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The Accidental Tourist (1988) – Review

This was originally written on Facebook as a post in talking about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 1988.

Macon (William Hurt) and Sarah Leary (Kathleen Turner).

As I’ve been writing these reviews, you might have noticed how I’ve tried to bring up the ways even movies I love may have issues in how they deal with issues that have come under higher scrutiny today, such as gender identity and sex. But those aren’t the only issues that may change the way you might view a work of art today. Consider, for example, the fact cities throughout the United States, and arguably the world, have become more homogenized, especially New York City. To bring in tourist dollars and out-of-town business, the Powers That Be in cities have driven out much of what gives these cities an identity in the first place – arts, local cuisine, small businesses – and replaced it with businesses that could be found anywhere. The attitude seems to be people who visit cities don’t want to experience what makes that city unique, they want to know where they can find a McDonald’s when they visit. To be sure, this isn’t a new attitude. The hero of Anne Tyler’s novel – and Lawrence Kasdan’s movie adaptation – The Accidental Tourist – which was published in 1985 (while the movie came out in 1988) writes travel books for people who hate to travel, and who are looking for where to get a McDonald’s in Paris, rather than where to get the best example of French food, Given the caveat I find that kind of attitude abhorrent, I must admit I still find The Accidental Tourist to be a wonderful novel and movie (Kasdan and Frank Galati wrote the screenplay).

Macon with Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis) and his dog Edward.

The writer of those books in both the novel and the movie is Macon Leary (William Hurt), who makes a living at this. Macon really doesn’t like to travel, which, according to his publisher Julian (Bill Pullman), makes him ideal to write the books. Macon, however, is cut off from life in other ways, especially since his son Ethan was murdered at a shooting in a fast-food restaurant (Jim True played the role in flashback scenes, but they were cut from the movie). Leary’s been unable to express his grief or reach out to people, and it’s because of this his wife Sarah (Kathleen Turner) decides to leave him. Macon retreats even further into himself, especially when Edward, his dog (actually, he was Ethan’s), leaps onto Macon one day, causing him to fall down and break his leg. Because of this accident, Macon moves in with his sister Rose (Amy Wright), and his brothers Charles (Ed Begley Jr.) and Porter (David Ogden Stiers). Because Edward starts to act out towards not just Macon, but the others, Macon finds he needs to get a dog trainer, and reluctantly reaches out to Muriel Pritchett (Geena Davis), who works at an animal hospital (called Meow-Bow) that also boards animals (Macon left Edward there at the last minute when he had to go on a trip and the usual place didn’t take Edward), because she also trains dogs. While Muriel is able to train Edward to get him to be more well-behaved, she also gradually draws Macon out of his emotional shell, even though (or maybe especially because) she’s much more outgoing than he is.

Julian Edge (Bill Pullman), Macon’s publisher.

When critic Nathan Rabin, then writing for the A.V. Club, reviewed Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown (my least favorite Crowe movie, though it did get better for me upon rewatch), he tagged the character Kirsten Dunst played in the movie, Claire, as a “Manic Pixie Dream Girl”. Rabin described this type of character as one who “exists solely in the fevered imaginations of sensitive writer-directors to teach broodingly soulful young men to embrace life and its infinite mysteries and adventures.” In other words, these characters – most often girls or, in some cases, women – exist solely to bring the lead male character out of their funk, or teach them life lessons, and, in general, make them better people, without having a life of their own. Muriel may seem like this at first – this type of character, it should be said, has been around in literature for a long time – but Tyler and Kasdan are much smarter than that. Muriel does have a life of her own – she has her own son, Alexander (Robert Gorman), who is a sickly boy (the novel goes into more detail as to what he’s allergic to, which is a lot), and is barely able to make ends meet. Not only that, but she makes it clear to Macon she’s not just there to help him; when Macon says they should transfer Alexander to a private school (he thinks Alexander doesn’t know how to subtract), Muriel wonders if that means Macon is going to pay for it, and tells him in no uncertain terms not to make any promises he can’t keep, especially if he doesn’t plan to stick around. That comes into play even more when Macon runs into Sarah again, and it’s clear they still have feelings for each other.

Macon’s sister Rose (Amy Wright) on the day of her wedding to Julian.

There’s a review quote on the inside back cover of my copy of Tyler’s novel that reads, “(Tyler’s) second-greatest gift is tolerance. Her greatest gift is love…” To me, that’s a good summation of Tyler’s gifts as a novelist. While she can sometimes go overboard on the quirks, as well as in portraying people too set in their ways, at her best, she makes those characters come to life, and always brings out the real emotions underneath. Tyler treats the characters in a comic way – the Learys all play a card game called Vaccination, with rules no one but them seem to know; they also can’t seem to go anywhere without getting lost – but she’s able to make us laugh with the characters, rather than at them (other than this novel, my favorites she’s written are Digging to America and Saint Maybe). Kasdan may have had to cut out a lot in adapting Tyler’s novel (deleted scenes can be found on the DVD), but he retains the spirit of it. A scene early in the movie (which is in the novel, though later in it) shows Macon, while on the plane, running into a man (Bradley Mott) who, as it happens, uses Leary’s books as a guide not just to travel, but to life, and again, we laugh with Leary here, not at him. Of course, Kasdan, along with his usual collaborators – cinematographer John Bailey and editor Carol Littleton – also accomplish visually what Tyler did in writing, especially near the end, where Macon encounters a boy in Paris (where he’s on a trip) who resembles Ethan. Kasdan is able to show us this just from the way Macon looks at the boy.

Muriel (Geena Davis) gets a surprise at the end of the film.

Of course, Kasdan also gets help from the actors. Hurt makes himself shrunken and paler than usual as Macon. You truly believe he’s cut himself off (in contrary to the cynicism he showed in The Big Chill and his free-spirited nature in Children of a Lesser God), and he makes the process in which Macon learns to eventually engage with the world again seem natural. Turner, better known for playing either femme fatale roles (Body Heat, Prizzi’s Honor) or characters caught up in adventures (Romancing the Stone and its sequel), shows a lot more to her in playing the grief-stricken Sarah, though it turns out she’s also got more steel in her than you think, especially when she comes out to take over for Macon when he hurts his back. Pullman was best known at the time for comic roles in movies like Ruthless People and Spaceballs, but while he has his comic side here as well – when he finds out Rose had been looking for the right envelope to mail him Macon’s latest work, Julian dubs it the “Macon Leary 9 by 12 envelope crisis” – he shows a lot of depth, especially in the scenes where he’s with Rose. And Wright, Begley, and Stiers are believable as siblings who are comfortable with each other. But it’s Davis who makes the movie work as well as it does. Muriel could have easily just have been a collection of quirks, but Davis makes her real by underplaying. She also does a lot with her face, especially in the scene where Macon comes over to tell her he can’t see her and ends up finally opening up about Ethan; she just leads him inside, and with a look, we can see the empathy and sadness in her eyes. It’s also there in the end, when Muriel, leaving Paris (she’s followed Macon there, without his wanting her there), sees Macon, and the way she reacts shows you why she deserved to win an Oscar for her performance (even if you think it was for the wrong category). The scenes where Macon looks for American food abroad still make me wince (though there aren’t as many in the movie as were in the novel), but The Accidental Tourist remains, for me, a wonderful movie because of the care and affection for the characters.

The Unbearable Lightness of Being (1988) – Review

1968, of course, was a year where it seemed like the world was on fire. After the Tet Offensive that happened during the Vietnam War, while the North Vietnamese lost the battle, the battle itself convinced many in the U.S. the war could not be won, and the protests against the war increased significantly, not only in the U.S. (culminating in the notorious protests at the Chicago Democratic Convention), but around the world; the May riots in Paris that year being one of the more prominent examples. It’s important to remember, however, the protests that were happening that year weren’t entirely about the war, or anti-U.S. or anti-Western sentiment. 1968 was also the year of the “Prague Spring”, where, in Czechoslovakia, people were rebelling against the strictures of Soviet rule, and trying to reform the government to allow more freedom of speech, press, and travel. Unfortunately, the Soviet government did not take this lying down, and in August of that year, they invaded the country and restored the totalitarian government. It’s against that backdrop Philip Kaufman’s great film The Unbearable Lightness of Being, which he and Jean-Claude Carriere adapted from the novel by Milan Kundera, takes place.

Tereza (Juliette Binoche) and Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis) after their wedding.

The film concerns Tomas (Daniel Day-Lewis), a surgeon in 1968 Prague, and an inveterate womanizer (his typical come-on line is, “Take off your clothes”). Though he sleeps around with a number of women, the one he always returns to is Sabina (Lena Olin), an artist. One day, while traveling to a small village, he meets Tereza (Juliette Binoche), a waitress at a bar. They soon fall in love and get married, and Tomas even encourages Tereza’s interest in photography. However, Tereza can’t stand the fact Tomas continues to sleep with other women. As if that wasn’t enough, when things in Czechoslovakia seem to be changing for the better, the Soviet Union sends troops and tanks in. Sabina, Tereza, and Tomas all flee to Geneva, where Sabina takes up with Franz (Derek de Lint, who played the collaborator in Soldier of Orange), a professor whom she likes, but doesn’t want to get emotionally involved with (among other things, as she puts it, “He doesn’t like my hat”). Tereza tries to sell the photographs she took of the invasion, but the magazine editors in Geneva consider the invasion old news, and suggest she take fashion pictures. Tereza tries to do so – she even visits Sabina, in a scene I’ll talk more about below – but finds herself unable to function in Geneva. She ends up talking Tomas in returning to Prague, even though the repressive government has been restored. Not only that, but Tomas cannot get a job as a surgeon anymore because he refuses to renounce a satirical article he wrote before the invasion criticizing the government (he gets a job as a window washer instead), and though Sabina has gone to America, he continues his womanizing, which continues to drive Tereza to despair, even though she has her own extramarital affair with an engineer (Stellan Skarsgard) she meets one night while at her old waitress job.

In his previous movie, The Right Stuff, Kaufman edited his actors into historical footage when Alan Shepherd was greeted by President Kennedy after his flight into space. He does the same thing with the invasion footage, as we see Tereza taking pictures of what’s happening, and he does it even more seamlessly. Since Czechoslovakia was still under Soviet control at the time, of course, this archival footage was the only part of the movie actually shot in Prague (Lyon, France doubled for Prague for the most part), but because of how well Kaufman and the great cinematographer Sven Nykvist shoot the rest of the movie, it doesn’t feel out of place. Other than the revolution, the sexual escapades depicted here were the main draw of the movie, yet Kaufman and Nykvist don’t shoot them for easy titillation. The best example of that comes in that scene where Tereza visits Sabina to photograph her. There’s definitely an eroticism about the scene, especially when Sabina decides to turn the tables and photograph Tereza (and even uses Tomas’ come-on line, “Take off your clothes”), but it feels genuine rather than cheap or exploitative. The movie packs a lot into its nearly three hour running time, yet it never feels rushed, as Kaufman is able to keep a light tone to the whole thing, even with all of the events happening.

In Kundera’s novel, he tells the story in a non-linear fashion, and the characters are as much symbols as they are flesh and blood. The characters are still symbols in the movie, but the actors make them come alive. In later years, Day-Lewis would disparage his own work here, and I don’t really understand why, as he’s never seemed more relaxed on screen, or funnier (the closest he came was in the title role in Steven Spielberg’s LINCOLN). Even when he’s sticking to his principles in not renouncing that article, Day-Lewis acts it in an offhand way, and he has marvelous chemistry with his co-stars. Binoche was early in her career (her most notable movies before this were Jean-Luc Godard’s HAIL MARY and Leos Carax’s MAUVAIS SANG), and this was her first role in English, but she’s up to the challenge. It seems Tereza represents the “darkness” that’s opposed to the light, which is not only a conceit, but a reactionary one, but Binoche makes her into a full-blooded character instead, as a woman who wants to live where she’s comfortable, and just doesn’t understand why men cheat; it’s when she and Tomas are alone in the country late in the movie, with their dog and other friends, that she only truly feels happy. Sabina is arguably the biggest conceit of all – the male fantasy of the friend with benefits – but Olin (most known at the time for appearing in Ingmar Bergman’s FANNY & ALEXANDER and AFTER THE REHEARSAL) likewise makes her a believable character of flesh and blood. Actors often say their wardrobe helps them define the character they play, and I don’t know if that’s how Olin felt about the bowler hat Sabina wears, but she makes it an integral part of the character. There’s also good work from de Lint, Skarsgard, Donald Moffat (as another surgeon), and Bergman stalwart Erland Josephson (as a janitor). Kaufman seems to have lost his way after this (his only other good film that I’ve seen is the 2000 period drama QUILLS), but THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING stands as a great movie about sex, politics, and freedom.

Reel 70: Love During Wartime

Roughly two-thirds of this show’s life ago, we did an episode titled “Life During Wartime“, in which the war wasn’t always neatly spelled out.

In today’s episode, it’s Love During Wartime, and again the war isn’t quite so obvious, except that it’s referring specifically to the Cold War. We’re looking at a pair of films that each deal with a couple and how they respond to Soviet oppression. In both cases, it’s rather early in that oppression, but they’re still set many years apart.

In Part One we’ll be looking at 1988’s The Unbearable Lightness of Being, directed and co-written by Philip Kaufman. Daniel Day-Lewis is a man who falls in love with a woman and eventually finds it in himself to change, however slowly, for her benefit. It’s a long, convoluted story that will run you through all of your emotions, no matter how cold-hearted you are.

Part Two is a more recent film. From 2018, it’s Cold War, a film about star-crossed lovers who seem to find themselves on the opposite sides of many different lines throughout their relationship, including the Iron Curtain itself. They’re together, then they’re separated, but they manage to find their way back together. Was it worth it for them? We’ll leave it to you to decide that part.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Episodes 71-73 will be all about spycraft, but for the first one we’re going to keep it light. We’ll start with 1979’s The In-Laws, starring Peter Falk and Alan Arkin. From there we go to 1984 and Top Secret!, a spy spoof that stars Val Kilmer as an Elvis-like musician who is recruited to perform in Europe and finds himself mixed up in espionage. Join us, won’t you?

Reel 65: The Remake Was Better, Part 1

So frequently we bemoan the fact that Hollywood doesn’t seem to have any original ideas. We complain that plots are constantly being recycled, and we get anxiety because films from our childhood are being remade.

However, once in awhile—once in awhile—that remake manages to surpass the original. And that’s what this episode, and the next one, are about.

In Part 1 of today’s episode, we’re looking at The Man Who Knew Too Much, Alfred Hitchcock’s remake of his own film from 1934 starring Peter Lorre. In this version, it’s James Stewart who is on vacation with his wife, played by Doris Day. He meets a mysterious man who is murdered in front of him. The man’s last words lead to a tangle of intrigue delivered as only Hitchcock can. It’s clear that whatever flaws Hitchcock saw in his first outing with this story, he managed to fix them.

Meanwhile, in Part 2, we move to 1988 and Dirty Rotten Scoundrels, directed by Frank Oz. This is a remake of a 1964 film called Bedtime Story. After this version there were two more remakes, involving gender flips. In 2001 we got Heartbreakers, and more recently, in 2019, it was called The Hustle. While recording this episode we conducted an informal poll of everyone in the room, and decided that this was the best version.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

We continue this remake conceit with another pair of films that worked out better when they were remade. First up, from 1999 it’s The Thomas Crown Affair, then we move forward a couple of years to Ocean’s Eleven, from 2001. Join us, won’t you?

Reel 58: This Woman’s Work

So many times, it seems, films where women are the central characters seem to treat those women as rather monolithic

That may not be quite the right word; let me amend that to say that they’re often treated the same way. Too many of them fail the Bechdel Test*, and that’s a pity.

In our continued journey Around the World in Twenty Films, the women in this film fail as well, but there’s a different dynamic involved so it’s not as glaringly obvious.

We start with 1960’s When a Woman Ascends the Stairs, a Japanese film directed by Mikio Naruse. It’s a look at the Geisha life that follows one of the veterans of the craft and her struggle to achieve a specific dream.

From there it’s a jump to Spain and 1988, for Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown, directed by Pedro Almodóvar. It’s a rather dark story played as a comedy, and you’ll have a bunch of fun following all the odd coincidences that allow this story to unfold the way it does.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Our journey takes us back to Asia, with 2018’s Shoplifters, a Japanese film that manages to re-define family ties in a way you won’t necessarily argue with. And then it’s off to Korea and 2019’s Parasite, a film that won four Oscar awards—three of them in the big categories.

*for those not in the know, the Bechdel Test is defined as: a way of evaluating whether or not a film or other work of fiction portrays women in a way that is sexist or characterized by gender stereotyping. To pass the Bechdel test a work must feature at least two women, these women must talk to each other, and their conversation must concern something other than a man. It gets its name from the US cartoonist Alison Bechdel, who formulated the criteria in 1985 in a comic strip “The Rule “, part of the series Dykes To Watch Out For (1983–2008).

Reel 35: Scorsese and Christianity

Martin Scorsese has never shied away from the fact that he is a Catholic, and that his religion oftentimes informs his work. There are few places where it’s more overt than in the two films we cover this week.

First we have 1988’s The Last Temptation of Christ, which portrays a side of Jesus (Willem Dafoe) that many of us suspected he had, but most of which is never portrayed in the Bible. Roughly the last third of the film gives us a “what if” scenario that had a lot of religious conservatives up in arms for awhile–and that was before anyone had even seen the film.

From there we jump forward to 2016 (and from the first century AD to the seventeenth), for Silence, starring Andrew Garfield, Adam Driver and Liam Neeson. It’s not an especially famous title in the Scorsese catalog, at least not to the casual movie fan, but it’s a powerful piece of work that will have you questioning your faith and that of the characters in the film.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Episode 36 is the first in a series of episodes featuring films that critics seem to think you can like one or the other but not both. Well, we argue that you can, indeed, like both, and we show you why. We start with a pair of Westerns: beginning with 1952’s High Noon, and then it’s on to 1959’s Rio Bravo. The plots are similar enough to echo one another, but you won’t think “remake” when you see the second film.

Reel 18: It’s How You Play the Game

This episode nearly didn’t make it to you, several times. The universe may have been conspiring against us. And that’s a shame because this is one over-stuffed show.

In this episode we take on 1988’s Bull Durham, written and directed by Ron Shelton. Shelton’s experience as a ballplayer shows in the minute details he presents to the viewer.

After that, we move on to Without Limits, directed by Robert Towne. It relates the story of Stever Prefontaine, a phenomenal track star of the early 1970s. In both of these films, there’s a philosophy of sports that informs the way the character/subjects behave, and we explore both of them pretty deeply.

COMING ATTRACTIONS:

Next time around, we look at a couple of films that play up the more absurd side of war via comedy and satire. So if you enjoy seeing the films before we chat, you’re looking for Duck Soup, the 1933 film starring the Marx Brothers, and Catch-22, the 1970 film starring Alan Arkin which is designed to confuse as much as amuse you.