The genius of the movie is in the character of Tom Baxter (‘of the Chicago Baxters! – poet, explorer, adventurer!’), so winningly played by Jeff Daniels. He’s a naïve child in a world where cars don’t run without keys to start the ignition, where there is pregnancy and poverty and popcorn, where people don’t have happy endings guaranteed. A world, rather beautifully too, where there is no discreet fade to blackout to endure when the kissing gets hot and heavy, and where the champagne doesn’t taste of lemonade. A world of colour. Just as all the people in thirties America want to escape their troubles by losing themselves in the make believe of the movies, so the characters on the silver screen want to escape from the monotony of wit and class and drinks at the Copacabana in the fifth reel, and taste real life. Tom is not human. He’s an artificial intelligence. He’s a replicant from Blade Runner, he’s a mecha from A.I. – but with an amiable social ease taught him by a hack screenwriter, and wearing slacks and a pith helmet. And it’s the wide-eyed appreciation of the world of this alien, even with all its ugliness and cruelty intact, that ironically makes the film so very humane. The scene where he talks to the whores at the brothel, and his simple belief in pure love without compromise reduces them to reflection and tears, is absolutely extraordinary.
But Jeff Daniels doesn’t only play Tom Baxter – he also plays Gil Shepherd, the actor who portrayed him, and who is now eager to track down Tom and force him back into his monochrome prison. (Gil can’t risk getting a reputation as a ‘difficult’ actor, who puts such work into making his characters real that they burst forth from the screen – his agent coolly reminds him of the scandal that ended Fatty Arbuckle’s career.) The beauty of Daniels’ performance as Gil is that you can see all those gentler qualities he used to bring Tom to life – but also how that innocence has been corrupted by ego and Hollywood artifice. The only way Gil can persuade Tom to leave Cecile is by winning Cecile’s heart himself – and, ultimately, Cecile is invited to choose romance with a real man over an imaginary one. But Gil’s professed love for Cecile is just another fiction, and as soon as Tom is back in the film (and, as Woody darkly suggests, all the prints are destroyed), he’s dumped the waitress and flown back to his movie star career. In the end, Allen says, the only way to live your life is to choose reality over fantasy – but with reality you inevitably get hurt.
Woody Allen was told that his movie would have been a hit had he only given it a happy ending. To which Allen tersely replied that that was the happy ending. Having abandoned the only man who’s ever loved her unconditionally, and having been abandoned in turn by his shallow doppelganger, Cecile has no option but to return to her abusive husband. But first she stops off in a movie theatre. There’s a new film playing. And as she watches Fred Astaire sing and dance with Ginger Rogers, her eyes start to shine, she starts to smile – and for the moment, once again, her troubles can be forgotten.
It’s a moving film, Purple Rose, with a heart beating through it so distinct from the cold comic slapstick of Sleeper. And along the way it has meditations upon God, and the illusory nature of life, and some of the funniest one liners Woody ever wrote. Woody isn’t even in it. There was no part suitable. So it’s a movie that even the most ardent Woodyphobe might appreciate. I might try it out on my wife. I might. One day. When she stops bringing up divorce so often.
Some years after making Purple Rose, Woody Allen got mixed up in a scandal of his own. It didn’t end his career (unlike Fatty Arbuckle’s), but it unarguably tarnished it. It lost him the respect he’d worked so hard to earn, it lost him his fanbase. I was having dinner with a woman who told me she’d once been an ardent fan – but since that strange sordid relationship with the adopted daughter of his own girlfriend, she’d never again watch a movie featuring that evil man. I tried a spirited defence. If not of the man himself, at least of his movies. But she was having none of it, and she fumed self-righteously all over her calamari. But then I reminded her of The Purple Rose of Cairo. Of its heart, and its imagination, of its intelligence and compassion. And her eyes watered a bit, and she relented. Woody Allen may not appreciate his inclusion in this book. But this movie, with a tight control of a sci-fi concept that can only be managed by a man who doesn’t even know the clichés of the form, is a masterpiece.
ALIENS
(Director: James Cameron; starring: Sigourney Weaver, Carrie Henn, Michael Biehn, Lance Henriksen - 1986)
Peter F. Hamilton
I haven’t watched Aliens for something like five years, probably longer. Despite that it was my number one choice when I was asked to contribute to this book. Then of course when Mark gave me the go-ahead I started to have my doubts. The reason I never watch the original Star Trek episodes any more is because I saw them all when I was growing up, and I enjoyed them back then in a way I never could now. That’s an attitude which isn’t just driven by cynicism. Expectations have changed considerably over the years due to the advancement of production values and bigger budgets. So the first big question is: does Aliens hold up to the somewhat idealised memory I have of it? Undoubtedly yes.
The film I’m writing about here is the director’s cut, with its restored scenes noticeably increasing the length. Admittedly the original theatrical release had a faster pace, but this version is the one which is now standard. There are arguments for both, and this one does become a little slack in the middle, but the inclusion of the extra scenes of the colony and Ripley learning what happened to her own daughter are more than adequate recompense.
The story which Cameron tells is actually quite simple in terms of structure. The Ripley awakening scenes are well handled, with the revelation that she’s been in suspension for fifty years; as is her subsequent court of enquiry where she’s unable to produce any evidence as to the creature that allegedly wiped out her crew. It also introduces us to Burke, with the classic line that he works for the company: ‘… but don’t let that fool you, I’m one of the good guys.’ It is his presence, both reasonable and supportive, which makes him all the more subversive later on.
Once contact with the colony is lost the film finally starts to kick into gear, and it’s with a wry knowing grin that we see Ripley manoeuvred into accompanying the team sent to investigate.
Our squad of Colonial Marine grunts dispatched on the mission are curiously not the standard bunch of misfits that we’re used to seeing in bad situations; yes they’re cocky and they’re individuals, but as a team they function well. They have discipline and they have firepower on their side. The lieutenant is wet behind the ears but in the establishing scenes we find out that there’s enough experience embedded within the squad as a whole to know they’ll handle themselves well in combat. All of which quietly builds on the expectation that when it starts to go wrong, it’s going to go spectacularly wrong.
Arrival at the planet is the one and only time I feel that the ‘special effects’ are in any way a letdown. The atmospheric entry flight of the dropship is quite dated compared to what we’re used to today. But once we’re on the ground that’s swiftly ignored as the squad moves through the abandoned colony base.
This is where we start to see Cameron’s storytelling technique coming to the fore. The exploration of the beaten-up techno-gothic corridors and rooms is tense in itself, with a couple of gotcha moments, and finding Newt, the sole human survivor; yet its real purpose is to familiarize us with the territory.
Once the colonists are located in the atmospheric processing plant, the squad moves off to rescue them. Again a fairly long setup process which pays enormous dividends in the closing reel.
Finally things start to go wrong. The proximity to the fusion reactor, which prohibits the grunts from using their weapons. The unknown, unexpected secreted resin – yeah, but secreted from what? And the cocooning of the colonists. The bloody arrival of the chest buster, which when it finally emerges is almost reassuring in its familiarity. Then the ambush begins and everything falls apart so rapidly that you are completely drawn into what has now becom
e a simple battle for survival.
Now we start to see Ripley as we remember her most fondly from the closing sections of Alien. Her command instincts surface and it is she who, in overriding the squad’s lieutenant, saves the day for the first time. This completes her arc of development from scared traumatised victim to reluctant tag-along, to exasperated fifth wheel advisor, to the one person everybody instinctively turns to.
The rest of the film follows the dwindling survivors as they retreat through the locations we are now so familiar with thanks to Cameron’s narrative ability. Retreat eventually becomes a rout, perfectly ruined by Burke’s treachery and greed. This is where the blend of horror elements –monster in the dark picking off the protagonists one at a time – coupled with science fiction – location and technology – come together in a fashion which qualifies Aliens as a true groundbreaking classic.
There are rich metaphors here. The US platoons with their superior firepower swooping in on primitive Vietnamese villages. Ripley’s loss of her daughter and finding a surrogate in Newt, which leads to the climactic fight between the females of both species in a bid to protect their young. The corruption of the squad’s simple human camaraderie by insidious corporate manoeuvring – betrayed by those in charge, as always.
All of these themes and more are to be found amid the narrative, yet none of them detract from the pace of the story. They are as integral as the wondrously gloomy environment and perpetual tension.
I have favourite scenes: when Ripley finally realises the aliens are in the ceiling crawl space. The loading bay fight. And favourite lines: ‘Get away from her you bitch!’ The fact that these shone through once again during my re-watching is testament to their durability and necessity. Most people will recognise them, or at least be able to reference them, which is more than a cursory nod to the fact that they have passed into cultural iconic status. That does not happen by chance.
As to the look and feel of the film, how does that stand up to review through eyes that have become accustomed to the utterly commonplace CGI over twenty years on? (An omnipresence ironically pioneered by Cameron himself in Titanic.) The way the film was crafted means it is hardly a factor. Yes, the loader fight was done much better in Avatar, but the wickedly claustrophobic cinematography prevalent throughout Aliens is more than compensation. This is not the kind of story or imagery suited to the show-it-all and shout-it-loud extravagance of Transformers. At its root Aliens is a haunted house/monster in the dark film, and as such I believe it actually benefits by being a creature of its time. I wouldn’t want it any other way. In fact, I hope that in another twenty years I can slot in my memory crystal and wallow in the fact that they don’t make ‘em like that any more.
THE FLY
(Director: David Cronenberg; starring: Jeff Goldblum, Geena Davis, John Getz, Joy Boushel - 1986)
Stephen Gregory
‘When I was a kid, I puked on my tricycle.’ Always teasing, always quipping, the brilliant young scientist, Dr Seth Brundle, explains how he suffered from motion sickness as a child, motivating him to invent a machine which will move matter almost instantaneously from place to place and eliminate the need for more mundane transport such as cars, boats and planes.
The Fly, David Cronenberg’s 1986 movie, has a relentless forward drive. In the very opening lines of the film, Brundle schmoozes a beautiful woman at a scientific conference by telling her he’s invented something which will change the world, and he persuades her, in time-honoured seductive style, to come back to his place and take a look at his invention. She goes to his laboratory, she wriggles sexily out of a black silk stocking and lets him shift it by means of his telepods from one end of the lab to the other. The stocking arrives intact, she’s impressed by the party trick and by the scientist’s wolfish charisma… and within the first few minutes of the film we have motivation, set-up, two characters (Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis) who spark and magnetise one another, and a story all ready to gather an unstoppable momentum.
George Langelaan’s original short story, which appeared in Playboy magazine in 1957, was adapted into a movie the following year, starring Vincent Price. Flesh and bone, living tissue, disintegrated particle by particle and put back together again in another place… it’s a notion of travelling through time and space which has teased the imagination of science-fiction writers for generations, from HG Wells’ masterpiece of time travel to the multiple episodes of Star Trek which have spawned the cliché ‘Beam me up, Scotty.’ It’s a quirky back-story to the main concept of The Fly that Langelaan himself endured changes to his flesh, having surgery to reduce the size of his extraordinarily big ears before he parachuted into Nazi-occupied France in World War II, in case they called attention to him and jeopardised the mission.
Cronenberg’s 1986 adaptation of The Fly is a celebration of the beauty and energy and fecundity of the flesh, and the even more awesome energy generated by its corruption. Brundle may have puked on his tricycle when he was a boy, but, by the time he’s been grossly disfigured and deformed by the fusion of his body with the molecular particles of a fly, he’s puked disgustingly on lots of other things as well. Still he manages to quip and tease: even in the process of metamorphosing into an enormous insect, the flicker of his humour, the warmth of his humanity, can be seen in his eyes. There’s something in the irony of the fly’s power and energy which is gruesomely fascinating… ironic because flies, in everyday life, are just small and very annoying things to swat and swear at. But their manic, buzzing power can be almost overwhelming, and their corruption of the flesh creates an energy more marvelous in death than in life.
And so Seth Brundle, already a handsome and vigorous young man, becomes even more vigorous as the power of the fly grows inside him. He’s a superb gymnast… he talks faster and more passionately… he makes love inexhaustibly, until it would seem he has not a drop of fluid left in his tireless body. Impatient with his lover when she’s reluctant to go through the telepods herself, he sends her packing, throwing himself into the city streets to find ways to channel his energies and find a partner who might have the courage to try and keep up with him. Even when he realises the awful truth, that his transformation is being worked by the fusion of the fly into his body, Brundle marvels at the miracle of it, as he crawls across the ceiling and walls of his laboratory, persuading himself that the change he is undergoing might be good, imbuing him with powers beyond the imagination of ordinary humans…
The Fly is quick with humour and a strange warmth, the vitality of human beings in love, who care for each other. Geena Davis brings tenderness and a seriousness of purpose to her role, which other actresses might have found hard to generate in a sci-fi shocker. Jeff Goldblum is charming and funny, setting off bomblets of jokes, squibs of anger, and ultimately, as the awful process of his transformation is completed, portraying a heartbreaking sadness as he feels his humanity being quenched and exhausted and consumed. ‘I am an insect,’ he mumbles through the remains of his human face, ‘I am an insect who dreamed he was a man, and loved it, and now is awake again.’
It’s a moving climax to the story. Some critics have expressed disappointment in The Fly for not delivering more footage of the man as fly, that we don’t see the Brundlefly for more than a few terrible moments in the last minute of the film… it’s the story of a man whose very molecular structure is fused and re-grown into the being of a fly, they say, so let’s see the fly, let’s see him flying, for heaven’s sake, an enormous, terrifying man-fly! But no, the point of the story is the transformation, not the result. It’s about a man, a human being, who loves a woman and is loved by her, whose flesh is changed so utterly that they cannot be together. I’m surprised, watching a ‘horror film’, that I’m moved more deeply by the sadness of it than by the horror.
Be moved, be very moved. Not such a catchy tag-line as the classic ‘Be afraid, be very afraid.’ But it’s the human drama of the story which makes The Fly such a good and memorable film, which runs deeper than the
fear it generates…
ROBOCOP
(Director: Paul Verhoeven; starring: Peter Weller, Nancy Allen, Dan O’Herlihy, Ronny Cox - 1987)
Jeff Strand
You wouldn’t expect a movie about a goofy-looking cyborg to have one of the greatest dark comedy moments in film history, but there it is: a guy getting shredded by machine gun fire during a boardroom presentation gone awry.
This masterpiece of sick humour comes right after a complete failure of a joke. Dick Jones (Ronny Cox) is demonstrating the ED-209 model law enforcement robot, and needs a volunteer. He hands the soon-to-be-extremely-deceased guy a gun and tells him to use it in a threatening manner. The volunteer points the gun at Jones, who looks at him like he’s a complete idiot and says, ‘Point it at ED-209.’ We get a reaction shot of other people in the meeting snickering at the stupidity on display.
Now, if you were simulating a crime-in-progress, why wouldn’t you point your gun at the human you were going to rob instead of the indestructible giant robot? I think the guy’s logic was sound, and this was an unwarranted blow to his dignity right before his splattery demise. The entire ED-209 project seems poorly conceived from the beginning, and of course it gets worse when the guy, after being told by the robot that he has 20 seconds to comply, drops the gun as instructed and is then told that he now has 15 seconds to comply. Oops. Robot glitch.
At this point, we know where the joke is going. What blew me right the hell out of my theatre seat in 1987 was how graphic the punch line turned out to be, even after being famously trimmed down to get an R-rating in the United States. Sure, I expected to see the robot kill the guy, but I most certainly did not expect that level of carnage. The sheer excess of the moment (why would a law enforcement robot need to pump hundreds of bullets into a suspect instead of, say, two?) is part of the film’s satirical brilliance.
Cinema Futura (edited by Mark Morris) Page 17