Wednesday, 31 October 2007

All-Too-Brief Encounters

posted @3:07 p.m. by Richard Kelly

Adam Fergus's Listmania! 10 gathers some terrifically diverse and very accessible movies in order to make a rather fine observation about the way that movie stories can sometimes touch on the ineffable - the grace moments in life, where we briefly reside in peace or even euphoria, knowing all too well that it can't last, and that the guys with the shotguns will be coming down the dirt-road any moment now to ruin our rural idyll... That's Witness (1985), by the way; but Adam prefers Kingpin (1996). Read on...

We have all the time in the world (or at least the next half hour): 10 moments of reflection, roadside dancing and tender-interlude shortly before the shit goes down By Adam Fergus

10. Raising Arizona, dir. Coen Bros, 1987

There’s plenty of mischief in the quarter of a film that precedes Nick Cage and Holly Hunter holed up in a caravan trailer park while all around them the search for their new, stolen son, Nathan Arizona Jr, goes on. But it’s in these angst-ridden, white-trash moments that Cage’s, H.I. realizes his days as a career criminal are through and he matures to his new role as husband and father. You wouldn’t define the relationship between the Nick and Holly as tender or stress-free, but given it precedes the arrival of their neighbour, Glen, who promptly suggests a wife-swap and hurls handfuls of coins at the heads of his kids, it sure beats the carnage that follows

9. Casablanca, dir. Michael Curtiz, 1942

So it’s a flashback and not real-time, but there’s no bigger bun-fight than WW2 and no bigger line to remember and reminisce than “We’ll always have Paris”. Bogie & Bergman get a few minutes to define the importance of their relationship making the subsequent reunion at Rick’s Place all the more poignant. It is France 1939; baguettes are baking, the cheese maturing and somewhere a beret is worn as our heroes get down. So real, so reflective, you can almost hear the sound of the French white flags waving in surrender.

8. The Last Detail, dir. Hal Ashby, 1973

If you’re military policeman Jack Nicholson, this is one long freedom-loving, boozy interlude from start to swear-filled finish. If you’re Randy Quaid, the marine who’s being dragged back for a court-martial, it is too… and then it’s not. A blokey movie about blokes and friendship in the face of hookers, tequila-abuse and looming jail time. It takes something special to make a sympathetic movie out of 3 American soldiers running amok at the tail end of the Vietnam war, but for all the laughs, Ashby’s film is tragic nonetheless.

7. Six Degrees of Separation, dir. Fred Schepsi 1992

The little bit of respite is barely on camera, it’s more a state of mind. After an impromptu dinner party, a showing of the priceless double-sided Kandinsky and scintillating conversation with their son’s school friend – the imposter, Will Smith – Donald Sutherland and Stockard Channing wake up to find a naked male hustler mooning them in their kitchen. It’s the evening of Smith’s life, the culmination of everything he’s worked toward and when questioned on the cocksure intruder, he sinks back to fraudulence and all the “bottles of beer” and “pots of jam” posturing leave him in a beat. “I was having such a nice night I wanted to add sex to make it perfect”, he whispers as suddenly, everything falls apart.

6. On Her Majesty's Secret Service, dir. Peter R. Hunt, 1969

No word of a lie; I know a woman who went out with George Lazenby when he was a jobbing actor in Queenbeyan, central New South Wales. Great lay, apparently. Which makes the running on the beach, driving through vineyards, laughing in snow suits montage that marks James Bond’s first long-term girlfriend, let alone marriage, all the sadder. Curse you Ernst Blofield! Curse you and your betrothal-hating SPECTRE ways! JB is married and 3 seconds before the credits roll you kill his wife, leaving the big guy to renew his endless, STI-ravaged search for love all over again!

5. Platoon, dir. Oliver Stone, 1986

In 1986 Oliver Stone bought out the most realistic, uncompromising, violent war pic to date; filling it with brutal, ugly wonderful characters who hate and die, but not necessarily in that order. All of which makes the self-indulgent moment where Charlie Sheen meets a Vietnamese deer, both quieter than anything that came before and certainly more ridiculous. After a chaotic firefight, Charlie emerges from his fox-hole, smoke, arms and burning NVA all around, as a beautiful buck gallops into view. Junior Sheen monologues something along the lines of “In that moment I realized my warring sergeants, Elias and Barnes were the 2 fathers I never had, both of the same coin yet different, I could see they represented the crisis in America” At which point, en mass, the audience throws up. Honestly, does anybody really love the smell of venison in the morning?

4. From Noon Till Three, dir. Frank D. Gilroy, 1976

Forgotten comedic western that sees Charles Bronson tee up with real-life wife, Jill Ireland, in what looks initially like a really glib episode of Dr Quinn Medicine Woman. Chuck’s a particularly shit train robber who stumbles across the previously- widowed Jill alone in her grand southern mansion. He holds her hostage and after she makes a couple of lame attempts at escape, the 2 of them spend the next few care-free weeks falling into each other’s arms and twirling on the stairs in top hat and tails. To be fair, this isn’t an interlude exactly - all this twirling takes up, like 90% of the film. The strange last minutes cap off a tale of betrayal and descent that will have even the most hardened fans of ‘Death Wish’ Bronson wiping the tears from their eyes and wondering where all the happiness went.

3. Kingpin, dir. Peter & Bobby Farrelly, 1996

In an attempt to re-enter the ten-pin big-time, hick country boy Woody Harrelson is schooled by Bill Murray, has his hand crushed in a ball-returning machine, loses the wooden prosthetic replacement in a bet and is forced into oral sex with his octogenarian landlady in lieu of rent. The kid from Cheers goes through so much in the first half of this film that his moment of respite with a small Amish community is thoroughly deserved and marks a turning point in his loser fortunes - even if he does end up drinking a quart of bull semen in the belief that he’s just milked a cow. With more barn-raisings and brothers Ezekiel per frame, you can forget about Peter Weir’s Witness - The Farrelly Brothers’ Kingpin is the best film about Luddite Pennsylvania, period.

2. Wild at Heart, dir. David Lynch 1990

Five metres from the highway, slam-dancing in the dust: “Oh Sailor, I fucking love this song! Pull over, pull over!” If you know the scene it’s over in 30 seconds, but it resonates with thrash and spontaneity. Arms, legs and heads flailing in pure, easy emotion on the road to the Wicked Witch of the West, Bobby Peru and god-knows what else. I try this myself on every car journey I take and the important thing is consistency: Drive. Out of the car. Dance. Back in. Drive. It’s easy to be the fool jumping about in the bus lane at Ladbroke Grove, but to really push the envelope of human potential, there’s nothing more extreme than the Watusi outside the M&S at Reading services.

1. Badlands, dir. Terrence Malick, 1973

The scene that inspired this Top 10. I like the bit where the film goes totally off reservation. Marty Sheen and an emaciated Sissy Spacek run into the glades to play Peter Pan Lost Boys and escape the mounting madness. In the blink of an eye their wooded getaway is built and thriving. Hunting, gathering, fishing, treetop shelter, whiling the hours of their childhood away in a juvenile ‘Walden’ as Sissy’s father lies smouldering on the floor of her family home. By my bet they get a good week and a half, but it could just as easily be 14 years. No one bothers them until, on the cusp of developing what looks like their first nuclear reactor, the Sheriff and bounty hunters show up skulking through the brambles and from there, nothing is the same again...

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