1985

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October 22, 2008

The Purple Rose of Cairo

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1985, comedy, drama, entertainment, fantasy, movies, romance, trailers | Tags: , , , , |
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Woody Allen has said that The Purple Rose of Cairo was one of a handful of his films that ended up being fairly close to how he envisioned it. He started off writing the movie and, as the process continued, the vision he had in the beginning stuck fairly close to the film as a finished product. In the mind of an artist, the notion of something being consistently real from the beginning of the process to the end of the process is compelling, as life’s distractions and thoughts often impose themselves and alter the consistency.

So we could say that 1985’s The Purple Rose of Cairo finds Woody Allen at his most consistent. A magical film, it is his ode to movies and to movie romance. It is also the quintessential film-within-a-film picture, as the worlds of Hollywood glitz and glamour collide with the worlds of reality in the Great Depression. Allen’s selection of such a raw, emotional, trying time in American history serves to brilliantly juxtapose the magical events seen on screen.

Back in the day where movies provided an escape from the rigours of life, we meet Cecilia (Mia Farrow). She is married to the brutish Monk (Danny Aiello) and lives out a loveless, empty existence. Cecilia’s only escape from her harsh reality is the cinema, where she watches whatever’s playing over and over again. As it happens, the film The Purple Rose of Cairo is playing and she is quite taken with it. She sees the picture again and again, sinking deeper into the fantasy world of the movie and forgetting her mounting troubles out in reality.

One day, something magical happens as one of the film’s characters, Tom Baxter (Jeff Daniels), steps off of the screen and into her life. He is in love with her and has seen her watching him on screen for the past few days. Baxter has broken the fourth wall, busted out of the picture, and chaos springs out like a bolt from the blue. The remaining actors on screen are clueless, unable to continue the film. Studio heads are called, the actor who plays Baxter is brought in, and a spiralling mass of press attention and romance begin to overwhelm Cecilia.

Indeed, this movie is less about the romance and the swirling characters and more about what it means to watch a movie and to be an audience. It is Allen’s meditation on the film experience; it’s about going to the movies, experiencing the characters, falling in love with the moments, feeling the situations. It is a bout art’s relationship to reality and how we, as the audience, experience that relationship. Do we fall in love? Do we risk something for artistic experiences? And so on…

But on its face, The Purple Rose of Cairo is also an entertaining story. There is humour, romance, goodness, purity, and slices of life. Farrow is brilliant as Cecilia and it is impossible not to feel for her. She is treated terribly by her husband and is in a loveless marriage, so we yearn for her to experience romance when she does and our heart breaks when something goes wrong. We feel sad, happy, and expectant for her as though she is our possession. Such is the nature of grand characters.

The Purple Rose of Cairo is not Woody Allen’s best film. There are uneven moments and the story sometimes drags. But it is entirely magical and engaging nevertheless, as Allen’s best works are never really truly his “best works” anyways. His oeuvre is composed of classics that never were, of films that never reached their potential. And, like all true artists, Woody Allen knows this and continues to impress us.

8.2/10

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May 21, 2008

The Breakfast Club

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1985, comedy, drama, entertainment, trailers | Tags: , , , , , , , |
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If anybody captured the teen angst of the 80s, it was John Hughes. His high-school comedy-dramas were among the most effective films of the teen genre and still hold up today against modern predictable schlock and gross-out comedies. Written more skilfully than most films and directed with a simplistic desire to pull the best out of the actors, most Hughes films stand the test of time because of relatable characters and situations. Out of all of his films, The Breakfast Club is probably the very best.

Most people know the basic plot of this 1985 teen film. Five teenagers representing a different clique in high school end up serving a Saturday detention together and come to realize that they are all a bit more complex than their exterior stereotypes would suggest. Set at fictional Shermer High School in Hughes’ widely used fictional town of Shermer, Illinois, The Breakfast Club would become a cult classic and would be widely recognized as one of the best films of the genre.

Emilio Estevez stars as Andrew Clark, the athlete. Estevez was 21 at the time of filming. His character is a varsity wrestler who is serving detention because he taped a student’s buttocks together. Molly Ringwald, just 16 at the time of shooting, plays Claire Standish, the wealthy popular girl. She is serving detention because she skipped school to go to the mall. Anthony Michael Hall, also 16 at the time of shooting, is Brian Johnson, the prototypical “nerd” character. He is serving detention for bringing a flare gun to school. Judd Nelson, 24 during filming, is John Bender, the quintessential rebel. He is in detention for pulling the fire alarm. Finally, Ally Sheedy, 21 during filming, is Alison Reynolds. She’s in detention because she had nothing better to do.

The majority of the film takes place in the school library, although the quintet does escape to go for a run in the hallway during one scene. While serving detention, the group learns about each other’s shortcomings, family issues, and inner secrets while fighting with one another. The gradual opening-up of the students to one another is one of the focal points of the film, as they learn to break down the stereotypes and really discuss issues with one another, even if it is for some just one afternoon. Claire, for instance, claims that things will simply go back to the way they were on the subsequent Monday morning, while others claim that things will be different and that they will be friends.

What makes The Breakfast Club great is the dialogue. Hughes’ script challenges the perceptions people have of the stereotypical groups that society often uses to make categorizing easy. Despite taking place in the mid-80s, the stereotypes found in the film still pervade today and the attitudes are often the same. An updated version of The Breakfast Club would probably need very little by way of touch-ups to the script and the material would remain just as poignant and just as important.

One minor gripe is that some scenes suffer from overacting. The emotional outbursts are often too forced and some scenes take on an almost cheesy effect because of it. The final sequence falls victim to this, as one can’t help but laugh out loud at Bender’s “fist in the air” as he crosses the field. Overall, however, The Breakfast Club maintains a gritty edge and uses the power of language to convey very compelling points. Hughes captures, for the most part, the real attitudes of teenagers and zeroes in on real struggles that many viewers will aptly relate to.

The truth is that most people who’ll read this review have seen The Breakfast Club and certainly don’t need me to tell them that it’s one of the best teen films of all time. They also don’t need do know that it was ranked number one on Entertainment Weekly’s Best High School Movies list or that its Simple Minds theme song has been featured in countless teen films since. Instead, what is likely going to resonate most for those who love The Breakfast Club is how one Saturday afternoon changed the lives of five students and, as a result, the mindset of many of the film’s viewers.

8/10

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December 31, 2007

Ran

Posted by Jordan Richardson under 1985, action, drama, entertainment, foreign, trailers, war | Tags: , , , , , |
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Ran

Akira Kurosawa’s Ran is considered to be his last great epic. The film is a Japanese period drama, or a “jidaigeki,” and had a budget of $12 million, making it the most expensive Japanese film ever produced up until that point. Ran was only modestly successful in Japan upon its opening, however, and had some rather indifferent luck at many awards ceremonies. The film was completed too late to be entered at Cannes for its opening, so it was released instead at the Tokyo International Film Festival. Kurosawa did not attend the film’s premier at the festival, which angered many. As a result of this, Ran was not submitted as Japan’s entry for Best Foreign Language film at the Oscars. Director Sidney Lumet organized a successful campaign to help get Kurosawa nominated as Best Director, but Kurosawa lost out to Sidney Pollack for his film Out of Africa. Ran did pick up an Academy Award for Costume Design, however.

Ran is often credited as being based around William Shakespeare’s King Lear. While Kurosawa did claim that some of King Lear influenced Ran, he was quick to note that this comparison was not intentional immediately. Kurosawa, who was 75-years-old during the making of Ran, first got the idea of the film during the mid-1970s. He had read a parable about a warlord named Mori Motonari, who was famous for having three sons. Kurosawa began to imagine what would happen had Motonari’s loyal sons been bad and out of that imagination sprang the idea for Ran. Kurosawa only became aware of the similarities to King Lear after he had begun pre-planning his film. The stories merged in a way Kurosawa was never able to explain and he penned the script in 1975, shortly after filming Dersu Uzala. He let it rest for seven years and, during this time, painted storyboards of the shots he thought of in Ran.

During the filming of Kagemusha, which is a film that Kurosawa sometimes refers to as a “dress rehearsal for Ran,” he was finally able to secure funding for Ran through French producer Serge Silberman. Ran was the final film of what is broadly known as Kurosawa’s “Third Period,” which denotes a time in the filmmaker’s history in which it became difficult for him to get funding. He was frequently forced to seek out financial backing during his Third Period. While Kurosawa had directed over twenty films in the first two decades of his career, he was only able to create four films in the two decades that encompassed his Third Period (1965-1985). He found himself competing against television and the dwindling film audiences in Japan and became so depressed that he attempted suicide as a result of being unable to secure funding for his projects. Many other, younger filmmakers boasted that Kurosawa was finished. Until the release of Ran in the mid-1980s, Kurosawa would struggle immensely. By the time he directed Ran, he was almost completely blind and his wife of forty years, Yoko Yaguchi, died during production.

Ran tells the story of the Great Lord Hidetora Ichimonji, played to perfection by the tremendous actor Tatsuya Nakadai. Hidetora has decided to step aside to make room for his three sons, Taro (Akira Terao), Jiro (Jinpachi Nezu), and Saburo (Daisuke Ryu). Hidetora’s only wish is that he be able to live out his remaining days as a guest in his son’s three castles. The two older sons flatter their father with false ideas, but Saburo, the youngest, warns his father of the folly of this plan. Enraged at this, Hidetora revokes Saburo’s status and banishes him. As time passes, the younger son’s words become true and Hidetora finds himself being stripped of everything, including his pride. Attempts on his life are made and the former Great Lord finds himself losing his mind and wandering haplessly through the lands that were once his. His regrets, despair, and inability to forgive himself are his demons as he wanders to find some form of respite from the madness.

Ran was a huge production, as mentioned. It was Kurosawa’s largest and most expensive production in his storied career. The film used around 1400 extras, requiring the construction of 1400 suits of armour. The costumes were designed by Emi Wada and Kurosawa and the production took around two years. Ran also used 200 horses, many of which were imported from the United States. The film was shot amidst the mountains and plains of Japan’s largest active volcano, Mount Aso. Kurosawa was granted permission to shoot at two of Japan’s most famous landmarks, the castles of Himeji and Kumamoto. The third castle of Hidetora was a real building that Kurosawa had built on the slopes of Mount Fuji. As it was burned to the ground, the escape involving Hidetora had to be done in one take.

Ran is a film of such incredible depth that it’s hard to sum it up capably in any review. Thematic elements are explored, including chaos, warfare, family relationships, and nihilism. Chaos occurs repeatedly throughout the film. In many scenes, Kurosawa proceeds scenes of extreme chaos with shots from the clouds that show a breaking storm. Anarchy reigns throughout the lands of Hidetora, whose own autocracy has freed up his sons to act in the same way. Within this framework of chaos, the actions of the sons are hardly surprising, as they have witnessed their father’s blood-spilling ways since birth. This chaos impacts the family relationships immensely and it is Saburo who offers the only rest from the madness for Hidetora. Ran portrays life as a world of endless affliction and chaos, as the film is not of the “happy ending” sort and rather ends with great desolation. Characters die futilely, lacking the heroism or great justice of many of Kurosawa’s other films. The last shot of the film especially demonstrates the anarchy and isolation of the human condition, as Kurosawa illustrates the commonly held principle of a world absent from God or gods.

Ran is one of the greatest epic films I have ever had the pleasure of experiencing. It is a bold vision from start to finish, shimmering with passionate colours and strident battles. It also contains a gradation that is often absent from many films, as the relationships and emotions between the film’s rich characters add extra elements to this layered and sharp story. Ran is a brilliant entry for Kurosawa and is a great starting point for anyone curious as to this genius’ work. It is blood-spattered, valiant, and huge, containing battle sequences and tactical movements that make films like Mel Gibson’s Braveheart look asinine. Ran is a masterpiece of such profundity, human grief, and pandemonium that it deserves many repeat viewings. It’s just astonishing.

10/10

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