1980s List Discussion and Suggestions (Lists Project Vol. 3)

[bamwc2]

That's from The Last Dive, not Recollections of the Yellow House though. The character you cite leaves the film after finding the politics and morality of Joao and his son vile. The scene as you describe it does not occur.

Knives, I just double checked it. The file has a title screen reading"recordações da casa amarela" and the scene occurs at the 80 minute mark.

[knives]

This is what I get for watching all of these films over a week. There's a similar scene in The Last Dive and I conflated them. That said the scene fits the tone of the movie up until that point and certainly does not condone his actions.

[bamwc2]

This is what I get for watching all of these films over a week. There's a similar scene in The Last Dive and I conflated them.

I'm actually glad to hear that I'm not the only one who does that! I'm so bad at doing that, that if I had seen The Last Dive, then I would have believed you without double checking.

[knives]

Yeah, in that film Monteiro has a character that exists pretty much to turn the film into a tragedy and given the hermaphrodite comments and money throw of Yellow House's rape sequence my memory automatically assumed The Last Dive.

[ohtani's jacket]

Missing (Costa-Gavras) -- this was good, but at times I felt a bit like a tourist watching a coup. I don't know if a suspense film is really what I want out of a political situation being brought to light, but Costa-Gavras is clearly good at these types of films. I suppose he had done the film from the victim's point of view previously with State of Siege and was looking at things from a different angle this time round. As usual, it wasn't that interesting visually, but the acting was solid. Jack Lemon was particularly noteworthy in a dramatic role.

Tender Mercies (Bruce Beresford) -- when I was a screenwriting major, my screenwriting bible swore by this film. It's not the perfect film that my bible made out, but it's a fine character drama and Duvall sinks into his role as usual. The film got some criticism at the time for not having enough story. I was always partial to 'small' films when I was a writing major, but I tended to prefer small films that pack a strong emotional punch and this doesn't quite get there.

Videodrome (David Cronenberg) -- suitably weird and definitely compelling, I got pretty much everything out of this that I wanted. Cronenberg has a great imagination for writing this stuff as it's not easy to make surrealist stuff narratively compelling. It was very much an early work and felt like he had something better in him, but I think he did a great job of realising his ideas at this point in time. Great catchphrase at the end.

A City of Sadness (Hou Hsiao-Hsien) -- I saw this a long time ago, but the copy in my university's AV library was missing the ending. I like a lot of Hou's stuff, but watching this again I felt like I needed a family tree to keep up with all the characters and I don't think the formalist approach of the same long shots for every locale is the best way to tell a story. I admired the film in terms of the story being told and it remains a historically important work, but Hou's style didn't really connect with me.

Peking Opera Blues (Tsui Hark) -- frenetic, fast paced film. Sort of like Shaw Brothers' wuxia meets Sergio Leone. I'm not sure it had enough depth to make my list, but as an exercise in style it was highly enjoyable. As is typical with these types of films, I think I came away admiring the film's influences more than the film itself.

Resurrection (Daniel Petrie) -- I decided to watch this because Ellen Burstyn was nominated for an Oscar for it. It's the story of a woman who survives a car accident which kills her husband and discovers she has healing powers. Films about a character's spiritual awakening aren't that common in American cinema, and while this ventured into Hallmark territory at times, for the most part it was well done. Petrie's directing wasn't very adventurous, but it was really about Burstyn's performance, which was pretty good. If you're partial to the odd sentimental flick you might enjoy it.

[Michael Kerpan]

A "study guide" (with family tree) _would_ help with City of Sadness -- as would the opportunity to watch the film (in a situation allowing full, undistracted attention) and to re-watch the film relatively soon after the first viewing. But, I see its "density" as almost entirely a virtue.

[zedz]

A "study guide" (with family tree) _would_ help with City of Sadness -- as would the opportunity to watch the film (in a situation allowing full, undistracted attention) and to re-watch the film relatively soon after the first viewing. But, I see its "density" as almost entirely a virtue.

Hou (and Yang) are definitely filmmakers whose work is designed to be rewatched. You have to provide your own exposition, but all the information you need is provided, somewhere and somehow. I got into the habit (back when I was expecting my encounters with their work to be 'once and gone forever' festival screenings) of adopting a highly active viewing mode when watching their films. As soon as you hear a character's name or a familial relationship is mentioned, actively memorize it and match it to the actor's face. Scan every setting for telltale elements of architecture and decoration; listen for audio clues on the soundtrack that will identify the non-visible surroundings (this is a very significant strategy of Yang's). The static, tableau presentation of settings is actually extremely useful for this mode of storytelling, since it gives you a secure orientation by which you can later identify different angles of the same setting, or exterior shots of familiar interiors. Casual mention of offscreen events and characters may well have a bearing on the main plot a half hour or hour later on, so keep a mental tally of those as well. For any of their films with a historical setting, knowing a little about the tortured history of Taiwan will help immeasurably. Even a skim of wikipedia before watching would be of value.

These films are not designed for passive viewing (neither director made films with the expectation of a future era that would allow for multiple domestic reviewings) so dive in and engage with every piece of information that's subtly provided. When you see a new character, actively hypothesize about their identity and relationships (Is he a brother or a boyfriend? Is he Character X that was mentioned in an unrelated scene twenty minutes ago? Was he involved in Incident Y that happened some time before the film began? How does each new piece of information impact on your theory?) Once you cotton on to the directors' eschewal of conventional (and highly artificial) film narration, you come to understand that they're not being wilfully obscure and are, in their way, actually a lot more straightforward than many directors. Their narrative structures are often playful, but seldom tricksy. Watching the films in a fully active mode (and, most importantly, being rewarded for doing so - some films will just seem worse the more attention you pay to them!) can be incredibly invigorating.

[Michael Kerpan]

A friend and I watched "Time to Live, Time to Die" together (not for the first time) -- and paused to compare notes on an ongoing basis -- and both of us discovered all sorts of details neither had noticed before. (This was done for an article -- so not exactly the way one would noprmally watch "for fun").

[colinr0380]

Ferris Bueller's Day Off (John Hughes, 1986)
Warning: I’m going to way overthink the ending of this film!

I’m not sure if I really care for this film. Is it muddled or clear in its objectives? On the one hand it is an admirable anti-authority, seize the day, up with teens film. Part of the joy of the film is that it is made with a ‘teen sensibility’, not thinking about the long term (or even the next five minutes).

Yet all the fun is short term, half the day off is wasted just getting the gang together and going on the road, and while the adults are used throughout for deluded, fuddy-duddy, killjoy comedy, eventually the status quo is restored (even for the Principal, despite him overstepping his boundaries quite egregiously due to his petty obsession with bringing one particular kid down).

More specifically, what is the film saying by contrasting (and immediately undercutting) the situation Cameron is left in at the end with his father’s car with Ferris’s desperate race against his parents back home? We’ve just had the scene where Cameron is the only character left to face the consequences of the day off. Even if his father isn’t the abusive tyrannical monster that Cameron's teenage point of view paints him as, the destruction of the car is something that is going to likely have major consequences for him, especially if he takes all the blame for it as a way of having an epiphanal ‘standing up to dad’ moment, sparing Ferris from discovery. Broderick plays this really well, leaving Ferris seeming much less smugly self-assured and more like a kid who knows things have just escalated beyond his control, and watching his ‘friend’ commit a form of suicide (thereby fulfilling his own depressive thoughts about his life throughout the film) with a mixture of dumbfounded lack of understanding of what to do and adolescent pride in seeing his friend take a stand against the grown ups.

Yet immediately after that scared-but-empowered “who cares what Dad’s gonna say” scene we get Ferris racing his parents and sister home, which immediately means that Ferris’s own social standing, the status quo and escaping responsibility are important to keep intact. Ferris is more of a subversive element destined to blow off steam and then become a full productive member of society rather than a full blown destructive anarchist ejecting themselves from society as a whole. Although his life turns on the moment between the sister and the Principal, where he is saved (in a ‘better the Devil you know’/ ‘blood is thicker than water’ moment) from discovery and having to be defined as a troublemaking rebel in the way that Cameron will not be allowed to.

The neurotic-to-destroyed Cameron isn’t someone for the audience to aspire to (like the Principal really), the Teflon-coated Ferris is. Yet Ferris destroys and gets away scot free. Does that make it the ultimate example of an 80s philosophy of casually destroying the long term future of others on your way to your goal, whether that is the top of the boardroom or to have the most fun day off possible? This is where I’m left unsure about the film – it ends superficially upbeat and triumphal, ignoring and undermining the core of darkness in Cameron’s storyline. Yet it also cares enough to put that alternate perspective in there, even if it gets sidelined. It harks back to the ‘everyone’s damaged’ kids in The Breakfast Club, yet also is combining that with a more upbeat comic tone. (It is a little like Weird Science if the house had been left destroyed, the bullying brother transformed and the grandparents still frozen at the end!)

[domino harvey]

I'm reminded of those comical reductive movie summaries, as the one for this film agrees with you!

FERRIS BUELLER'S DAY OFF: Amoral narcissist makes world dance for his amusement.

I think your response is a common one, especially as an adult. Bueller is the typical popular kid, doing everything for himself and his own whims and coming out scott free in the end. Hughes in his teen films is obsessed with the idea of popularity, and it's interesting that his only film centered wholly on the cool table/in-crowd makes its central figure into such an unrepentant shit. Is it amusing? I'd say so, though not as much as it was when I was a kid. I guess I'd rather sit with the losers of Weird Science or the mismatched spectrum of the Breakfast Club!

[mfunk9786]

Colin - despite the fact that I disagreed with you, I loved reading your write-up on Ferris Bueller's Day Off.

Isn't any form of taking enjoyment in rebellion/standing up to your father an improvement considering Cameron's psyche at the beginning of the film? It seems like he almost needs the Earth-rattling confrontation that's sure to follow with his old man - he needs to prove to himself that he can live through something he's been tiptoeing around his whole life and come out on the other end with his freedom and a reduction in his anxiety over any kind of conflict (even though this is obviously some hardcore conflict). It's not as if he burned the house down and murdered the rest of his family - some panes of glass replaced, an insurance claim - his father's car is going to be okay in the end, and that we're seeing Cameron willing to stand up to this unwinnable fight is, despite the fact that he and Ferris were absolutely in the wrong, an improvement on the Cameron that we begin the film with, someone who seems almost deathly afraid of reality (as you said, "neurotic to destroyed"). Ferris understands that Cameron is insisting on taking the heat for a reason - despite it being deep muck that Ferris has gotten him into, Cameron sees why he needs to stomp around in it so he can move on with his life with more of an ability to function in the world, with a healthy sense of spontaneity to couple with (and hopefully balance with) his extreme beta male fear of conflict. Also, I think it's a near-universal scenario, being in absolutely fucking monumental trouble with your parents, but them not knowing that yet, and having that dreadful few minutes/hours/days before they realize what you've done. Despite it being, as you said, "the core darkness in Cameron's storyline," it's also something a lot of viewers over the years have been able to project themselves onto, and something that many of us have survived through despite being well aware of that monster gnawing at the pit of our stomachs.

I don't know that I agree with the subtext being read into the run home so much - you're right, aside from beginning to finally be introspective about his future, Ferris isn't changed much by this day - but at the end of the day, he's a teenager who is willing to be ridiculous if it means completing this absurd charade by getting back home in the nick of time if that option is available to him. Do you contend, theoretically, that we would've seen a similar shift in Ferris that we did in Cameron if he decided to turn himself in, or take his time strolling home? And, to expand on that question, how cinematic and/or entertaining would that ultimately be?

One more addition, re: what you said, Domino - there are two types of "popular kids," aren't there? I feel like Ferris works as a character because he's funny, he's likable (despite being occasionally destructive) - if this were a film about someone who constantly did bad things to people out of malice but constantly gets away with it because of his popularity (i.e., say, if a film were made about Emelio Estevez' character prior to his Saturday detention), I think that'd be one thing. But I just don't see that in Ferris' character. Despite his desire to enact this fantasy of the perfect sick day, and his mischievous bordering on neglectful treatment of Cameron's trust (though I really feel it was partially from a place of "what could go wrong?" naivete), Ferris is ultimately the right kind of "popular" or "cool" kid to center a film around, in my view.

[Mr Sausage]

I suppose I can't blame Ferris for being self-centred since the world really does seem to revolve around him. I knew a lot of kids growing up that wanted more than anything for someone to seriously care that they skipped school (or worse), let alone pretty much every authority figure in their lives as in the case of Ferris.

I think part of the reason the movie did nothing for me when I first saw it as an early teen is that I couldn't share its ethos. I know now that it's exaggerating a common youthful feeling that school is a kind of benign prison and skipping it is a big deal with big consequences. But I never had that feeling. There were no consequences to skipping school except maybe scholastically, but I was an indifferent student anyway. Then, too, there were students whose absence would draw a (small) reaction from the teacher and students whose absence was never noticed. The movie made a very big deal out of something that meant very little to me, so I always saw it from a distance.

That I hated all the characters and didn't like the jokes probably had more to do with it, tho'.

[domino harvey]

I think the film actually created a whole aura of exoticism around missing school that resonated for at least a generation (my own) before dissipating-- many of my peers definitely thought skipping school was a whole magical process thanks to this movie, when the reality is no one cares (as much as they do in the film). Some teen movies put you right back into the headspace of a teenager (Avoiding other Hughes examples, Can't Buy Me Love or Lucas do an especially good job at this), while others just make you feel old. To be fair, when this came up in my revisiting childhood favorites queue, my response was pretty neutral in either direction

[Mr Sausage]

I think we're in the same generation. The reaction among my friends for instance is the same as mine, but I buy the reaction you describe, so I guess this movie either serves as wish fulfillment or alienates you with its foreignness. Wonder if the generation from when this was released felt any different.

My reaction to this movie has been the same since I was thirteen, so it neither makes me feel old nor reminds me of what its like to be a kid. It just seems to come from another world.

[colinr0380]

Thanks mfunk - I don't hate the film, just feel ambivalent to whether I should celebrate the ending, although in some ways the ending is 'perfect' for eliding anything but the adolescent sense of triumph and a single day well spent from the film. I do sometimes think that more than any film, this would benefit from a sequel showing consequences from this one. Would Cameron have gone off to military school or juvie or, since we are talking about a pretty privileged set of characters here, would it just all have really amounted to nothing and perhaps the ever-feared but never seen father figure (compared to the extremely present, and almost smotheringly over-attentive, members of Ferris's family) might not turn out to have been such an entirely consumer goods-driven monster as he was made out to be?

Even a sequel that just replayed events exactly the same but with a 'world of work' setting rather than a High School one could be a fruitful one! (They've got to make him a Banker!)

I don't know that I agree with the subtext being read into the run home so much - you're right, aside from beginning to finally be introspective about his future, Ferris isn't changed much by this day - but at the end of the day, he's a teenager who is willing to be ridiculous if it means completing this absurd charade by getting back home in the nick of time if that option is available to him. Do you contend, theoretically, that we would've seen a similar shift in Ferris that we did in Cameron if he decided to turn himself in, or take his time strolling home? And, to expand on that question, how cinematic and/or entertaining would that ultimately be?

I completely agree with you. There's nothing that Ferris can do, so perhaps I am too harsh on him (though he should feel some pangs of guilt! It all depends what happens with Cameron, something the film gets out of showing) but some of those heavier issues are immediately brushed aside by the run home scene, which is entirely the climax that the film needs at that point to get away from Cameron and his drama - a funny, silly action packed chase scene with twists and turns that make it seem as if our hero is going to get caught at any moment. But those two scenes make for an interesting counterpoint with each other and that whole Cameron subplot is something that the film never really needed to include, except to juxtapose it with someone who is getting through life a lot more easily and without any real regrets.

I think part of the reason the movie did nothing for me when I first saw it as an early teen is that I couldn't share its ethos. I know now that it's exaggerating a common youthful feeling that school is a kind of benign prison and skipping it is a big deal with big consequences. But I never had that feeling. There were no consequences to skipping school except maybe scholastically, but I was an indifferent student anyway.

I remember being burdened with a lot of pointless guilt as a kid and rarely was off school ill, although from talking with workmates with children, things seem even worse these days with school texting or telephoning parents as soon as their kids start getting less than their predicted grades or don't come to school! I remember pretty vividly one occasion on which I was ill from school on a Monday, then felt slightly better (better enough to really have gone to school) on the Tuesday but telling my mum I just didn't think I could manage it. My mum called the school to say I was still ill but not before giving me the "it's your own life that you are ruining" speech that immediately made me feel terribly guilty! Although I got over it soon enough and spent the day in bed watching Kiss Me Deadly and Major Dundee, so I thought that I had a pretty productive sick day!

It's not as if he burned the house down and murdered the rest of his family

You know, perhaps my approach to this film might go all the way back to when I first watched this film in my teens in a double bill with Badlands! Perhaps my attitude to one film bled into the other!

I really want to put in a word for Edie McClurg in this film, who is great as the school secretary, being a more down to Earth foil to Jeffrey Jones's character (with a great reading of the line about the other pupil's attitude to Ferris: "they all think he's a righteous dude!"). She's had a very interesting career, from one of the students in Brian De Palma's Carrie, through Eating Raoul and various Cheech & Chong films and other John Hughes movies, through to most recently voices in Disney movies such as Cars and Wreck-It-Ralph. However (and taking things back to Badlands) I'll always remember her from her unforgettable small role as the ditzy sitcom mother overlooking her abusive husband played by Rodney Dangerfield (they'd both previously been in another 80s comedy classic, Back To School!) in Natural Born Killers.

[domino harvey]

McClurg was of course part of a real sitcom before Natural Born Killers, the Hogan Family, where she was the nosy next door neighbor, and at the time of the Stone film she was a ubiquitous spokesperson for Ziploc bags! As you mention, though, she's in other Hughes and her most memorable role is surely her one scene in Planes Trains and Automobiles where she gets the easiest but biggest laugh of the movie

[Feego]

I hope to revisit Ferris Bueller at some point, but my last viewing a couple of years ago was not a positive one. As a teenager (in the early 2000s), I never saw the film as anything more than a goofy fantasy, and I loved it on that level. I can't say that I identified very much with any of the characters or their circumstances, but I just got a kick out of the notion of not so much skipping school as seemingly having the world at your feet. On my last viewing, I really did find Ferris to be, if not an actively obnoxious character, one who is so privileged and spoiled that he is not even aware of how self-centered he is. The only character I liked was his sister, played by Jennifer Grey. She was the only character who both disliked Ferris and DIDN'T come off as a psychopath. But of course, the movie has her turn to the dark side in the end (what else can you expect of someone who falls in love with Charlie Sheen? ). For me, the perfect ending would have been if Grey managed to outsmart the principal AND expose Ferris' hijinks to his parents, and thereby becoming their new favorite.

[zedz]

I think we're in the same generation. The reaction among my friends for instance is the same as mine, but I buy the reaction you describe, so I guess this movie either serves as wish fulfillment or alienates you with its foreignness. Wonder if the generation from when this was released felt any different.

That'd be me. I hated it on release. The main character just came across as an entitled little shit, and the way the film was constantly fawning over him was extremely off-putting, and since most of the humour relied on you relating to the main character in a particular (mindlessly admiring) way, that side of things fell flat as well. The model of 'rebellion' the film was selling was so totally plugged into mainstream consumerist norms that it seemed gauche and pointless. But then, American school life - at least as it was presented in movies - almost always appeared alienating and shallow to me, with its inane preoccupation with proms and yearbooks and cliques and fraternities. For us, school was more like a necessary inconvenience: get an education and get out of there; keep your social engagement with it and its artificial culture to the bare minimum. The Hughes film that had by far the most resonance for my peer group was The Breakfast Club, the rest tended towards fantasy or ethnography from our point of view.

[Gregory]

I was in elementary school when it came out and was fairly neutral toward it and its character. Most of Ferris's charisma seemed to come from Broderick, not from the writing. I'm not interested in anything I've seen by Hughes enough to revisit it, and my memory of this one is somewhat hazy, but based on that I can't quite join the anti-Ferris camp because rather than being the typical popular kid, he seemed more original and like much more of a mensch than any of the popular kids I knew, who were not just overconfident but often hatefully arrogant and never would have been a friend to someone like Cameron. They made cutting remarks about that type of person, lest their own social status suffer as a result of hanging around a "loser." However, if I try to imagine what someone like Ferris would become in college or in a career, it probably doesn't support a view of the character as a likeable, clever subversive. It's just harmless letting off of steam and doesn't offer much else cinematically. 1980s teen/college movies are full of easy and bland scenes of prankishly sticking it to the square principal/college dean (as parodied so well in the Simpsons episode "Homer Goes to College").

The basis of the story, skipping a day of school with promises of adventure, was appealing to me because I was never once allowed to miss school unless I was too sick to enjoy any part of it, and even then I was expected to catch up on homework. Before seeing the film, I remember at least one instance of an attempt at faked illness in our house, which ended in a depressing defeat, so the film was probably an antidote. The lure of truancy used to have enduring appeal in many of the older comic books I used to read (with Donald's nephews and other characters from the Dell comics etc.) in which there were actual truancy officers who had to be outwitted, with the reward being a wonderful day of lake fishing and adventure. The film doesn't quite live up to all that, but I liked the premise.

[Mr Sausage]

But then, American school life - at least as it was presented in movies - almost always appeared alienating and shallow to me, with its inane preoccupation with proms and yearbooks and cliques and fraternities. For us, school was more like a necessary inconvenience: get an education and get out of there; keep your social engagement with it and its artificial culture to the bare minimum.

Growing up in Canada, I had the same reaction. American highschool films were pretty alien to my experience, even the ones I assume are trying to be accurate (Dazed and Confused). I still wonder how much social reality in, say, Hughes' films was reflected or simply created.

[bamwc2]

McClurg was of course part of a real sitcom before Natural Born Killers, the Hogan Family, where she was the nosy next door neighbor, and at the time of the Stone film she was a ubiquitous spokesperson for Ziploc bags! As you mention, though, she's in other Hughes and her most memorable role is surely her one scene in Planes Trains and Automobiles where she gets the easiest but biggest laugh of the movie

Her's was one of the first non-celebrity faces that I would recognize in various productions when I was a kid. She's had quite an interesting career, including some voice work in recent high profile animated films. However, most surprising to me was her appearance as the teenage stepsister Bertha in the Faerie Tale Theatre adaptation of Cinderella. It came out only a year before FBDO, but also costars Matthew Broderick. In 1985 she was supposed to be the same age as him, a year later he was a high schooler and she the school's adult secretary!

[Lemmy Caution]

My high school implemented a policy whereby 13 unexcused absences meant you had to go to summer school. The unintended consequences of which were many students, myself included, missed exactly 12.5 days, and were able to plan June days down the shore, etc.
Amusingly the policy intended to make sure students attended school actually encouraged us to miss significantly more days than we otherwise would have skipped out on.

[domino harvey]

We had a policy of eight absences per semester. On the ninth, you automatically received no credit for the class regardless of your grade. You could make up six additional excused absences via Saturday school, where 30 mins = one hour credit. We all definitely missed exactly as many days as we could including Saturday school (which was pretty great, you just got to sit in the lunchroom and read). Funnily enough, none of the high schools I've taught/currently teach in have had any attendance or seat-time policy, which is just insane to me

[tojoed]

I've seen the film only once and I quite enjoyed it, but that's all. The American high school experience has always been a mystery to me.
When I was at grammar school (same as high school, I think), you couldn't be off without a medical certificate or you were likely to be expelled.
Ee, it were tough, in my day.

[Mr Sausage]

Christ, not only was there no absence policy at my highschool, but once you hit grade 11 you could 'sign yourself' out of class, that is, go to the office and sign a sheet to officially excuse yourself from attendance as if you were your legal guardian. I guess this was a result of the fact that school was no longer compulsory beyond 16.