Saturday Night Fever - the 1970s were a very different era!

You know there are those films that you assume you've seen because you're aware of all the cultural baggage that comes with them, but then you realise in your 40s you've somehow missed them?  No?  Well for me Saturday Night Fever was until recently exactly that film.  John Travolta was already a star of stage and small screen when in 1977 his movie career was launched into the big time when he starred as Tony Manero, a young, cocksure Brooklyn lad who lives for disco.  Who amongst us can't see in our minds eye images of a white-suited Travolta throwing shapes to the sounds of the Bee Gees in primary coloured shirts with huge lapels?  Is it any wonder I'd assumed I must have seen Saturday Night Fever?

It is of course the film that launched the popularity of the disco movement into the mainstream.  With an iconic soundtrack supplied by none other than the Bee Gees themselves, it's a coming of age tale in which starry-eyed Tony Manero (Travolta) is exposed to more of the real world than he would ever want to see, confronts his prejudices and has to grow up.  Plus of course all the dancing.  There's a lot of dancing.

Though I was alive in the 1970s I was in no position to remember it, so I am happy to stand corrected as to the accuracy of the fashions and societal norms of the time.  If Saturday Night Fever does tell it as it was, then the world has changed a lot in the intervening 40 years.  New York was grittier.  Brooklyn was full of racists and husbands assaulting their wives.  Men were rapists, and the women who went with them trod a fine line between getting noticed and getting noticed too much.  The world was a dead-end place.  Saturday Night Fever is sometimes tough to watch for these reasons.  What was harmless & playful banter back then is a sexual assault in 2021.

Of course the Overton Window shifts through the years and with enough time something will always look dated.  For this I can't fault Saturday Night Fever.  Where the production team did drop the ball though is in a fundamental misunderstanding of the structure of their story.  The events of the film happen in roughly the following order - 1) Moreno is young and carefree 2) Morena falls for lady dancer Stephanie 3) a series of bad things happen 4) Moreno wins a rigged dance-off, causing him to question everything 5) reconciliation with Stephanie 6) the future is an unwritten story.  What the film needed was for #4 to be at the end.  After the reconciliation with Stephanie, they should then compete in the dance, and end on a big dance number.  They don't need to win the competition, they just need the final shot to be Moreno triumphantly living his dream on the neon-lit floor.  This isn't rocket science, Bollywood has been doing this for decades!

With the structure as it is, Moreno's final promise to Stephanie to grow up implicitly comes with a promise to give up dancing.  The understanding is that disco is a childish fascination holding Moreno back.  Only by giving up the thing that gives him a boyish glint in his eye can he grow and become a real man.  How depressing.  Much better would be to put the bad events earlier in the film, give Moreno a chance to stew in his nadir before the reconciliation with Stephanie in her Manhattan apartment and then send them both back to Brooklyn for the triumphant finale.  This is a film that's supposed to be celebrating disco; why can't we grow up and have a boogie?

Where the film is timeless is in Travolta's performance.  It doesn't matter how many years pass or societal norms change, that man can move.  From the opening strut (Stayin' Alive) to his solo performance (You Should Be Dancing) to the final dance off (More Than A Woman) - Travolta has it all.  I recommend Saturday Night Fever.  Travolta's performance is one for the ages, and in spite of a huge structural flaw in the story, the film's faults are easily covered for be the sheer joy in watching a man in a white suit single-handedly define a genre.

One Cut of the Dead - A genuinely novel experience

Low-budget Japanese zombie horror / spoof / comedy One Cut of the Dead isn't the film you're expecting.  Is doesn't matter what you're expecting or what you've been told or what preconceptions of the genre you have - this film isn't it.  Nominally a story about a film crew filming a zombie movie who get attacked by actual zombies, the opening 35 minutes is a single take in and around a warehouse with grainy footage that drops us directly into the genre-laden action without any fanfare or introduction.  Then everything shifts in a way that's not really describable without spoilering a hefty chunk of what makes the film enjoyable.

Enjoyably meta without ever coming across as smug, the film feeds you a slice of delicious cake, shows you how it was made, then lets you eat another slice, before finally giving you the recipe.  Something of the magic is lost in knowing how it's done, and you're probably never going to make it yourself - but it's nice to know how to do it none-the-less.

Limiting myself to a spoiler-free review makes it difficult to say anything specific.  What I can say is that anyone interested in the film-making process will likely enjoy it.  And it's not just film, anyone involved with a performative art that requires hitting cues, dealing with on-set problems and primadonas will recognise something familiar here.  One Cut of the Dead is an enjoyable curio I wholeheartedly recommend.

Back to the Future - reassuringly very (very) good

 Nostalgia isn't what is used to be.

Not my line - but Bill Bailey's.  It conveys a good point though, which is the nature of nostalgia has changed.  Even in my lifetime I've seen it.  I'm sure nostalgia used to be far less all-consuming.  Sure there were always people who loved Star Wars, but they didn't seem to be everywhere all the time.  Possibly it's the rise of the internet allowing disparate dedicated groups of followers to congregate and achieve a greater volume than they otherwise would have?  Perhaps the rise of all-access media has made it easier than ever for people to relive childhood memories (if you wanted to re-watch your favourite film when I was 10, you had to wait for it to be broadcast on TV - no Amazon Prime!).

I only realised that Back to the Future was a serious player in the plethora of field of nostalgic throw-backery when Secret Cinema put on a show and people lost their shit.  I remember Back to the Future, as a nerdy kid growing up in the 1980s, being interested in physics and wondering in awe about the possibilities of time travel, I loved it.  And the second one, and the third.  I still remember going to see Back to the Future 2 at Ilford Odeon, it's a wonderful memory.  The power of nostalgia is strong.  But the question always remains - was it actually any good?  Like - actually?

I always have a temptation to look dimly upon the cultural works that have been marked out for the platinum standard nostalgia treatment.  But having watched the film again 2 weekends ago for the first time in more than a decade - Back to the Future is very (very) good.  It's actually fairly difficult to find anything bad to say about it.

You will of course know the plot.  Michael J Fox is Marty McFly, who is accidentally sent 30 years into the past after his crazy scientist friend Doc Brown (Christopher Lloyd) is shot by terrorists.  McFly must then work with the younger Doc Brown to work out how to send himself back to the future, while at the same time trying to ward off the affections of his own mother (presently a teenager) and convincing her to check out the nerdy guy in the corner (who happens to be his dad).

It's tightly-scripted, full of attention to detail, well-scored and snappily edited with hardly one scene out of place.  Fox and Lloyd are perfectly cast, and though much has been made of Fox's non-teen age when making the film, he was only 23 at the time - hardly outside of the usual bell curve for portrayal of teenage roles on screen.  There are multiple escalating and overlapping plot threads, but they never get tied up or step on each others' toes. The plots then come together seamlessly with a prom night will-the-wont-they, leading straight into a nail-biting race against the clock to send Marty home and then a joyous denouement as all the things Marty got up to in 1955 feed into and subtly alter the present.  Aside from the usual 1980s issue of terribly-aged outfits and awful hair (so awful), there is nothing bad to say.  Prove me wrong.  I dare you.

And we haven't even talked about the DeLorean.  Chosen to be the vehicle for Doc Brown's time machine precisely because it was such an instantly recognisably flop, the cultural impact of Back to the Future is now such that it's a classic car with a following all around the world.  Culture innit!

So I take my hat off and tip it with respect - Back to the Future is a film fully-deserving of its place at the forefront of the world's nostalgiagasm.  Well played Robert Zemeckis; well played.    

The Lighthouse - HARK!

The Lighthouse utterly blew me away.  One scene in particular I realised at the end of it that I had a tear in my eye and was literally sitting on the edge of my seat.  As soon as it ended I wound the DVD back and watched it again; I was drawn in just as much as before, the camera slowly focusing into Willem Dafoe's starkly contrasting features as he calls down nautical curses from the depth of his soul.

Just enjoy.  Enjoy (blogger wont let me embed this).

HAAAAARRK!

The Lighthouse - A film about nothing, a film about everything

Since I saw The Witch back in 2016 I don't think I've watched a horror film without drawing comparison.  Robert Eggers wrote and directed that film and with it re-invigorated the horror genre.  Gone were the usual tropes and trappings, replaced instead with something far more meditative.  Spookiness was emphasised over outright frights.  The genre was re-framed more explicitly than ever as a vehicle for exploring the fragilities of human psychology.  The film received universal praise and it many imagined it be very hard to follow up with anything as deep and noteworthy.

With The Lighthouse, Eggers has again written and directed a post-modern thriller that easily matches his feature debut and proves his work will not go down as a one-hit wonder.  Filmed in stark black and white, in 3:4 ratio and featuring only 3 performers, The Lighthouse throws us on to an isolated rock where two men must work for a month operating the eponymous machinery.  Willem Dafoe (Wake - an old sea-dog) and Robert Pattinson (Winslow - a hard-worker, but new to this work), work, drink, argue, fight, fart and exchange stories over the course of a bafflingly hypnotic 100 minutes.  And hypnotic is the right word.  The soundscape is filled with the swell and movement of water as well as the drone of foghorns, at the moments when they fade to nothing one feels drawn into an infinitely wide space where nothing is certain.  The black and white palate is no gimmick either, the starkly contrasting light and darkness knowing used at every moment to create hyper-reality, then back to normality before back to semi-madness.

Made before lockdown, the film seems strangely prescient of it - being as it is about 2 men stuck together in a place they hardly want to be, unable to leave, their workplace has become their home.  Revelling in meta-fiction, the screenplay hints towards its own potential interpretation.  Perhaps this is purgatory? Perhaps we're inside the head of one of both men?  Is either an avenging angel / god / the devil wrecking revenge / penance on the past crimes of the other?  Maybe it's simply an exploration of male bonding; a 19th century depiction of the banterpocalypse?  All of the above?  Delete as appropriate.

What is clear is that Eggers' work stands alone and apart.  It works as a story to be absorbed as well as a cleverly-weaved tapestry to be pored through over glasses of whisky.  The Lighthouse is a film that absolutely defies any attempt to straightjacket it.  It purports to be about nothing in particular, but is about anything you want it to be.  It's a masterwork.

Flashdance - Male gaze

Lockdown has been a hard time, for every good film we watch there is a grand balancing out that seems to be required - a terrible film must be watched too.  A few weeks ago Flashdance was suggested.  Really?  Really.

Jennifer Beals plays Alex.  Alex works by day in Pittsburgh's steel mills and by night dances at a local bar.  She lives with her old grandma and works hard, but what she really wants is to break free and get a place at the local dance school.  But how will she get an audition?  How indeed.  Oh - and terrible 80s fashions.  So very terrible.

Though the film is (we assume) intended as an aspirational tale in which an honest working class girl comes good and gets to go off and be a dancer, it is hard to get over the explicit male gaze through which the story is told.  It is no surprise to discover that Flashdance was written by 2 men, directed by a man and produced by none other than Jerry Bruckheimer (also a man).  Alex is a character who makes no sense until you realise she's being idealised and imagined purely from a male view-point.  She's innocent but surprisingly sexually confident.  She likes dancing because... well that's what girls like isn't it?  She's completely happy with being stalked by her boss.  She's an 18-year-old woman imagined by male movie producers in the 1980s.  Make you wonder who this movie's intended audience was.  Was it made by men for men?  Or was it made by men for women, imagining this is what women and girls wanted to see?  The fact the film was popular at the time implies people (some of whom I assume were actual women) did want to see it.  Tells you something about how times have changed.

Far from being a strong female character or feminist cypher, everything about Alex that should indicate a progressive depiction is absolutely shallow.  Alex works at the forge, but she's neither seen as good at it, or having to fight any battles with sexism in the workplace or having to square the circle of her dreams against societal expectations.  Alex is introduced writhing around on a stage and having a bucket of water chucked over her (see image above) - such women's lib.  One of Alex's friends wants to be a figure skater but fails - probably because she hasn't got a man looking out for her!  Alex wants to be a dancer, but she's neither shown to be much good at it nor does she have to work particularly hard to get into dance school.  Rather she has the helping hand of a man pulling the strings to get her an audition - help she only gets by consenting to being stalked and making herself sexually available to him.  Not very #MeToo is it?  The script then has the audacity to give Alex lines implying she never wanted any help or that the man she's just given a foot-job to in a restaurant was betraying her feminist ideals by doing her a good turn.  The shallowness of this attempt to give a veneer of feminist authenticity to the story is jaw-dropping.

The film is a worthwhile watch as a sort of historical document for the hair, clothing and stylings of the time.  Contemporary depictions of night clubs from the 1980s always fill me with unease - I can never work out if clubs were really like that or they're satirical depictions of something else.  No wonder that scene died a rapid death in favour of rave culture and the eventual 90's dance scene.  What Flashdance is most certainly NOT, is an aspirational tale about one young woman's dreams to be a dancer.  Rather it's film showing what a group of men in their 40s imagined it would be like to be an 18-year-old woman who dreams of being a dancer; and how they want to have sex with her.

The Hunger Games - starting a revolution

I was reminded of this scene from The Hunger Games recently following the protests that have rocked the US and parts of the world after the death of George Floyd.  I am reminded of the way in which a revolution or protest movement can be kicked off in the most unknowable of ways.  Here, Katniss - of District 12 - is embroiled in the battle royale that is the Hunger Games.  She has spent her time in the game forging alliances with the other participants rather than fighting as expected by the semi-royalty of the Capital.  Her strongest ally is Rue of District 11, who has just died.  Rather than lashing out in rage or anger, Katniss tends to Rue's body and then makes a gesture to the camera she knows is there.  It's a gesture of significance to the citizens of District 11.  It's a gesture of solidarity.  That she of District 12 makes it gives it all the more significance.  It says that we - the oppressed - stand as one.  And with it she unwittingly starts a revolution.

Dear lord this scene brings a tear to my eye when I watch it.  Captures what The Hunger Games at its best was actually about.  About how real change is created by forging alliances and changing minds through action.  Life imitates art.