Steven Spielberg: 1941

As with most of the films that eventually "caused" the death of New Hollywood, the reports of 1941's commercial and critical failure have been vastly overstated over the years. The film turned a profit and, while it certainly received its share of negative reviews, its reception never reached the abysmal levels of a Heaven's Gate. It does, however, validate some of the primary criticisms of the late New Hollywood period, in that it is several times too big, too fussed over and too much a slave to the whims of its director.

That 1941 is a comedy proves hairier than New York, New York or Cimino's infamous bomb. For comedy, despite being the broadest and most exaggerated of genres -- well, perhaps second to the musical, but if that's true it's at least partially because nearly all musicals are themselves comedies -- also relies on reservation in delivery. Yes, everyone remembers Buster Keaton whirling himself about and positioning himself just right so that the wall of a house could fall on him without harm, but it's Keaton's deadpan, or Chaplin's sincerity, or the quieter moments in the more recent Kevin Smith/Judd Apatow fare, that linger longest in our hearts and minds.

For someone as visually resplendent as Steven Spielberg, however, recreating those major sight gags with the added benefit of increased budgets and vastly improved effects technology made for better bait than the desire to bring back some of that old comic charm. Ergo, Spielberg attempted to make a comedy out of American fears in the wake of the Pearl Harbor attack, using the techniques he'd learned from his blockbusters, and the result is a feature so loud, so grandiose, so unreasonably, unjustifiably huge that the comedy loses any hint of subtlety as it must shout incessantly to be heard over the din.

The audio track of 1941 bustles at all times with roaring planes, grinding tanks and exploding shells. Occasionally, you can hear some people talking. When they do, they speak in old-timey period voices, barring those instances where the actors simply don't feel like doing so. I can't blame them: Spielberg clearly placed the actors on the ladder of importance a few rungs below the effects. The situation brings to mind that old hypothetical: if an actor stops caring in the middle of an explosion, does anyone notice?

Well, the answer is yes. For all the distractions and the fundamentally mismatched pairing of Spielberg's formalism and a hyper-zany WWII comedy, the biggest weakness of the film lies in some of its casting. For every actor who delivers -- a sadly underused John Belushi, Slim Pickens, Dan Aykroyd, the ever-delightful John Candy -- and elevates the questionable material, there is a corresponding piece of dead weight -- John Di Cicco, the arguable protagonist; Treat Williams, more of a villain than the invading Japanese; Tim Matheson, essentially parlaying his Otter character from Animal House into the role of a more straight-laced yet irreverent captain and leaving behind all the charm in the process. Particularly noticeable is the woeful use of such legendary actors as Toshiro Mifune (in one of his few American roles and the first in which he spoke all of his own lines without relying on dubbing) and Christopher Lee (naturally playing a Nazi on account of being British), whose roles leave little room for comedy and largely mine racial humor when they're given lines meant to elicit laughs.

But is the film so bad? The picture slips into tedium from time to time, yes. Some actors are either saddled with poorly written characters (relatively speaking; they're all shallow) or simply to weak to pull of any of the one-liners or gags. But a fair amount works, more than you would expect in an infamous "flop," anyway. The idea that, with the threat of a Japanese invasion of Los Angeles looming, the local base commander would elect to forgo his duties to catch a screening of Dumbo is funny, more so when Spielberg occasionally returns to the theater to watch the man choking back tears and mouthing along with the words. There's a lovely piece of deadpan at the beginning when the Japanese submarine surfaces and the sailors search for targets. The commander (Mifune) asks if there are any honorable targets in L.A. to attack, and one of his subordinates excitedly shouts "Hollywood!" A running gag of the film involves Birkhead (Matheson) attempting to seduce an old flame, Donna (Nancy Allen), by playing on her erotic fixation on flying. The various double entendres and broader comedy that derives from this setup is not exactly clever but most of their scenes earn laughs despite neither actor bringing much to the film.

Some of the physical bits work as well, pushed as they are so far into the red that, if nothing else, you have to laugh at the absurdity of it all. The entire final hour of the film counters much of the leaden exposition of the first, and it plays out basically as one large fistfight/gunfight/explosion. Nothing in this lengthy stretch of film makes a lick of sense, but Belushi's madman shtick works well for the role of a pilot who might be every bit as loony and over-committed as the kamikazes, and the rapid crescendo of action across the last 55 minutes at once moves the film into even more insane territory as it finally gives the comedy a chance to catch up and join the madness instead of lagging behind. 1941 climaxes with the Japanese firing upon a Ferris wheel in an amusement park and a house falling into the ocean, and I find myself agreeing with no one in particular that it really is the only possible way the film could have ended.

It's also interesting as a Spielberg fan to watch the film and see the connection to the director's other films, particularly ones he hadn't made yet. The opening scene is of course a thorough parody of the director's own Jaws, down to the same camera shots and setup (Spielberg even brought back Chrissy herself, Susan Blacklinie, to play the skinny-dipper), only this time the woman is not dragged down by a hungry monster but launched from the sea as the Japanese sub rises from underneath her. The blazing neon signs and smoky air around the section of L.A. where the military men let off steam recall the fuzzy luminescence of A.I.'s Pleasure Island. For that matter, the use of Dumbo ties into the mention and even emphasis on the Pinocchio story in both Close Encounters of the Third Kind and A.I. The fight that breaks out inside the dance hall -- indeed, the interior layout of the dance hall itself -- brings to mind the opening scene of Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. The pompous Sitarski (Williams) attempts to rape the beautiful Betty, the object of our hero Wally's desire, and Wally's masculine rescue would be pasted over almost entirely into the George McFly-Biff Tannen-Lorraine Baines triangle of the Spielberg-produced Back to the Future. Now, Robert Zemeckis wrote and directed that film and co-wrote this one, which begs the question: what the hell is it with Bob Zemeckis and his perception of rape as a means to lighthearted character development?

Ultimately, 1941 is not a good movie. A neat encapsulation of what to expect with the picture comes at the start, when Spielberg transitions from the terrifically funny Jaws spoof and formation of the plan to attack Hollywood to a mercilessly unfunny scene in a diner that introduces Di Cicco, Williams, Aykroyd and a number of other major character. There's also the matter of the gentle but noticeable racism, some of which you could argue is a reflection of the way people spoke back then, particularly only a few days after the Japanese attack, but there are racist caricatures on the submarine without any brash, white Americans around (it's interesting that a few of the clips from Dumbo that Spielberg show the crows that have been since cited as racist). Despite the flaws, however, there are enough entertaining moments here to justify spending the two hours to watch the film, and Spielberg's too-slick direction even aids him at times, such as the dance/fight and a series of rapidly editing together tracking shots from different POVs involving a motorcycle sidecar separating from the bike and careening through the streets. It's understandable that such a big film could see its minor disappointment magnified to match its grandiosity, but a mild disappointment is all it remains, undeserving of some of the pure hatred directed its way.

Planes, Trains & Automobiles

As I sit here tonight, cradling a full stomach and nursing a head cold, I've turned to two things for comfort: Nyquil (so forgive me if this review slips into the realm of garbled non-sequitur when that miraclous green sludge kicks in) and Planes, Trains & Automobiles. There's something wretchedly pathetic about a 20-year-old's nostalgia, particularly for something that's actually older than he is, but I wonder we'll ever have another film of its kind. A Thanksgiving film, I mean. Every other major holiday has numerous films that revolve around that particularly day (well, maybe Independence Day is the only one for July 4, but that film so inadvertently summarizes that holiday that no one needed to try again). Heck, one has a veritable pick of the litter for Christmas, whether you like so-sugary-it'll-give-you-diabetes nostalgia (A Christmas Story), family-is-hell farce (Christmas Vacation) or even love-to-hate cynicism (Bad Santa). And I'm not even counting the approximately 12,000 versions of Dickens' A Christmas Carol (though attention must be paid to The Muppet Christmas Carol, king of the adaptations and indeed the Christmas genre).

Thanksgiving, if I might break out the soapbox now and be done with it, doesn't even exist anymore. Now, Thanksgiving is merely a feast to build and store one's energy for the subsequent Christmas shopping spree. Christ, the economy was so bad this year that Black Friday started on Monday. Of course, this isn't entirely a recent occurrence; one could spot the trouble on the horizon all the way back to 1947's Miracle on 34th Street, a staple of the Christmas genre, which builds its plot upon an opening at the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade. That was the real Red Tide of the late '40s, one that foresaw our current situation, in which the Ghost of Christmas Future has become the Present, his skeletal talons clawing for yet more territory by eviscerating our beloved celebration of a time when we relied on the Native Americans for food, before we figured it out for ourselves and killed them in repayment (be thankful we were the only ones with guns!).

I suppose -- as I appear dead-set on derailing this review before it even begins, spurred on by the tongue-loosening treacle that is the deadly Q, its green haze slowly clouding my vision -- that this is as good a time as any to discuss the late John Hughes. As a child of the '90s, and someone who's never really fit in with the youth zeitgeist anyway, Hughes doesn't hold the place in my heart he does for the Gen X'ers. I find that his screenplays typically waver between hip youth comedies that do not age well and message-heavy pictures that slam on the brakes at odd intervals to remind of Serious Issues (there is a great deal of overlap between the two).*

That may be one of the many reasons why I so dearly love his masterpiece Planes, Trains & Automobiles. Neither facile comedy nor a heavy-handed issues picture, it instead finds the best elements of both of these styles while omitting the weaker aspects of the rest of Hughes' corpus. For make no mistake: this is a farce, albeit one played with a straight face rather than a winking nod. It is also, at times, dramatic and serious, but its messages are fluidly integrated into the film instead of set apart and lit with neon. It is also a holiday film that impressively links to the deeper meanings behind its holiday beyond superficial lip service.

As farce requires simplicity, Hughes' story can be summed up in a single sentence: a man attempts to go home for Thanksgiving but cannot. The man in question is Neal Page (Steve Martin), an advertising executive currently working in New York and set to fly back home to Chicago to see his family for the first time in weeks. But a meeting runs long, his cab is stolen and the flight is delayed. When he finally gets on a plane, he's bumped from first class to coach, and then the plane must divert to Wichita due to a blizzard.

Adding to this misery is one Del Griffith (John Candy), the man who stole Neal's cab and, of course, sat next to him in his downgraded coach seat. Del is the sort of person who embodies the idea of "trying too hard": he's a kind, affable man, but he treats strangers like close friends, regaling them with long-winded stories that cannot qualify as anecdotes because they ultimately serve no point. Even his laugh is overly ingratiating, widening his mouth to swallow his face to emit a staccato chuckle of a laugh. He makes a living selling shower ring curtains (or earrings, depending on whom he's pitching), the sort of prosaic, meaningless occupation that seems perfectly fitting. He offers to use his connections to get Neal a room in Wichita, setting in motion one of the weirder buddy movies, a genre that is predicated on off-kilter juxtapositions.

Though the buddy film had existed for years, Martin and Candy almost seem like the archetypes for the genre's characters: Martin, the detached, ironic stand-up, is perfect as the uptight, no-nonsense character, while the lovable, physically comic Candy can make Del's exaggerations identifiable. At the motel in Wichita, Neal, fed up with the day's events, unleashes on Del, criticizing him for the exact things we all feel for his ilk -- a hatred of his "amusing" stories, his irritating cheerfulness, the way people like that think that laughing off serious problems is a valid way of handling them and thus wondering why normal people get stress -- and Candy's slow deflation is one of the most heartbreaking things I've ever seen in the movies. And then, he rallies; "Yeah, you're right," he calmly states. "I talk too much. I also listen too much. I could be a cold-hearted cynic like you... but I don't like to hurt people's feelings." He says, with childlike yet forceful simplicity, "I like me," and the effect is so staggering even Neal stops in his tracks.

The rest of the journey unites the two in an odd friendship, as they suffer yet more setbacks and find a certain comfort from this mad world in each other. A thief nabs the cash out of both their wallets, but at least Neal has a credit card. Until their rental car catches fire with his wallet inside. They hitch rides at times, but they never seem to make it into the actual cabs, always stuck in the backs of trucks in the middle of snow-blanketed Kansas and Missouri. Yet the trip is therapeutic, softening Neal's self-absorption and taming the more insufferable attributes of Del's kindness. Such moments grow naturally from the ills that befall the pair, and they never obstruct the comedy, which is as bountiful and filling as a Turkey Day feast.

Two bits continue to strike me as particularly hilarious: the first takes place in the Wichita motel, the morning after their argument and subsequent burying of the hatchet. Sharing a bed, they each reached out to their imagined loved ones in the night, waking to find themselves spooning and holding hands. "Where's your other hand?" asks Neal. "Between two pillows." "Those aren't pillows!" It starts with typical homophobic jitters and gagging, then Hughes pushes it further until he mocks such responses with Neal and Del's desperate attempts to find something macho to discuss to prove how manly they are. "See that Bears game last week?" "Yeah, helluva a game, helluva game. Bears gotta great team this year." There's also something tremendously funny about the way this scene of mock-post-coital cuddling coming off their harsh conversation the night before, a subtle evocation of makeup sex.

The other notable comic triumph, and the film's most famous scene, occurs at a rental car agency. After receiving the keys to the wrong car and being forced to walk three miles back from the airport to the agency, Neal looks like he might produce a shotgun at any minute and start indiscriminately killing customer and representative alike. He approaches the counter of a woman enjoying a personal phone conversation who waves him off when he clears his throat. When she at least hangs up and turns to him with one of those painted-on smiles, he launches into a tirade. In the space of one minute, Martin uses the word "fuck" 18 times in a picture that would have otherwise barely garnered a PG rating. The concentration of the film's swearing into this one scene makes it hilarious, more so because Martin does not grandstand and shout but hisses silently in true anger.

The ending comes with a twist, but one designed to enhance the emotional weight of the story, not create some out of thin air. Its happy ending is not saccharine but deeply felt, a validation of the men's trials as evidenced in Neal's flashbacks on the train, in which Hughes contrasts thoughts of his children and his memories of his time with Del, both of which elicit the same smiling, loving reaction. Before fading out to the credits, the frame freezes on John Candy's smiling visage, smiling so that his pudgy cheeks push his eyes into squints, and I am reminded of the great pain of losing someone so vibrant. I remember as a kid just wanting to reach through the screen of his movies and hug John candy, feeling it would be like hugging Winnie the Pooh and Santa Claus all at once. Even now, I see the way his great mound of flesh wriggles when he laughs, or the way that a simple slump of his shoulders can bring me as close to tears as the end of Casablanca. So I lament him, as I do Hughes, for all his weakness. I also mourn the passage of films like this, broad comedies with a true heart, the likes of which Judd Apatow and his sphere of influence has been trying to recreate for years now without the recipe. And, as this film is so much a part of its subject, I mourn Thanksgiving, the fading luster of its wonderful message, no matter how dark the truth behind it might be.

Yet, if I stopped there, I would be just as guilty of casting aside the holiday, so let me really blog here for a minute and discuss that for which I give thanks. Friends and family are a given, but consider this my thanks anyway. For Roger Ebert, Jonathan Rosenbuam, Manny Farber, Andrew Sarris, Dave Kehr, James Agee, Cahiers, Film Comment, and all the other intelligent critics and film publications out there who have offered and continue to offer revealing, beautifully written criticism and analysis of the cinema. For Deron Overpeck, my Intro to Film Studies professor last year, the only witty, enthusiastic and utterly engaging professor I've yet had in college after almost three full years. For David Bordwell, whose instructional writings reassure me that I might be able to learn something about academic film studies when my college offers so few courses on film. For Bergman, Scorsese, Herzog, Welles, Kurosawa, Kubrick, Peckinpah, Ford, Lynch, Kaufman, Lang and Murnau. For Whedon, Simon and Sorkin. For filmmakers like Jean-Luc Godard, who are so independent and confident that they continue to make films that don't cater to anyone's wishes, including those of people like myself who consider ourselves adventurous moviegoers. For people like Jim Emerson, James Berardinelli, Tim Brayton, Ed Howard, Jason Bellamy -- to name but an obscenely omissive few -- who prove that serious, well-written criticism is not only possible on the Internet but greatly abetted by it.

And lastly, I'm thankful for those who somehow found this blog, read it and gave me feedback and suggestions. Your input is invaluable to me and I can only hope that I receive more in the future. Thank you. Oh, and thank you, Nyquil, for easing this sore throat with your sickly sweet serum. You may take me to the land of the dreamless sleep now.



*I confess that I was somewhat amused to check his IMDb profile and see that he wrote the remake of Miracle on 34th Street. It's a small world after all, huh?

Stripes

Year One left such a bad taste in my mouth that when I got back to my apartment I gathered what few Ramis DVDs I had and popped them in the ol' player to have a sort of unofficial wake. Most of my stuff was at my house and not college, but I at least had Stripes and the Ghostbusters films, so I made do. Before now, I'd only seen Stripes once (well, technically twice, as I watched both versions), so I figured not only might I fight back the memory of Ramis' latest dud but I might also spot some new stuff.

I watched the original theatrical version of Stripes, and thank God I did, because even this truncated edition is overlong and unfocused. Don't get me wrong: Stripes is an excellent comedy and the first film that allowed Bill Murray to really start honing that dryly cynical character that would become his staple. It just needed a better editor.

Murray plays John Winger, a taxi driver who gets a pink slip after terrorizing a rude upper-class woman by mishandling her bags and driving like a madman. Before the day is over, his car is repossessed and his girlfriend dump him. His friend, Russell Ziskey (Ramis), isn't doing much better: he tries to teach ESL classes but doesn't know the first thing about teaching immigrants. Winger decides he needs to turn his life around, but he can't do it without help, so he convinces Ziskey to enlist in the Army with him.

What follows is, in its own devilish way, the comedic version of Full Metal Jacket, made a good six years before that film. Winger and Ziskey head off to basic training where they meet a cast of characters played by such scene-stealers as John Candy and Judge Reinhold. Sgt. 1st Class Hulka (Warren Oates) does all the usual spirit-breaking and head-shaving, but where Pvt. Joker in Kubrick's opus quickly fell into line, Winger proves a deadpan thorn in the sergeant's side.

Murray owns these boot camp scenes; he sports an innocent but conniving smirk as he gently yet incessantly challenges the sergeant's command. Backed by Ramis' writing, his Winger gets laughs for the simple fact that he manages to remain just one step ahead of the authorities in a vocation that doesn't allow for much slacking, to say the least. There's an uneasy admiration between the two warring factions, as Winger at last has a worthy foe and can take any punishment the sarge can dish out.

Ramis, Candy, John Laroquette and the others are no slouches themselves; Candy is his usual affable dope, while Laroquette plays the officious prig with relish (clearly serving as a military transplant of Niedermeyer from Animal House). Ramis plays a marvelous straight man to Murray's Winger, looking ever exhausted by his friend's antics even as he continuously acts as an enabler just to see what his bud will do next.

As with Full Metal Jacket, the film takes an abrupt turn when the soldiers leave basic and receive their first missions. Where Full Metal Jacket suddenly switched from dark comedy to its thematic arc, however, Stripes goes from broad comedy to, well, I'm not quite sure. The men are transferred to Europe where they are placed in charge of the "Urban Assault Vehicle," a sort of tank disguised as an RV. Winger and Ziskey snag their MP girlfriends (P.J. Soles and Sean Young) and head into Soviet territory. And it all dovetails from there.

In part, the complete devolution into chaos was to be expected. It's certainly a hallmark of Ramis' early scripts, and they proved to be wildly hysterical in such gems as Animal House and Caddyshack. But the problem here is that they're actually squaring off against Soviets, not the authority that keeps them down. Stripes is meant to be a continuation of Animal House and its light-hearted post-Nixon rebellion against the stagnant and corrupt American institutions, a mockery of the absurdity of authority having the audacity to tell us what's right when they are so wrong. But there's nothing funny in the film's climax; it's simply action. And it ends with Winger and Ziskey accepted as heroes and welcomed into the machine instead of breaking free of it.

For that reason, Stripes is perhaps most remembered as the bridge between Ramis' early, brilliant but ill-focused sense of chaotic misanthropy and the more restrained, heartfelt writer-director who would eventually come up with something as refined as Groundhog Day. He wouldn't find the right balance between action and comedy until his subsequent film, Ghostbusters, which also put his drier side on full display. Nevertheless, Stripes is a great film for its first 2/3, and it belongs on the shelves of any comedy fan, particularly someone who likes Bill Murray.