Dirty Dancing - Why am I reviewing this?

A very good question.  Well I happened to be at a small Christmas gathering last night and someone had the TV on.  Upon it there was Channel 5 (though not in HD on a massive HD TV - what on earth is the point?) showing the 1980s cult classic upon which this blog post will focus.  I have a slightly strange relationship with this film.  My Mum was a huge fan and my recollection is that she watched a VHS recording almost on repeat through a portion of the early 1990s.  Back in those days there was only 1 screen in the house, and as such it formed a small part of the background to my upbringing.  Seeing it again last night, I was surprised at the familiarity of the beats and cues of the film, almost as surprised as I was by the adult themes that had largely gone over my head as a 12 year old.

For those who have been living in a cave for the last 25 years, the premise is thus.  The Houseman family go for their summer holidays at a resort in upstate New York.  'Baby' Houseman (Jennifer Grey) is a young woman who falls in love with the resort's hotter-than-hot dancer Johnny Castle (Patrick Swayze).  Citizen Kane it is not.

Sounds simple right?  Well it is.  So why is it so popular?  Well it's a question that on the surface has an obvious answer, but one can go slightly deeper and understand something about storytelling.  The obvious answer is that Patrick Swayze has amazing abs and dances like a god.  Women love dancing and washboard abs - so success is guaranteed right?  Well not quite.  Dirty Dancing is a film with a surprising amount of heart; it deals with issues of abortion, abuse, growing up and - crucially - has a central character in Baby who is the perfect every-woman.  Baby is assertive and confident, but also very vulnerable when she doesn't understand what's going on.  She has a father who is strong, understanding, supportive and emotional; he is a rock when she needs strength and breaks down in tears when she has disappoints him.  Oh and her lover is Patrick Swayze.  Who wouldn't want to be Baby?

This is the thing that so many rubbish films get so wrong.  It isn't enough to just tickle our visual taste buds (I'm talking about guns and action here just as much as I am talking about bums and abs), a film needs to have an emotional connection to make you care.  Don't get me wrong, Dirty Dancing isn't my kind of film, but I can relate to what is going on and I understand why it has come to touch the hearts of so many women (I would say 'people', but let's not kid ourselves eh?) out there in the movie-going world.

Of course there are numerous criticisms that we can legitimately level at the film.  For a start the sound track isn't completely of the 1960s, which is a huge mid-step for a film that works very hard to establish itself in that pre-Vietnam era.  Also it suffers from same as the main problem I have with the Twilight saga, which is that the main character is little more than an empty vessel on to which female viewers are encouraged to cast their own personalities.  I would argue that this criticism has less weight here than in the Twilight saga, here Baby's father and family have crushed her individuality and expression out of her, so we might expect her personality to be a little thin.  However I agree that this is one of the film's major weaknesses.

Certainly no-one is going to be persuaded to watch Dirty Dancing or not as a result of this blog.  These are merely some musings on a cult film that has firmly entrenched its place in the zeitgeist over the last 25 years.  I shall try to get another review in before 2017 - would be a bit weird to end the year on a film that was released in 1987 after all!

Seconds - very Twilight Zone

I honestly cannot remember now what it was that made me seek out this interesting film that's straight out of the playbook of classic 1960s The Twilight Zone, only with a twisted subtext that only gets darker as the plot comes to a conclusion.  Seconds is a minor masterpiece typical of the modernist science fiction thriller genre that was hugely popular in post war US mainstream culture.  John Randolph plays Arthur Hamilton, an aging city banker who is bored of his life and comes upon a secret society that promises him youth and a new identity.  His death is faked and he becomes Antiochus Wilson (played by Rock Hudson), younger, surrounded by youth, opportunity, and a sudden dislocation from everyone and everything he once knew.

If anyone ever wanted to do a study into the impact that direction has upon the tone of a film, then the contrast between the Hamilton and Wilson portions of Seconds provides ample material.  The director uses blocking and framing during the opening 25 minutes to convey the unease of Hamilton's world.  Everything from his dislocation from his wife and career to his fraught attempts to inveigle himself into the secret society - not a word needs to be said to tell us the alienation engulfing him.  Contrast this with the latter half of the film, the camerawork is free and feels more like a pop video at times as it effortlessly describes a world of youth, opportunity and new possibilities.

The film is very much a tale of being careful for what one wishes.  In the great tradition of The Twilight Zone the story presents a character with what the audience knows is a Faustian Bargain, a fact that only becomes apparent to the protagonist far too late.  Some may find the character's ultimately downward trajectory a little too depressing to take, but this is dystopian science fiction at its most pure so I would be shocked if it didn't appeal to a less-than-mainstream audience.  In the end I would recommend this to anyone with an interest in science fiction, especially those who have enjoyed and of the various incarnations of The Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits or Tales of the Unexpected that have existed over the years.

Son of Saul - Bleak, Art, Important

The sort of film I definitely would have watched in the cinema back when I was at university and hanging out at Nottingham's premier arthouse cinema every week, Son of Saul is a brutal and terrifying depiction of a few days in the life of a Sonderkomando at Auschwitz concentration camp.  As it turned out, I only got around to seeing it a few weeks ago - one of the few films of 2016 I have actually seen in 2016.  One of fewer still that I have managed to blog about.

There is little shortage of depictions of the horrors of Nazi Germany on the silver screen.  The intent of these films is more often than not a message to the post modern world to not forget the horrors that the modern one wrought upon itself.  Sadly though, only 80 years since Hitler presided over the infamous Berlin Olympics, it feels like many Europeans have forgotten how easy it is to allow peace to slip away.  As far right movements once again take hold of populist politics in France, Austria, Hungary and to a much lesser extent here in the UK, it is more important than ever to reminder ourselves where the politics of hate end up taking us.

Which is exactly what Son of Saul does.  The film follows Saul Ausländer, a Hungarian Sonderkomando who is forced to undertake the horrific work of leading people into Auschwitz's gas chambers, and then sorting their belongings and clearing out their bodies afterwards.  The story is told exclusively from Ausländer's perspective, with the camera residing either just over his shoulder or closely in his face.  In this way, the horrors of Auschwitz are presented to us via his reactions rather than directly.  His reaction (or numb lack of reaction) to what we know is going on out of shot easily as effecting as seeing any other brutal depiction of the Holocaust.  The film is about hopelessness and the pain that people can inflict on their fellows when we stop seeing people as people.  If there is a glimmer of hope in the way the film ends, then it is perhaps a nod to the idea fact that the Holocaust did, eventually, end.  The hope was for a new generation to remember, commemorate, and say 'never again'.

It's a film that's deliberately hard to watch.  But that's the point, keeping the peace and working together for the benefit of all isn't easy.  It's something we all have to work for.  Son of Saul does its part to remind us of the perils of taking the path of the scapegoat.  Please Europe - Never Again.