lines. Crash telling Nuke to aim a pitch at the bull mascot to freak out the other team is pitch perfect, as are the scenes where, when Nuke shakes off his pitch signs, he tells the batter on the opposing team what pitch is coming next. Everything from the sports angle works here, as do the three relationships involved—Nuke and Annie, Nuke and Crash, and Annie and Crash. All of them feel real.

Bull Durham is a perfect date movie in that sense. For the stereotypical guy, there’s baseball and swearing and sex. For the stereotypical woman, there’s high romance.

But more than that, this film strikes at a level of reality, of a true attempt not just to tell a story or sell a script, but to show a real experience of what life in the minors is like, what it’s like to be on the bus and have a guy who won’t shut up, or to be forced to hang around guys who drive you crazy. There’s a poetry to this film that doesn’t happen very often.

I forget how much I love this movie until I watch it again. And the truth is, today I watched it twice because it deserves to be watched twice. This is a special film, and damn near perfect.

Why to watch Bull Durham: Baseball the way it is played, even if it wasn’t meant to be played this way.
Why not to watch: You’re biased against Kevin Costner, Susan Sarandon, and/or Tim Robbins.

Shining, Glistening Eyes

Film: Doctor Zhivago
Format: DVD from Northern Illinois University Library on big ol’ television.


The epic romance is a style from a bygone age. Dr. Zhivago, based on the novel of the same name by Boris Pasternak, is one of the last epic romances on the grand old scale. A true epic takes place on a grand scale against a massive backdrop, usually of war and usually with huge, sweeping expanses of land. Since this story takes place across the years of World War I and the Bolshevik Revolution, the scale doesn’t get much grander.

As tends to be the case with huge Russian epics, we have a lot of characters to keep straight here, but there are only a few that are really important. Also as is the case with Russian epics everybody has three names, and you can expect them to be used at any time, which can make some conversations difficult to keep straight.

We start, as many films of this sort do, at the end of things, with a Bolshevik general named Yevgraf (Alec Guinness) looking for his niece. The girl, who might be the right one, is brought to him, and he begins to tell her the tale of his half-brother, Yuri Zhivago (Omar Sharif). Yuri’s mother died when he was very young, and he was taken to Moscow by an adoptive family that includes Tonya (Geraldine Chaplin).

Yuri grows up to be a competent doctor as well as an acclaimed poet. He becomes engaged to Tonya around the time of World War I. Simultaneously, we are introduced to Lara (Julie Christie), a young woman who is enamored of a Bolshevik named Pasha (Tom Courtenay), in part because of his great passion.

The two meet for the first time when Lara’s mother attempts suicide and Yuri is one of the two who attends her. He is immediately smitten with the girl, but also discovers another rival in the form of Komarovsky (Rod Steiger), who acts as a sort of protector for Lara and her mother. He refuses to give his blessing to a marriage between Lara and Pasha, and takes it upon himself to essentially rape the girl as a way of exerting her dominance. She shoots Komarovsky during a Christmas party, and Zhivago watches her led out of the hall by Pasha and out of his life.

The war begins, and Yuri is posted to the Ukraine where he encounters Lara once again. She acts as his nurse while he tends to the troops, and they become quite close, but not in the Biblical sense. Back in Moscow, the situation has changed with the capture of the tsar and the Bolshevik Revolution. Yuri meets with Yevgraf, who manages to smuggle the family out of Moscow and out to a family estate in Varykino.

Here, naturally, Zhivago meets Lara again after first encountering Sasha, who now goes by the name of Strelnikov, and is quite the player in the Red (Bolshevik) Army. For the first time, their obvious love kindles into something much more despite the fact that Tonya is pregnant. No longer able to live with the affair, he breaks things off with Lara, but is captured by partisans and is forced to serve with them for nearly two years. He deserts and makes his way back to Varykino only to discover that his family is gone. However, Lara is still there, and she rescues him. They encounter Komarovsky again, who offers to take them to Vladivostok on the Pacific coast, but they refuse.

Of course, like the players in any great romance, both Lara and Yuri are doomed, in part because of the events that surround them and in part because of their great love for each other, forbidden by their marriages to other people. And yet, in the vast sweep of the conflict where people are lost and unaccounted for, they live a life together filled with the sort of romance that people generally only dream of, burning terribly for each other constantly. Of course they are forced to separate eventually, and of course, their passion is what continues to drive them and eventually proves to be the thing that destroys them, only in the most impossibly romantic way.

The cinematography is, of course, as lovely and grand as you might expect from someone with David Lean’s reputation and track record. The film is truly grand, and it’s grand in no small part because of the huge expanses of Russian countryside filled with trees, empty spaces, and acres upon acres of white, glistening snow.

Despite this, it’s not the vast expanses of Russian steppes that I remember, but the close ups, particularly of Omar Sharif, with his eyes glistening with tears, shining in whatever ambient light happens to be available. Seriously, the man is read to cry so often that he’s almost a leaking faucet. Everything he does reminds him of this great love of his life or the injustices he sees under the Bolshevik system, and these things cause tears to well up in his eyes constantly.

Doctor Zhivago is the story of this great love. It’s also really freakin’ long for the story it tells. I had trouble more than once keeping my eyes open through some of the passages. It’s not that the story isn’t gripping in its own way, but the epic sweep, while impressive, doesn’t strike me as being entirely necessary for a boy-loves-girl, loses-finds-loses girl story.

Ultimately, I can’t get past those glistening eyes. Zhivago’s passion more often than not comes off as a weepy bitch. Great and grand, but not in the way I was hoping. And prepare to hear that damned balalaika version of "Lara's Theme" in your head for the rest of your life.

Why to watch Dr. Zhivago : Epic sweep and romance on a grand scale.
Why not to watch: Three-plus hours of shining-eyed close up.

Who You Gonna Call? Not These Guys.

Film: Hori, Ma Panenko (The Fireman’s Ball)
Format: VHS from Northern Illinois University Library on big ol’ television.


Comedy sometimes translates from one culture to another and sometimes it doesn’t. There are some things that seem to be funny regardless of who’s doing it while other things are culture specific or time specific. Milos Forman’s Hori, Ma Panenko (The Fireman’s Ball) falls somewhere in the middle. Some of the events of this strange little comedy are riotously funny. Others are funny only in the context of the film being made in Czechoslovakia in the late 1960s. If you don’t know that this was filmed in a Communist country, much of what makes it funny will go straight over your head.

Hori, Ma Panenko is a comedy of errors. It concerns a volunteer fire brigade in a small town in Czechoslovakia. Wanting to do something nice for their former chairman who has cancer (but doesn’t know it—the doctors refuse to tell him), the brigade wishes to present him with a ceremonial fire axe for his 86th birthday. They’d have done it for his 85th if they’d known about the cancer.

Regardless, they decide to have a ball, a fundraising lottery, and a beauty pageant. The bulk of the story takes place at this ball and concerns the series of idiocies, problems, and outright fraud that occurs there. First is the table of items for the lottery. Even before the ball begins, they start to disappear, the food and booze items going first. As the ball goes on, more and more items slip away from the table despite the fact that one of the fireman is attempting to keep an eye on it, and the fact that his wife seems to be joining in on the thievery.

While this is going on, a few of the firemen attempt to put together a collection of women to compete for the beauty pageant. Many of the firemen want their own daughters in the competition regardless of how tubby or homely they are. None of the girls appear to really want to be in the pageant. One mother wants to watch the judging process and won’t leave the room with the firemen. Another girl strips down to her bathing suit. And naturally, while this is happening, the prizes on the lottery table continue to vanish.

Eventually, it’s time for the beauty contest, but the girls who were selected refuse to participate and instead lock themselves in a bathroom. Other women are commandeered to the stage—dragged in some cases—but it’s all for naught, since at that moment, the fire alarm goes off. There’s a fire in town. The house burns to the ground since the fire brigade has no real equipment and is forced to resort to shoveling snow onto the burning building.

Everyone returns to the ball, and many of the partygoers respond to the fire by donating their lottery tickets to the old man whose house burned down. Of course, since at this point virtually all of the lottery prizes are gone, it means nothing. The lights are turned off so that the guilty can return the stolen items, and when the lights come back on, everything is missing. From here, things continue to go downhill for the hapless brigade.

Milos Forman made this film without professional actors, and he didn’t need them. He used an actual fire brigade in a small town, and was based on a real experience of a real nightmarish fireman’s ball. The film, which humorously depicts corruption, incompetence, and outright criminal behavior from virtually everyone involved, caused a huge uproar and was eventually “banned forever” by the Czech state. In fact, Forman was rescued from a 10-year prison term for causing damage to Czechoslovakia by virtue of his French distributors, and emigrated shortly afterward.

All of that is interesting, of course, but the real question is whether or not the film is funny. It is, after all, a comedy. The answer to that isn’t that easy. Hori, Ma Panenko has not aged particularly gracefully. Parts of it are still funny, of course, but much of it requires the context of when and in what country it was shot simply to understand why something might be funny. This is true of both the comedy and the political satire here.

Why to watch Hori, Ma Panenko : A slice of Czech life turned on its side.
Why not to watch: Not all the comedy translates.