Category: Best Director

A PLACE IN THE SUN (1951)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: George Stevens
CAST: Montgomery Clift, Elizabeth Taylor, Shelley Winters, Raymond Burr
MY RATING: 9/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 82% Fresh

PLOT: A struggling young man gets a job working for his rich uncle and ends up falling in love with two women, one rich and one poor.


I first saw A Place in the Sun many moons ago at a friend’s house.  I remember enjoying it but thinking it was too soapy for my taste.  Years went by.  I finally got around to watching Woody Allen’s Match Point and was stunned at how much Allen’s film borrowed from George Stevens’ celebrated melodrama.  Having just re-watched A Place in the Sun, my opinion of it has warmed considerably, without diminishing my admiration for Match Point, which remains one of my favorite films of all time.

A Place in the Sun tells the story of young George Eastman, played by Montgomery Clift at or near the height of his powers.  He’s a bit of a layabout who wrangles a job at his rich uncle’s swimsuit factory.  When George meets his rich relatives, I was reminded of a George Gobel quip: “Did you ever get the feeling that the world was a tuxedo and you were a pair of brown shoes?”  That’s George Eastman to a T, a ne’er-do-well in a sea of the well-to-do.

Against company policy, George falls in love (or at least in lust) with a rather plain girl, Alice, played by Shelley Winters in a de-glamorized role that went completely against type at that point in her career, winning her a Best Actress nomination.  Alice and George flirt and hold hands and occasionally neck (mildly scandalous for a 1951 film), but George can’t help but stare at another girl who pops up occasionally: Angela Vickers.  Angela is played by a ravishing Elizabeth Taylor, who was only 17 at the time of filming and empirically one of the most beautiful women in Hollywood, if not the world.  It’s not too hard to imagine any man, let alone poor George Eastman, falling in love with her instantly.

But George is still connected to Alice, especially because he’s already slept with her.  When George learns Alice is pregnant, he despairs because he had been planning to end things with Alice to pursue Angela.  Alice even visits a doctor who might possibly provide an abortion.  Of course, this being 1951, “abortion” is never mentioned out loud, nor is the word “pregnant.”  But Alice’s visit to the doctor is handled with incredible intelligence and brilliant screenwriting that manages to say everything it needs to say without ever uttering those forbidden words.

The rest of the film examines what George may or may not be willing to do for the sake of his love for Angela, who loves him back, it turns out…but she doesn’t know about Alice.  Since this is based on a then-famous novel called An American Tragedy (by Theodore Dreiser), it may not be too hard to divine what is in store for George before the final credits roll, but getting there is the fun part.  By casting heartthrobs as the hero/anti-hero and the rich girl he loves, the film cleverly gets us to root for them a little bit, even when George is considering murder.

While Elizabeth Taylor dominates every scene she’s in just by standing there, the Academy made sure Shelley Winters was recognized for her incredibly difficult performance as Alice.  There are some movies where, if a character is an emotional yo-yo, it can be frustrating.  With Alice, Winters never crossed a line into unlikability, even when she calls George at a fancy dinner party demanding he marry her tomorrow, “or else.”  It’s clear she has no options left to her if she wants to have any semblance of a life in polite society (by 1950s standards, anyway).  I felt bad for her.  But I also felt bad for George – to a degree – when he demonstrates how sincerely he has fallen head over heels for Angela.  Not just because she’s stunningly beautiful, but also because she really seems to have fallen for him, too.

Lately, my movie-watching itinerary of classic films has involved a fair share of outstanding melodramas (Leave Her to Heaven, 1945; The Heiress, 1949; Dodsworth, 1936).  A Place in the Sun fits right into that mold.  It doesn’t quite achieve the perfection of The Heiress, but it is a fantastic example of its genre, good enough for Woody Allen to “reimagine” its basic story for Match Point, so it’s definitely worth a look if you’re into that kind of thing.

AMERICAN BEAUTY

By Marc S. Sanders

Lester Burnham declares in less than a year he’ll be dead.  When we meet him, he’s masturbating in the shower, sleeping in the back of the family vehicle on the way to work, and declaring that his wife Carolyn used to be lovely.  Heck, he’s acting like he’s dead already.  His life has nothing new or exciting to pursue.  His daughter, Jane, doesn’t give him the time of day.  He’s threatened with being laid off from his magazine call center job that he’s held on to for nearly twenty-five years.  What’s to live for anymore? 

I guess what’s complimentary about poor Lester is that at least he’s honest with himself.  All the other neighbors, except for the gay couple known as Jim & Jim, are just as unhappy it seems and might as well be dead too.  A common theme running through the suburban landscape of American Beauty centers on a sense of mental awakening. Who revives sad, lost folks like Lester and Carolyn?  Perhaps it’s the generation sneaking up behind them, who are on the cusp of taking their place in young adulthood. 

Lester is played by Kevin Spacey, in his second Oscar winning performance.  Carolyn is portrayed by Annette Bening who is way overdue for a trophy.  Jane the daughter is played by Thora Birch.  The headliners of this cast are outstanding in how different and disagreeable they portray a broken family that is forced to live in an unstimulating home while trudging through a lifeless marriage.  Look at the set designs within this film.  There’s an endless amount of blank walls within the interiors of the homes.  Almost no artwork or pictures are to be found. 

Lester pines and fantasizes about Jane’s best friend Angela (Mena Suvari) getting rained on with red rose petals while she lies naked in a pure white bathtub.  Carolyn, the real estate agent who can’t make a sale, sidles up to the dashing Buddy Kane (Peter Gallagher), her competition. Next door is Chris Cooper in a hospital cornered role as retired Marine Colonel Frank Fitts, with his near comatose wife Barbara played by Allison Janey, and their eighteen-year-old resourceful drug dealing son, Ricky (Wes Bentley). He takes advantage of his camcorder at any opportunity to collect the beautiful images found within the world he occupies and observes.  That could mean he’s capturing Jane in her bedroom window which faces his own.  Later, he’ll show you the freedom of a plastic shopping bag dancing within an autumn breeze.  An old shopping bag has more life among a breeze and brown leaves than Lester, Carolyn, Frank or Barbara.

There is a mystery to American Beauty that seems quite odd.  We know that Lester will die soon, but how and why? Maybe there’s a twist, because that outcome seems more and more impossible as we see Lester discover a spirited mindset to go after what he wants, when he wants and declare that he’s not going to allow himself to take shit from anyone particularly in his boring dead end job or from his unaffectionate wife.  Ricky, the kid with tons of money and electronics equipment, has nothing to lose because he’s not committed to anything at age eighteen and he can just quit an ordinary table-waiting job at any given moment.  Why didn’t Lester have the gumption to ever be like Ricky?   It seems so simple.

There’s a blink and miss it sign hidden in plain sight.  Pinned to the wall of Lester’s work cubicle is the message “Look Closer.”  Director Sam Mendes and writer Alan Ball gives the audience a subtle wink to dig within the cracks of suburban life sidewalks.  These homes may appear perfect on the outside, with neighborly neighbors, but if you watch with a more critical eye you’ll find an emptiness that has been unfilled for too long.  The filmmakers make it easy for you to uncover what eats away at the upper middle-class way of living.  Dinner with Lawrence Welk playing in the background is anything but uplifting.  It’s imprisoning.

When one member of this community opts to seize his moment, no matter if he’s motivated by a kid’s rebelliousness and the drugs he buys off of him, or the fact that he thinks a beautiful teenage blonde has the hots for him, he sets out to change.  He exercises and builds up his body, buys the dream sports car he’s always wanted, quits his job and grows to not caring how this may disturb his unloving wife. 

American Beauty seems to remind us how alive we can be when we are younger and not as restrained by the commitments it takes to live like adults with debts and parenthood and jobs and marriage.  Look closer though because couldn’t we live as well or more aggressively when middle age arrives?

The irony of Alan Ball’s script is that a boring guy like Lester Burnham discovers exciting things about himself just as the end of his life is approaching.  All he needed was stimulation.  He never saw his death coming, and you might forget he told you he will soon be dead, but American Beauty works to show how necessary it is to live each day to the fullest. 

I sound hokey.  I know.  Yet, that’s the direction of this film’s trajectory.  On the side, you observe those people who do not pursue what will fulfill their own lives and desperately need a modification.  Lester was limited to branch out. So is Colonel Fitts and his very sad wife.  So is Carolyn, and Jane and Angela, and maybe so is Ricky.  All of these people uphold facades about themselves to preserve a happiness on the outside when they really feel worse within. 

Sam Mendes is brilliant at drawing upon the subtle messages and insecurities of Alan Ball’s neighborhood characters.   About the only people that Sam and Alan do not dig deeper with is the gay couple.  I guess since they are happily out of the closet, what is left for them to conceal?

I could not help but compare Mendes’ Oscar winning film to Robert Redford’s.  American Beauty is more forthright than Ordinary People. Redford’s film draws out the ugly honesty of the family nucleus when an unexpected tragedy interferes.  Then it takes the entire film before the spouses take off their masks and truly declare how they regard each other.  It’s crushing to realize a sad truth. 

American Beauty rips off the layer right at the beginning, though.  A tragedy does not awaken these people to the natures that embarrass them.  Simply a hellbent, fed up mindset gets one guy going, and if that one member opens his eyes, then so will others because a simple disruption in ordinary life is next to impossible to live with.  Both films are so wise in how they criticize the very people these films were likely catered for.

What do these two Oscar winners say?  They tell the middle class, middle age American to simply look closer.

IT HAPPENED ONE NIGHT

By Marc S. Sanders

If you want to stay on top of how the world of American cinema evolved over the last hundred years, within all its categories, you must find time to watch the one film that paved the way for the romantic comedy, as well as the travel comedy.  Frank Capra’s Oscar winning picture, It Happened One Night, is the first of three films to win Oscars for every major category: Best Picture, Director, Screenplay, Actor and Actress. Nearly a hundred years later, the accolades still feel worthy.

Claudette Colbert is wealthy heiress Ellie Andrews who dives off and swims away from the captivity of her father’s yacht and buses from Miami to New York to reunite with her new husband, King Westly (Jameson Thomas).  Her father, Alexander Andrews (Walter Connolly), never approved of this marriage and insists his spoiled daughter get it annulled once she is found.  A ten-thousand-dollar reward is up for grabs to the person who finds her.

Along the way, a rogue reporter, Peter Warne (Clark Gable) ends up next to this young lady on the bus.  Complications ensue where their money gets lost, bags are stolen, buses are missed, and buses get stuck.  Then this trip becomes a walking experience.  Ellie has agreed to stay by Peter’s side though.  He promises to get her to New York as long as he gets to write about her story firsthand amid the constant headlines that recount Alexander’s desperation to get his daughter back.

It’d be easy enough if only Peter and Ellie were not falling for one another.

Sounds familiar, doesn’t it?  Any Nora Ephron script has the elements of It Happened One Night.  Screwball comedies with Cary Grant and Katharine Hepburn seemed to follow a similar blueprint.  To the best of my knowledge, Frank Capra’s film was first though.  

A famous scene has Colbert and Gable on the side of the road trying to hitch a ride.  Colbert’s bare leg does the trick that Gable’s outstretched thumb could not.  Eventually, this scene for the ages evolved into Meg Ryan and Billy Crystal daring to fake an orgasm effectively while dining at Katz’s Delicatessen.

When Harry Met Sally… is what easily comes to mind while watching It Happened One Night.  Peter will tease this spoiled rich girl. Yet, he will also be gentlemanly enough to put up a blanket to divide a cabin room he shares with Ellie, allowing for some privacy.  In the middle of the night though, the two will stay up chatting from either side of their blanket wall, as both acknowledge sad voids within their personal lives.  It’s parallel to how Harry and Sally would chat on the phone from their respective apartment bedrooms while discussing their newly evolving friendship with Casablanca on TV.  

Ellie and Peter become relaxed as their sojourn continues.  They could be left in the middle of nowhere with no money or food, but Gable and Colbert’s chemistry show an easy comfort to each other.  That is what’s expected of any troubled travel film.  At first Ellie does not want to share a rear bench on the bus with Peter.  She’s married to King and the purpose of this runaway trip is to be back in her new husband’s arms.  Plus, this odd fellow on the bus feels unseemly.  His charm is overbearing to the socialite’s proper petiteness.  He’ll resort to munching on a carrot he finds in a patch. She can’t find the appetite for it. Time together breaks down barriers though, just as movies in later decades eventually accomplished with films like Midnight Run and Planes, Trains & Automobiles.  This kind of formula, with ongoing new settings and circumstances, is almost guaranteed to end in positivity once the mutual antagonism is behind the pair.  

For 1934, It Happened One Night was bold in its content, ahead of an eventual ratings system intent on upholding an acceptable level of conservatism.  Colbert’s leg is the most unforgettable.  Later, Peter feels it necessary to spank Ellie.  Then there is the fact that the two share a room together.  Comedic circumstances and shock lend to the humor of this scenario.  Plus, there’s Claudette Colbert undressing down to her slip while a bare-chested Clark Gable is only one side of a blanket away from her.  

Would It Happened One Night endure an endless admiration if moments like these were contained? I doubt it.  Frank Capra’s film hinges on sexual appeal that feels naughty and rebellious.  

The dialogue remains witty.  Clark Gable’s introduction in the film while on the phone with his editor is a precursor to what an outlandish Bill Murray might have done with the script. The material is sometimes quite brash, and the ending, which has been duplicated hundreds of times since, is a perfect example of romantic escapism.  

Over ninety years have passed but unexpected romance is what remains treasured.  When two people with nothing in common begin an unwelcome journey together, it’s still easy to hope they find a way to like each other.  They have to like one another first before they can even concern themselves with falling in love.  The progress of this east coast bus ride allows for the stages to develop naturally.  Frank Capra, Clark Gable and Claudette Colbert were the first to give it a shot and it works brilliantly and beautifully.

ANORA

By Marc S. Sanders

Anora, or Ani as she prefers to be called, had to have been a character that writer/director Sean Baker always intended on loving.  Not in an intimate way though.  Sean Baker had to deeply care about this twenty-three-year-old girl who has no connections or family or solid friendships or kinships.  Baker wrote about Anora, wanting her to be appreciated by someone who would finally embrace her. 

Anora—sorry…Ani…has a good heart.  She may be an exotic dancer at a New York City strip club, but she is someone who has every right to be respected and valued. If you choose to watch the film you’ll know why, as a pertinent prop referenced earlier in the picture suddenly resurfaces when you least expect it.  A minute or two later the closing credits appear amid the sound of flapping windshield wipers and there is no music to cue your emotional response.  You likely will have spent the last two and a half hours laughing loudly, dropping your jaw, and gasping in shock at what unfolds for Ani. In the end though, you’ll realize that you want the best for her, like her creator did when he originally drafted this script and shot the film about Ani’s episodic escapades.

Sean Baker’s film is eye opening right from the start.  Club music blares within the HQ, the name of Ani’s strip joint where she collects an exorbitant amount of dollar bills while she strategically flirts with middle-aged men and frat boys looking for an evening of debauchery.  She has a talent for one on one charm with any customer, as she repeatedly bares her chest and reveals her thong, but she also delivers a very satisfying service.  A young man named Ivan, sometimes it’s Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn), specifically requests a girl who speaks Russian to cater to his needs.  Ani is the only one who can comply.  Ani and Ivan get to talking, mostly in Russian but limited English too.  She gets invited to his private, deco mansion, which is really owned by his Russian aristocratic parents, and a slap happy relationship of sex and more sex, and money, and drugs and drinking and partying and New Year’s Eve partying and money, and clothes and expensive coats, and travels to Las Vegas ensue.  (Yes! I know that was a run on sentence.  My elaborate text does not even come close to what these twenty-somethings indulge in though.  It must be seen to be believed.)

Anyway, since they’re in Vegas, why not get married?  Vows are taken, the bride is kissed and Ani is emptying her locker at HQ for a promising future of being a spoiled, but loved, aristocratic wife.

In the few times that Ivan calms down, he is only engrossed in his online video games while Anora lies on his chest with an expression of wanting more than to come in second to Call Of Duty. Baker focuses on Ivan’s childish habit a few times.  So be sure to observe how Ani sadly looks upon an inattentive Ivan.

A problem occurs though that neither character could ever expect.  The tabloids have reported that Vanya, this spoiled brat son of a Russian oligarch, has up and married a prostitute. Now the family image is at risk of being shamed.  Mom and dad are on their way back to the states and have summoned Toros (Karren Karagulian), an Armenian Catholic priest and the son’s Godfather, to round up Vanya and the so-called whore to get the marriage annulled immediately.  Not divorced!  Divorce does not happen within the legacy of this family.  An annulment is what is needed. 

Toros rounds up Igor and Nick (Yura Borisov, Paul Weissman) to get over to the house right away, get the marriage license and bring the kids in for the quick annulment at the courthouse.  If only it were that simple.

Watching Anora allowed me to reminisce about other films that catered to outrageous debauchery and led to a domino effect of problems.  Doug Liman’s Go for example, or True Romance written by Quentin Tarantino, or even a super ridiculous comedy known as Very Bad Things with Christian Slater and Cameron Diaz.  The first two examples are very good films because the dialogue is sharp with eclectic casts who elevated simplistic material.  Let’s not talk about the third one, but I will say it is delicious junk food.  With Anora though, just when you think you know where this story should be going it doesn’t.  You think it will turn right, but then it makes a sharp left and Sean Baker knows he just needs to keep the fighting and the screaming and the cursing at an organic natural level.  What do you do when the wards you are put in charge of will not cooperate?  What if one of them goes missing and simply won’t answer his cell phone?

Well, on a cold winter night you may get a broken nose, car sick, and your car might get towed.   Anora is not about big stunts or gratuitous violence.  It’s not mobster movie material either.  Anora works naturally for people in desperate situations, from a handful of different perspectives.

Oh yeah.  Anora—sorry Ani, is played by Mikey Madison and she is bound for marquee attraction over the next twenty or thirty years.  This performance is so concentrated in moments of natural glee, anger, and maybe despair and sadness.  You applaud her character’s strength.  Ani talks like an updated version of Judy Holliday from Born Yesterday, but she’s no dummy and she never succumbs to intimidation.  I’ll confess it right here.  If two hulking Armenian thugs approach me, I’ll do whatever they want me to do. Ani gets all my props though.  She will never settle.  She’s a married woman and no one will deny her of her rights.

Mikey Madison has such wonderous chemistry with Sean Baker’s camera.  There must be over a hundred and fifty close-ups on this young actor and each one is unique.  I was sad for Anora when Ivan would not give her attention.  I was cheerful when the two were overindulging in carefree sex and sin city fun.  I was on Anora’s side when she was restrained. I was admirable of her giving a good fight to the giants that enter her space.  I was exhausted with her as she was forced to sit in Toros’ car while brainstorming where her husband could be.  I was supportive when she makes appeals with the family to offer a good first impression.  She hates her name, but she introduces herself as Anora to Vanya’s steely mother. Ani is willing to make all of this work. Finally, I was angry—very angry–alongside of her whenever she was unfairly treated like garbage. 

Amid all of the chaos that ensues, Sean Baker works like the eyes of the film’s audience. We keep guard over Ani’s condition and state of mind as she’s coerced into looking all over Brooklyn and Coney Island for her new husband that the Armenians need to find before the boy’s parents arrive by noon the next day. 

None of the dialogue is crafty like Quentin Tarantino’s or Neil Simon’s.  I could not quote a single line.  The yelling and conversations and overtalking and interruptions are natural and raw.  Sometimes, the exchanges feel pointless until you arrive at another scene that demonstrates with brilliant insight why certain throwaway moments are preserved in the final print of the film.  It makes complete sense that Sean Baker did not just write, produce and direct this film.  He edited it as well. 

The whole way through the picture I kept wondering how this story would end.  I spelled out variations of doom for any one of the characters.  I considered gratuitous violence or swashbuckling adventure and daring escapes.  Man o’ man, have I become cliché.  Because just as you arrive at the picture’s conclusion, a meaningful prop puts the period at the end of the story and the last audible expression before the picture goes to black comes from Anora. You now realize that this girl, who is as self-reliant as many exotic dancers must be, has feelings too.  As defiant as Anora can be, she can also get pricked and bleed and the big laughs you responded to for most of the film are distant memories. Anora can feel pain like any of us.

When I drove home, I was hurting.  I was hurting for Anora, and my one wish is that I hope Anora will be okay.

Roger Ebert once gave a seminar that lasted for eleven hours as he commented on practically every shot and piece of dialogue in Tarantino’s Pulp Fiction.  My long shot wish is that on a subsequent viewing of Anora, I can deliver a similar kind of observational lecture to others who had already seen the film too.  I believe I could reveal sincerity and perception related to every close up, every chaos-stricken scene of panic or decadence, and especially when that one prop reappears. I’d likely spend a half hour simply discussing the value that this prop carries and what it means to Sean Baker’s film, and especially to Ani.

As messy and gritty as Anora may appear, it is also one of the most adoring and perceptive films to be released in a long time. 

Anora must be in my top five favorite films of 2024.  It might just be my favorite.  There are a few other candidates, but I left feeling so satisfied with Mikey Madison’s performance and Sean Baker’s sloppy, yet astute, little film. 

This is superb filmmaking.

MRS. MINIVER

By Marc S. Sanders

To watch a classic film, usually reserved for Turner Classic Movies, is to get a history lesson while realizing that people’s perceptions have hardly changed.    In the early 1940s as World War II was occurring, happiness in many corners of the world was still moving forward.  Presently, I believe that happens today.  For example, Israeli hostages are only now being released from Hamas.  Until the conflict is over though, a childhood friend of mine chooses to run every Sunday morning.  He declares that he runs because they can’t.  This friend is not a soldier bearing arms.  He is acknowledging a violent and frightening conflict that persists.  On the side, he’s a devoted New York Yankees fan.  In 1942, when William Wyler’s Oscar winning film Mrs. Miniver was released, the well to do characters were performing comparably as Europe was in the thick of staving off the Nazi militia.

Mrs. Miniver opens on a bustling metropolitan district in England.  The title character, Kay Miniver (Greer Garson), is in a mad rush for something.  She hops on and off the double decker bus and weaves her way through the crowd.  Finally, she arrives at the destination.  The glamorous hat she’s had her eye on is still available to purchase.  Her only dilemma now is what will her husband think when he learns of the extravagant purchase.

Upon her arrival home, Clem Miniver (Walter Pidgeon) hides from his wife in a brand new convertible.  When she goes in the house, he makes a decision.  It’s expensive, but he must have the car and so he buys it.

In this tranquil part of England, the most immediate concern among these well to do people is deciding whether or not to treat themselves to gifts that will bring them joy.  Talk of a German invasion seems like a possibility, but the Minivers, with their two young children and their twenty-year-old son at Oxford, insist on living comfortably and happily.

Lady Beldon (May Whitty) is the elderly and intimidating aristocrat who suffers a terrible dilemma.  It seems the bell ringer, Mr. Ballard (Henry Travers), has grown a beautiful rose that looks like no other.  He cherishes it so much that he names the flower “Mrs. Miniver.”  The real person is honored for the personal recognition.  Yet, Lady Beldon’s concern is her yellow rose will not win this year’s prize trophy cup at the village flower festival.  Her granddaughter Carol (Teresa Wright) gracefully asks Kay if she’ll convince Mr. Ballard to withdraw his entry so that her grandmother can win once again.  She’s elderly, she’s accustomed to winning each year, and it would mean the world to her.

This request will also lead to a romance for Carol with the Minivers’ son Vin (Richard Ney), who has just enlisted in the Royal Air Force so he’s ready to fight the Axis forces of World War II.

All of this seems frivolous during the first half of Mrs. Miniver.  These people live comfortably but gradually grow a little more unsettled as they soon hear planes flying overhead their homes while the sounds of battle play off in the distance.   The possibilities of war coming to their front door seems to be an unlikely scenario.  The battles and bloodshed are out of sight, but only partially out of mind. 

I appreciate the editing of this film.  Clem is woken in the middle of the night to join the other neighboring husbands at the local saloon.  They are being requested to join the historic small boat rescue at the battle of Dunkirk.  The men down a drink and sail off without hesitation.  No one gives protest or stands behind their wealth or stature.

Midway through the picture, Kay is reading a bedtime story to her children in a dimly lit room.  We never see the entirety of this cramped space.  The scene simply begins with no transition.  The walls appear to be made of aluminum and then I realize the Minivers have taken shelter in an underground bunker.  Soon, they will be living through one unimaginable night of shelling and bomb dropping. Director William Wyler never turns off the camera through the extended sequence.  The bunker shakes and rattles.  The children cry in fear.  Dirt rains down them.  Books and belongings fall among the family. The pounding explosions carry on outside.  It seems to never end and the concern over a lady’s fashion hat or a beautiful new automobile are distant memories.

When Vin and Carol arrive home from a honeymoon, the Minivers home is wrecked.  So is Clem’s boat following the Dunkirk incident.  However, they happily remain living there with the youngest child playing a welcoming number on the piano.  

Amid all of these episodes, the people of this small English town uphold their positivity, but they never lose sight of what is nearby.  It’s just a house.  The Minivers are surviving and remain together.  Their biggest concern is that one day Vin won’t return from battle. Yet, time and again he does with hugs and kisses for everyone.

I’ve provided a lot of what occurs in Mrs. Miniver because I was not entirely sure of the purpose of all of these happenings until the final act is served and surprising outcomes arrive.  For much of the film, William Wyler delivers an impression of life away from the front lines.  These people live with a devotion to help their country and abandon comfort when necessary. Flower festivals, gleeful children, young romance and materialistic tranquility will carry on regardless of terrible interruptions of war.

Amid turmoil in our present state with political divides, unjust prejudice, natural disasters, and a resurgence of Cold War threats, I can’t help but wonder if many of us live like this family.  I believe we do, and I see nothing wrong with that.  We have to escape and live happily no matter what terrible future might befall us because otherwise what is the purpose of living?  Still, we choose to remain alert and especially empathetic and ready to aid our fellow neighbors when the need arises.

Visually, a shocking set design for the final scene of Mrs. Miniver sends a message that is only enhanced by a sermon delivered by the town minister.  I learned later that this speech was written at the last second by William Wyler and the actor portraying the minister (Henry Wilcoxon).  It perfectly demonstrates the overall purpose of the entire film.  Mrs. Miniver is the story of a fight for ongoing freedom; an independence to live and to treat oneself happily and lovingly.  People perish during the course of the picture.  The minister explains with convincing validity why they had to die so undeservedly and unexpectedly.  It’s an ending that really touched me, and upon the movie’s conclusion a message appears urging Americans to buy war bonds.  

This speech had such an impact at the time that it circulated in propaganda films and on radio airwaves as a means to deliver a shared triumph among the Allied masses.  It reminded people that simply because you live at home, does not mean you are exonerated of the fight for continued freedom.  The fight is not exclusive to hoisting a rifle or dropping bombs from planes.  A unified front of country must be upheld.  

Mrs. Miniver begins as a romanticized film of people living glamorously and happily but it effectively segues to a reality of uncertain times.  I went from questioning what is its purpose to an understanding of a reason to live and to strive.  

A BEAUTIFUL MIND

By Marc S. Sanders

The genius was always easier than living with the monsters in his mind.  So was the dilemma that consistently plagued Nobel Prize winning Professor John Nash.

Ahead of seeing A Beautiful Mind for the first time, what you don’t know about Professor Nash is what will dazzle you the most when Ron Howard uncovers the mysteries he lived with during graduate school and on through his fellowship at MIT and with his enduring and loving marriage to his wife Alicia (Jennifer Connelly in an Oscar winning role).  John Nash is masterfully portrayed by Russell Crowe in a celebrated, nominated performance.

Dr. Nash comes off like a genius savant when Howard’s film introduces him in 1947 at Princeton University.  The director adopts a technique of presenting much of Nash’s depths and highlighting patterns and numbers in magazines or on chalk boards or even within the reflections that appear before his eyes in bright sunlight.  On a clear night, see if you can find an umbrella within a starry sky. 

For many of us, I presume it’s hard to decipher what it means to live the life of a mathematical genius. Ron Howard with Akiva Goldsmith’s hailed adapted screenplay does not expect anyone to comprehend formulas or equations.  The filmmakers simply ask you to witness how discovery is processed.  Nash writes endlessly on his dorm room windows.  He fills up every inch of the chalk boards at his disposal.  He tears apart articles in magazines and wallpapers his room and office with them.  Even when he is not writing, he is computing how situations will end up best towards his and his peers’ advantage. There’s one curvaceous, blond woman standing in the center of a bar for one of the men to hopefully have a tryst with, but then who will be left to pair with the dark-haired ladies that surround her?  Nash finds the logic in all of the men abandoning the blond.  The genius realizes what none of us can see.  Go for what no one would ever expect to have occurred.

Despite the professor’s odd ticks, unwelcome vernacular and his lack of social skills, a well-established livelihood works out for him.  He falls in love with a former student that he marries, Alicia, and he obtains a fellowship for himself and two Princeton comrades to practice out their theories at MIT.  Personal companionship arrives with his former roommate, Charles (an energetic Paul Bettany), and his niece.  On the other hand, John has also been recruited to become a code decipherer for the government and he must answer to a mysterious gentleman named Parcher (Ed Harris) who is using John to stay a step ahead of the Soviets.   John’s work must remain top secret and as his clandestine activities become more threatening and intense, so does the paranoia get increasingly overwhelming.

I’ve only covered the first act of A Beautiful Mind because when the truth of John Nash’s purpose and how he is regarded is revealed, this biography becomes something much further from how it began.  Akiva Goldsmith’s trickery in his script is capable of surprising an audience when some veils are lifted for both the primary subject of this piece and those who come in and out of John Nash’s life.  This is a true story but it’s incredibly surprising that a mathematical wizard like John Nash could be living a whole other life that makes little sense at first.

Ron Howard is doing some fine work here reaching for material that might feel familiar with other cinematic geniuses in film ranging from the fictional Will Hunting to more recently real-life figures like Mark Zuckerberg. Characters like these stand out for their quirkiness and oddities.  With Russell Crowe’s brilliant characterization of awkwardness in his uneven walk and how he carries his papers and briefcase, it is not hard to adapt to the man on film.  What he says and how he speaks would leave any one of us to roll our eyes at his behavior.  You’d likely chortle at John just as his Princeton classmates do.  Later though, you understand how valuable his accomplishments are to a greater good, and at the same time you become alarmed at how Dr. Nash is being used both from his own perspective as well as by those figures who unexpectedly enter his life and will not just leave.

Jennifer Connelly’s role does not amount to much at first.  With her alluring looks that have graced other films in her earlier career, she initially comes off as a token spouse to the main character and you remind the person sitting next to you that is actress Jennifer Connelly who got her start in Labyrinth with David Bowie, and Once Upon A Time In America with Robert DeNiro.  Yet, as more dynamics are revealed about her husband does the character Alicia show through, and she has no choice but to survive with her spouse’s torment.  Connelly has a scene that will crush you when she must unleash her frustrations in the middle of the night as well as sporadically throughout the film. She has to be carefully observant of her husband’s behavior for the safety of their child and herself.  Ron Howard sets up scenes that haunt Alicia only, and his wide camera work is absolutely eye opening as it lends to her personal performance.

It’s fascinating to observe John Nash’s willpower as he persists to live with personal demons while upholding the demands of his genius.  This film works on so many levels of enhanced editing and perspective, but without unforgettable work from Russell Crowe, Jennifer Connelly, and a supporting cast of character actors like Christopher Plummer, Josh Charles, Judd Hirsh, Ed Harris and Paul Bettany it could not sustain its staying power. 

A Beautiful Mind is a thoroughly effective biography.

ON THE WATERFRONT

By Marc S. Sanders

Terry Malloy innocently calls up to his friend Joe’s window and tells him to go to the roof of his apartment building to check on the pigeons.  Only what happens to Joe when he gets there is not what Terry expected setting off a complex dilemma of morality and preservation of life.

In one of Marlon Brando’s most famous roles, Terry Malloy is an ex-prize fighter who now carries out menial tasks for the New Jersey mob bosses that have a foothold over the longshoremen and their union contracts.  Terry listens to what his mobster brother Charley (Rod Steiger) tells him to do.  As long as he keeps his mouth shut, he’ll be selected each day on the dock for work and he’ll never have to lift a finger.  Just let things be and keep quiet.

Charley’s boss is Johnny Friendly (Lee J Cobb), who is ruthless with his control over the area. The guys have to surrender to the demands of Johnny and his toughies because it is no secret what really happened to Joe and who was responsible.  The cops can investigate and ask questions, but they’ll get nowhere.  It’s up to Father Barry (Karl Malden) to talk some sense into the fellas, and considering Terry was one of the last guys to see Joe alive, he’s the best option to overthrow Johnny’s reign.  If Terry shows up for a subpoena, it could put Johnny and his goons out of business.

Another conflict of interest for Terry is that he has taken to Joe’s sister Edie (Eva Marie Saint) who also knows of Johnny’s corruption.  She just has not realized that Terry might have been indirectly responsible.

Marlon Brando looks everything like a movie star should.  His slicked back hair and dark eyes shadowed by his thin eyebrows and the way he carries himself in a plaid winter coat is held in a permanent memory just as James Dean and later pop culture figures like Fonzie, or Tom Cruise and Brad Pitt evolved.  It sounds silly but there’s a reason Madonna lends recognition to the classic actor in her club song Vogue, and this is one of many films in his early career to reference for the honor. 

Eva Marie Saint is wonderful as the young woman in pain and confusion following the death of her brother.  Edie is as least as conflicted as Terry due to her immediate attraction to the tough guy’s charms while still bent on discovering who had her kind brother killed and why.  Brando and Saint have a magnificent scene together when the truth comes out and Leonard Bernstein’s music comes to a halt of silence.

On The Waterfront has an irony of life imitating art.  Mind you, I’m not here to provide a history lesson and wallow in political divisions.  I find it interesting that Terry Malloy’s dilemma is whistle blowing the corruption that occurs, while also being intimidated to keep quiet.  Patterned similarly is what director Elia Kazan infamously became known for when he testified during the Joseph McCarthy hearings against people in Hollywood suspected of having communist ties.  A Union community is designed to protect its members, but sometimes the dynamics lead to just one who is singled out to expose what is not cooperating legally and accordingly.  (Some of the actors were against working on this film because of what Kazan committed but they were bound by studio contracts.)

I am aware of how much On The Waterfront is hailed as a perennial classic.  The cast is an outstanding collection of actors beginning of course with Brando, Malden, Steiger and Cobb.  Following television appearances, this was Eva Marie Saint’s first film, and there are other uncredited actors who had not made their mark yet including Martin Balsam, Michael V Gazzo, and Fred Gwynne.  The film boasts Oscar nominations for five actors (two wins, for Brando and Saint respectively) as well as wins for Best Picture, Director and Screenplay.  All that being said and yet I cannot say I felt invested in the film. 

The characters’ plights and pains simply did not connect with me.  Actually, while I believe I’m expected to yearn for Terry Malloy’s pain and regret where he declares he “…coulda been a contender…,” I felt sorrier for his brother Charley. 

In that well-known scene between the two brothers in the back of the cab, it is Charley who is really torn.  Charley is tied to his mob boss, Johnny Friendly, but he has to convince his brother to do what is best to protect the mob he’s committed to, or it could get both of them killed.  That famous scene is owned more by Steiger than Brando.  An interesting fact is that Rod Steiger had to perform most of that scene without Marlon Brando there.  The lead actor would leave the set at 4pm sharp each day, leaving Steiger to do his half of the scene with a stand in reading Brando’s lines.  It caused a bitter rift between the two actors.  Yet, the next time you catch the film, have a look at who is really doing the heavy lifting.

I might have gotten trapped trying to understand the way the union operates and how the mob manipulates everything to their advantage.  I’m lost in some of the early dialogue and how people go about doing what they do.  Maybe what I should have done is relax my train of thought and take in how the protagonist is pulled in many different ways, none of which seem like a winning solution. 

Out of context there is a selection of great scenes on display.  Karl Malden is magnificent when he urges the longshoremen to stand up to the brutality and intimidation they are under.  His concentration is amazing as he is pelted with trash while holding his composure.  This scene won him his Oscar nomination.

Lee J Cobb is a memorable antagonist. The concluding scene between his Johnny Friendly and Terry stands as a final battle between hero and villain and the residual effects of what was shot of that bout have been honorably repeated in many films thereafter. 

There’s an obvious influence that stemmed from On The Waterfront.  Clearly, much of the material had an enormous influence on future filmmakers like Lumet, Scorsese and Coppola.  Perhaps that’s the reason it did not grab me.  Those future directors turned the motifs that Kazan provided into flashier segments of color and trick camera work.  Even the inclusion of harsh language in those grittier, later films left me with a more convincing authenticity.  Then again, I was shocked to see Terry Malloy tell Father Barry to go to hell.  Pretty bold for 1954, and still somewhat shocking within the context of the piece.

On The Waterfront is actually based on fact from happenings at the docks off of Hoboken, NJ where most of the film was shot.  To watch it today is to look back at what high stakes dramatization and dilemmas of ethics surrounded by death and crime must have looked like.  It does feel outdated to me, showing a period that is long past, but it paints its truth very, very well. 

GONE WITH THE WIND

By Marc S. Sanders

Gone With The Wind is probably the first of the sweeping epic.  It spans a transitional period in history from the American Civil War and through the aftermath known as Reconstruction.  Contained within these historical contexts are the prominent Georgian Southern Plantation residents. They court and romance one another ahead of the war. They celebrate with welcome glee, ready to fend off the horrible Yankees of the North who desire to put an end to black slavery.  Nearly ninety years later Victor Fleming’s film, based on Margaret Mitchell’s bestseller, is an impressive piece of movie making with set designs and shots that remain superior to many modern films of today. 

At the top of the character pyramid is young Scarlett O’Hara (Vivien Leigh), the spoiled Southern Belle of a wealthy Irish plantation owner.  Her spoiled livelihood pines only for the noble and dashing Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard).  Yet, he has committed himself to his cousin and Scarlett’s best friend Melanie (Olivia de Havilland).  Enter Rhett Bulter (Clark Gable), a self-made wealthy prospector who is taken with Scarlett. She gives him the coldest of shoulders as she waits for Ashley to leave Melanie and have him all to herself. 

Before the soap operas of radio and television arrived, there was Rhett and Scarlett in a competition of romantic swordplay. As you watch Gone With The Wind, you see how the relationships change with marriages and children, along with death as a cost of war.  If it wasn’t for how well this collection of actors perform, all of this storytelling would feel quite hammy by today’s expectations.  Yet, Clark Gable is undeniably handsome and confident as Rhett.  His stature is so impressively consistent with that pencil thin perfect mustache to enhance his proud grin.  He doesn’t wear the costumes of 1860 regality.  The costumes wear Clark Gable.  If the film were ever to be remade, no one could match what Gable delivered.  Vivien Leigh is also unforgettable.  Scarlett is hard to like, though amusing in how she holds to her convictions of rejecting Rhett’s advances while still obsessing over Ashley.  Sometimes you want to shake this spoiled brat down to reality.  Yet, as the film demonstrates, reality shellshocks the young lady as the war overcomes and she must learn to fend for herself and those closest to her.  Viviene Leigh is radiant, and she epitomizes this character amid the vibrant colors of her dresswear and her piercing eyes that focus on what is important to her.  Whether it is schoolgirl flirtations or determined survival, Viviene Leigh is always focused on Scarlett’s stubborn strengths, which at times are also her weaknesses.

The construction of Gone With The Wind is what stays with me most.  Knowing what we know of our country’s bloody history, it’s surprising to see how excited the men of the South are to enlist in the Confederate Army, defending their ways of Southern gentility and slave ownership.  Yet, even for a film, Victor Fleming does not shy away from the atrocities of war.  Before Oliver Stone demonstrated the false heroism that a man like Ron Kovic expected to find in Vietnam (Born On The Fourth Of July) or even what could be found in the first acts of All Quiet On The Western Front, Gone With The Wind was there to flip the coin first.  The same men who bucked their horses and fired their pistols in celebration of going off to fight either never returned or they came back to a thinly spread, elderly doctor ready to sever their limbs. 

The most unforgettable shot of this film occurs when naïve Scarlett traipses across a long block of wounded men to find the doctor and insist he tend to Melanie who is about to deliver a child.  The number of extras and the amount of detail and design in this one scene is astounding.  It’s truly a walk back in time and it never glamourizes an unforgiving history.  You cannot help but be marveled at this wide shot; one of the best I’ve ever encountered.

Following this moment, Scarlett is forced to grow up as Sherman’s forces advance through Atlanta and Savannah burning everything in sight, including what’s most precious, her plantation home known as Tara.  The art design of Tara should be studied in film school.  Victor Fleming’s crew show a beautiful expanse of land and prominence to open the film, just ahead of the Civil War, then it is followed by a pillaged and burn stained remnant of invasion that could not be fended away.  Fleming also captures stunning silhouettes of Scarlett and others with the foreground bathed in a burnt orange sunset or a grey and gloomy sky.  An unleafed oak tree is off to the side lending to the foreground and implying a current barrenness of what was once a luxurious South.  Just ahead of the film’s intermission, Victor Fleming completes his canvas on film showing a defiant Scarlett with a raised fist delivering her self-sworn testimony to reviving Tara for a new day.  It’s just another unforgettable moment in all of film history.

The length of Gone With The Wind feels overwhelming clocking in at just under four hours.  Still, the picture moves and progresses through historical landscapes and the developments of young Scarlett as she moves from her unquestioned reliance from Mammy, her house servant (Hattie McDaniel, the first African American to win an Oscar) and on to her courtships and marriages.  During her transitions, she must contend with lack of food, money and resources for herself and the slaves she’s grown up with at Tara, as well as the other plantation widows and wives.  Scarlett also must grow up quickly to find ways to fend off tax demands of Union Carpetbaggers.  All of these character developments hold my interest much more than the battle of the sexes engaged between her and Rhett.  These characters are wonderful.  Pure cuts of cinema grandeur.  However, I was caught up more in their recoveries following an undeniable defeat at the hands of war and what little was left behind.

When the film returns to the soap opera chapters, it is not so much that I am admiring Vivien Leigh, Clark Gable, Olivia de Havilland or Leslie Howard.  I am much more engaged in the backgrounds they occupy.  The rubble of carnage followed by the grand reconstructions that remedied their new situations.  Rhett and Scarlett fight for common ground in their eventual marriage, have a child and then emotionally toy with one another.  It’s nothing boring.  However, it is a lot of same old, same old and Margaret Mitchell’s sweeping epic finds sad resolutions to their dilemma of uncommon grounds with each other.  Arguably, these resolves in the storylines are a little too convenient as the story works to draw your tears while keeping you engaged in the drama.  Gone With The Wind is so legendary though, and still one of the biggest revenue earning films of all time. It is likely had I seen this film at the end of the 1930s when technicolor films were rare treats, that anything put on the screen would take me away in the splendor and heartache.  I reflect on the film after watching it for a second time and I still do not like Scarlett.  However, I admire what she endures and how she persists.

In 1939, Victor Fleming directed both The Wizard Of Oz and Gone With The Wind, two films with only the commonality of technicolor achievements.  They remain two of the greatest cinematic triumphs of all time and will always carry that honor.  I’d argue that Fleming was a Francis Ford Coppola, or a James Cameron or George Lucas of his time.  A pioneering and aggressive filmmaker looking to invent a new way to absorb moving images on a screen, accompanied by grand instrumental soundtracks and actors who complimented zoom ins and outs with his camera.  Victor Fleming is a director who truly remains unmatched.  When you watch these two films, you are carried off into unfamiliar times and places. You are forced to observe beyond what appears closest to you.  The immediate stories do not stop with Dorothy or Scarlett.  Look at Munchkinland or war-torn Savannah as far as your eye can take it. Fleming has something all the way back there, that far out, for you to see and collect in your consciousness.

Today, Gone With The Wind is accepted as a piece with an asterisk next to its title.  The treatment of African Americans in the film along with their dialects and appearances is held into question.  Should these people be depicted in this manner?  Ahead of the film, streaming on MAX currently, there is a warning label of what some may consider inappropriate content even though the film remains preserved in its original final edits.  It should be.  How blacks were cast in films and how blacks were treated in history can not be changed and if we are to improve on our future of filmmaking and the histories that have yet to come, then the worst thing we could ever do is disregard the errors of our ways and whitewash over how any people were regarded and what our perspectives looked like.  Hattie McDaniel’s character may be the most beloved and memorable character in Gone With The Wind.  She’s a scene stealer whenever Gable or Leigh share a moment with her.  It speaks volumes that she could win the Oscar during a time when overt prejudice was never subtle. She was not even permitted in the theatre to accept her trophy. Clark Gable almost didn’t attend the ceremony in protest of her restriction.  McDaniel held that he go in honor of the film.  Still, Ms. McDaniel insisted that she’d rather play a maid on screen a hundred times over than live the life of a real maid fulfilling the servitude of someone else’s demands. 

Ahead of the challenging progress that came over twenty years later with the civil rights movement, McDaniel demonstrated a need for people of color to connect and relate to any kind of movie watcher.  Gone With The Wind would not have the reputation it has always held without Hattie McDaniel or Butterfly McQueen (as Prissy, another house servant).  To wit, these actors upheld what was being fought for within the Civil War and how those of the deep south lived and treated one another.  While we should be sensitive to how blacks were treated at this time, I am also grateful for their contributions into a historical depiction of a violent and unfair period.

Gone With The Wind takes commitment to watch.  Yet, it is such an important masterpiece in filmmaking.  It carries an immense significance that I believe it is one of a select number of films that must be watched in everyone’s lifetime.  I expect to still be breathing when the film reaches its one hundredth anniversary, and while some critics and skeptics poke at its shortcoming in sensitivity, I also hope that those who wish not to censor or erase an often-cruel history will give the picture its ongoing salutes and applause.  I’ll be at that Fathom event in the movie theater for that one hundredth anniversary.  This film was made to last a full century after its debut and then to last another hundred years thereafter.

It’s a masterful, epic and unforgettable piece of movie making.

BORN ON THE FOURTH OF JULY (1989)

by Miguel E. Rodriguez

DIRECTOR: Oliver Stone
CAST: Tom Cruise, Kyra Sedgwick, Raymond J. Barry, Jerry Levine, Frank Whaley, Caroline Kava, Willem Dafoe
MY RATING: 7/10
ROTTEN TOMATOMETER: 84% Certified Fresh

PLOT: A biography of Ron Kovic, a fiercely patriotic Marine who fights in Vietnam, is paralyzed in battle, and experiences a dramatic turnaround upon his return home.


I can already tell this is going to be a difficult review to write.

There is nothing overtly wrong with Oliver Stone’s Born on the Fourth of July.  It is expertly directed, and the pacing never flags.  Tom Cruise’s Oscar-nominated performance is deservedly legendary; he leaves nothing in the tank, a fierce rebuttal to critics who thought he was nothing but a pretty face.  But even though there is much to admire, when the closing credits rolled, I felt oddly detached.  The movie kept me at arm’s length from really engaging with the lead character.  Or maybe I kept the movie at arm’s length.

Could it be that I simply don’t care for Vietnam films anymore?  Not likely.  One of my absolute favorite films is Michael Cimino’s masterpiece The Deer Hunter.  In fact, the opening scenes of Born on the Fourth of July are reminiscent of that earlier film in that it takes its time establishing the main character, Ron Kovic, as a young man in the early-to-mid 1960s at the dawn of the Vietnam War.  Born and raised in Massapequa, New York, his strict Catholic upbringing and his devotion to high-school wrestling instill a strong sense of right and wrong in the world.  A point is made about how America had never lost a war up to that time.  Kovic’s wrestling coach exhorts him and his teammates as if he were a Marine drill instructor.  “I want you to kill!  You hear me?! …You got to pay the price for victory, and the price is sacrifice!!”  It’s not very subtle, but Stone is making it clear that, in those days leading up to the Vietnam quagmire, the American credo was, “Winning isn’t everything, it’s the ONLY thing.”

Kovic enlists, sees combat, and during two horrific sequences, he experiences: an unintended massacre of Vietnamese civilians, the accidental shooting of a fellow soldier (with Kovic himself behind the trigger), and a fateful gun battle during which a bullet went through his right shoulder, collapsing a lung and severing his spinal cord, paralyzing him from the waist down.  These scenes are appropriately skittish and terrifying, putting us in Kovic’s boots and making us feel the unimaginable stress of fighting a war where half the time you weren’t sure who or what you were shooting at.  Kovic is shipped stateside…and here, as they say, is where his troubles REALLY began.

If the scenes set at the VA Hospital during Ron Kovic’s convalescence weren’t based on his actual experiences, I would denounce them as sensationalistic and manipulative.  Rats roam free among the beds.  (A nurse provides spectacularly unhelpful advice: “You don’t bother them, they ain’t gonna bother you.”)  Orderlies spend their down time getting high on marijuana or worse.  Unchecked catheters get backed up.  When a vital blood pump malfunctions, a doctor has to go to the basement to “rig up a substitute.”  And through it all, Ron Kovic does everything in his power to prove to the (correctly) pessimistic doctors that he will walk again, even re-injuring himself in the process.

(It’s futile, I know, to critique a film for what it’s not instead of what it is, but I can’t help wondering if I might have developed a more emotional reaction or attachment to the film if the entire film had focused on Kovic’s tenure at the VA hospital…although I will admit that would be a thoroughly depressing film.  Also, it might have developed some unintentional similarities to One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest.  Who knows.)

The rest of the film details Kovic’s return home to his family, his emotional swings between the lowest kind of depression (“Who’s going to love me, Dad?  Who’s ever going to love me?”) and angry shouting matches with his parents and occasional bar fights.  Eventually, Kovic has a revelation: he still loves his country, but he can’t stand the government that sent him and his friends halfway around the world for a cause he no longer understands.  After a short hiatus in Mexico (I won’t get into too many details about that plot point because it’s the one section of the film that borders on boring), he returns home and dedicates his life to speaking up for the men and women who returned from Vietnam to a country that, at worst, hated them, and at best, simply didn’t care about them.

Again, the film is a stirring portrait of a man and a life.  However, as much as I want to, I can’t pin down what it is about the movie that failed to reach me at the kind of emotional level that other biographies have done before.  I just recently watched My Left Foot, with Daniel Day-Lewis’s towering performance at its center.  Another film biography, another main character confined to a wheelchair, a character who comes to terms with himself and how the world responds to him and comes up with a way to respond to the world.  But My Left Foot made my heart soar in a way that Born on the Fourth of July never achieved.  I watched the movie intently, focusing on every plot development and every nuance.  But it just didn’t grab me.  I am at a loss to explain why.

Could it be because of the presence of Tom Cruise in the lead role?  He showed these kinds of acting chops again ten years later in Magnolia, giving another Oscar-nominated performance.  In that movie, he completely disappeared into the role, despite having one of the most recognizable faces on the planet.  Perhaps the younger Tom Cruise (only 27 at the time) emits the kind of wattage that overshadows those around him?  So that you’re aware of the face first and the character second?  Maybe.  So why doesn’t the same thing happen in Magnolia or even The Last Samurai?  Perhaps it took him ten years to find a way to modulate or customize his performance so that, when it counts, the character comes first and the Cruise persona second.

I’m speculating.  The bottom line is, Born on the Fourth of July is a worthy addition to the resumes of both Oliver Stone and Tom Cruise.  It knows the story it wants to tell and resolutely sticks with it the whole way.  There are no sidetracks at any time, not even when he becomes an activist.  The focus is always on Ron Kovic, not the cause.  Stone and his screenwriters trusted that the story of Ron Kovic would draw enough attention to the cause on its own.  That approach would work with just about any other film.  This time, it had the effect of diluting the emotional experience while still holding my attention all the way through.  I would still recommend it to anyone who hasn’t seen it, if for nothing else to see Cruise play a role where he gets to sound notes he rarely got to play in his early career.  Would I watch it again?  Maybe.  I think the story is important enough for me to try to see what I might have missed this time around.

THE BRIDGE ON THE RIVER KWAI

By Marc S. Sanders

David Lean’s The Bridge On The River Kwai commits to a common theme.  The purpose of war means nothing to the pawns assigned to execute its actions.

The film primarily takes place in Japanese occupied Burma during World War II.  A prison has just acquired a British platoon of soldiers, and the Japanese have mandated this squad to construct a railway bridge that will run over the Kwai river benefiting the Axis efforts in the war.  Colonel Nicholson (Alec Guinness, in a celebrated early career role) respects the rules of war that come with his battalion being held as prisoners of the Japanese enemy, and he is prepared to have his men begin construction.  However, as his copy of the Geneva Convention Agreement dictates, his officers are not obliged to join in the assignment.  

This is a far off deserted jungle however, that does not even need to be fenced off because an attempted trek to escape is bound to fail.  Therefore, the Geneva Convention Agreement has no value of authority out here in this bug infested, stilted and sweltering heat with minimal resources of food, clothing or medicine.  The Japanese commander Colonel Saito (Sessue Hayakawa) does not hesitate to swat Nicholson’s copy in the Englishman’s face.  Now, since the politics of war are no longer a factor, the stamina of these two men are what’s at stake.

Saito forces Nicholson into a cramped, isolated hot box with next to no food or water.  He’s lucky because his remaining officers are forced to share the other box together.  Saito will force them to comply, or he may just have to kill himself.

The Bridge On The River Kwai explores how productivity, leadership and endurance thrive, but at a startling cost of madness.  Before you realize it, none of these characters are speaking of their respective war efforts or even the mandates of war.  As Nicholson persists in his stance as a defiant leader, a remarkable tide turns within this prison camp.  Soon, the question arises as to who is running this camp and overseeing this bridge project. The enforcers or the prisoners? 

A separate storyline involves an American prisoner named Shears (William Holden) – one of the last men in his platoon to survive, and now only here to bury his fallen comrades.  He’s introduced to describe the harsh reality of what Nicholson and his men can expect.  Yet once Shears escapes the camp, he is caught in a twisted irony, being forced to return to the prison camp where he must destroy the bridge under the command of a British special forces leader named Warden (Jack Hawkins).  Warden goes through his own form of madness.  A badly injured foot becomes something worse than a bloody stump and still he insists on leading his small brigade into the jungle.  

Meanwhile, as Nicholson develops more control over the camp, with Saito realizing his own pitiful ineptitude, a faction of the British are now likely to engage with Nicholson’s newfound achievement as a leader over his own squad, as well as the human Japanese resources he’s also recruited to complete this solid foundation.

David Lean had a reputation for never settling for less on his pictures and The Bridge On The River Kwai is a perfect example.  I recently watched the film, for a second time, with my fellow Cinemaniacs.  Thomas and Miguel assuredly pointed out that one less than sturdy bridge was constructed by Lean’s crew to demonstrate its weaknesses and the lack of engineering the Japanese possess, before Nicholson fully takes over.  That structure collapses on film and thus lends to the next plight in the story, when Nicholson proves to Saito that he is more capable than his enemy counterpart.

Later, the actual bridge is finished leading to a nail biting ending that elevates in suspense as an oncoming Japanese train is heard approaching with its signature whistle and chugging overheard as Colonel Nicholson proudly walks across his success, newly minted with a plaque carved with his name.  Elsewhere in the area are Stearns and Hawkins.  What began with Japanese antagonism has shifted to one side likely to do battle with itself.  

Who is fighting who?  More importantly, what are they fighting for?  War or persistent, delusional madness?

The Bridge On The River Kwai is a magnificent adventure produced with sensational filmmaking.  The investment and risk that David Lean took to assemble this picture is astounding.  It was filmed within the actual jungles.  (Miguel said somewhere around Sri Lanka.) The costumes worn by the thousands of extras are tattered dirty scraps that certainly does not invite the sex appeal you’d expect in a modern film of this kind.  Moreover, the audacity of the filmmaker at least matches the nerve of the story’s cast of characters.  

The cast is marvelous, but it is Sessue Hayakawa and Alec Guinness who serve the impact of Lean’s film.  The movie comes close to a three-hour running time.  The first half of the film has Hayakawa positioned as the leading antagonist, but the second half has Guinness filling that spot.  They almost seem to mirror one another as their character arcs move in parallel but opposite directions working to accomplish their goals, while shedding any kind of humane concern for their underlings or the countries they serve.  

I consider this film to be groundbreaking.  It’s a spectacle, but it allows much to be examined in mental acuity, military allegiance and endurance.  The Bridge On The River Kwai tests how effective war can be for any side that participates.  My Cinemaniac comrade, Thomas,  informed me that the story, adapted from a novel by Pierre Boulle, is entirely fictional.  Still, I believe it garners an important message.  Are we supposed to truly embrace “rules of war?”  This is not Risk the board game.

These men might carry the titles and rankings issued to them by their governments. However, isolate them in the middle of nowhere and who is going to uphold any semblance of regulation?  War functions on efforts of violence.  When was the last time anyone had respect for violence?