Tag Archives: Deja Viewed

Deja Viewed: Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude

Harold and Maude feels like a movie made on Opposite Day.

It’s a May-December romance, but in the reverse order of most Hollywood love stories. The stars look as un-cinematic as stars get (read: like normal people). It features one of the greatest movie soundtracks ever produced — which was never commercially released.

From the opening scene, in which we see a young man methodically hang himself while his unconcerned mother bustles past his swinging body, it’s clear: We aren’t in regular romcom territory.

The very-much-alive body belongs to Harold (Bud Cort), a college-aged kid obsessed with death, fake suicides and getting under the skin of his unflappable mother (VivianPickles).

During one of his routine drop-ins of a stranger’s funeral, Harold meets Maude (Ruth Gordon) a 79-year-old also intrigued with the macabre. But where Harold sees funerals as suicide dry-runs, Maude sees them as life’s lily pads, springing her into seize-the-day adventures. 

Director Hal Ashby balances fairy tale absurdities with a sincere love story between perhaps the most unlikely couple in cinema history: Maude is a fiesty Holocaust survivor who inhabits a gentle universe that abides her casual car thefts; Harold is a lonely teen who drives a modded hearse.

Ashby jolts the film with overlapping sound, oversaturated color and an underrated soundtrack — a Graduate-level gem by Cat Stevens, now Yusuf Islam. Unlike The Graduate, (which this film subtly subverts), the soundtrack was never released. Thankfully, the nine-song, 29-minute playlist is eminently streamable.

As we bound from bad date to good, from death to life, from privileged suburbia to Vietnam-era nihilism, it’s easy to forget that the film, now more than 50 years old, was as far ahead of its time as his other cult hit, 1979’s Being There.

Here, Harold is lost in the computer dating world. Maude practices mindful meditation. Ashby wields Lynchian absurdities before that was a term. And were it not for its cult-film bonafides, Harold and Maude features a twist ending that would be called Shyamalan-ian today.

Make no mistake: this is an oddball movie that lives on eccentricities and an outsider worldview. The symbolism of Harold’s “deaths” have divided diehards for more than a half century over whether the film is a counter-culture statement or poem urging viewers to make every breath count.

Either way, the viewer wins. It may pose as a comedy about staging death, but Harold and Maude ultimately says something profound about rehearsing life.

Deja Viewed: Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

Ferris Bueller's Day Off – IFC Center

Some art has a lyrical note to it.

Not in the overt sense, like you’d find in symphonies, operas, ballets and musicals on stage and screen. But in a more sublime sense, particularly in the visual arts.

Whether it’s a memorable theme song (M*A*S*H*, Cheers) or a show fully aware of the music of its time or place (Mad Men, Breaking Bad, Community), some pieces just feel like they can carry a tune. Like porn, it’s hard to define. But you know it when you see it. Here’s how to tell whether art is lyrical. Think of a favorite show or film. Did it introduce (or, better yet, re-introduce) you to a song, singer, band or genre?  If so, it’s lyrical.

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the lyrical film incarnate. From Ferris singing Danke Schoen in the shower to the introduction of Yello’s Oh Yeah, the trailer for director John Hughes’ 1986 film announces up front: Either get in rhythm, or get out of the way.

But how could we get out of the way of this irresistible movie? Bueller would not only become one of the Mount Rushmore faces of the modern high school comedy; it would seal John Hughes’ reputation as the Hollywood voice of Generation X adolescence. Between Bueller, The Breakfast Club, Sixteen Candles and Pretty in Pink, Hughes wrote the book on teenage suburban angst — and set a template that exists to this day.Vintage Pick: John Hughes Triple Threat | The Harbinger Online

Bueller, though, breaks from its predecessors by not taking itself so seriously. If anything, Bueller is a zen meditation compared to the psychopathy of the earlier films. Ferris doesn’t fret school; he sees principals as comic foils. He’s Bart Simpson in a cardigan and beret.

Which may explain the lyrical joy of the movie. Hughes packs Bueller with as many logic-straining adventures as any classic Matt Groening episode, complete with unexpected musical numbers. In an 1 1/2 hours, Ferris:

  • Jacks a Ferrari.

  • Visits the Chicago Museum of Art.

  • Catches a Cubs game.

  • And crashes the real annual Chicago parade.

All while crooning, dancing and lip-syncing his way out of the clutches of infantile Principal Rooney. Ferris professes an enlightened rationalization for his 10th absence of the school year: “Life moves pretty fast. If you don’t stop and look around once in a while, you could miss it.” Name another high school film with that message at its core.

Bueller even manages to accomplish the heretofore impossible: improve a Beatles tune. Close your eyes at the 2:20 mark of the Chicago parade; see if Twist and Shout doesn’t sound better with a horn section, clapping hands, stomping feet and a chorus of rising voices.

Which is, ultimately, what makes  Bueller so catchy. Don’t just stop and look around, the movie seems to implore. Stop and sing out.

There’s a wistful element to Bueller, The movie would mark Hughes’ (who died at 59) last high school film, as his pictures would later focus on what Ferris might have become as a dad (She’s Having a Baby), a divorcee (Uncle Buck) or both (Planes, Trains and Automobiles).

Right before Twist and Shout, the film ponders Ferris’ future after high school. Bueller’s buddy Cameron suggests Ferris will become a fry cook on Venus. In DVD commentary, Hughes saw a future of extremes. Ferris would either wind up in prison, the director speculated, or he’d become president.

We should be so lucky. To quote the would-be future king: Anda one, anda two…

 

 

 

Deja Viewed: Her

Her' Rearview: Is Your OS Female — and Other Questions Raised by ...

Right out of the gate, Her was hailed as a masterwork.

It earned a thumbs-up from an astounding 95% of the nation’s critics. Writer-director Spike Jonze won a Best Original Screenplay Oscar. Combined, Her would win 82 various film circle awards and be nominated for 184.

Yet the movie never resonated with the American public. Costing $23 million, the movie would make back only $26 million, a mediocre-at-best showing by commercial box office standards.

What a shame, because Her is one of those rare films that becomes more prescient with age. Like 2001: A Space Odyssey, Her was so ahead of its time it cost the movie in its initial run. In the case of Kubrick’s masterpiece, the film was revived by midnight-movie stoners who kept it afloat until critics gave it a deja view. Here’s hoping the same thing happens with Her, Deja Viewed.

Two things make Her a film for the ages. First, it’s one of the few sci-fi movies not set in a dystopian future. From Brazil to Blade Runner, it’s clear Hollywood dreads what comes next (perhaps prophetically). And it’s unofficially requisite that symbols of the future — technology, over-reaching governments, tentacle-reaching aliens — post an existential threat to the hero of sci-fi films. The exception, of course, is Star Wars, but that is set “A long time ago.”

There is no such menace in Her. Replicants don’t roam Los Angeles. Aliens haven’t bombed the White House. Xenomorphs aren’t using us as larval hosts. If anything, life in Jonze’s futurescape seems pretty damn cool. Video games are played in holograms, dictation is flawless and emails are never mis-sent.

Instead, Her makes human frailty, ego and self-delusion the film’s antagonist. Those timeless demons free the movie of the genre’s cliches and trope-pits.

Second, the film’s premise — Theodore Twombly (Joaquin Phoenix) falls in love with an Operating System named Samantha — couldn’t be more topical, even today. Especially today: Her came out a year before the release of Amazon’s Alexa and two years before Google’s Home Assistant.

Like 2001‘s depiction of space travel (which looks eerily like today’s), Her‘s depiction of our interaction with budding Artificial Intelligence is spot-on, and raises questions that are more poignant today than they were in 2013.How we made 2001: A Space Odyssey | Film | The Guardian

Such as: What would you want your Alexa (here a synonym for artificial intelligence) to be able to do? Read your emails to you? Write your emails for you? Ostensibly, Alexa listens to every personal word you say aloud in your home, hears every secret, taps every phone call. Given how much she knows about you, would you want advice from Alexa? Is she already a companion?

Among Her‘s few critics, some pointed out the sarcastic personality the operating system, voiced by Scarlett Johansson, seems to possess. Why, they asked, would an operating system have a flirty tone?

To that, I suggest taking the Artificial Intelligence Etiquette Test. If you have both Google’s and Amazon’s $50 digital assistants — which I highly recommend — ask each the question, “How do I look?” Google is clearly more flattering than Amazon.

Notice, too, the fascinating focus of Her, which is essentially about looking beyond the ever-shrinking horizons of technology and seeing the larger world around us.

When we see close-ups of Theo, Jonze frames him in a focus as soft as a feather pillow. Theodore can see what’s immediately in front of him, but is myopic to the world that surrounds him. Even when he’s looking at Samantha at arm’s length, she appears just out of focus. She is just out of reach.Her - Official Trailer 2 [HD] - YouTube

By the film’s end, we aren’t just questioning what makes for a healthy relationship, but what makes for consciousness. Both Theo and Samantha are on similar odysseys, exploring the boundaries of love, communication, friendship and their places in the universe.

After two hours of soft focus, warm yellows, oranges and reds (inspired, Jonze says, by Jamba Juice) and not one belt in any wardrobe, Her ends on a starkly focused shot of the Los Angeles skyline.

Jonze and Her appear to be saying, “Yes, you have a place in the universe. Just know it’s a shared place.”