The movie that first comes to my mind when looking back at
1988 is Terence Davies’ Distant Voices, a story seemingly springing from the
director’s own life in Liverpool where he was born in 1945, the youngest of ten
kids where he would face a blend of love, abuse, loss of faith, and the always lingering
question of identity. The past doesn’t ever leave, it dawdles like a ghost and Davies
knows better than just about anyone how to conjure it up, and I suppose that
for this reason above all else that it deserves a spot atop. The entire
endeavor feels like memories coming to life, disjointed recollections vividly
rebuilt with a true care and regard for detail and feeling. There is something
in the way he stages and revives these memories, the use of music, sung by the
cast, especially makes for beautiful scene after beautiful scene, though it
wouldn’t be Davies if not for a cruel patriarchal ogre at the center of the
action. I should note that I viewed in on youtube with a full screen and
headphones a few years back, thus a proper viewing would be ideal.
Scorsese’s The Last Temptation of Christ considers Jesus as
a diety unsure of his purpose and completely oblivious to the pitfalls of
morality, specifically how good intentions don’t always lead to benevolent outcomes.
Behold Lazarus, disoriented and terrified to be led back from death to life.
Schrader and Scorsese view morality similarly to Bunuel, where good deeds are
stalked by something diabolical lurking in the shadows. Jesus is seen finally
as a man teetering between two extremes, tortured by his vocation and therefore
the surrogate we deserve, even if he is ultimately triumphant in death.
Similarly, I teeter in my reactions to this movie, which is monumental but always
elusive for me.
What else and why? First, Claude Chabrol’s portrait of Vichy
France, specifically the life and Tribunal sanctioned death of Marie-Louise
Giraud. First viewing was a bust, 1am on TCM about two weeks after my son was
born. Maybe I was too tired or maybe I didn’t want to confront the polar
opposite of infant life. The second viewing felt like watching an entirely
different movie, touchy subjects aside, I feel Chabrol takes a very detached
high road and thus lets the irony of Giraud’s fate sink in a little more. John Carpenter’s They Live imagines a world in
which aliens use a giant ray to alter our perception of all things, especially
the growing chasm between the affluent and the homeless and starving. This
leaves only Rowdy Roddy Piper and Keith David to go mutineer and kick their
fucking asses back to Mars (or wherever these ugly bastards come from).
Kzysztof Kieślowski’s A Short Film About
Love and A Short Film About Killing examine two of the ten big ones from mount
Sinai. Thou shalt not kill. Sounds like a solid commandment. Who is the thou?
First, it’s Jacek, a young man tortured by the death of his sister in which he
believes himself to be exceedingly complicit. He kills a taxi driver creep,
brutally (the scene itself is as ugly as they come), and then the state returns
the favor in a scene of equal brutality. Once again, the notion of justice is
touched upon with a somewhat objective view. On one hand, we are privy to a
hideous act of violence that results in someone’s death, albeit a guy who may
or may not be a dangerous person himself. But to then be saddled with the
reality that this one action can result in a hanging, especially given the
complications surrounding the circumstance, I imagine that most of us will at
least think about the ramifications. Or maybe not. In A Short Film About Love, peeping
Tomek spends his nights staring at Magda, unbeknownst to her. From this, Kieślowski somehow manages to
make a case for love, at first unrequited but later reciprocated, and more
importantly contemplated. This love is the polemical kind that most will find
very hard to empathize with. I did.
I’ll let
Miyazaki do the talking: “My Neighbor
Totoro aims to be a happy and
heartwarming film, a film that lets the audience go home with pleasant, glad
feelings. Lovers will feel each other to be more precious, parents will fondly
recall their childhoods, and children will start exploring the thickets behind
shrines and climbing trees to try to find a Totoro. This is the kind of film I
want to make.” Mission accomplished. The beauty here is in the master’s
devotion to everyday routines both natural and communal, Miyazaki’s refusal to
let things get swept away by fairy tale grandeur. I distinctly remembering this
and Bela Tarr’s The Wreckmeister Harmonies being the first two films that Dean
actually held his interest, which is not my way of being a snob, I just seized
the opportunity to catch up on some blindspots while this little ball of fun
looked around at things enquiringly and mystified.
For a very different look at
quotidian existence, specifically trying not to starve to death during the
declining days of WWII where American bombers napalmed the Japanese countryside
(Kobe in this movie) killing many and leaving more homeless and hungry, check
out friendly Ghibli rival Isao Takahata’s Grave of the Fireflies. Here we bear
witness to 13 year old Seita and his 5 year old sister Setsuko’s slow crawl
towards starvation and death after their mother is vaporized. It’s sad! Another
very sad animated film = The Land Before Time. I’ll never forget the
heartache of Little Foot left alone to find the Great Valley after the death of
his mother. To this day that sorrow sticks with me, I get the Pavlovian weeps
whenever I hear James Horner’s The Whispering Wind. I’ll never forget the
following year when my mother was rushed to the hospital with a brain aneurysm
and a very slim chance of survival. She lived, but there was a solid three week
span in which it was probable that she wasn’t going to make it. I couldn’t wrap
my little brain around it. While my mother was recovering, my first grade
teacher played this movie in class and I ran out of the room crying. I
re-watched it this year the day after I realized Lou was probably going to die
and cried again. There is something about this movie that seems fit for
tragedy.
Robert Zemeckis had the guts and wherewithal to bring Disney
(Mickey, Dumbo, Donald, Pinnochio), WB (Daffy, Bugs, Yosemite Sam, Porky), and Fleisher’s
Betty Boop together for a dark and nasty noir classic. Toons are exploited and
segregated, Toontown is a ghetto where toons are left to die in Judge Doom’s
dip when they step even slightly out of line. Not only is it our titular hero’s
sacred looney duty to stop him from demolishing his beloved shantytown and turning
it into a freeway a la Robert Towne, but
also to prove his innocence. For many years I had only seen a cut version of my
father taped it off television and left out virtually every scene with Jessica
Rabbit. What the fuck?
Don’t forget John v Hans in the fortified Nakatomi Plaza,
where Bruce’s emotional climax comes at the sight and recognition of none other
than Carl Winslow rather than his wife, which is kinda the heart and soul of
the movie. How about Raymond v Rex, which delivers one of the most
psychologically terrifying and depressing finales in movie history not only
because Raymond gets to spend his final hour and change trapped in a coffin but
because he knows that his beloved fiancée went out the same horrible way, a
fate beyond what he probably could ever comprehend. And it’s futile to try and
articulate the euphoria I experience whilst watching Frank Dreblin do just
about anything. Leslie Nielson is my hero.
Top Ten 0f 1988 in alphabetical order:
Distant Voices, Still Lives (Terence Davies)
Grave of the Fireflies (Isao Takahata)
My Neighbor Totoro (Hayao Miyazaki)
The Naked Gun: From the Files of the Police Squad (David
Zucker)
A Short Film About Love/A Short Film About Killing (Kzysztof Kieślowski)
Story of Women (Claude Chabrol)
They Live! (John Carpenter)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (Robert Zemeckis)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Pedro Almodovar)
Honorable Mentions in roughly preferential order: The Last
Temptation of Christ, Ariel, Die Hard, As Tears Go By, The Vanishing, The Land
Before Time, The Thin Blue Line, Monkey Shines, Cop, Alice, Dead Ringers, The
Decline of Western Civilization Part II: The Metal Years, Bird.
Not for me: The Blob, A Cry in the Dark, Friday the 13th
Part VII: The New Blood, Halloween 4: The Return of Michael Myers, Killer
Klowns from Outer Space, Lair of the White Worm, Mississippi Burning, Rain Man,
The Serpent and the Rainbow, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, Willow, The
Bear.
Like or Respect (*s indicating that I haven’t seen it since
I was young): Above the Law, Big Top Pee Wee, Bloodsport, Bull Durham, Coming
to America, Critters 2: The Main Course, Beetlejuice, Hairspray, Child’s Play,
Daffy Duck’s Quackbusters, The Dead Pool,
Ernest Saves Christmas, The Fox and the Hound, A Fish Called Wanda,
Hellbound: Hellraiser II, License to Drive, Mac and Me, Maniac Cop, Nightmare
on Elm Street 4: The Dream Master, Oliver and Company, Pound Puppies and the
Legend of the of Big Paw, Pumpkinhead.
Didn’t pay due attention to: The Horse Thief
