Category: Winners – 1980s

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Driving Miss Daisy – 1989

This was an excellent movie and quite honestly, I had my doubts from the beginning.  I went into it knowing very little, except that everyone I talked to told me that it was a really good movie.  But I kept thinking that it would just be old people talking.  I thought it was going to be slow and boring.  But thank goodness, I was wrong.

Driving Miss Daisy was so well done in so many ways.  First of all, the cast was perfect.  Jessica Tandy and Morgan Freeman played the two leads with Dan Aykroyd, Esther Rolle and Patti LuPone filling out the supporting roles.  They all did a great job.  Jessica Tandy won the award for Best Actress, and both Freeman and Aykroyd were nominated in their respective categories.  Having only known Rolle from her part on the television show Good Times, and LuPone for her many wonderful Broadway portrayals, I was pleasantly surprised to see them on the big screen.

Interesting note:  Tandy, in particular, should be commended for her work as she was 81 years old when she received her award.  She is the oldest recipient of the award in Academy history.

The plot is a simple one that can be summed up quickly.  Daisy Werthan (Tandy) is an older, wealthy, white, Jewish woman living in Atlanta, Georgia.  She is too old to drive, so her son Boolie Werthan (Aykroyd) hires for her a chauffeur named Hoke Colburn (Freeman).  Daisy doesn’t want to give up her independence, but eventually accepts Hoke’s service.  Over the years, a deep and lasting friendship develops between the two.  That’s it, in a nutshell.

Of course, the complexities of the story go much deeper than that.  Daisy is a widow who used to be a teacher.  Before that, she was a girl who grew up in a poor family that often had to do without the simple comforts of life because they couldn’t afford them.  It was then that she learned her fierce independence, adopting the adage that if you want anything done, you have to do it for yourself.

For many people, one of the difficulties of growing old is giving up independence.  Many things which were once as easy as driving to the super-market, are now difficult and cannot be done without assistance.  But as the body, and sometimes the mind, begin to slow down, such measures are necessary.  This can bring a certain amount of embarrassment or even shame, along with a hefty amount of frustration.  This is not really the point of the movie, but it does explain why she is so resistant to having a chauffeur.

At one point she is so dead set against having Hoke as her driver, she tries to catch him stealing from her food pantry.  She finds a can of Salmon missing and is all ready to accuse him of being a thief when he comes in and addresses the issue before she can make her accusation.  He admits to taking the Salmon and has already purchased a replacement can to restore the pantry.

Fortunately, everybody loves Morgan Freeman.  He just has such a likable persona about him that is hard to resist, and Miss Daisy is no exception.  Eventually she begins to accept him.  In one slightly amusing scene, Daisy refuses to let him drive her to the market.  She sets out on foot, walking towards a bus-stop.  But Hoke follows her in the car.  Embarrassed at being followed by a man in a car, Daisy breaks down and allows him to drive her.

Thus, an uneasy friendship begins as her personal barriers are broken down.  She claims to not have any prejudices, and yet, like many people, they are there.  Hers take a very subtle form.  She has nothing against colored people, but she employs them only as servants such as Idella, her cook, wonderfully played by Esther Rolle.  Miss Daisy has to get over her own prejudices, but she, at several points becomes the victim of anti-Semitism.  The worst of these instances is when her Jewish temple is bombed.  But even then, Hoke is there to offer comfort by sharing his own experience with horrible racism.

The intricacies of their friendship continue to grow and become much deeper.  The screen-writer, Alfred Uhry, did an excellent job of making it all believable, and the director, Bruce Beresford, did a great job of making the pacing a comfortable one.  What I mean by this, is that  Driving Miss Daisy could have been such a snoozer.  But it wasn’t.  The acting was top-notch and engaging.  The pace of the film was not as slow as you might think.  The film was only 1 hour and 49 minutes long but it felt even shorter.  Compare that to the running time of other Academy Award Best Picture winners of the 1980s  like The Last Emperor at 2 hours and 40 minutes, Out of Africa and Amadeus, both at 2 hours and 41 minutes, and Gandhi at 3 hours and 3 minutes.  Even Rain Man came in at 2 hours and 13 minutes.  Driving Miss Daisy was such an easy film to watch and enjoy.

Now, as to specific performances, Jessica Tandy did a fantastic job.  Her character started off at 72 years old and ended up at 97.  Interesting that even though the actress was 81, they had to put aging makeup on her to make her appear 16 years older.  Miss Daisy starts off as a crotchety old lady and through her interaction with Hoke, she softens and becomes a likable character.  When her dementia set in, my heart nearly broke.  She is so frightened, as anyone would be in her situation, and Tandy, the actress,  really had a lot to do with my emotional response.  But even through the onset of her illness, she holds on to the fact that Hoke has become her best friend.

I especially liked her in the final scene of the movie.  At this point, she is in a rest home and is about 97 or so years old.  She has difficulty even picking up a fork to eat her food.  Hoke is visiting her and continues to be her friend by picking up the fork and feeding her.  It is such a sweet and heartwarming scene, that even now, as I am remembering it, I am getting all teary-eyed.  The look of gratitude and love on her face as she eats from his hand is just brilliant.  Well done Jessica!

Morgan Freeman also did a fantastic job.  I have never seen him do anything I didn’t like.  I loved him in the Shawshank Redemption, which is one of my favorite movies of all time.  (The fact that it didn’t take home a Best Picture Oscar of its own is just a travesty!  But I digress…)  And who didn’t love just hearing his voice in March of the Penguins?  The character of Hoke, which he created for Driving Miss Daisy was wonderful to watch.  He is the kind of guy that we would all love to know.  He was honest, polite, gentle, pleasant, and thoroughly endearing.

Even Dan Aykroyd surprised me.  I am used to seeing him in comedies and it was nice to see him in a more serious role.  He even took on a Southern accent which he kept up perfectly well.

The costumes and sets were all perfectly appropriate, though that didn’t seem like an overly-complicated an achievement.  Everything appeared to be appropriate enough to the 50s and 60s.  Even the cars that Hoke was driving were from the right time.

But I have to mention one thing that I didn’t particularly care for, and I think this would be the fault of the director.  Often times, the story would skip ahead several years without letting the audience know.  It wasn’t always enough to require more age makeup on the characters, so it was hard to tell that any significant blocks of time had passed.  The result of this oversight was that by the end of the film you don’t really get a sense of just how long Hoke was Miss Daisy’s driver.  Apparently he worked for her for 25 years, though there was little to no indication of that much time having passed.  I think the director should have made it clearer when the plot jumped ahead like that.

Interesting note:  Driving Miss Daisy is the last film to win the Best Picture award with a G rating.  It is also the only film that was based on an off-Broadway production to win the Best Picture award.

And finally, I have to mention the music.  Hans Zimmer wrote the score that accompanied the film.  It was appropriately twangy for a film that takes place in the South, but I liked it anyway.  In fact, the score was nominated for a Grammy for Best Instrumental Composition for a Motion Picture or for Television.  This is impressive since the score was performed entirely by Zimmer, using nothing but samplers and synthesizers.

I liked the film, despite myself.  It was very sweet without particularly trying to be, which made it work very well.  Sweet for the sake of being sweet is usually just nauseating.  But Driving Miss Daisy was nice and touching, and enjoyable to watch.  However… I looked it up.  It was running against some pretty great movies like Dead Poet’s Society, Field of Dreams, My Left Foot and Born on the 4^th of July.  Best Picture Against that kind of competition?  I’m not entirely convinced.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Rain Man – 1988

Rain Man brings us back down to earth.  The last four Best Picture Winners have been films that took us to the past and put us in foreign locations.  But here we are with Tom Cruise and Dustin Hoffman in a film that takes place in the year in which it was made.  I had seen bits and pieces of this movie, but never the whole thing in one sitting.

Finally!  Finally we get to see Hoffman turn in a performance that justifies all the accolades that have been given to him over the years.  This is the first time I have seen him play a character that was not so one note.  Now, I understand that anyone who has seen Rain Man might say that his character was VERY one note.  That was the whole point of his character.  But we’ll get into that in a bit.

Let me back up and start with a little plot, a few likes and dislikes, and then a word or two about costumes and music. Somewhere in there we’ll get into the characters.  There is a lot to cover.

The film opens with Tom Criuse playing the part of Charlie Babbitt.  He is a fast talking high-end car salesman who is selling cars to an interested buyer if he can get the vehicles clear of customs.  It promises to be a very lucrative deal if he can pull it off.  The complications start when he gets a phone call saying his father has died.  Without going too deeply into the story, he flies to Cincinnati for the funeral and the reading of the will.  He learns that aside from a fancy car and some rose bushes, he has been left nothing of his father’s considerable estate.  A sum of $3 million has been left to Raymond, his brother, played by Dustin Hoffman.

The problem is he had no idea that he had a brother.  Raymond had been hidden from him.  He is a patient at a mental institution, an autistic savant.  The autism means that his brain does not function in a way that allows him to competently interact with the real world.  He cannot take care of himself and needs constant supervision.  Savant means that his brain has highly specialized abilities that are far beyond normal human levels.  For example, he has a photographic memory that is 100% accurate, though he generally has little understanding of the subject matter.  He is also a human calculator, able to instantly count hundreds of objects at once, or do long multiplication instantly in his head, though again, he cannot understand what the numbers mean.

In order to get his hands on his half of the money, Charlie kidnaps Raymond from the institution and tries to take him to LA.  However, part of Raymond’s condition is that he needs routine in just about everything he does or he becomes deathly afraid.  He must eat the same foods, watch the same TV programs, and all on the tight schedule programmed by the institution.  And since Raymond will not get on an airplane (he can recall with perfect accuracy the dates, airlines, flight numbers, and number of fatalities of every airplane crash ever to occur) Charlie is forced to drive cross country with him.

In the mean time, Charlie’s car deal goes bad and he loses everything.  So what does he end up doing?  He takes Raymond to Vegas and uses his savant abilities to count cards at the black-jack table and make enough money to pay for his debts.

Cruise did a good enough job.  He was the perfect self-centered asshole precursor to the me-me-me yuppie of the 90s.  Honestly, as I watched the film, the thought occurred to me that Hoffman could have done the role justice in his younger years.  But Cruise knew what he was doing.  The official movie trailer described Charlie as a smooth-talking salesman.  But I think abrasive jerk would have been more accurate.  He was such an ass to the other characters in the film, he was starting to piss me off.

Interesting note:  Hoffman was actually originally slated to play the character of Charlie, opposite Bill Murray playing Raymond.

Hoffman, however was incredible.  He won the Oscar for Best Actor, and I think he really deserved it.  The way he behaved, the repeated and repeated lines and phrases, the autistic mannerisms, the dead, uninterested look in his eyes, the nervous rocking back and forth, the fits of terror when he lost control, all made for an unforgettable character.  This was truly the work of a master actor and in this case, I really have to tip my hat to him.  It is a performance that needs to be seen.

The film is an easy one to like, but not everything was perfect.  There was actually only one small thing I didn’t really like.  The only sizeable female character in the film was Charlie‘s girlfriend, Susanna, played by Valeria Golino.  I’m not sure why, but I have always considered Golino to be an unremarkable and average actress.  She is pretty enough if she doesn’t have to speak.  In fact, she has won numerous awards for Italian cinema, but her accent was so strong that I sometimes had difficulty understanding her.  And her character, which, I must admit, had nothing to do with her, was poorly written.  I mean, she is supposed to be Charlie’s long-time girlfriend.  But really, why would anyone with an ounce of self-esteem put up with such a self-centered jerk for that long?  The only intelligent thing she did in the film was to leave him, and there was no reason for her to come back later.

OK – maybe that wasn’t so much bad writing… just a character I didn’t like.

The costumes were very appropriate for the late 80s.  This was the era of Miami Vice, where shirts were buttoned all the way up without ties, suit jackets had very square shoulders, and sunglasses were worn even at night.  Put a gun in Tom Cruise’s hand and he could have joined Crocket and Tubbs.

The music was nominated for best Original score, though it did not win.   I actually thought the music was a little disjointed.  I mean, I felt that it sometimes didn’t seem to fit the movie.  It reminded me of the score to a 1992 movie called Medicine Man by Jerry Goldsmith.  Sometimes, I thought the music was a bit too… Rain Forest instead of Rain Man.

Now, here is something I have to question:  How accurately did the writers, and subsequently Hoffman, come to portraying actual autism?  Apparently, very accurately.  There really are people who are very similar to Raymond, having many of the same characteristics and abilities.  The problem comes when people see his performance and make the assumption that all autistics are just like that.  In fact, autism comes in many forms and is only rarely coupled with savant abilities.  So, in light of that truth, I don’t mind that they chose to use that rare combination to tell their story.  The movie never tried to say that all autistic people are like Raymond.

Interesting note:  Another misconception fostered by the film is that card counting is illegal in the United States.  In fact, it is legal, though it is difficult to do and frowned upon by casinos.

Now, all that being said, there was really not very much emotional depth in the film.  As you might guess, when Charlie and Raymond spend a week together, they get to know each other and they are both changed by the experience.  They form a connection and a bond.  The one most affected by this bond is Charlie, so the real main character of the movie is not Raymond, but Charlie.  He goes through the most profound changes and becomes a better person by the end.

And I really liked the tiny little sub-plot that explained where the title of the movie came from.  This was the story of Charlie’s infancy which also explained why Raymond was sent away to an institution.  The scene in which this story is told is one of real connection between the two brothers.  I wish there had been just a few more scenes like it to make Charlie’s emotional journey more substantial.  You see, though his character was more mellow by the end, and maybe a bit more mature, he still retained some of those negative qualities that made me dislike him at the beginning.  But I guess it just goes to show you that though a tiger can change his stripes, it doesn’t happen over-night.

Overall, this was a very good movie, and worth seeing.  Hoffman’s performance was amazing.  The film took home 4 Oscars.  Aside from Best Picture and Best Actor, it also won for Best Director (Berry Levinson) and Best Writing, Original Screenplay (Barry Morrow and Ronald Bass).

Interesting note:  That character of Raymond was based on real-life savant Kim Peek, the biggest difference being that Peek was not autistic.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Last Emperor – 1987

The Last Emperor was a large movie.  It was nearly 3 hours long, a bit slow for my tastes, but visually stunning.  There is no doubt that it was a good movie.  The production values were of the highest standard.  There was clearly a great attention to detail in the costumes, filming locations, props and the like.  The casting was very good, though the only name I recognized was Peter O’Tool.

However, he was only a minor character.  The main plot of the film was carried by actor John Lone who played the part of the adult Puyi, the last Emperor of China.  He reigned from 1908 at the age of 3 until he was forced to abdicate the throne in 1912 at the age of 7.  He remained in the palace of the Forbidden City for the next 12 years until he was expelled in 1924.  The film continues to follow Puyi over the course of his life as he is re-crowned as a puppet emperor for Japanese invaders in 1932, captured by the Russian army in the Pacific War in 1949, and imprisoned for ten years in the Fushun War Criminals Management Center until his release from government rehabilitation in 1958.  At that point he was 53 years old.  Then a few brief scenes are shown of him just before his death in 1967 at the age of 62.  At that point, he was a simple gardener living the life of a peasant.

Of course those are just the bare highlights of his life.  There are, of course many more details that the movie covered and we’ll get to those in a bit, but something has to be mentioned first: The magnificent Forbidden City.  Apparently The Last Emperor was the first Western motion picture that the Chinese government allowed to film in the historical building.  The Forbidden City is a phenomenal palace that was built in the early 1400s for use as a residence for the Emperors of China and their families.  It was used as such for 500 years.  Located in the center of Beijing, it is an easily recognizable structure that is now a tourist attraction and museum.

Interesting note:  The Forbidden City is actually named Zijin Cheng which is translated as Purple Forbidden City.  Purple refers to Ziwei, the North Star, which in Chinese Mythology is the abode of the Celestial Emperor.  The Forbidden City was the home of his counterpart, the Terrestrial Emperor.

Director Bernardo Bertolucci spent the first 90 minutes of the film taking full advantage of beauty of the Forbidden City. The coronation scene was one of particular magnificence.  The film used over 19,000 extras, many of whom were in that scene.  Each one of them had to be clothed in period specific Chinese ceremonial garb, circa 1908, which must have been a pretty daunting task for costume designer, James Acheson.  He really deserved the Oscar he won for his work.  The costumes for the Emperor were gorgeous and regal.  Well done, James.

Interesting note:  Many of the extras in the film were drafted from the Chinese Army.

The Forbidden City is grand and ornate.  The architecture is exquisite and easily recognizable.  The throne itself is a work of art done in gold.  When Puyi took the throne he was too young to appreciate its splendor and kept begging to be allowed to go home, though this request was denied him.  His only friend was his wet nurse.  I found it a bit creepy, but strangely believable that he was still breast-feeding at age 10 or so.  The serving staff waited on him hand and foot, so much so that he had no idea how to take care of himself.  He couldn’t even tie his own shoes.

While Puyi still lived at the Forbidden City, a wife was chosen for him, and he was allowed to choose his own consort, or secondary wife.  His first wife, the Empress Wanrong was played by Joan Chen.  She was beautiful and played her part well.  Later on in the film, she becomes an opium addict and suffers a tragic fate.  I thought she did a good job.

John Lone, though, did a fantastic job.  As with most epics of this nature, he had to play the same character in different phases of his life – in this case, from around 21 to 62.  The makeup can only do so much.  As good as the makeup is, the actor has to act the part properly.  I have seen it done right and I have seen it done wrong.  Lone did just fine.  Of course, several other ages were needed for the film.  Richard Vuu was the 3 year-old Puyi.  Tijer Tsou played him at 8 years old.  And finally, Wu Tao was Puyi at 15 years-old.  It is the job of the casting director to find actors that look similar enough as to be believable as the same person.  There isn’t an Academy award for Best Casting, but whoever this person was, maybe he would have won.

Peter O’Tool played the part of Reginald Johnston, Puyi’s Scottish tutor.  O’Tool is generally a fine actor, and he performed the role passably well.  My problem with his portrayal was that they made the point of saying that he was a Scotsman.  But he had a distinctly British accent.  Only once did I hear anything come out of his mouth that resembled a Scottish accent.  However, it was only for one brief sentence and it never came back.  If you can get past that little detail, he did OK.

I have to give a special thumbs-up to the producer Jeremy Thomas.  The reason for this is that he independently funded the entire film.  On his own, he raised the $25 million needed to make the film without any studio backing him.  Once the film was made, he struck a deal with Columbia Pictures to distribute the movie in North America, but other than that, he did it all single-handedly.

Interesting note:  According to my research, (back to Wikipedia again…) I found that at some point, in order to raise money, Thomas was scouring the phone book in search of potential financers.

The soundtrack was very well done.  As you might expect, the music had a distinctly Chinese flare that did a great job of putting you right in the middle of the mysterious far-east.  The music made use of authentic Chinese instruments that traditionally have that high squeaky quality that should be annoying, and often is to my American ears.  But within the context of the film, it was appropriate.  I would have expected nothing else.  In fact, it was even very beautiful at times and had a certain ancient and timeless feel.

And that brings me to something that I was not sure I was going to mention in my review.  The opening credits.  Usually, opening credits are not particularly noteworthy, but they caught my attention in this movie.  All they did was show bright and colorful images of intricate and yet mostly indistinct backgrounds that were nonetheless very beautiful as the names of the actors were flowing on and off the screen.  It was very pretty and, I thought, somewhat reflective of the ornately beautiful traditional clothing of China.  And of course, the beautiful Chinese-sounding music that played over the credits caught my attention.

When I reflect on the life of Puyi as it was depicted in The Last Emperor, I have to agree with Johnston’s assessment in the film.  Puyi had to be the loneliest boy alive.  With all the servants and staff at his command, not one of them was allowed to be a friend to him.  They were all too busy falling all over themselves to serve him.  With all the power he had, the ability to have anything he desired, he had remarkably few opportunities to be in control his own life.  He was at the mercy of his position as Emperor.

And it was just sad that he ended up with nothing, no family, no servants, no money, no position, and no title.  But I also think that a small part of him must have been happier like that, happier with the freedom that the life of a peasant must have allowed him.  As Emperor, he was a prisoner.  As a peasant he was free.

Finally, I have to mention the Chinese Republic prison in which he spent ten long years.  In fact, the film opened with him being taken to the prison in 1950.  So really, the story of his life, the lion’s share of the movie, was all told in flashback.  Every now and then, to neatly divide up his life into its different eras, the story would return to the prison.  Here he ran into several people that he knew when he was the Emperor of all China.  Out of habit, he still treated them like servants until they began to complain both to him and to the prison guards.  It really brought home the fact that he was no longer Emperor.

One of the guards actually befriends him and helps/forces him to learn to take care of himself.  While in incarceration, he sees a propaganda film displaying Japanese war atrocities and actually repents, admitting his forced participation as a puppet Emperor for the Japanese.  He is released from prison in 1958.

The film ends in a very clever way.  As a simple tourist, at the age of 63 or so, Puyi visits the Forbidden City, his former home.  It is now a museum.  It is nearly deserted as he climbs over the guard rope to ascend to the throne upon which he once sat.  Before he can sit on the throne he is stopped by a young child wearing the red scarf of the Communist Pioneer Movement.  He tells the child that he was once the Emperor of all China.  The boy demands proof.  In answer, Puyi reaches behind the throne to a secret place where he had once hidden a small jar containing a cricket that had been given to him as a gift when he was a child.  Somehow, the 60 year old cricket was still alive inside the jar, but never-mind that.  The child releases the insect and believes Puyi, but when he looks back in wonder, Puyi is gone. Enigmatic and mysterious, to be sure.  Much like ancient China, itself.

This was ultimately a good movie.  It was a bit too long and slow for my tastes, but definitely worth watching, a worthy Best Picture winner.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Platoon – 1986

Here we have another war film.  This is the first one that really dealt with the Vietnam War in a hard-hitting way.  Sure, The Deer Hunter took place in the Vietnam War and had a few scenes that took place in Vietnam, but it was more like fantasy than reality.  Platoon really took the war head-on.

The Vietnam War was unlike any other war in history in so many ways.  It took place in a time of great political, social and cultural upheaval leaving very few people in the United States unaffected.  The fighting conditions were unlike anything our soldiers had ever faced.  Warfare technology had progressed to a point where injuries and death were dealt more horrifically than ever before.

Platoon caught me off guard.  I went into it having never seen it before.  After all, I am not a huge fan of war films, especially not if they get too graphic or bloody.  Platoon was very violent and bloody, stressful to watch and heartbreaking at times.  But it was a film that also had a very deep emotional content and characters that were powerful.  It starred Charlie Sheen as the lead, Private Chris Taylor, an enlisted college drop-out assigned to Bravo Company, 25^th Infantry Division.  The story was told from his perspective.  In fact, a certain amount of narration takes place in the form of Taylor’s letters to his grandmother.

Oliver Stone directed this movie, and I have to make special mention of that because the advertisements and trailer really emphasized the fact that Stone had served in the Vietnam War with the 25^th Infantry Division.  He was wounded twice and received the Purple Heart with an Oak Leaf Cluster.  That really went a long way to validating the credibility of the film, and its excessive violence.  In fact some have called Platoon a semi-autobiographical film for Stone.

Either way, I felt he achieved a realism that is rarely seen in movies.  The dirt, the grime, the horrible jungle environment, the wounded men, the insanity, the loss of one’s sense and reason, and the ever present fear of pain and death were all blatantly displayed in harsh tones of green, black, brown and red.

Interesting note:  In order to get the most realism he could out of his actors, Stone forced them to go through similar conditions to real soldiers.  He made them carry heavy packs and provisions, dig foxholes, go on forced marches, and deprived them of sleep for two weeks before filming started.  This had the effect of making sure the actors looked as beat and weary as their characters were supposed to be.

Sheen did a great job.  These days, Sheen has been in the media and has become known as a crazy guy, a wild partier, and even pretty loony at times.  It is easy to forget that he can actually be an excellent actor when he wants to be.  His portrayal of Chris Taylor proves that point.  He was young and he had a look of naiveté about him that was essential for the character.  At least, that is how he started out.  By the end of the film, he was on the verge of madness and possibly even suicide, though we’ll get to that in a bit.

There was actually a fairly extensive list of actors that have gone on to prolific careers that were in Platoon: Tom Berenger, Willem Dafoe, Johnny Depp, Forest Whitaker, Kevin Dillon, and John C. McGinley.  And those are just the ones I personally recognize.  The entire cast did a great job, but apart from Charlie Sheen, two of these actors had prominent parts.  Berenger played the part of Sergeant Bob Barnes.  He was the stereotypical macho asshole guy who thought he was tougher and smarter than anyone else.  He thought he was above the rules when in reality his humanity had sunk lower than anyone else’s.  Unfortunately, he was also the Platoon Leader.

Opposite him was Dafoe, playing the part of Sergeant Elias.  Elias turned out to be a good guy.  He became sort of a mentor to Taylor who was having a tough time assimilating the life of an infantry man.  Elias helped him out, stood up for him and became a kind of friend.  I have often been prejudice against Willem Dafoe, though I must admit, I always have difficulty explaining why.  Something about him as an actor just seems creepy to me.  But I also cannot deny that he is skilled at his craft.  More than once I have seen him turn in good performances in various films.  This was no exception.  He was a likable character and Dafoe did a good job.

But everything changes when the platoon is ordered to investigate a village of Vietnamese peasants suspected of harboring NVA (North Vietnamese Army) soldiers.  The men of the platoon go crazy.  Before this they had spent months in the jungles fighting the NVA, watching their companions die horrible deaths, and knowing that at any second, any one of them might be next.  Then they find one of their patrols mutilated and tied to a post.  The sanity of the platoon snapped as the villagers cowered in fear.  Even Taylor loses himself and starts shooting at the feet of a man and woman, making them “dance.”  This only stops when another member of the platoon steps in and bludgeons the man to death with his weapon.  After that Taylor finds several men trying to rape two young girls of the village and stops them.

While interrogating the village chief, Barnes, believing that he is hiding more NVA soldiers despite his protestations, loses control and shoots the chief’s wife in the head, murdering her.  But if that wasn’t enough, he grabs the chief’s daughter and threatens to execute her if the NVA soldiers are not given up.  Elias intervenes and gets into a fist-fight with Barnes.

Elias brings formal charges against Barnes, but before the case can be tried, the platoon is ordered back out into the jungle.  In order to stop the inquiry and subsequent court-marshal, Barnes murders Elias.  Taylor doesn’t see it happen, but he strongly suspects the truth.  Barnes tells him that Elias is dead and the two head back to the helicopters.  But as the helicopters are flying away, Elias runs out of the jungle being chased by a host of enemy soldiers.  This is where the famous shot of the dying man with his arms raised to the sky which is featured on some of the promotional posters for the film came from.  I thought it was an unusually over-dramatized death for a film which has gone out of its way to be realistic and somewhat matter-of-fact about death.

Now, I know I am simply spelling out the main plot, which I usually try not to do too much during my reviews, but I have a reason.  You see, the climax of the film depends on this and I want to comment on how the movie ends.  After a huge battle where the U.S. troops are defending against a major assault, Taylor and Barnes are fighting for their lives.  At one point, knowing that Taylor could still blow the whistle on him, and even accuse him of murdering Elias, Barnes tries to murder Taylor as well.  But they are both knocked unconscious before that can happen.

When Taylor wakes up the next morning, he finds an enemy rifle and points it at Barnes who is lying on the ground.  In his macho style, Barnes croaks something like, “Just do it!” not believing that Taylor has the morals of a murderer.  But my jaw just dropped when, without the slightest hesitation, he actually does it!  He shoots Barnes in the chest, killing him instantly.  I was shocked!  Most Hollywood movies take the high road, making the main character out to be noble and forthright.  The fact that Taylor actually committed murder, even though it was the murder of a man who deserved it, was a wonderful departure from the typical movie hero stereotype!

The tagline for the film in advertisements was a play on a famous phrase.  “The first casualty of war is innocence,” the original word, of course, being “the truth.”  This profound ending really drove that point home in a powerful way.  Taylor sheds the last of his innocence when he murders Sergeant Barnes in a very cold and casual way.  Of course, he is sent home after that, having been wounded twice during his time in service.

Interesting note:  The plot synopsis on Wikipedia says that after killing Barnes, Taylor actually contemplates suicide before he is found by U.S. troops.  This was not very evident in the film, though it makes perfect sense.

Another interesting note:  Oliver stone made a cameo appearance as the battalion commander of the 3/22 infantry in the climactic battle which was based on the historical New Year’s Day Battle of 1968.  Stone actually took part in that battle while in Vietnam.

Of all the other actors in the film, I really liked the character of Sergeant O’Neill, played my John C. McGinley.  He did a great job playing a character that, while not exactly likable, was very believable.  He desperately wanted to go home.  At the very least I think that would have been my attitude, had I been there and so I felt a tremendous amount of sympathy for his character.  In the end, he only survived the final battle by hiding under the body of a dead soldier.  In that way he escaped injury, but in doing so he got promoted to Platoon leader, thus keeping him in Vietnam while others were allowed to go home.  The look of horror and resignation on the man’s face when he received his promotion and realized that he couldn’t leave was almost enough to make me teary as well.  Very well-acted McGinley!

This was not exactly an easy movie to watch but it was very well done and I ended up liking it despite myself.  I appreciated the realism of the plot and the depiction of the horrors of the Vietnam War.  It was thought provoking and it stuck with me for several days after watching it.  The movie was nominated for 7 Academy Awards, winning 4 of them.  In addition to Best Picture, it won for Best Sound and Best Film Editing, and Oliver Stone took home the Oscar for Best Director.  This was truly a powerful piece of film-making.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Out of Africa – 1985

This was a good movie, though a slow one.  The plot was engaging, the acting was good, the music was gorgeous, and the themes grand.  The filming locations were exotic, the realism was very well done, and characters were subtle and believable.  I enjoyed watching it, well enough, though generally, I would say that it isn’t really my kind of film.  Meryl Streep and Robert Redford take the leads along with Austrian born actor, Klaus Maria Brandauer.  It would have been a great movie if it hadn’t been so slow.

Of course, Redford also did a good job, as he usually does.  He was good in previous Best Picture winner, The Sting.  But it seemed to me that he was playing the same character.  I’m beginning to think that he actually has a pretty limited range when it comes to acting.  True, he is very handsome and nice to watch, but I didn’t see him stretching himself as an actor.

But Meryl Streep can pretty much do no wrong in my eyes.  She took on a Dutch accent which she kept up very well throughout the entire film.  Accents are usually avoided for all but the most skilled actors because they are not easy to maintain.  Streep, however, had already proved that she was up to the task of carrying a believable accent, turning in a masterful performance in Sophie’s Choice three years earlier in 1982.  Again, she was wonderful to watch and she did a fantastic job.

Out of Africa was based on an autobiography written by Karen Blixen.  Streep played the part of Blixen, a Danish woman who has some money and is looking for a husband.  She ends up entering into a marriage of convenience with a good friend named Baron Bror Blixen, excellently played by Brandauer.  Together, they move to British Africa, what is now Kenya, with the intention of starting a dairy farm.  From then on, nothing goes right for Karen.  Nothing.  This is one of those plots that asks the question, “How much misery can we heap on our character without killing her?”

Interesting note:  Streep got the part by showing up for her meeting with director Sydney Pollack in a low-cut blouse and push-up bra, because he had originally thought she wasn’t sexy enough for the part.  Ironically, I didn’t really think that her character needed to be at all sexy.

Sure, Karen gains her husband’s title and is now the Baroness Blixen, but that is where the relationship effectively ends.  He takes her money and buys a coffee plantation instead of a dairy farm, which he has no intention of helping to run.  Instead, he wants to be a big-game hunter and leaves her alone to run the plantation alone for months at a time.  Unfortunately the coffee plants will not yield any kind of a harvest for four years, so he has effectively put them in financial difficulty right off the bat.  Add to that the fact that the marriage, at least for him, is a loveless one.  But she develops feelings for him anyway, and is surprised and hurt when she catches him cheating.  And how did she catch him?  Why,    he gives her syphilis, of course.  This does not kill her, but it does ensure that she can no longer have children.

Redford plays the role of Denys Finch Hatton.  He is a big-game hunter and friend of the Blixens.  As time goes by, and as bad things start happening to Karen, the friendship between her and Denys continues to develop.  Eventually the two become lovers.  The movie is billed as a romantic drama, and up until this point, there has been plenty of drama and very little romance.  But I must say that the romance, once it started happening, was very good.  The script was good, but it was made even more effective because of the good acting, especially Streep.

Sufficient time was given to the building of the relationship until it was natural that the two become lovers.  I’ve seen movies that are supposed to be romances that don’t do that, and the couple just jump into the sack together before you can turn your head.  But Streep and Redford had a nice on-screen chemistry that was nice to watch.

Interesting note:  The movie deviated from real life in several significant ways.  For example, Karen and Denys conceived at least one child together.  Unfortunately Karen suffered a miscarriage.  This doesn’t make sense, since the syphilis made Karen unable to have children.  So, in reality, she must have been cheating on her husband, Bror, before she contracted the disease from him.

The movie goes slowly on as more misfortune and tragedy are piled on top of Karen.  But the film also had the great English composer John Barry doing the soundtrack.  And let me tell you, it was an absolutely beautiful score.  One of my favorite scores to listen to is Dances With Wolves, another of Barry’s scores, and I could hear his personal style in the music for Out of Africa as well.  It was large and sweeping and very melodic.  Barry’s music has a feeling of simplicity about it that hides the true complex nature of the orchestral writing.  Just beautiful.

I also have to mention the costumes.  This was a period piece, taking place around the end of WWI.  Some of the scenes required period specific dresses for Streep and the other ladies to wear.  I especially liked some of the hats that she wore.  They even made a point of drawing attention to one of her hats in one scene, in which another woman mentions that she thinks the hat is hideous.  I actually liked that one.  Of course, the men were easy to clothe, for the most part.  Their tuxedos and safari clothing were comparable to anything that might be worn today.

The cinematography was also pretty noteworthy.  Pollack had some wonderful filming locations to work with.  Africa has some amazingly beautiful landscapes.  There were plenty of wide shots of the desert plains.  There was even a great sequence in which Karen and Denys went up in a biplane and looked down at the beauty of Africa.  They flew over herds of water buffalo and flocks of flamingos.  For anyone who has not seen these things in documentaries or videos, they are humongous.  It is actually surprising how large these masses of animals are.

Also, the depictions of the lions was pretty cool.  One thing I noticed that the director chose to do took place in a short scene in which Karen and Denys are attacked by lions.  Pollack showed the attack in slow motion so the audience could get a clear image of the charging beasts.  The large cats are beautiful when they are running and it was an effective little trick.  Unfortunately it took away the sense of danger inherent in the scene.  You couldn’t get an idea how fast the animals actually are when they attack their prey.  And the tension of the scene when both Karen and Denys calmly raised their guns and shot the lions down was undercut.  I think the sequence might have been better served if it showed the quickness of the attack and the calm-under-pressure reflexes of the characters involved.

But it also did something else that I didn’t particularly care for.  It just emphasized the slowness of the entire movie.  You see, as I was reading about the slow pace of the film, I found that it was a deliberate choice, and there was a reason for it.  Much of the film’s romantic subplot and the plot of the movie as a whole centered around Denys (and to some extent Bror as well) and his refusal to settle down.  Apparently life in South Africa moves at a slower pace than most of the world.  Denys loved the slower, calmer lifestyle that he had become accustomed to.  This was reflective of the South African natives and their nomadic ways.

And once again, I find it interesting that the British are there, trying to make the rest of the world like itself rather than leaving them alone and letting them live their own lives in peace.  For some reason the Brits have a history of arrogance, thinking that they are the only civilized nation on earth and wherever they go, they want to force the natives to adopt their civilized ways for their own good, whether they want it or not.

Well, by the end of the film, Karen has endured such loss, betrayal, sickness, and misfortune that it comes as no surprise that she loses Denys as well.  There was one line that she uttered during one of Denys’ brief visits which I found very telling of the entire film.  She said, “When the gods want to punish you, they answer your prayers.”  I’m pretty sure it meant that we never know what is really good for us.  As a result, what we want will more than likely be bad for us.  So don’t want anything too good for yourself.  It’s just going to get you into trouble.  A pretty pessimistic view, to be sure, but then look at what her character had already endured.  A bit of pessimism is understandable.

Still, the movie was very pretty to look at and very pretty to listen to, and the romance between Karen and Denys was pretty engaging.  But it just moved too slow for my tastes.  Pick up the pace just a little bit and I would have liked it even more.

Interesting note:  This is taken directly from Wikipedia.  “Among the various props used in the movie, the compass that Redford gives to Streep was Denys Finch Hatton’s actual compass. Unfortunately, it was stolen during the production. As guns (real, toys and replicas) are illegal in Kenya, Redford’s papier mache pistol was confiscated at the end of production and has since been seen as a rental item in subsequent stage productions in Nairobi.”

Another interesting note:  Supermodel Iman had a small role in the latter half of the film as Mariammo, the African lover of Denys’ friend.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Amadeus – 1984

Right off the bat, I have to say that Amadeus was an incredible film.  Director Milos Forman had a clear idea of what he wanted and the ability to make it work.  He was able to get the perfect cast, permission to film in the right locations, which we’ll get to in a bit, a script that was beyond wonderful, and a realism that was incredibly believable, despite the almost fantasy-like nature of the film.  This movie truly deserved all the awards it won.

Amadeus is based on the stage play, using the same name.  It is a story told from the perspective of Antonio Salieri, masterfully played by F. Murray Abraham.  His portrayal was nothing short of genius.  The film begins with an extremely aged Salieri’s bloody attempt at suicide.  He claims to have killed Mozart, a lofty claim, to be sure, since Mozart’s death is believed to be of an acute case of rheumatic fever.
However, Salieri, having been locked away in an insane asylum, recounts to a visiting priest his reasons for driving the genius composer to his death.  The main body of the movie then begins, following Salieri during his tenure as Court Composer to Holy Roman Emperor Joseph II, played by Jeffrey Jones.  Rumors of a child prodigy, now grown to manhood, named Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, played by Tom Hulce, begin to circulate around the court.  The Emperor asks to meet this young wunderkind.

But here is the catch.  Salieri was so in love with music as a child that he prayed and made a deal with God.  In this deal, he asked to be a composer of skill and notoriety. In return, he offered his chastity, his enterprise, and his very soul.  And he remained true to his bargain.  He was the figure of piety, abstaining from sins of the flesh, and devoting his professional life to the glory of music, which he thought of as God’s answer to his prayer.

But then Mozart arrives in Vienna and Salieri sees him being a debauched and perverted man, the adult version of a spoiled child.  This incenses Salieri beyond sanity for one simple reason: because he has heard Mozart’s music and recognized the sheer genius of it.  At first, he thought that the music’s unearthly beauty was a fluke.  The little that he heard had to be a stroke of luck or an accident.  But the more heard, the more he listened, the more he began to realize that it was anything but.  And he began to think that God had cheated him.  Through Mozart’s music, he heard the very voice of God Himself, so exquisite were the young reprobate’s compositions.  He who had devoted his entire life to God and His glorification through his own music, which now seemed nothing more than mediocre when compared to that of Mozart, now felt like God was spitting on him and his paltry talents.  That was when hate began to grow in his heart, hate for Mozart, and eventually, hate even for God.

Abraham’s performance was incredible, mesmerizing, intense, and utterly believable.  Throughout the movie, the old Salieri, keeps returning to remind the audience that the story of Mozart is all a flashback in his mind as he confesses his professed crime of murder to the priest.  These little scenes were so well written and so well acted.  Abrahams won the Academy Award for Best Actor for his performance, and it was well deserved.  He was phenomenal.

But I also have to give credit where credit is due.  The screenplay was written by Peter Schaffer.  The words he put into Salieri’s mouth were like poetry, powerful and profound.  The way he described music and its beauty, the way it can touch and move the souls of men was truly inspired.  But then, the way he described the depths of despair and hatred that the character of Salieri went through were also masterfully written.

Tom Hulce’s performance was also quite wonderful to watch.  He was also nominated for the Best Actor Award.  His portrayal of the tortured composer was wonderful.  He played the petulant, spoiled boy with what seemed like ease.  He played the great composer with real boldness and gravity.  Of course, the real man, Mozart, was not nearly as flamboyant as he was depicted in the movie, but it was wonderful for the drama, played against the dire motives of the character of Salieri.  But I believe that Abrahams won the Oscar over Hulce because Salieri was a much more complex character with infinitely deeper motivations.

Interesting note:  Kenneth Branagh was actually one of the finalists to play the coveted role of Mozart, but he was dropped when Forman decided he wanted an all American cast.

Another interesting note: Tom Hulce had to learn to play the piano for the part, and would spend hours and hours practicing in his hotel room during filming so that it would look believable when he was shown at the keyboard.  There is a scene in which Mozart has to play the keyboard backwards as he is held up-side-down over the harpsichord.  It has been noted that he actually played all the correct keys visually to match the music being played in the film’s soundtrack.

Other notable actors in Amadeus were Jeffrey Jones, playing the Emperor, Elizabeth Berridge as Mozart’s devoted wife Constanze, Roy Dotrice as Leopold Mozart, Mozart’s father, and Simon Callow as Emanuel Schikaneder, Mozart’s friend who ran the local vaudeville playhouse. They all played their parts very well, especially, Jones and Berridge.  Jones was always a delight to watch, he looked the part and played it very well.  Berridge was a bit of a screen stealer for me.  She was so common, not high born, and yet so earnest in her love for her husband.  I really enjoyed watching her.

Interesting note: Meg Tilly was originally cast in the role of Constanze.  Unfortunately for her, she was playing street soccer the night before filming was to take place.  She tore a ligament in her leg that forced her to relinquish the part to Berridge.

Another interesting note: Simon Callow played the part of Mozart in the stage version, but was given the part of Schikaneder, the librettist of The Magic Flute, in the film.

Part of the film was shot on location in Prague, Kromeriz, and Vienna.  Prague was a particularly difficult location since it is located in the Czech Republic.  Half the crew and even some of the extras were made up of the Czech Secret Police.  The main body of the movie was, however, shot in Vienna.

I would be remiss if I did not mention the costumes for this film.  Every single person had to be fitted and dressed for the late 1700s.  There were more wigs than one could count.  There were costumes for peasants and royalty.  There were theatre costumes for all the different operas depicted.  They had to dress lords and ladies, adults and children.  Theodore Pistek was the costume designer and though the task he took on was beyond belief, he really knew what he was doing.  He earned his own Oscar for his work and he really deserved it.  The costumes were simply fantastic!  Well done Theodore!

I also have to think that making this movie had to be a particularly special experience for the actors and the crew involved for a very special reason.  One of the authentic filming locations used in the film was the Burgtheatre in Vienna.  This was the actual theatre in which The Marriage of Figaro, one of Mozart’s most popular operas had its actual premier.  The theatre has had minimal renovations over the centuries and is in very much the same condition that it had been in 1786.  But to perform scenes from the beautiful opera in the very theatre in which it premiered was apparently an emotional experience for the cast and crew.

As director, Forman went out of his way to ensure that this somewhat biographical film was, first and foremost, a drama.  Some of the details were changed for dramatic effect, but I have no problem with that.  Hollywood does that all the time.  As long as the key points are maintained and no glaring untruths are told, then it makes sense that certain changes must be made when translating reality into a movie.  That being said, here are a few of the historical inaccuracies that my research has uncovered.  Time for a little history lesson.

Mozart and Constanze actually had 6 children, two of whom survived beyond infancy.  The film only showed one child.  The film also glossed over the fact that Mozart actually had a fairly respectable income and he and his wife enjoyed a plush lifestyle for a while.  But times became difficult for him and all composers in Vienna at the time because of the Austro-Turkish War.  Resources for his main patron, Emperor Joseph II, began to grow thin and paying a chamber composer became a secondary concern.  The film never mentioned the war.  Instead, it played into the drama of Salieri as he sabotaged Mozart’s career out of hatred and jealousy.

Also, the movie implied that Mozart’s last 3 operas were The Marriage of Figaro, Don Giovanni, and The Magic Flute.  Cosi fan tutte, another of Mozart’s famous operas, was written in 1790.  In addition, he wrote one of his lesser-known operas, La clemenza di Tito, which premiered in 1791.

And finally, it appears that the film was quite accurate in that Mozart had accumulated sizeable debts from borrowing.  What it does not mention is that near the end of his life he actually started making a lot of money selling his music and subsequently started paying off some of his debts.

Back to the film.  In a pretty minor part, Cynthia Nixon, famous today for her role on the TV show Sex in the City, played Lorl, Mozart’s maid.  Actually her character was fairly pivotal.  She was hired by Salieri to be Mozart’s maid so that she could be a spy, and even let Salieri into the apartment when the Mozarts were out.  I just found it a surprise to see Nixon in the movie.

And finally, there was the music.  Forman described the music of Mozart as an actual character in the film.  The music was scored and conducted by Sir Neville Marriner, who agreed to take the job on one condition: that not a single note of Mozart’s music would be changed.  Forman agreed and Mozart’s wonderful and beautiful music was used as the film score.  The movie’s soundtrack actually reached # 56 on Billboard’s album charts, making it one of the most popular recordings of classical music ever produced.

Interesting note:  In the beginning of the film, a snippet of the real Antonio Salieri’s music was used, though some of his notes were altered.

This was simply an incredible movie.  The attention to certain details was wonderful and impressive to watch.  But most impressive, to me was the music, the costumes, and Abraham’s phenomenal performance.  And the drama was gripping enough to make me emotionally invested in the plot.  It was a film that, even though I had seen it before, made me continue to think about it long after the final credits ended.  This was truly a great and worthy addition to the list of Best Picture winners.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Terms of Endearment – 1983

I went into this Best Picture winner knowing only what I had been told.  This is a chick-flick.  A tear-jerker.  Not really my kind of movie.  But I have to admit.  It did its job.  I shed a tear or two for the characters on the screen.  How could I not?  Cancer is never a pleasant subject.

Shirley McLaine, Jack Nicholson and Debra Winger star in this film that I’m not sure if I liked or not.  The acting was fine, the casting was fine, the filming locations and production values were good.  Even the basic plot was acceptable.  But it was the characters that I just didn’t like.  Thus, I had a hard time liking the movie, in general.

McLaine plays the part of Aurora Greenway.  She is a mother who is so overbearing, over-protective, and over the top that her only daughter is embarrassed of her and can’t wait to get away from her.  Winger plays Emma, the daughter that is socially and emotionally damaged by her clingy and invasive mother.

Not one minute into the movie and I already didn’t like Aurora and here’s why.  The opening scene is one in which she is a new mother.  Her infant child is sleeping in her crib.  She can’t hear the baby crying, so she assumes something is wrong.  Within seconds, her paranoia escalates into thinking the baby has suffered a crib death.  Her husband can be heard from the other room, exasperated and annoyed at his wife’s outlandish assumptions.  She goes in and wakes the baby, then actually attempts to climb into the crib with her.  When the infant starts to cry she is satisfied.  “Good,” she says as she leaves the crying baby in the dark.

I think that little scene was supposed to be humorous, but I instantly saw her neurotic behavior for what it was: unreasonable and paranoid.  I was not amused.  I was disturbed.  When the little girl is around 6 or 7 years old, her father dies.  The mother continues her neurotic behavior by waking her daughter and sleeping with her in her bed.  That kind of mother would drive anyone crazy.

Eventually Emma is ready to get married.  The movie never discloses where she met Flap Horton, played by Jeff Daniels.  But Aurora is so narcissistic that the night before the wedding, she begs her daughter not to go through with the marriage, calling it the biggest mistake Emma would ever make.  To me, it was a transparent attempt to keep her daughter at home with her.  At this point I still liked Emma and I applauded her response.  If you disapprove of the man that much, then don’t come to the wedding.  Aurora was such a mean mother that she boycotted the wedding.

You get the picture, don’t you?  Aurora was not a nice person and I, as a viewer, had very little sympathy for her.  But then the daughter starts some bad behavior of her own.  She starts cheating on her husband and showing signs of mental instability.  But the strange thing about that is the fact that she takes the affair so casually.  It is as if adultery is acceptable behavior.  She talks to her mother on the phone about it.  She even goes so far as to talk on the phone to her lover, Sam Burns, played by Jonathan Lithgow, in front of her children.

But then her behavior sinks even lower!  She catches her husband, Flap, having an affair of his own.  Not only does she not tell him about her own cheating, but she blows up and comes down on him for his infidelity!  Apparently what is good for the goose is not good for the gander!

In the meantime, Aurora begins having an affair with her neighbor Garrett Breedlove, played by Jack Nicholson.  This one was alright with me because neither of them were attached to anyone else.  At that point, I said “Good for them!”  Garrett’s big problem, however, is a fear of commitment which becomes evident when Emma arrives with the kids in tow and Aurora tries to introduce them to him.  He literally runs for cover.

But then everything changes when Emma is diagnosed with terminal cancer.  This whole part of the plot took place so quickly that it seemed like minutes after the tumors are found, she is on her death bed.  Then everybody in the family comes together to see her off.  Even Aurora and Flap, who have never liked each other, share a moment of tears and sorrow when Emma dies.

Sure, I shed a few tears of my own at that, but honestly, not that many.  I saw it coming.  Winger was nominated for Best Actress, but lost to McLaine.  I think they both did a fine job in their respective roles, but I’m just not sure the roles themselves were worth Academy Awards.  In addition, Lithgow was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, though Nicholson took home the Oscar in that category.  As I have said before, I did not see what they were up against at the Awards, so I cannot make an informed opinion as to whether or not they deserved their Oscars.

Interesting note:  In an interview with Barbara Walters, Bette Davis said “At least Terms of Endearment was an authentic film about relationships, and I must say that Miss Shirley McLaine gave an outstanding performance, but then she’s always good.”

For me, the film was pretty average with characters that I didn’t like very much, that is, until Emma’s cancer was diagnosed.  Then the best qualities of the characters started to emerge.  This is where the abilities of the talented cast of actors really started to shine.  Emma changed from a simplistic character I didn’t like to a human being dealing with a terminal illness.  Aurora changed from a mean and self-centered mother to a woman who is terrified as she watches her only child suffer and die.

I think that I saw it in this way.  The majority of the film was supposed to be a romantic comedy.  Aurora’s overbearing and stern attitude was supposed to be funny.  Emma’s quirky mental issues were supposed to be humorous.  Garrett’s lecherous antics were supposed to be laughable.  And there were brief moments when they were.  But once Emma got sick, the little humor that was there vanished.

I know I am over-simplifying the movie.  There were, of course, more subtleties than I am giving the movie credit for.  I just find it hard to like a movie in which I did not like any of the main characters.  That being said, there were things about the movie that I liked very much.  I liked how the script treated the characters after the cancer was diagnosed.  The film became a drama that was able to move me emotionally.

I also have to give a special thumbs-up to Troy Bishop who played Tommy, Emma’s eldest son.  For a child actor, he really did a fantastic job.  Of course it was a smaller part, but he played it well.  Tommy was a troubled young man who had anger issues because he felt unloved by his parents.  On top of that, he had to listen to his parents fight all the time.  I’m sure that many people have had similar experiences growing up.  When he visited his mother for the last time in the hospital, he really stood out to me as a very believable character.

Interesting note:  Apparently, there was a sequel to Terms of Endearment called The Evening Star which came out in 1996.  McLaine and Nicholson both came back to reprise their roles.  The story takes place 15 years after Emma’s death.  The character of Tommy, it is revealed, is in jail on drug charges.

Now, I have to mention something that is a bit of a personal contradiction for me.  I happen to like Jack Nicholson as an actor.  He has a natural presence on the screen that is fascinating to watch.  But I have to say that he is something of a one-trick-pony.  He is basically the same character in every movie I have ever seen him in.  Only the name and situation changes.  I watched him in Terms of Endearment and I clearly saw him in 1975’s One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, 1987’s The Witches of Eastwick, 1980’s The Shining, and even 1997’s As Good as it Gets.  And those are just the movies I know him best from.  That being said, he is always interesting to watch.

When it comes down to it, I have to leave it at this:  I am pretty ambiguous about this movie.  I’ve never been a huge fan of romantic-comedies.  But I liked McLaine and Nicholson.  I didn’t particularly like any of the characters, but I liked some of the acting.  The soundtrack was pretty unmemorable, but I liked the production standards.  I wasn’t impressed with the comedy, but I liked the drama.  There was very little romance to be moved by, but it had a reassuring ending.

Oh, about the ending… reassuring is an apt word.  There was a great deal of sadness and loss caused by Emma’s death.  But the family seemed to be doing alright, implying that bad things happen, and unfortunately, it is a part of life.  But once we get past the initial grief, life goes on and it is possible to be happy again.  That, at least, is a positive thought and one that is worth remembering.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Gandhi – 1982

Gandhi was a wonderful step back into the world of the epic. Films seem to have gotten away from telling epic stories. The last Best Picture winner I can really put into that category was Patton in 1970. The Godfather? Even The Deer Hunter? I don’t think so. Gandhi was really a true epic. The story was told on a grand, world changing scale. The subject matter was a man who changed history.  In keeping with the far reaching effects of the man, the movie had lofty and inspiring themes, some amazing cinematography, exotic and yet very appropriate music, and an impressive cast with thousands of extras.  The story spanned a 55 year period in history.

Gandhi was, of course, a historical figure, making this film somewhat biographical. But it only covered his life from 1893 to his death in 1948. Gandhi is the man who made the term passive resistance really mean something. He was played by actor Ben Kingsley, who won the Best Actor Award for his portrayal. Kingsley was phenomenal. He is a great actor, but even more than that, he really looked like the real Gandhi.

The film was directed by Richard Attenborough, who also won an Oscar for Best Director. In fact, the film was nominated for 11 Academy Awards, and won 8 of them. Other wins included Best Original Screenplay (John Briley), Best Cinematography (Billy Williams and Ronnie Taylor), Best Art Direction, Best Costume Design and Best Film Editing.

Interesting note: The Academy Award nominated Soundtrack was composed by Ravi Shankar and George Fenton, though they did not win.

Other notable actors in the film were Rohini Hattangadi as Kasturba Gandhi, Gandhi’s wife, Candice Bergen as Margaret Bourke-White, a reporter, Martin Sheen as Vince Walker, a journalist, and Ian Charleson as Reverend Charles Freer Andrews, one of Gandhi’s early supporters and close friend.  All of their roles, with the exception of Hattangadi were fairly small, but the actors stood out to me, partly because they were recognizable names that I am familiar with, and because they are good actors.

Interesting note: Another actor had a few minutes of screen-time: Sir John Gielgud. That makes two actors who were in the previous year’s Best Picture winner, Chariots of Fire, that had parts in Gandhi, the other being Ian Charleson.

The first thing about the movie that caught my attention was its beginning. It does something that I have seen other films do and it is an effective tactic to capture the interest of a viewer. They started out with Gandhi’s death. He was assassinated – shot three times at point-blank range. He was able to utter the words “Oh, God!” before falling. Actually, this was spoken in his native language as, “He Ram!” referring to the Hindu god Rama.

Interesting note: The movie actually holds a place in the Guinness Book of World Records for the use of the most extras in any one scene. In the beginning of the film, after Gandhi is killed, 300,000 extras were used during his funeral scene.

 

Then the film takes us back 55 years to 1893 which was the first event of significance that started to shape the man, Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi into the prominent spiritual and political figure that he would become. He is a lawyer that has studied in London and has purchased a first class ticket on a train in South Africa. He is the victim of extreme prejudice from British citizens who are incensed that an Indian is being allowed to ride in first class, and he is forcibly thrown off the train.

 

Seeing how horribly Indian people are treated, he begins his protest in a non-violent way by publicly burning his government-issued documents that mark him as a second-class citizen. He encourages others to do the same. He allows himself to be beaten and arrested without fighting back, earning him the respect of his peers. He continues with his campaign and remains true to his non-violent convictions. The more he protests the criminal abuse allowed by the British laws in South Africa, the more followers he attracts.

You see, Gandhi believed so strongly in the rightness of his cause that he was willing to undergo the worst forms of mistreatment without any retaliation.  And his reasons for doing so were simple and clear. He knew that violence always begets more violence. Also, that violent retaliation only serves to justify the mistreatment. And finally, that once the world, and more importantly his persecutors, saw how unjustly he was being treated, shame would make them give him, or those who came after him, the fair treatment that every human being deserves.

That is the basis of his non-violent resistance. And I’ll be darned if it didn’t actually work. Eventually the Indians in South Africa were given fairer laws and his following grew even larger on the global scale. But when he returned to India, it was the same story all over again. The Brits were there treating Indians like second-class citizens in their own country. So, he started his campaign all over again.

But this time, he traveled all over the country gaining supporters and adherents. His fame and popularity grew. Eventually, the entire nation was behind him and his peaceful ways. There were a few scenes which were hard to watch. One of which was a scene in which some workers who were being treated unfairly tried to walk away from their jobs in protest. The military began beating them badly to get them to go back to work. But the Indians kept taking the beatings without resisting or fighting back. Row after row of men were beaten with sticks. The sad display went on into the night.

But that was the point. The terrible display garnered world-wide attention and the military eventually had to give in and answer for the unprovoked beatings they administered.

As I had mentioned before, the cinematography for Gandhi was incredible. Attenborough was not afraid to use the wide angle camera shots that gave the viewers a sense of the grand scale of the South African and Indian landscapes. The immense fields, the colorful skies, the vast waters, were all so beautiful to see on the screen. And all the people. The endless sea of people that crowd the streets of India were impressive. It must have been a real challenge to organize and film.

As for Kingsley’s performance, all I can say is that I was thoroughly impressed. He had the look, the accent, the mannerisms, and the disposition of the real Gandhi. In all the Academy Award winning films I have watched so far, this had to be one of the finest performances of all time. He was incredible.

I also have to mention the soundtrack in a little more detail. Ravi Shankar’s music on the sitar gave the film a very obvious Indian flavor and was wonderful to listen to. It was exotic and yet approachable. There was a certain kind of unique magical quality to the music that almost made the life of Gandhi out to be somehow mystical or charmed.  And in retrospect, it was. So, well done Ravi!

If I had any complaints at all about the movie, I would mention two things. First, it is a very long movie, coming in at 3 hours and 3 minutes long. Maybe it might have been a little easier to watch if it had been cut down by about 30 minutes or so, though to be honest, I’m not sure what they could have cut.  It all seemed to be necessary to the plot and its biographic nature.

The second thing I would complain about is that there was a definite reason why Gandhi was assassinated. But the film never went into that at all. It never explained who killed him and what his reasons were. I think it would have served the movie well to spend at least a few minutes on that. I wanted to know why he was assassinated and so I had to look it up myself.

Apparently, after Gandhi got the British to leave India, there was a terrible division in the newly freed country between the Hindus and the Muslims. The division was so bad that actual fighting broke out and a civil war began. Gandhi was, of course, opposed to the fighting, and so he fasted until the fighting ceased. His fast was so great that he very nearly died. But though Gandhi was a Hindu, he recommended that a Muslim be the first Prime Minister of India, trying to show that the two sides can find peaceful solutions to their differences.  Unfortunately, this only worked part-way.  The nation was divided into India and Pakistan.

What the movie did not explain was that a dissident named Nathuram Godse, dissatisfied with Gandhi’s choice of Prime Minister and with his non-violent policies shot him for political reasons. A tragedy, to be sure. But I wish the movie would have explained it a bit more than it did.  As it was portrayed, his death seemed random and unexplained.

Still, there is no denying that this was a great movie. I liked it more than I thought I would.  I really liked the way his passive resistance was portrayed.  In the end, the film returned to the inevitable assassination, the funeral, and the public cremation.  The influence that Gandhi had on the people of India justified the 300,000 extras who were in that funeral procession scene.  The last scene before the credits is a shot of Gandhi’s ashes being scattered over the holy Ganga river.

I like that Gandhi was an epic.  He was certainly a historical figure who lived an epic life.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Chariots of Fire – 1981

I will start this review off by saying that I find it ironic that a movie about running fast was so slow!  I’m sorry, but seeing runners racing in slow motion does not make it feel like a spiritual experience to me.  And there was a LOT of slow motion running.  This was a good movie, but only if you have a lot of patience.  And I must also make a confession.  This is the first Best Picture winning movie I can remember seeing at the theatre.  I was 8 years old and my father took my brothers and I to the movies.  I was bored out of my gourd.

Fortunately, I have a different perspective as an adult.  Let’s face it:  This is not a children’s movie.  There are a lot of adult concepts that are covered that I wasn’t old enough to understand back then.  Unfortunately, though I fought against it, I had difficulty forgetting how bored I was when I first watched this movie in 1981.

As you might have already guessed, Chariots of Fire was about running.  More specifically, it is about Olympic Track runners.  It is based on true events that took place in the 1920s.  Runner Harold Abrahams, played by Ben Cross, is a Jewish Englishman.  He has apparently never lost a race in his life.  He is also an angry young man who wants to stick it to anyone who is anti-Semitic.   Unfortunately, he attends Cambridge College, which is overtly Catholic.  The staff treats him unfairly because of his religious beliefs.  So rather than running away, he runs on the track team. Exceling on the track is his way of throwing his religion in their faces.  While there he meets and falls in love with professional soprano, Sybil Gordon, played by Alice Krige.

Interesting note:  Sybil is introduced as she is performing the role of Yum-Yum, the female lead, in the Gilbert & Sullivan Operetta, The Mikado.  In real life, Gordon never played that lead role, though she did play the part of Peep-Bo, one of Yum-Yum’s friends.

Runner Eric Liddell, played by Ian Charleson is a China born Scotsman whose parents are missionaries in China.  He is a devoutly religious man who believes that because God gave him the ability to run fast, his running is a way to glorify God.  His sister Jennie, played by Cheryl Campbell, wanted him to return to China as a missionary.  She feared that running in the Olympics might be dangerous for him in some spiritual way.

Interesting note:  This was something that was invented for the movie.  In real life, Jennie was actually very supportive of Eric’s running.

Both men were supposed to be the fastest men in Brittan.  The actors did a good enough job, though it was honestly hard to tell just how fast they were.  They were always shown running in slow motion with inspirational, yet somehow creepy and ominous music blotting out every other sound.  I understand that the filmmakers were trying to make running seem like the religious experience it apparently was for the two men, but for me it just translated into slow.  It seems to me that a race would catch my attention a lot more if I was actually watching men running fast in hearty competition.

I think this might have been a better movie if they had taken out all the slow motion running because the stories that took place off the race track were interesting enough to keep my attention.  Of course, there was much more to the movie than running.  There was the anti-Semitic sub-plot, the devout Catholic angle, the love story between Harold and Sybil, the hard training to be the best, the preparation for the Olympic games, the disappointment of defeat, and the glory of winning.

This was a period piece and the costumes and sets were all quite appropriate.  I have always liked women’s fashions from the 1920s.  I always found that fashion designers were trying to be as daring as possible without going too far.  Another thing that was good was that the actors looked right for the period.  I have seen period specific movies in which the actors had very modern faces.  They didn’t look like they belonged in the era in which the story took place.  The proper hair style can account for some of this inconsistency, but not all of it.  Ben Cross and Ian Charlson looked like they had both stepped right out of 1922.

But thinking in those terms, for me, the music didn’t really work very well.  Of course, the score by composer Vangelis was popular enough to win the Academy Award for Best Score.  But I thought that, as a whole, it wasn’t that great.  True, that opening instrumental theme was a great piece of music.  It was beautiful, inspiring, and memorable.  But that was the only part of the score that really worked.  For that opening scene, showing the men running along the beach, it was great, though it had a very synthesized modern sound that did nothing to put me in the 1920s.  But even then it would have been fine if the rest of the film had a score that was in the same style as the opening theme.  But the rest of the film had music that was strange and slow, and quite unmemorable.

Other actors in the film who stood out to me were Ian Holm, John Gielgud, and David Yelland.  Holm played Sam Mussabini, a trainer who took on Abrahams as his student.  I have always liked Holm as an actor, and his role in this film did not disappoint me.  He looked the part, acted well, and did a fine job.  He also played drunk very well after his student Abrahams won his gold medal for the 100 meter dash.  Believably drunk is not easy to play.  And there was one thing he said in particular that really made sense to me.  He said, “Now that you have won you can put all this behind you and start living.”  (Unfortunately this is a paraphrase I should have written the exact quote down.)

And it was such a true statement because they showed how training for the Olympics, training to be the best became the kind of obsession that took over the runner’s life.  I’m sure that the athletes of today go through the same experiences.  The sport becomes everything.  It eclipses everything and becomes the most important thing in the athlete’s life.  It has to.  It is the only way for someone to be the best.

In Abraham’s case, it forced him to set Sybil aside until the Olympics were over.  But he was fortunate.  She understood and waited for him to win his gold medal.  When he did, he took Mussabini’s advice and returned to her.

John Gielgud played the Master of Trinity at Cambridge University.  He was one of the men who was anti-Semitic, treating Abrahams badly because he was a Jew.  I can’t picture Gielgud playing anything other than a stuffy British professor, lawyer, or banker.  His face just has that permanent “I’m better than you” kind of smugness that is, on rare occasions, broken by a kindly smile.

David Yelland had a very small but memorable part as the Prince of Wales who attended the 1924 Olympics.  His part was important to the plot.  You see, when Liddell finds out he is scheduled to run in a race on a Sunday, he refuses to run.  He believes that Sunday is intended by God to be a day of rest.  The Prince requests a private audience with him to try to convince him to run.  Even then, Liddell politely refuses, saying that his allegiance to God is greater than his allegiance to his country.  Yelland was very handsome and played the small part very well.

Though it wounds him Liddell to do so, he still refuses to run.  Fortunately, a solution is found.  Another runner who has already won a gold medal in another race allows Liddell to run in his place in the 400 meter, which takes place on a Thursday.

Interesting note:  Liddell’s adherence to his religious convictions made headlines all over the world.  Before the race began, he was given a note that said “It says in the good book ‘He that honors me, I will honor’.  Good Luck.”  In reality, this note was given to him by his British teammates.  In the film, it was given to him by his opponent, American runner Jackson Scholz, played by Brad Davis.  Colin Welland, the movie’s screenwriter asked the real Scholz permission to make this little change for dramatic effect.  Scholz’s reply was, “Yes, great, as long as it makes me look good.”

Another interesting note:  At the end, the film shows a few paragraphs on the screen, telling what happened to the characters.  Abrahams married Sybil and went on to be the elder statesman of British Athletics.  Liddell, went on to more missionary service in China, but was killed in 1945 in Japanese-occupied China.

When it comes down to it, the movie was a bit too slow for my tastes.  That didn’t make it a bad movie, just a slow one.  I have done my best not to let my memories of being bored with it as a child affect my enjoyment of it as an adult.  There were plenty of good things about the movie, and even a moment or two of greatness.  But on the whole, it was just not my cup of tea.

Still, I can understand why it won best picture.  It was a movie about dreams of Olympic glory.  The Olympics have always been about international cooperation, being the best one can be, integrity, and following ones dreams.  They have been fostering inspirational stories since their inception in 1896, and continue to positively inspire people around the world today.

Just… enough with the slow-motion running.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ordinary People – 1980

I went into this movie knowing next to nothing about it.  I knew that it starred Donald Sutherland, Mary Tyler Moore, Judd Hirsch, and Timothy Hutton – but that was about it.  Then, before I watched it, a friend told me that it was a horrible movie.  He said that it was a waste of film.  So, I must admit that my expectations were low.  After all, I was never a huge Donald Sutherland fan.

But I am pleased to say that I actually enjoyed the movie.  It was a very heavy drama that was, at times, difficult to watch.  It made me squirm in my seat.  I wanted to pause the DVD and walk away.  But I forced myself to stay and experience the film as the director had intended.  You can’t walk away from life.  You can’t walk away from the things that happen to ordinary people.

The drama centered around the Jarrett family.  Sutherland played the father, Calvin.  His wife, Beth, is played by Moore.  And finally there is their remaining son, Conrad, played by a very young Hutton.  I say remaining son because apparently there was another son who died in a sailing accident.  To make matters worse, Conrad, dealing with post-traumatic stress disorder and survivor’s guilt, tried to commit suicide.

To make matters worse, Beth had always favored her first son, Buck, and always showed very little love to Conrad.  This unfortunate behavior gets a hundred times worse after Buck’s death.  She loses the ability to love anyone including her husband.  To make matters worse, Calvin has no idea how to recognize, let alone deal with, the problems in his family.  He has ideas of some of the things going on, but has very little conviction when it comes to finding solutions.

To make matters worse, Conrad is desperately reaching out for help in various ways and it seems as if he is slowly moving back towards the idea of suicide, a prospect that terrifies him.  To make matters even worse, the only way his parents know how to deal with things is to put on happy faces and pretend that everything is, or will be, OK.

I quickly realized that this insanely dysfunctional family needed professional help, and the only one of them smart enough and brave enough to get that help is Conrad.  Hutton really turned in a stellar performance.  He was very young at the time, 19 years old when the filming took place, but he really stood out as a fantastic actor, even then.  He made it easy for me to see his character’s problems.  I knew what needed to be done.  It was heart-wrenching to see what he was going through, knowing that, as an outside observer, I was powerless to help.

And yet, without his parent’s urging or even their support, Conrad contacted a professional psychiatrist, Dr. Berger, played by Hirsch.  Hirsch also exceeded my expectations, doing a great job.  I’ve never been to a psychiatrist, so I don’t know first-hand how they behave, but I thought his portrayal was pretty accurate according to what I might expect.

Interesting note:  Hirsch’s performance has been praised by the psychiatric community because he was able to portray their profession in a positive light.  Apparently, this is not how psychiatrists are normally shown.  But of course, you can’t please everybody.  There were a few psychiatrists who criticized him because his character was too positive, making him seem one-dimensional.

You see, like I said, the movie was stressful to watch, but it was OK because, in the end, progress was made and healing began.  And most importantly, what needed to happen happened.  At the end of the movie, Beth left.  The mom left, and that was what needed to happen?  Well, yes.  I discovered that most of the problems that plagued the family stemmed from Beth’s inability to love her family after Buck’s death.  Both Calvin and Conrad needed her emotionally, and she couldn’t give them anything.

The way she treated them was horrible.  At one point, Conrad tried to tell his father that she hated him.  Of course, Calvin’s automatic response was that she loved him, and Conrad knew that he wasn’t even listening to his cry for help.  But eventually, even Calvin began to understand that his son had been right.  Trying to be a good father and husband, he gave Beth several opportunities to get help, which she could not bring herself to accept.  He all but begged her to talk to the psychiatrist.  Even at the last when he told her exactly what I had been thinking about her for half the movie, how she was hurting everyone around her, making everyone miserable, her first and immediate response was to run away, rather than to face her own pain.  But that is exactly what need to happen before Calvin and Conrad could begin to heal.

I was actually really impressed with Sutherland’s performance.  I have never seen him in a role that allowed him to explore such deep emotions.  I have gained a new respect for him as an actor.  He was especially good in that last scene where he tells his wife how much she is hurting him and her son.

Moore also did a good job.  In my eyes, she was the bad guy, and I spent half the movie wanting to strangle her.  That tells me that she portrayed the character well.  When she leaves at the end, I don’t think the audience is supposed to see it as a bad thing.  Of course, it would have been better if she broke down and admitted her failures, and began to heal, herself.  But she was so emotionally damaged, she couldn’t bring herself to do it, and I was glad when she left.

Interesting note:  Mary Tyler Moore used this role to make a definite break from the TV roles she was most known for:  Laura Petrie from the Dick Van Dyke Show, and Mary Richards from the Mary Tyler Moore Show.

Another face it was nice to see was Elizabeth McGovern.  She played the part of Conrad’s love interest, Jeannine Pratt.  She is beautiful, and a fine actress.  She was also very young at the time, but was able to turn her minor supporting role into a character with a little depth and personality.  Well done Elizabeth.

The director is actually a pretty big name in Hollywood.  Actor Robert Redford made his directorial debut with Ordinary People, and he took home the Oscar for his efforts.  Screenwriter Alvin Sargent won for Best Adapted Screenplay, and Hutton garnered a well-deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actor.  Moore was nominated for Best Supporting Actress and Hirsch was nominated for Best Supporting Actor, though neither of them won.

Interesting note:  Donald Sutherland was not nominated for Best actor for his performance, though all three of his co-stars were in their respective categories.  Some Academy Historians consider it to be one of the biggest snubs in Academy Award history.

This was Timothy Hutton’s first major role that really put him on the map.  To say he did a great job was an understatement.  He was really phenomenal.  The night in which Conrad has his epiphany and realizes that his brother’s death was not his fault was such a moment of great relief.  It was truly a cathartic breakthrough.  The tears, the raw emotion, the sobbing, was all so real.  As we all know, an outpouring of grief like that can sometimes be the best thing that can happen to someone who is in a lot of pain.  The ability to forgive one’s self for the tragedies of the past is one of the hardest things for a person to achieve.  And when that dam broke, the flood of deep, deep grief poured out from him in a way that brought tears to my eyes.

And lastly, I must mention the music, specifically the use of the classical piece, Pachelbel’s Canon.  The music itself is a gentle round that is absolutely gorgeous in its simplicity.  The repeating bass line provides a lush foundation for the melodic variations wandering above.  It has a distinctly easy and insightful feel to it, and yet when coupled with images of the empty streets and perfect lawns of Lake Forest, Illinois, it is colored with a touch of melancholy.  Using Pachelbel’s Canon was an inspired choice made by Mr. Redford.

Interesting note:  Pachelbel’s Canon experienced a significant surge in popularity after the release of Ordinary People.

After watching the film, I understand the title.  Sadly, terrible things happen to people every day.  The movie explores how such a tragedy as the death of a family member can affect not only the stability of the family, but the emotional stability of its individual members.  Things like this happen to ordinary people like you and me, and when they do, more often than not, a great deal of pain must be worked through before healing can happen.  But there is hope.  Help is out there, if we can but learn to accept it.