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I'll be posting a longer appreciation of the great Shinji Somai soon, specifically for The Catch, but this Hughes discussion urgently calls for a recommendation of Typhoon Club, Somai's much darker, saturnine take on The Breakfast Club. One of the most lovely and overwhelming films about youth I've ever seen, eliciting enormous emotions through the patient development of a desperate apocalyptic atmosphere in the empty hallways of the school, and some of the most stunning uses of weather in cinema. It acts as a correction to Hughes' film, but I think also acknowledges the basic conceptual validity and weight of Breakfast, and takes it as a a starting point rather than a battleground. At some point in the project I'm planning on rewatching both together.

I'm actually surprised that, on this forum, a wide-spread distrust of authority is being used as a criticism against a filmmaker. I'm no big fan of his films, but I'd wouldn't begrudge him that distrust any more than I'd begrudge it in Charlie Chaplin or Alan Pakula movies, however exaggerated.

I don't think much either way on his attitude toward authority other than disliking a three minute scene from Uncle Buck, but yeah, it seems fundamentally part of his youthful distrust of the establishment-- if anything it gives his teen films authenticity. Maybe many of our posters in this thread are just growing up/grown up to the point that they've undersold some of these emotional responses

As for the principal in The Breakfast Club, I always thought that there must be a backstory behind this macho charade that Paul and John devised but never is really explained on-screen, like that when he gets home it's his wife who wears the pants in the family or something.

Who, the Beatles? Last names please

Gleason and Hughes, respectively.

Ally Sheedy has a key line in The Breakfast Club: "When you grow up, your heart dies." When I was 15 years old and heard that line, I thought, "Wow, that's really smart." Fifteen years later, I recognize it as giving authentic voice to the target demographic, but on a personal level, it no longer has resonance for me. Hughes made his teen films (and I am specifically referring to his teen films) with the clear intention of reaching and connecting with a certain age group, and the enduring popularity of his movies with American teenagers proves that he was tremendously successful. But age-wise, I think his movies do have an expiration point.

Corrected:

flyonthewall2983 wrote:As for the principal in The Breakfast Club, I always thought that there must be a backstory behind this macho charade that my pal Paul and my bestest bud John devised but never is really explained on-screen, like that when he gets home it's his wife who wears the pants in the family or something.

(I did threaten to do this!)

flyonthewall2983 wrote:As for the principal in The Breakfast Club, I always thought that there must be a backstory behind this macho charade that Paul and John devised but never is really explained on-screen, like that when he gets home it's his wife who wears the pants in the family or something.

Already that strikes me as problematic because that suggests that Gleason did something to earn these spoiled brats scorn which he doesn't. All things considered, and this might just be the quality of the performance, he seems pretty reasonable given the situation. The punching scene might be a bit overdone, but in its own melodramatic way seems reasonable if not plausible a reaction to Nelson's shit. Certainly he doesn't do anything worth being compared to the villains of a Pakula movie. Anyways that seems like a false conflagration since the authority in the Hughes movies aren't abusing their power or acting in a primarily self interested malicious manner. They seem, to me, to be positively average with the exception of Nelson's father and not worth the excessive melodrama of some lines like the one Feego quoted.

If only Typhoon Club didn't have one really irritating shot in its morning-after epilogue. But Somai is a criminally underappreciated director. Did you manage to see The Catch with subtitles (I've only seen it unsubbed).

knives wrote:Certainly he doesn't do anything worth being compared to the villains of a Pakula movie.

Please don't do stuff like this. I shouldn't even have to refute this straw man: I also compared those films to Charlie Chaplin movies, on top of which I was talking about an attitude, the general distrust of authority, not in what specific form each director decided to express it. Also, your post reads as if the villains of each movie generated the attitude in the filmmaker and not vice versa, which is weird.

Anyway, I've never identified with the movie personally (and I first saw it on tv back in elementary school), but I suppose the point with the principle is not that he's evil, manipulative, or even unreasonable; just that the kids are meant to be complex humans with complex issues, yet all that the principle knows how to do is treat them like indistinguishable delinquents to be punished with busy work and tedium while he goes about the business of ignoring them, their problems, their individuality, and all the things that led them where they are. They gain more understanding of themselves and each other, and find more compassion and sympathy, talking as a group than they do from the people meant to be guiding and helping them. And they learn all that by ignoring the basic rules the principle set for them, no doubt under the impression that those rules would help them. He's merely angry that the rules have been broken. He's the classic authority figure who's more concerned with order than with people, and evidently John Hughes dislikes that type of person.

Again, this is a movie I'm indifferent to, but it seems plain to me what it's trying to accomplish, even if what it accomplishes doesn't move me.

Mr Sausage wrote: Also, your post reads as if the villains of each movie generated the attitude in the filmmaker and not vice versa, which is weird.

Pardon me, but I don't understand what you mean by this. Are you trying to say, for example, that the villains in The Parallax View were chosen based on what Pakula views as a villain based on his attitude toward such figures? If that's the case I agree, though it ignores what may have caused the attitude itself to be generated which is real life instances of villainy like the Kennedy assassinations or Watergate. Also to the Chaplin thing, and I definitely didn't make this clear enough, I did realize I was leaning too hard on the Pakula example and did try to sway some of my later comments toward Chaplin's bullies hence the second to last sentence. I think there's still a pretty clear difference between them and the family and authority figures in Hughes' film. That said their behavior toward the principal is significantly less a problem to me than how they talk about family since the Principal does stand as an oppositional figure to them and it only makes sense to lash out. In general I think The Breakfast Club is much better on this front than what I recall of Ferris Bueller's Day Off. The relationship between the authority suggested by a principal (or even your examples) is very different than that of a parent. It is in regard of the family that I feel Hughes goes too far into fantasy. In my experience no child would say publicly to strangers, no matter how united, such things about their parents.

I was saying that your post reads as if the characters were producing the attitude in the filmmakers rather than being the products of that attitude--which is odd, but neither here nor there.

But you still persist in being hung up on irrelevant specifics, as tho' if you find the individual differences in all the bad authority figures you can prove the three filmmakers don't actually share a widespread distrust of authority and can go back to criticizing Hughes for never having a positive depiction of someone with authority, while overlooking it in the other two.

Like I said, the individual representations will differ, but they all come from the same place.

Michael Kerpan wrote:Did you manage to see The Catch with subtitles (I've only seen it unsubbed).

It looks like fansubs became available late last year.

swo17 wrote:

Michael Kerpan wrote:Did you manage to see The Catch with subtitles (I've only seen it unsubbed).

It looks like fansubs became available late last year.

Yes, I did, though the writing is definitely it's weakest feature.

Turns out the discussion on Breakfast Club came right on time for this

bamwc2 wrote:
A Summer at Grandpa's (Hsiao-hsien Hou, 1984): This was my first experience with the early works of Hsiao-hsien Hou (previously, the earliest film of his that I had seen was 1996's Goodbye, South, Goodbye) and I have to say how great it is to see the work of a master craftsman in his prime. A mother's illness forces a young boy and his even younger sister to leave the big city of Taipei for the summer and resettle into their grandparent's rural Taiwanese estate. While there what we get is less of a progressive story than it is a series of events unwinding from the children's perspective. The film perfectly captures a youth's experience of the summer months, where a single season can feel like a lifetime of adventures and exploration. Told with the simplicity and elegance that the story demands, this is nothing short of a masterpiece. So far it's my favorite discovery of this nascent project and will almost certainly make my list.

My first Hou, and while I can see where the praise comes from, I'm not as deeply enamoured of it as others here. While I found the portrayal of the children very convincing and partly also moving, some of the other characters felt somewhat underdeveloped for me. This goes especially for the grandfather, who doesn't come across as a very likeable character for most of the film but then in the end gets to pronounce what I take to be the film's message to the boy. On the other hand, the boy's uncle is shown in a far too likeable manner in the beginning, which makes it hard to believe that he gets involved with those thugs later in the film. Still, I liked the often very beautiful photography and the film's slow pace. People often seem to compare it to Ozu, but if so, then I clearly find the Japanese master's stories more 'round'. But still I do think that this is a very fine film, all in all.

Boy Meets Girl (Leos Carax, 1984): I really liked this. Initially the film feels a bit all over the place perhaps, but it all comes wonderfully together once the boy meets the girl at the party. Carax even gets away with the all-to-clever idea of showing most of the other guests as if they were practically showroom dummies. The extended sequence of the two protagonists sitting in the kitchen is very believable in its depiction of youthful fragility and dreams. Lots of references to film history; Bergman came to my mind, but also early Godard (Michelle Perrier might be seen as a stand-in for the young Anna Karina, but she might easily have sprung out of any Rivette film of the time, too), but Carax nevertheless manages to find his own voice. Pretty gorgeous visuals all the time, and very assured direction. An astonishing debut film.

Under The Glacier (Gudny Halldorsdottir, 1989): This is the kind of film that probably only can come from a country like Iceland. A young man is sent as an emissary of the Bishop of Iceland to investigate the behaviour of a countryside priest about whom there are rumours of not-quite orthodox behaviour. Indeed, the priest is more interested in repairing cars than in holding services or burying the dead; there's also a wacky esoteric community with strange cults, and finally the young man gets to know an alluring femme fatale who may or may not be 'real'. It's all completely weird, and very funny on top of it, but still this is a strangely moving and deeply spiritual film. Highly recommended if you want to see something outside the usual. Expect the unexpected.

flyonthewall2983 wrote:Turns out the discussion on Breakfast Club came right on time for this

Funny story, that. The high school where that was filmed has now been converted into a state police headquarters, one that my wife used to live only about a hundred feet from while we were engaged. She was also about a five minute drive away from the first McDonalds, John Wayne Gacy's house, and a spot on the Des Plaines river where Bo Jackson could regularly be seen bow fishing. It was a very strange convergence of history in that area...

I expected (in advance) "Summer at Grandpa's" to become a favorite -- but it never did. Lots of lovely moments, but things never seemed to come together -- and WAY too much plot (and coincidence). On the other hand, Boys From Fengkuei (which I had never heard of) was quite impressive.

I wonder -- when does "early Hou" end? ;-}

Michael Kerpan wrote:I wonder -- when does "early Hou" end? ;-}

Not that there's anything hard and fast about this, but I'd say it ends with Daughter of the Nile, as City of Sadness seems to me to kick off a new phase of his filmmaking career and is also a convenient marker as, I believe, his first big domestic success.

(And I'd classify the pre-Boys from Fengkuei work as 'juvenilia', since there's such a massive leap in quality and ambition with that film. Exploring that earlier work is for the hardcore fanatics!)

I think City of Sadness and the 90s films make for a coherent body of work, then Millennium Mambo and the other noughties films another tidy bunch. I'm assuming The Assassin will represent a new departure.

Actually, looking at the above, you could also lump City in as the culmination of his 80s work, since it has strong ties to A Time to Live and a Time to Die and Dust in the Wind, and then have tidy decade-by-decade divisions.

Sid and Nancy (1986, Alex Cox)
After my first viewing of this movie, I find myself alternately put off and amazed by it. On the one hand, I can’t really see much of a purpose in it aside from wallowing in the extreme misery of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen’s self-destructive existence. Unlike most celebrity biopics, the subjects of this one were not particularly talented nor did they achieve anything of great note beyond many pathetic public displays (I don’t know much about the history of the Sex Pistols, but at least according to the film, Vicious seemed more a bane than an asset to the band). And as far as telling a tragic love story, I question if the relationship between the two was truly love. Again going only by the movie, their relationship seemed more like one of desperate neediness, as nobody else wanted them, most painfully Nancy’s family. On the upside, the central performances by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb are astonishing and truly make the movie palatable even at its most disturbing. I also love the touches of humor and surrealism that Alex Cox sprinkles in throughout, especially the dreamlike performance of “My Way,” which apparently was based on a scene from Julian Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. This is certainly a movie I would like to revisit in the future, but for now I don’t feel comfortable placing it on my list.

zedz wrote:

Michael Kerpan wrote:I wonder -- when does "early Hou" end? ;-}

Not that there's anything hard and fast about this, but I'd say it ends with Daughter of the Nile, as City of Sadness seems to me to kick off a new phase of his filmmaking career and is also a convenient marker as, I believe, his first big domestic success.

(And I'd classify the pre-Boys from Fengkuei work as 'juvenilia', since there's such a massive leap in quality and ambition with that film. Exploring that earlier work is for the hardcore fanatics!)

I think City of Sadness and the 90s films make for a coherent body of work, then Millennium Mambo and the other noughties films another tidy bunch. I'm assuming The Assassin will represent a new departure.

Actually, looking at the above, you could also lump City in as the culmination of his 80s work, since it has strong ties to A Time to Live and a Time to Die and Dust in the Wind, and then have tidy decade-by-decade divisions.

On the other hand, Daughter of the Nile seems to look forward (in some ways) to Millennium Mambo.

Sandwich Man doesn't seem to fit neatly with anything else.

The pre-Boys films are very different too be sure. Not so much juvenilia, as trying to do something very different. The first two films were a lot of fun, for what they were. The third one (Green, Green Grass of Home) is a less successful pot-boiler, perhaps, because it is already starting to look ahead to Hou's next phase.

I would say that there were at least 5 great Hou films in the 80s. ;~}

Feego wrote:Sid and Nancy (1986, Alex Cox)
After my first viewing of this movie, I find myself alternately put off and amazed by it. On the one hand, I can’t really see much of a purpose in it aside from wallowing in the extreme misery of Sid Vicious and Nancy Spungen’s self-destructive existence. Unlike most celebrity biopics, the subjects of this one were not particularly talented nor did they achieve anything of great note beyond many pathetic public displays (I don’t know much about the history of the Sex Pistols, but at least according to the film, Vicious seemed more a bane than an asset to the band). And as far as telling a tragic love story, I question if the relationship between the two was truly love. Again going only by the movie, their relationship seemed more like one of desperate neediness, as nobody else wanted them, most painfully Nancy’s family. On the upside, the central performances by Gary Oldman and Chloe Webb are astonishing and truly make the movie palatable even at its most disturbing. I also love the touches of humor and surrealism that Alex Cox sprinkles in throughout, especially the dreamlike performance of “My Way,” which apparently was based on a scene from Julian Temple’s The Great Rock ‘n’ Roll Swindle. This is certainly a movie I would like to revisit in the future, but for now I don’t feel comfortable placing it on my list.

That version of My Way is basically the only interesting thing he did if just because it is so purposefully inept. As I understand it Vicious couldn't play any instrument to save his life, but was a perfectly reasonable composer.

Yeah I've watched that clip, and while it's pretty great, I gotta say ... I like Oldman's imitation of it better.

"My Way" was only one of his covers, and when he died we was turning an interesting corner into punk covers of old tunes (an area that all manner of underground/alternative types of bands would go on to explore in the decade that followed), going just on attitude alone not any kind of vocal talent, but he was too far gone as a heroin casualty for it to happen. People who knew him (insofar as that was possible) have talked about how he didn't really know who he was, so he clung to the invented persona of "Sid Vicious" and everything people expected that went along with that. Not sure how widely known this is, but before he was "Sid" the punk icon, he was a major fan of Roxy Music and Bowie, and he first showed up in the papers a couple of years before punk happened wearing some kind of gold lamé getup.