Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) explains what’s going on to an unseen Sam Hesselman (George Dzundza).
The following was originally written on Facebook when I was writing about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 1987.
While I have always said my movie education came from my father – when I was 13 and our family moved to California, he bought a videodisc player, and would bring home an old movie he had bought almost every week to show us – the other part of my movie education started when I became a teenager and went to see movies on my own, or with friends. 1987 and 1988 were the years I remember going most often to the movies, either at Hughes Auditorium at Gonzaga, or, during the summer, going to the movies in theaters when I was back home in Walnut Creek. This was all the newer movies, of course (I’ve mentioned how my father, for the most part, wasn’t a fan of pop culture after 1960 or so), but seeing these, I feel, was an integral part of my taking those tentative steps towards growing up (not the only ones, of course). As much as I enjoyed movies like Silverado, for example, I knew there were certain conventions they followed. So when I went to see Roger Donaldson’s No Way Out one August weekend, I had no idea it was going to be a Hollywood movie that actually dared to pull the rug out from underneath the audience at the end. In addition, I still think the rest of the movie still holds up very well.
Tom and Susan Atwell (Sean Young) flirt with each other.
Adapted by Robert Garland from the novel The Big Clock by Kenneth Fearing (which had already been filmed in 1948 by John Farrow), the movie updates the original setting (a big city media empire) to Washington D.C.. Lt. Commander Tom Farrell (Kevin Costner) gets assigned there to work for Secretary of State David Brice (Gene Hackman) as his liaison with the intelligence community, specifically the CIA – though Farrell’s old friend Scott Pritchard (Will Patton) is Brice’s chief of staff, Farrell actually got the job after performing a daring rescue on his ship. As it happens, both Farrell and Brice share the same girlfriend, Susan Atwell (Sean Young), whom Farrell met at the presidential inauguration ball. Farrell knows this, but all Brice knows is Atwell is seeing someone else. One night, after she and Farrell have been away for the weekend, Brice confronts her at her home, they get into a fight, and he accidentally kills her. Filled with guilt, Brice goes over to visit Pritchard and confesses what he did. Pritchard, looking to protect his boss, has other ideas. He convinces Brice to blame the crime on “Yuri” – the CIA code name for the Soviet spy they’re convinced has been a sleeper agent inside the U.S. – and to have the Criminal Investigative Division (CID), which works out of the Pentagon, to take over the investigation. Farrell is put in charge of all of this (so the Secretary has a fall guy if necessary), meaning he’s investigating a crime where, thanks to all of the circumstantial evidence (including a faded Polaroid print Pritchard found, from a picture Atwell had taken of Farrell), he’s the primary suspect.
Tom and his boss, Secretary of State David Brice (Gene Hackman).
It must be acknowledged, of course, while Patton does a terrific job as Pritchard, he’s playing a villainous gay character, which is a tired stereotype (the fact that part came not only from Fearing’s novel, but was also implied – as much as could be in a Hays Code era movie – in George McCready’s performance in the movie version doesn’t entirely mitigate that, of course). Other than the twist ending, the other memorable scene of the movie for many was the sex scene Atwell and Farrell have in a limo, and the fact Atwell is killed later made some critics categorize Donaldson’s movie as yet another “Fuck and die” movie, as many thrillers in the 80’s were borrowing a page from slasher films of the 70’s and punishing women for having sex by killing them. I’ve mentioned before how I also don’t like movies that utilize that type of plotline, although, in this case, I would argue in “Fuck and die” movies, you’re being encouraged to root for the woman to die for having sex, whereas here, you’re supposed to feel shocked and upset about it happening.
Tom and Scott Pritchard (Will Patton).
Having said all of that, Donaldson and Garland have made another movie where every little detail pay off later, and not just that Polaroid; details Farrell didn’t even think of, like the gift Brice got from a foreign minister that he gave Atwell (which is what Farrell eventually uses to try and implicate Brice), end up being important later. Not only that, but the movie shifts from romantic comedy/drama to thriller mode without breaking a sweat. Moving the setting of the novel (and the original movie) from a media empire to the government also works, as it raises the stakes of Farrell’s attempts to clear his name. Speaking of which, the movie would fit in to Hitchcock’s thrillers, and not just because of the way it blends comedy (the flirtatious banter between Farrell and Atwell when they first meet) with suspense (the chase scene between Farrell and two agents “associated” with special forces – one of them played by Marshall Bell – as he races them to protect a witness (Iman) from them; that chase sequence, as with the whole movie, is shot well by John Alcott – his last movie before he died; it’s dedicated to him – and edited well by William Hoy and Neil Travis). It also follows one of Hitchcock’s favorite plots of an innocent man trying to clear their name, but adds a couple of twists to it, one being the innocent man is in charge of the investigation, and the other, the major one, is the “innocent” man, as it happens, isn’t so innocent after all.
The house where the movie begins and ends.
I mentioned before how Costner had been cut out of THE BIG CHILL, but gave performances I liked in Testament and Silverado. His breakout movie, The Untouchables, had come out two months earlier, and I’m not a big fan of that movie (though I’ve come to like it more than I did at first glance, it’s still more shiny surface than anything else for me) or of Costner’s performance as Elliot Ness there. Having said that, I do believe it was that movie, and that performance, that helped make his performance as Farrell work so well here. It helped create an image of an “all-American” hero, and Costner plays into that again with his portrayal of Farrell, which is crucial to the movie working as well as it does, especially when that final twist comes up. Even the one scene that may tip the movie’s hand – when Farrell calls someone from a phone booth in the Pentagon – can be explained away, thanks to Costner’s performance and determination. Hackman has played this type of role before, but he plays it very well. I’ve mentioned how I like Patton’s work here, and he’s especially good in a scene where he realizes something about the plot. Young has great chemistry with Costner. There’s also good work from George Dzundza as a co-worker and friend of Farrell’s, who becomes an innocent victim of the machinations of the plot, and Jason Bernard as the head of CID. Maurice Jarre’s score also keeps the suspense ratcheted up. Even if the Cold War machinations that drive the plot date the movie somewhat, No Way Out still stands as one of the best thrillers I’ve ever seen, and the way the movie changes everything around with that twist ending makes it stick in the mind long afterwards.
Dr. Brooks (Sidney Poitier) and Dr. Wharton (Stephen McNally).
In the years immediately following World War II, Hollywood finally seemed to wake up to the fact racism was a bad thing (to be fair, there are still parts of the country that still haven’t figured that out). Granted, Hollywood didn’t own up to how they had depicted African-Americans (or other people of color) in the years before or during WWII (In This Our Life, John Huston’s follow-up to The Maltese Falcon, is not considered one of his best among his fans, but it does deserve credit for how it depicts its African-American characters, and Sahara, the WWII movie co-starring Humphrey Bogart, also treats its African-American characters with dignity and respect, but those were few and far between), but at least they were finally willing to confront racism as a subject. In 1949, there were four movies dealing with racism against African-Americans: Home of the Brave, directed by Mark Robson, Intruder in the Dust, directed by Clarence Brown (and adapted from the novel by William Faulkner), Lost Boundaries, directed by Alfred L. Werker, and Pinky, directed by Elia Kazan. Of those, Intruder in the Dust is considered the best of them, with the least amount of compromises in regards to the Hays Code, studio timidity, or racist sensibilities. I like Intruder in the Dust, particularly for the performances of Juano Hernandez, Will Geer, and Porter Hall, but I believe the best movie to deal with racism in the immediate post-WWII era was No Way Out, directed and co-written by Joseph L. Mankiewicz (who co-wrote the movie with Lesser Samuels; Philip Yordan also did uncredited work on the script).
Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) glowers at Dr. Brooks.
Dr. Luther Brooks (Sidney Poitier) is the first African-American doctor to work at an unnamed city hospital (modeled on what was then called Cook County Hospital in Chicago, now called John H. Stoger Jr. Hospital). One night, when he’s the attending physician at the prison ward, Ray Biddle (Richard Widmark) and his brother Johnny are brought in after they were both wounded in the leg during an attempted robbery. Ray is a racist, and he’s further inflamed when Dr. Brooks, to the bemusement of the guards on duty, believes Johnny is suffering from a brain tumor and starts checking for that (giving Johnny a spinal tap), rather than being concerned with the gunshot wound. Johnny ends up dying, and Ray accuses Dr. Brooks of killing his brother. Dr. Brooks convinces his superior, Dr. Dan Wharton (Stephen McNally), they need to perform an autopsy on Johnny, and since they need the approval of a family member (and Ray certainly won’t approve), the two doctors approach Johnny’s widow, Edie Johnson (Linda Darnell), to approve an autopsy to prove Johnny died of a brain tumor and not a gunshot wound. Edie, however, is torn between conflicting loyalties, especially when Ray (as much as she despises him) plays on her racism. At the same time, Brooks’ co-worker Lefty Jones (Dots Johnson), a hospital orderly, and other members of the African-American community realize the whites are going to cause a riot, and despite Brooks’ pleas, are preparing to respond with force of their own. This leads Brooks to take matters into his own hands by having himself arrested for Johnny’s murder to force an autopsy, but this also leads to a confrontation with Ray.
Dr. Brooks and Dr. Wharton try to convince Edie (Linda Darnell) to approve an autopsy for her late husband.
This was a departure for Mankiewicz, as he was known for dialogue-driven comedy/dramas such as A Letter to Three Wives, People Will Talk (appropriately enough), The Barefoot Contessa, and best of all, All About Eve. At first glance, this material might have been more suited to someone like Kazan. However, Mankiewicz apparently sought this material out because he wanted to make a Kazan-type film. What’s interesting is that Mankiewicz doesn’t try and soft-pedal the material. He wanted to show the ugly nature of racism, and we certainly get that with Ray, not just in what he says to Dr. Brooks, but also in the way he acts towards Dr. Brooks, such as when Ray attacks him at the end. Granted, in the over 70 years since this movie was made, Hollywood still seems to only be able to portray racism at its most obvious, so this may not seem like a stretch today. However, unlike many of the movies tackling racism in some way today, Mankiewicz also shows more casual racism. We get that with the hospital guards who question what Dr. Brooks is doing in treating Ray’s brother in a way they wouldn’t question a white doctor, as well as in in the scene where those guards give Ray bad news about a fight between his friends and members of the African-American community, and they use a racial slur not as blatant as the n-word, but still offensive. Mankiewicz also shows that in the scene where Dr. Wharton is trying to convince Dr. Moreland (Stanley Ridges) to approve Dr. Brooks’ request to have an autopsy performed, and Moreland is more concerned about the fact if he fires Brooks, it’ll be bad publicity – plus, he tells Wharton not to tell him about race. Finally, there’s the scene where Ray takes a scalpel and slips it into Dr. Brooks’ pocket and the nurses don’t immediately come to his defense after Dr. Brooks accuses Ray of stealing it, even though Brooks is a doctor there. In his commentary on the DVD, film noir specialist Eddie Muller speculated the reason why the movie wasn’t shown too much on TV is because Mankiewicz didn’t pull any punches when it came to showing racism.
Edie gets threatened by Ray and his brother George (Harry Bellaver).
Admittedly, Mankiewicz does slip up in other ways. Some of that is plot points – the scene where Dr. Wharton, while waiting for the elevator at the hospital, is telling someone he’s going to a hotel seems to be there only so Ray can be in earshot so after he and his brother George (Harry Bellaver) overpower a guard, they can lure Dr. Brooks there. Some of that is the speeches some characters get stuck with, particularly Cora (Mildred Joanne Smith), Dr. Brooks’ wife. And some of that is Mankiewicz does, unfortunately, trying to placate white audiences by making sure there are “good” whites in the picture, so we get scenes like when Dr. Brooks gushes about how much he appreciates Wharton (it makes sense he’d be grateful to Wharton, but it comes off as patronizing to Dr. Brooks).* Still, for the most part, Mankiewicz keeps control of the material. Also, while his is first and foremost a message film, Mankiewicz, with the help of cinematographer Milton R. Krasner (who shot two other movies for Mankiewicz), make this look like a noir film, especially in the fight between the poor whites and the African-Americans, or at Wharton’s home when Ray is getting ready to ambush Dr. Brooks. The plot also has the trappings of a noir in the fact it’s about an innocent man who gets caught in a quagmire, as well as a good bad girl in the form of Edie, who does briefly backslide into being racist thanks to Ray egging her on, but then turns away from that. Mankiewicz and Samuels also portray George in an interesting way in that George is a deaf-mute, but that doesn’t account for, or excuse, his racism.
Dr. Brooks and Edie reluctantly treat the badly-wounded Ray.
Like many actors who have played racists over the years, Widmark in real life was a liberal (he even apologized to Poitier after many takes until Poitier told him they were just acting – the two became friends, and went on to co-star again in The Long Ships and The Bedford Incident, while Poitier would later direct Widmark in Hanky Panky). Widmark had made his mark by playing villainous or treacherous characters in movies like Kiss of Death and Road House (Panic in the Streets, the Kazan film that came out the same year as No Way Out, was Widmark’s first attempt to play against type), but what’s revealing in his performance is how he isn’t afraid to make Ray look pathetic as well as racist, especially at the end when he collapses. Darnell would later call this the only good film she ever did, and while I wouldn’t agree (I like Unfaithfully Yours and A Letter to Three Wives, the latter her first film with Mankiewicz), I certainly think it’s her best performance. The way she’s able to let you know what Edie is thinking when she tricks George to get away from him (she blasts the radio loudly, knowing he can’t hear it but the neighbors will, and when they come in, she gets away in the confusion) is a good example of, as is the scene when she bonds with Gladys (Amanda Randolph), Wharton’s maid. Like Widmark, McNally was mostly known for playing villainous characters (the same year this film came out, he played James Stewart’s outlaw brother in Winchester ’73), but he plays well against type here. Rudolph manages to make the most of her stock role, and there are also early appearances from real-life couple Ossie Davis and Ruby Dee as a couple (Dee plays Dr. Brooks’ sister, while Davis plays his brother-in-law). But the movie rests on Poitier’s shoulders. This was his first leading role (he had been an extra in a feature and had also appeared in a documentary), but Poitier already seems like a natural. Admittedly, Dr. Brooks is the type of role that Poitier would find himself playing more and more over the next two decades, but there are some interesting wrinkles here, especially at the end. It may seem like a sop when Dr. Brooks decides to treat a wounded Ray even after Ray attacks him, but his rationale for treating Ray is that he’s trying to stay true to the Hippocratic oath, rather than some false statement about trying to get along. Not only that, but long before the famous scene of Poitier slapping a white man who slapped him in the film In the Heat of the Night, Poitier gets to snarl, “Don’t cry, white boy, you’re gonna live” to Ray when he’s crying in pain. It’s scenes like that which help make No Way Out still hold up today as both a good anti-racist film and a good film, period.
*-On the other hand, when the hospital orderly (Dot Johnson) tells Dr. Brooks about how the African-Americans are going to fight the whites, and Dr. Brooks tells him they’ll be no better than the whites are if they resort to violence, the orderly responds, “Ain’t it asking a lot for us to be better than them when we get killed just for trying to prove we’re as good?”, which is not something you’d expect to hear in a 1950 movie.
A long while back (Episodes 14—17), we looked at English remakes of non-English films. Those were the same story but different titles. Then in Episode 23, it was four different versions of the same story, with the same title. Now, we give you a pair of films with the same title, but that’s the only thing they have in common: the story lines and subject matter are vastly different from one another.
In this episode we’re screening two films titled No Way Out. In the first half, it’s the 1950 version starring Sidney Poitier in his feature film debut, along with Richard Widmark, Linda Darnell and Stephen McNally. Poitier is a doctor who runs into race issues and a medical complication during his first night in a new assignment. The issue snowballs until there’s a full race riot going on. Poitier’s character comes up with an interesting tactic to prove he did the right thing that first night, but it nearly backfires on him.
From there we jump to 1987. This No Way Out stars Kevin Costner, Gene Hackman and Sean Young in a story of Cold War intrigue. We practically guarantee that you’ll be caught off-guard by the way everything resolves.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Next time around, we’ll continue this gimmick with another pair of films that have the same title and nothing else in common. The films’ title is Loving. One is from 1970 and the other is from 2016.
Along with Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury, and Arthur C. Clarke, Robert Heinlein was one of the leading science fiction writers to emerge after World War II. He was praised for the accuracy he brought to the science part of his fiction. Heinlein was also the rare writer who seemed to be praised on both sides of the political aisle (reflecting his own political journey from left to right to being a libertarian). Stranger in a Strange Land (which I’ve never read) was widely praised by the counter-culture for its views on the sexual revolution. Starship Troopers, on the other hand, was praised by right-wingers for its unabashed militarism. To its detractors, the latter novel is a fascist novel disguised as science fiction. I’m not sure I’d go that far – when I initially read it in the 1990’s, I took it as being Sands of Iwo Jima set in the future – but there’s no question it is very gung-ho about war and the military (along with being gung-ho about corporal punishment and believing only certain people had the right to vote). So it makes you curious if producer Jon Davison and screenwriter Ed Neumeier secretly knew what they were doing when they pursued Paul Verhoeven (whom they had worked with successfully on Robocop), who had grown up in the Netherlands when it was occupied by Nazi Germany during WWII, to direct the movie version of Heinlein’s novel, because the resulting movie, Starship Troopers, took that pro-militarism attitude and turned it entire on its head.* When it came out in 1997, Starship Troopers was a box-office bomb, and critics weren’t much kinder (Gene Siskel was one of the few critics who liked it, and he only gave it a mild recommendation). Today, however, it’s become a cult hit for those who realize it was a satire on the novel, and while I don’t love it, I think it’s terrific.
As with the novel, the movie is set in the 23rd century, where Earth is ruled by the military under the guise of the United Citizen Federation, and they’re at war with bugs, who are fighting the Earth on planets Earth is trying to colonize from their home base on Kiendathu. It’s at this time Johnny Rico (Casper Van Dien), a star athlete, enlists as a mobile infantryman, over the objections of his parents. Also joining up are Carmen Ibanez (Denise Richards), an ace space pilot and Rico’s girlfriend (at first), Carl Jenkins (Neil Patrick Harris), a psychic who ends up in military intelligence, and Izabelle “Dizzy” Flores (Dina Mayer), who joins the mobile infantry unit because she’s in love with Rico. While Carmen joins the space air force, breaks up with Rico, and becomes close to Zander Barcalow (Patrick Muldoon), another pilot, Rico goes through training with Izzy, under the command of Sgt. Zim (Clancy Brown), who respects Rico because he was taught by Jean Rasczak (Michael Ironside), who later joins the military again. While Rico initially impresses Zim enough to be promoted to squad leader, he later quits military training after an exercise he supervises inadvertently causes the death of one of his men. However, Rico goes back to the military when a bug attack kills his parents, and he and Izzy, along with Ace Levy (Jake Busey), who was in the training class with Rico, and Sugar Watkins (Seth Gilliam) to be part of the Roughnecks (led by Rasczak) fighting unit, who does the bulk of the fighting against the bug army., though the fight turns out to be tougher, and bloodier, than anyone expected
In his Dutch films, Verhoeven was allowed to explicitly show sex and violence, along with a satirical edge in movies like Soldier of Orange, Spetters, and The 4th Man. In Hollywood, on the other hand, Verhoeven had to dial down the sex part, except for Basic Instinct and Showgirls (both movies have a cult following and are considered in some circles as being as subversive as Verhoeven’s Dutch films, but I think that’s giving too much credit to Joe Eszterhas, the screenwriter of both films) – he does have the nude shower scene here, which he got the cast to agree to when he and cinematographer Jost Vacano agreed to shoot the scene while nude – but has been allowed to show explicit violence. Yet as in Robocop and Total Recall (my favorite of Verhoeven’s Hollywood movies), the violence in Starship Troopers never feels gratuitous, but necessary to the story. Forgoing Heinlein’s novel, Verhoeven does not try to make war glorious, but makes it a living hell, yet at the same time, showing a society that produces people who seem to be equipped to do little else except fight bugs and maybe even get killed by them.
Of course, part of what makes the violence work so well in the movie – aside from the way Verhoeven, Vacano, and editors Mark Goldblatt and Caroline Ross help stage it – is the satire Verhoeven brings to balance the movie out. Verhoeven stated in interviews he took inspiration from movies Hollywood made during WWII, but especially the movies of Leni Riefenstahl, specifically Triumph of the Will and Olympia (George Lucas, of course, used imagery from the former in the final scenes of Star Wars: A New Hope, but Verhoeven takes it to another level here). Part of that comes through in the pro-military commercials and news segments that appear throughout the movie (similar to the ones in Robocop), with narration by John Cunningham (a veteran stage and TV actor who has also appeared in such movies as Mystic Pizza, School Ties, and Nixon) that always ends with, “Would you like to know more?” Part of that also comes from the costumes designed by Ellen Mirojnick, who outfits most of the characters in military uniforms that wouldn’t look out of place in Triumph of the Will. Part of that also comes from Neumeier’s dialogue, which also wouldn’t seem out of place in a military propaganda film (when experts are debating the war on TV, and one mentions the bugs may have developed intelligence, another one snorts, “Frankly, I find the idea of a bug that thinks offensive!”). Still, most of the satire comes from how Verhoeven cast the movie with actors who would have fit right in on Melrose Place, being blond and blue-eyed – and if you’re wondering about folks from Argentina (which is where the Earth scenes take place, though that part of the movie was shot in Los Angeles, where the bug planet scenes were shot the South Dakota and Wyoming) being blond and blue-eyed, remember a number of Nazis who fled Germany at the end of WWII to escape capture settled in Argentina.
In the years since the movie was released, a healthy debate has sprung up among fans of the movie as to which of the cast members were in on the joke. Although Van Dien had stated in interviews at the time that he recognized the film was meant to be a satire, his subsequent career choices (he was in one of the first Christian-themed movies, The Omega Code, as well as daytime and prime time soap operas on TV) doesn’t give you much confidence in that statement. On the other hand, it’s clear Brown, Harris, and Ironside recognize what kind of movie they’re in – Ironside especially when he’s espousing pro-military attitudes that even Gunnery Sergeant Hartman from Full Metal Jacket might have blanched at – and I would argue Mayer also seems to get that it’s a satire, even if her character was changed from the novel (Dizzy was a man in the novel) to give Rico a love interest. Richards is an interesting case. In the DVD commentary, Verhoeven insists Carmen was meant to be a feminist character, while test audiences didn’t react well to her, even wishing she had been the one who dies. While a lot of that can be seen as the misogyny of the audiences of the time, and Carmen certainly gets shown as being capable of what she does, I always thought she should have been a more compelling character, and I’m not sure if it’s the fault of Richards, Verhoeven, the writing, or a combination. That said, based on the movies she did after this, particularly Wild Things and Undercover Brother, which are both tongue-in-cheek genre pieces (the former for the erotic thriller, the latter for blaxploitation movies) – and while I don’t think much of The World is Not Enough, the James Bond movies pre-Daniel Craig were tongue-in-cheek – it’s likely Richards did get the humor of the movie, even if she doesn’t come across that way. Regardless, the actors for the most part are good, particularly Brown, Harris, and Mayer. Starship Troopers doesn’t rank as my favorite Verhoeven, but I admire its audaciousness in turning the militarism of Heinlein’s novel on its head.
*-Neumeier had actually written an original screenplay called “Bug Hunt at Outpost 7”, but when he showed it to Davison, Davison pointed out the similarities to Heinlein’s novel.
The early-to-mid 1970’s in American movies is justly remembered as the time of the New Hollywood movement (or Hollywood New Wave), where directors wanted to depict a different kind of America than what had been put on screen during the studio era, and also combine a love for that studio era with a love of the type of non-English language films (especially European and Japanese) that had played on American screens in the 1950’s and 1960’s. What doesn’t get remembered as much is the 1970’s also saw a number of movies that were revisionist versions of genre movies of the studio era, particularly the western and the private eye movie, which encompassed both the amateur sleuth/drawing room mystery type of private eye movie (like The Private Life of Sherlock Holmes) and the hardboiled type of private eye movie. For the latter, The Long Goodbye (directed by Robert Altman), Chinatown (directed by Roman Polanski), and Night Moves (directed by Arthur Penn) are considered among the best examples. All due respect to those movies – I love Chinatown and Night Moves, and have come around on The Long Goodbye, though it’s still not my favorite Altman – but I would argue Kiss Me Deadly, directed by Robert Aldrich and based on the novel by Mickey Spillane (adapted by A.I. Bezzerides), beat them to the punch.
Spillane wrote in the tradition of hard-boiled detective fiction as established by Dashiell Hammett and Raymond Chandler. However, whereas Hammett and Chandler wrote about flawed characters who nonetheless tried to adhere to a moral code, Spillane’s most famous character, private detective Mike Hammer, was unapologetically a brutalist who nonetheless saw himself as a moral crusader against anybody who Spillane didn’t like (especially drug dealers and Communists). Towards that end, Spillane, who started out writing for comic books until he switched to novels because they paid better, eschewed Hammett’s spare prose and Chandler’s romanticism (which admittedly could get wearying at times) for rat-a-tat, punchy writing that would seem like a parody of macho posturing were it not for the fact Spillane so obviously believed in it. Hammer was his hero, and it’s precisely this ideal that Aldrich and Bezzerides undercut with their movie version.
Hammer (Ralph Meeker) is driving one night when he comes across Christine (Cloris Leachman, in her film debut) running barefoot along the road, and wearing only a trenchcoat. She tells him, “Remember me” before some men drive Hammer off the road, take Christine, kill her, and leave him for dead. Hammer wakes up in the hospital, accompanied by Velda (Maxine Cooper), his secretary/lover, and Lt. Pat Murphy (Wesley Addy), his friend on the police force. Though Murphy tries to tell him not to investigate any further, Hammer tries to find out what happened to Christine, as he thinks it’s part of something big. He goes to Christine’s apartment, where he discovers Lily Carver (Gaby Rodgers), who claims to have been Christine’s roommate, and says she’s scared the people who killed Christine will come after her too. Hammer also ends up tangling with Carl Evello (Paul Stewart), a gangster who works with Dr. Soberin (Albert Dekker), a mysterious crooked doctor, as well as the search for a mysterious black box, or as Velda refers to it, “the great whatsit.”
The private detectives in earlier film noirs, such as Sam Spade in The Maltese Falcon or Philip Marlowe in Murder my Sweet and The Big Sleep, were involved in missing persons cases, and even though those cases ended up revealing a lot more, the detectives were darker than “amateur” sleuths like Philo Vance and the Falcon, and they also butted heads with the police (most notably the scene in The Maltese Falcon when Spade delivers an angry rant towards the district attorney, only interrupting himself to ask the stenographer if he’s getting everything down), there was still an air of respectability about them (the closest to disreputable is probably Jeff Bailey, aka Jeff Markham, the private eye played by Robert Mitchum in Out of the Past, and he finds out there are lines even he won’t cross). There’s nothing respectable about Hammer. He works on divorce cases – if it’s a husband suspected of cheating, Velda seduces him to catch him in the act, while if it’s the wife, it’s Hammer who does the work – and again, he tries to find out what happened to Christine not because of any sense of morality, but because he thinks he’s onto something big that will help him break out. Also, even though this was made during the Production Code era, Hammer is willing to manhandle anyone (including an opera singer and a coroner) to get information, as well as seduce any woman he comes across (even Evello’s girl). About the only redeeming qualities Hammer has are his friendship with Nick (Nick Dennis), his auto mechanic, his friendships with African-American characters (including Eddie Yeager (Juano Hernandez), a gym owner), and his drive to save Velda when she’s kidnapped. This is in direct contrast to Spillane’s novel, where Hammer’s actions are considered heroic, even by Murphy, whereas in the movie, he’s warning Hammer to stay off the case because he’s screwing everything up.
Along with the attitude towards Hammer, the other major change from the novel (even though Aldrich and Bezzerides keep a lot of it) is what Soberin, and eventually Hammer, are after. In the novel, it was heroin, as Spillane had it in for drug dealers, whom he considered on a par with Communists, whereas in the film, it’s an attaché case containing something nuclear-related. That part is hinted at in the film when Murphy drops the hint, “Manhattan Project, Los Alamos, Trinity” to Hammer in order to warn him off, as well as when Dr. Soberin describes the box as “Pandora’s Box”. It also gets hinted at when Hammer finds the case at an athletic club and opens it, only to close it immediately after the light and radiation burn his wrist. That sets the stage for one of the most infamous endings ever, when Lily – or, at least, the woman pretending to be Lily; she’s actually working with Dr. Soberin – shoots Dr. Soberin dead because he won’t share what’s in the case with her, then shoots Hammer before opening the case, only for that same light and radiation to emerge, burning her to death and causing the house she and the others are in to eventually explode. Oddly enough, in the studio-enforced ending, everyone dies, while in Aldrich and Bezzerides’ ending, a wounded Hammer manages to rescue Velda and they both escape.
One trait the film does share with the novel is Aldrich’s baroque style matches Spillane’s rat-a-tat prose, though without the macho posturing that made the novel wearying for me. Aldrich and cinematographer Ernest Laszlo (in the fourth of five movies together) deftly blend location shooting (the exteriors) with sets (the interiors). At one point in the movie, Hammer is kidnapped by Shug Smallhouse (Jack Lambert) and Charlie Max (Jack Elam), two of Evello’s thugs, and gets drugged, which was not new for film noir – in Murder my Sweet, Edward Dmytryk’s adaptation of Raymond Chandler’s Farewell my Lovely, Philip Marlowe gets drugged as well by the bad guys – but what makes this sequence different is Aldrich and Laszlo shoot Soberin (when he’s questioning Hammer) so you never see his face, making him all the more menacing and otherworldly. And the final sequence certainly shows Aldrich pulling out all the stops. This also serves as a nice contrast to Bezzerides’ dialogue, which is elliptical where Spillane’s was punchy, which is brought out with Dr. Soberin, who speaks almost entirely in flowery riddles, even near the end, when “Lily” is asking him what’s in the case (or as she calls it, the box), and he speaks of Pandora’s Box, among other things.
At the time, Meeker had been a contract player for MGM, as well as a stage actor (he replaced Marlon Brando on A Streetcar Named Desire, and originated the role of Hal, the drifter, in Picnic: William Holden played the role in the 1955 movie version), with his best role being the affable if somewhat troubled ex-cavalryman Anderson in Anthony Mann’s dark western The Naked Spur. Playing Hammer required Meeker to step up his game, and he does, using his physicality in a way that he’d never really do again. Meeker can go from superficially charming to menacing on a dime here, especially when he’s at Evello’s party and goes from coming on to one of the women there to beating up on Shut and Charlie. Of the three main actresses, only Leachman went on to have a prolific acting career, though Cooper concentrated on political activism and Rodgers was involved with songwriting. Still, all three are very good. Velda may be jaded, but she’s smart in ways Hammer never will be, and Cooper projects that well. Leachman doesn’t have a lot of screen time, but you certainly understand why Hammer is curious to find out what happened to her, as she projects an air of mystery. In an interview, Rodgers apparently said Aldrich told her to play the part as if she was a lesbian, which is a wrongful stereotype considering how psychotic “Lily” turns out to be, but Rodgers also projects an air of mystery that works for the character. Finally, while Dekker and Stewart did play good guys in their career, and well (Dekker as Gregory Peck’s editor in Gentleman’s Agreement, Stewart as an ace reporter in Deadline U.S.A. and a nightclub owner in the Elvis Presley vehicle King Creole), they were at their best in villainous roles, and they’re both appropriately menacing here. Though Kiss Me Deadly wasn’t popular with critics at the time, today, it’s rightly seen as a terrific film (influencing, among other films, Pulp Fiction, which also had a mysterious case as part of its plot), and again, a revisionist film noir long before the term came about.
Over the course of this show, Sean and I have covered all kinds of adaptations. Some were based on books, some on record albums, and some on Broadway Musicals (HA! Kidding about that last one; Sean would rather be dragged through broken glass and then dipped in rubbing alcohol).
But the one thing they had in common was some sense of fealty to the original source material. Well, that ends with this episode, hence the title “Subversive Adaptations.”
We start with Kiss Me Deadly, the 1954 film directed by Robert Aldrich. Aldrich takes a direct poke at the right-wing mentality of Mickey Spillane’s original novel. He carries us on a trip following Mike Hammer, who’s about as ignorant as we are regarding what’s going on.
From there we move on to 1997 and Starship Troopers, directed by Paul Verhoeven. Robert A. Heinlein’s novel was written on the cusp of his transition out of the “juvenile” science fiction he’d been doing. While the book depicts a relatively militaristic society, the story line spends most of its time in the central character’s military training and his move up the command chain, and not so much on the details of the war. (Also, a character who dies late in the film doesn’t make it past Page One of the book.) Verhoeven—a Holocaust survivor—gives us an eerily prescient view of what it looks like when fascistic politics takes precedence over common sense.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
In our next two episodes, we take a slightly different turn. Rather than featuring films that have a common thread thematically, we’ll be looking at two films whose only commonality is the title. To that end, next time we’ll be screening two different films both titled No Way Out, from 1950 and from 1987.
In our latest episode, Claude and I talk about two movies where characters must confront their past; Lone Star (1996) and Mystic River (2003). Here’s what I wrote about each of them when writing on Facebook about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 1996 and 2003, respectively.
Chris Cooper (Sam Deeds) and Elizabeth Pena (Pilar Cruz)
I own a book called Legends, Lies and Cherished Myths of American History, by Richard Shenkman, published over 30 years ago. As the title indicates, it purports to tell the truth behind a lot of what we were taught in history classes growing up (about politicians, family life, famous sayings, and more), What we are taught about our country’s history has become a hot topic again as there is renewed, and welcome, debate about who we choose to honor through a statue (or having a place named after), as well as who we choose to put the spotlight on when it comes to our history, especially if it marginalizes people of color and women. The way we view history also relates to personal history as well a country’s history; one person may only have happy memories of their parents, while that person’s sibling may think otherwise. Personal and political history are the subject of John Sayles’ Lone Star, one of his best movies.
The title of the movie refers to the slogan of Texas, which is where the movie takes place, specifically Frontera, a small border town near Laredo, and near an army base. Cliff (Stephen Mendillo) and Mikey (Stephen J. Lang, not to be confused with the Stephen Lang from Avatar), two sergeants from the base, are out treasure hunting one day in a deserted shooting range when they find an old sheriff’s badge, a Masonic ring, and a human skull (later, they also find a bullet). Sam Deeds (Chris Cooper), the town sheriff, is able to confirm the badge, ring and skull all belonged to Charlie Wade (Kris Kristofferson), the former sheriff of the town 40 years earlier, a corrupt man who had ruled the town with an iron fist, and who had mysteriously disappeared one night, along with $10,000, after a confrontation with Buddy Deeds (Matthew McConaughey), Sam’s father and one of Charlie’s deputies. While the townspeople relish this story, and Buddy (whom they’re dedicating a courthouse to), Sam has always resented his father, ever since he broke up Sam’s teenage romance with Pilar (Elizabeth Pena), now a schoolteacher, single mother, and widow. As Sam begins to investigate the circumstances surrounding Charlie’s death, he believes Buddy was the one who actually killed Charlie, though it may be he just wants that to be true.
Kris Kristofferson (Charlie Wade)
Sayles also sets up a parallel story involving Col. Del Payne (Joe Morton), the new commanding officer of that army base, which is getting shut down in the near future. While stationed at the base, Payne has to handle an incident involving Athens (Chandra Wilson), one of the soldiers on the base, at a nearby bar (two men get into a fight over her). That incident brings Col. Payne back into the orbit of his estranged father Otis (Ron Canada), who owns the bar where it happened (the colonel’s son Chet (Eddie Robinson) was also at the bar that night, though only he and Otis know that) – and who also, as it happens, is connected to Charlie Wade and Buddy Deeds. Payne resents his father for his womanizing and for abandoning his family, only to realize there’s a lot more to his father than he thinks.
Again, history runs throughout the movie. Pilar is a history teacher, and there’s a scene where she and other faculty members get into an argument with school board members about the history textbooks, with whites wanting only their view of history to be taught (a fight that continues to this day). Otis is a history buff, with a room in his bar devoted to pictures and books about his African-American and Native-American ancestry, which he shows Chet. Then there’s Buddy’s history, with Hollis (Clifton James), once a deputy under Charlie, now the town mayor, being the keeper of Buddy’s legacy and the teller of his stories. Hollis and Mercedes Cruz (Miriam Colon), Pilar’s mother, who owns a Mexican restaurant, are the ones behind the push to name the courthouse after Buddy, even though Danny (Jesse Borrego), a local reporter, has a story Buddy evicted Mexican residents of a local community in order to create lakefront property for a tourist attraction that Buddy and Hollis profited from. However, most people Sam talks to about Buddy, including Otis and Minnie Bledsoe (Beatrice Winde), whose husband owned that bar before Otis did, maintain Buddy always dealt with people fairly (as Otis says, “I don’t recall a man in this county – black, white, or Mexican – who’d hesitate for a minute to call on Buddy Deeds to solve a problem”).
Joe Morton (Col. Del Payne)
Sayles, who as usual, edited the movie as well as writing and directing, and cinematographer Stuart Dryburgh don’t do much to differentiate between a scene taking place in the present and one that takes place in the past; no sepia tones, no dissolves, just panning the camera over to signify a transition from past to present and back again. However, in the context of this movie, it works because it helps illustrate how the past is still alive for many of the main characters, and how they like, or need, to hold on to it. Whether it’s Otis telling the story of what really happened to Charlie Wade the night he disappeared, and Dryburgh pans over from the bar in the 90’s to the bar in the 50’s (Gabriel Casseus plays the younger Otis), or, in a poignant moment, when Sam and Pilar talk by a stream, and after she leaves, the camera pans over to a young Sam (Tay Strathairn, son of Sayles regular David Strathairn) and Pilar (Vanessa Martinez, who went on to appear in two more Sayles movies) talking, and then the camera comes back to Sam.*
Along with the history, Sayles throws in the tropes of the mystery film – did Buddy actually kill Wade and take the money? – and the western, with the lone sheriff ruling over the town (Charlie Wade), as well as the lone sheriff trying to investigate what he thinks is the dark secret of the town despite opposition (Sam). The mystery is pretty straightforward, with Sayles playing fair throughout, though it does mean it’s easy to figure out who really killed Charlie Wade (there’s another secret that gets revealed by the end of the movie, and while Sayles plays equally fair with that one, the revelation of that secret is a total surprise; when I saw the movie in the theater when it came out, the audience I was with gasped at the reveal). At the same time, Sayles pays attention to the other stories equally well. He even gets some humor into the movie. Cliff is dating Priscilla (LaTanya Richardson), another sergeant on the base, and when Mikey wonders if her family will accept the fact he’s white, Cliff responds they’re just happy it proves she’s not a lesbian, to which Mikey responds, “It’s always heartwarming to see a prejudice defeated by a deeper prejudice.” When Sam says he’s going to “go over to the other side”, Ray (Tony Plana), his deputy, wonders, “Republicans?” Of course, mostly, it’s played for drama; when Athens fails a drug test, and Col. Payne wonders why she’s in the army in the first place, she responds, “They pay us, sir” (as Sayles points out in the book-length interview book he did with Gavin Smith, many people of color join the military precisely because it gives them a job and more opportunity for advancement than in the private sector), and Sayles also gets into the issue of Mexicans coming across the border, as Mercedes reluctantly helping her busboy’s wife come across, and she remembers how she came across the same way. The score by Mason Daring, Sayles’ frequent composer, also brings together the mélange of musical styles down in Texas, although the best musical moment comes from a prerecorded song; when Sam and Pilar dance to Ivory Joe Hunter’s “Since I Met You Baby” at Miriam’s restaurant.
Cooper, who had previously worked with Sayles on Matewan (as well as in a small role in City of Hope), is playing to the type of another famous actor with the last name of Cooper who was associated with westerns, but he plays it well, and shows what a good listener he is (his role is mostly reactive). Pena, who had appeared in Shannon’s Deal, the show Sayles created, gives a forceful performance as Pilar, and she and Cooper have very good chemistry. Kristofferson is cagey and menacing as Charlie Wade. Morton, as with his character in City of Hope, is playing someone caught between two worlds, and handles it well again. And the rest of the cast, including Frances McDormand as Sam’s ex-wife, is very good in their roles. Though Sayles has continued to make good, or at least interesting, movies, Lone Star remains the last time he hit the peak of his talent as a filmmaker, as well as a sobering reminder about the way history informs everything we do.
*-In another scene with the younger Pilar and Sam, Sayles also throws in an homage to his B-movie roots; the movie the two watch at a drive-in before Buddy catches them is Black Mama, White Mama, a prison exploitation version of The Defiant Ones starring Pam Grier and co-written by Jonathan Demme.
Jimmy Markum (Sean Penn)
(Note: this review of Mystic River was originally written for the fanzine CAPRA in 2003, and is followed by corrections and additional thoughts)
Clint Eastwood’s latest movie – after the entertaining but somewhat routine Space Cowboys and Blood Work – Mystic River, adapted by Brian Helgeland from the novel by Dennis Lehane, starts out with three boys who are friends, Jimmy Markum, Dave Boyle, and Sean Devine. One day, when the boys decide to carve their names on the sidewalk, two men who present themselves as cops come up, chew the boys out, and tell them to get in their car. Dave gets in the car, but something tells Jimmy and Sean to stay away. So Dave, of course, is kidnapped and molested, until he finally escapes and comes home. But even though he’s given a hero’s welcome, he, along with Jimmy and Sean, know that glory will be short-lived. 25 years later, Jimmy (Sean Penn) is an ex-con who runs a convenience store, is married to Annabeth (Laura Linney), whom he married after his first wife died, and has three daughters. Dave (Tim Robbins) is a handyman who is married to Celeste (Marcia Gay Harden), and has a son. Sean (Kevin Bacon) is a homicide detective who is separated from his wife. All of them, in other words, are living on a fragile edge. The three come back together when Jimmy’s oldest daughter, Katie (Emmy Rossum), is murdered. Sean is the detective assigned to the case, along with his partner Whitey Powers (Laurence Fishburne). And Dave came home the night of the murder with blood on his clothes, and while he told a story of facing down a mugger, Celeste doesn’t believe him, and she, along with Whitey, and even Sean and Jimmy, begins to suspect him, especially when he reveals he saw Katie before he died.
Back in 1992, when Eastwood made Unforgiven, a lot of critics saw this as his repudiation of The Man With No Name character he played in the spaghetti westerns he did with Sergio Leone. Similarly, some have seen this film as turning his back on his Dirty Harry character and the idea of vigilante justice. There are only three acts of violence shown in the entire film – and interestingly enough, none of them are Katie’s murder – and none of them are cathartic. Not only that, but one of them ends up against someone who’s innocent, and the person who commits this act gets off scot-free. This is miles away from the charge we get from revenge killings in other movies, and it’s certainly to Lehane, Helgeland, and Eastwood’s credit that they go for this more complex view of justices. The closest Eastwood ever came to this before was in his film Tightrope, where his detective character shared some of the same proclivities as the serial killer he was after, but it’s not as deeply explored as it is here.
Kevin Bacon (Sean Devine)
Still, while all of that is admirable, it’s the sense of personal history that makes this resonate. All of these characters, perhaps wounded by their own history, are reluctant to open up until Katie’s death (except, of course, for Whitey, the only one not from the neighborhood). And once that happens, you sense how the incident from the car still haunts them. Katie had been planning to run away with Brendan Harris (Tom Guiry), the one boy Jimmy absolutely forbade her to see, and we soon find out that’s more than just Jimmy being a naturally protective father. Later, after Katie is dead, Jimmy confesses aloud, “I know in my soul I contributed to your death; I just don’t know how”. As for Dave, he refuses to talk about his past to Celeste, and refuses to think about it, except in his nightmares. When he does finally talk about it, he can only talk about it in the third person, calling himself The Boy Who Escaped From Wolves (literally here; in the flashbacks, when he’s escaping, we hear wolves howling), which scares Celeste even more. The only person trying to escape the weight of the past is Sean. His ex-wife calls him on his cell phone, and while she never says anything, he attempts to try and make sense of where they went wrong, and how it can be fixed.
One charge that’s stuck with Eastwood his entire career is how inexpressive he is, and how inexpressive the actors who’ve worked under him are (partly this is blamed on his penchant for few takes; what he sees as spontaneous, others see being afraid to dig deep). He’s managed to become more than just a clenched-teeth actor in the last decade, however, and that’s certainly not a charge you can lay at this movie. Penn throws himself into his role with characteristic resolve and honesty, especially in the scene where he cries, without even knowing it, for Katie. Robbins uses his height to his advantage here, playing Dave as a wounded giant who seems weighed down by his past. Bacon is the surprise here, relying on none of his mannerisms, and being convincing as the cop. Fishburne is appropriately flip and smart as Whitey. Some have criticized Linney’s performance, especially for a Lady Macbeth type moment near the end of the movie. Granted, her character is better developed in the novel but I think Linney brings her usual toughness to the role, so that final speech didn’t seem out of place. And it’s almost unbearable to watch Harden here. If Annabeth is like a proud, stern eagle, Celeste is the frightened, fragile dove, and Harden nails that aspect. Much has been made of the last scene, a parade, where Sean gives Jimmy a chillingly ambiguous look, and while that’s a powerful moment, I think the look exchanged between Annabeth and Celeste right before is even more powerful.
Tim Robbins (Dave Boyle)
Eastwood also wrote the music, and my one complaint with the movie is his excluding Rickie Lee Jones’ “Pirates (So Long Lonely Avenue)” from the soundtrack (in the novel, it’s the song Jimmy and Annabeth first danced to, and if there’s anybody who fits Jones’ idea of “sad-eyed Sinatras”, it’s Jimmy). But for the most part, we get the richness of Lehane’s novel, not just in the characters, but the sense of the neighborhood and its history. All of that comes together in the crowning achievement of Eastwood’s career.
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So, a big error right off the bat; Dave gets into the car at the beginning instead of Jimmy and Sean because the fake cops (one of them played by John Doman, best known to me as Rawls on The Wire) say they’re taking him home to his mother, whereas Jimmy and Sean’s parents live right on that street. Also, I should have mentioned the changes from the novel, other than that Rickie Lee Jones song being cut out, and the parts of Annabeth and Celeste being cut down (though Eastwood reportedly told Helgeland, to beef them back up somewhat); Jimmy’s last name is changed from Marcus (in the novel) to Markum, he, Dave and Sean are trying to pull a hockey puck from the sewer when the fake cop comes by, not writing their names in the cement, and there are scenes establishing the three main characters as adults that aren’t in the novel (Jimmy at the store with Katie, Dave walking the streets of his old neighborhood with his son, Sean and Whitey at a different crime scene on a bridge). I also should have mentioned how Eastwood insisting on shooting in Boston lends authenticity to the movie, as well as cinematographer Tom Stern’s fine work in capturing the locations (Stern has shot most of Eastwood’s films since Blood Work). Also, one nice bit of trivia; Kevin Chapman, who plays one of the Savage brothers (the crooks who work with Jimmy), and who went on to appear in Brotherhood, the Showtime series that was one of the best shows of the 2000’s, also appeared in a small role in 21 Grams.
A couple of other things to mention. First of all, of course, there’s been quite a pushback against Penn’s performance, saying it’s overacting to the nth degree, and quite bad (I won’t dignify the other term it’s been characterized as by using it, as I’m sick to death of that term, as I’ve mentioned before). Good overacting and bad overacting, to me, is in the eye of the beholder; I’m the one who thinks Anthony Hopkins does awful overacting in Bram Stoker’s Dracula, while a lot of people I know really like him in that, so I can only say I disagree about Penn here. Secondly, Eastwood’s career went down some interesting paths for the rest of the decade, but in this past decade, he seems to have taken a turn towards simplistic readings of the material he chooses. Still, I do think Mystic River still holds up.
Your patience is appreciated with this episode; I spent last weekend at the Southern Studio and had some trouble with my remote access to the files here at home. My brothers and I spent the entire weekend together without any wives or kids; we’d NEVER done that before and had a bunch of fun reconnecting. Next time I swear there’ll be more drinking.
Anyway: In this week’s episode we take on a pair of films involving people who are dealing with an event in the distant past.
We start our romp through history with Lone Star (1996), written and directed by John Sayles. We’ve talked about Sayles’ work before (in Episode 39, wherein we discuss The Return of the Secaucus Seven) and it’s good to see that Sayles can still tell a straightforward story. But this time he deftly handles the transitions between present and past.
From there it’s on to 2003’s Mystic River, directed by Clint Eastwood. In this film, three boys are involved in a tragic event in the past. In the present-day, they’re still haunted by the events of their childhood when a new tragedy strikes.
COMING ATTRACTIONS:
Join us as we take on a couple of subversive adaptations. First up is Kiss Me Deadly, from 1955. Then we jump to 1997 or, if you prefer, the far future, with Starship Troopers. Were they good? Bad? Weird? Or did you just not get the message they were sending? Stay tuned!
The second movie reviewed in our latest episode is Parasite, and here’s what I wrote about it on Facebook when writing about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 2019.
Another international filmmaker whose work I’ve never been able to fully embrace is Bong Joon Ho. I recognize he’s one of a handful of directors who address the fact, as he puts it, we live in a world called capitalism, but too often, I find his work heavy-handed, even though, in his previous films (The Host, Snowpiercer), he expressed that idea through genre. Ironically, when Bong decided to address the subject more directly in Parasite (which he co-wrote with Han Jin-Won), he made what, for me, is his best film to date. It also made history; it’s only the second film to win both the top prize at the Cannes Film Festival and Best Picture at the Oscars (Marty was the other one)*, and the first non-English language film to win Best Picture at the Oscars.
In Seoul, the Kim family – father Ki-Taek (Song Kang Ho), mother Chung-Sook (Jang Hye-Jin), daughter Ki-Jung (Park So-Dam), and son Ki-Woo (Choi Woo-Sik) – live in a sub-basement apartment. They fold pizza boxes for a living, which barely helps to make ends meet. One day, Ki-Woo’s friend Min (Park Seo-Joon) visits them. Min is moving abroad, so he recommends Ki-Woo to take over his job as tutor to Da-Hye (Jung Ji-So), daughter of the Park family – Dong-Ik (Lee Sun-Kyun), the father, and Yeon-Kyo (Cho Yeo-Jeong). Ki-Woo makes a good impression on the Parks (especially Da-Hye, who develops a crush on him), and when he notices Da-Hye’s hyperactive younger brother, Da-Song (Jung Hyun-Jun), likes to draw, Ki-Woo recommends his “friend” Jessica – actually Ki-Jung – to be his art therapist. Similarly, Ki-Jung “accidentally” leaves her panties in the Park’s limo, framing the driver, Yoon (Park Keun-Rok) for having sex in the car, and recommends Ki-Taek as a driver (he did work as a driver previously). Finally, when Ki-Woo and Ki-Jung find out Moon-Gwang (Lee Jung-Eun), the Park’s housekeeper, is allergic to peaches, they exploit that to make it look like she actually has tuberculosis, and tell the Parks about a cleaning service that caters to rich people like them, and which “happens” to use Chung-Sook, who takes over as housekeeper. With all four members of the Kim family now gainfully employed, things seem to be looking up, but looks can be deceiving.
The simplest way to tell this story would have been to make one family evil and one family good, but even though Bong drew on sources that did stack the deck like that – the 1960 version of The Housemaid – he doesn’t make that mistake. All of the characters here have both their good and bad traits (including one character I won’t talk about because it constitutes a major spoiler), while at the same time, we see how circumstances have shaped them. At one point, Ki-Taek says the Parks are nice even though they’re rich, whereas Chung-Sook tells him the Parks are nice only because they’re rich. At the same time, Bong also shows the trappings of wealth and what they do; he and production designer Lee Ha-Jun designed the house the Parks lived in, and it feels clean and modern (Yeon-Kyo is a germaphobe who also wants to protect her son – why that is constitutes another spoiler – while Dong-Ik simply likes it that way), but also overwhelming, remote, and reeking of privilege. By contrast, the Kims’ apartment is cramped and filthy, especially when a rainstorm floods the place. You can see why the Kims would do just about anything to crawl out of that existence, and why the Parks take their own place so seriously, while at the same time trapped by it as much as they are defined by it.
In case you think this sounds like a tract, Bong also makes it funny. Right from the beginning, when we see Ki-Jung and Ki-Woo rooting around in the apartment trying to latch onto a neighbor’s Wi-Fi signal, Bong exploits the comic potential of the material. The lengths the Kims go to in order to not only secure employment for everyone, but also to get the chauffeur and the housekeeper out of the way, is darkly funny. The way “Jessica” bullshits her way through teaching Da-Song is another comic aspect (the dark irony, of course, is she actually does him some good) – the “jingle” she does to recite the backstory made up for her soon became a popular GIF and meme.
At the same time, Bong takes the characters and relationships seriously, even when he’s pushing the caricature; for example, the feelings Da-Hye has for Ki-Woo are genuine (even if it’s partly as an escape from the problems in the family; namely, her parents’ indifference to her), and you also get the sense Ki-Woo isn’t entirely pretending in what he thinks about her. Therefore, when things become violent in the last 1/3 (although never gratuitously), it comes as even more of a shock (though it’s set up). All of the actors are able to keep the characters believable the entire way (my personal favorite is So-Dam, but all of them are excellent). I don’t know if Parasite represents a turning point for Bong, or remain just the one movie of Bong’s I like, but it’s still a great film regardless.
*-Some people would also add The Lost Weekend, but since it was awarded a tie for the Palme D’Or with several other films, and since that happened for the year after it won Best Picture, I wouldn’t.
Episode 59 has finally dropped, and here’s what I wrote about our first movie from that episode, Shoplifters, when I wrote about my favorite movies released in the U.S. in 2018.
Throughout his career, Hirokazu Kore-eda has specialized in telling humanistic dramas, as well as movies inspired by true stories – not the earth-shattering or world-shaking stories made into movies like, say, The Post, but what might be called human interest stories. My favorite film of his to date, Shoplifters, which won the Palme D’Or in 2018, combines both of those strands (though not based on any particular story, it is based on stories Kore-eda read about poverty and shoplifting).
Set in Tokyo, the film follows a poor family living in a run-down apartment; Osamu (Lily Franky), an out-of-work day laborer (he twisted his ankle), his wife Nobuyo (Sakura Ando), who works for a laundry service, Nobuyo’s sister Aki (Mayu Matsuoka), who works as a stripper, and Shota (Kairi Jo), Osamu and Nobuyo’s son, or so he appears to be at first. They live with the apartment owner, Hatsue (Kirin Kiki), and they live off her pension and the food and other supplies Osamu and Shota shoplift from grocery stores. One night, as Osamu and Shota are walking home, they spot a little girl named Yuri (Miyu Sasaki), who seems to come from a family that abuses and neglects her. Osamu takes her in, and while Shota’s jealous at first of the attention Yuri gets, when Yuri, whose name is changed to Rin, joins in on the family’s shoplifting, he changes his mind, especially when he and the rest of the family learn Rin’s family never reported her missing. However, after one incident involving Shota, things start to unravel.
Kore-eda’s method is to let things develop at their own pace, without trying to force any melodrama on the proceedings. Sometimes, that low-key approach simply becomes too flat (as I felt the Kore-eda film most similar to this, 2004’s Nobody Knows, about a group of children abandoned by their mother, was).* However, with the plot twists Kore-eda gives us as the movie goes on, this low-key approach works. Kore-eda (who also edited the film), cinematographer Ryuto Kondo, and production designer Keiko Mitsumatsu show us the details of how this makeshift family lives, without rubbing our noses in it. Kore-eda also shows us how this family loves and takes care of each other, as well as Yuri, even as we later learn the truth about all of them. As with other of his films, Kore-eda is also making a critique of the Japanese government – how I can’t really get into without giving things away – but again, he does so in a low-key manner, so it never feels didactic. Instead, he involves us emotionally with the characters, without every tugging directly on our heartstrings. It helps the cast is all very good (Kiki, a Kore-eda regular, died a couple of months before the film was released in the U.S.). As more people fall into poverty, it becomes important for art to depict them in an honest way, and Shoplifters fits the bill.
*-At the time I wrote this, that’s how I felt about Nobody Knows. However, after rewatching the movie, I like it a lot more, and it’s up there with my favorite Kore-eda movies (along with After Life, Still Walking, Our Little Sister, Shoplifters, and Broker).
