Somewhere in Time (1980)

 

Somewhere in Time is beautifully shot even though it uses soft focus so much I did wonder if my eyesight might be going. It also has a lovely score that’s based somewhat on a “Variations on a Theme by Paganini” by Rachmaninoff. It features very likeable performances from Christopher Reeve as playwright Richard Collier and Jane Seymour as actress Elise McKenna. There’s even a nice, if brief, turn by Christopher Plummer as Elise’s manager. Despite all of the strong aspects of the film, however, the plot is astonishingly strange. While still a college student, Richard meets an old woman who gives him a watch and says, “Come back to me.” He doesn’t do anything about this strange behavior at the time – although you’d think asking her who she is would be of paramount importance – and time passes, quite a bit of time, actually, eight years. He goes to a hotel to work and falls in love with a photograph of Elise from 1912 that’s on display in the hotel museum. (Do lots of hotels have museums?) It turns out she was the old woman he encountered, and he starts doing research to find out as much as possible about her. Then, in a rather abrupt turn, thanks to finding a book on the subject among Elise’s possessions, he begins talking to an old professor of his about time travel because the professor – coincidentally – wrote the book Elise had. Richard gets some old money and, in essence, “wills” himself back to 1912 so that he can meet and fall in love with Elise. I realize that this is a fantasy romance, but it does seem to stretch credulity to think someone could just will themselves back in time. Wouldn’t we all do that in order to change the past, at least some of it? Richard and Elise have very little time together, less than two days, really, but she makes an improvised speech on stage during her performance that is clearly aimed at him and then she returns to make love to him after her manager tries to separate them. Unfortunately, Richard sees a penny from 1979 and that brings him back to the present because, of course, a penny would ruin everything romantic. Was everything that happened to him just a dream or was it a fantasy or did any of it really happen? Is it possible that someone like Arthur (Bill Erwin), now the bellman, could still be working at the same hotel for more than sixty years? The film raises a lot of questions that remain unanswered, and I know that it’s a romantic movie about meeting someone you’re destined to fall in love with and that’s enough for most viewers. I can’t blame them, I suppose, but when Richard starts to starve himself after coming back to the present, I knew where this is headed. I guess if you can will yourself back into the past (although that apparently works just the one time), then you can will yourself to die so that you can reunite with your long-dead loved one.

Oscar Nomination: Best Costume Design

The Empire Strikes Back (1980)

 

The Empire Strikes Back (now known as Star Wars: Episode V – The Empire Strikes Back, a ludicrously long title) is a darker, more intense sequel to Star Wars (1977). It’s that rare sequel to improve and expand upon its predecessor; if anything, this second film enriched the mythology of the entire saga and provided a greater sense of danger as we are witness once again to a series of battles between the Rebel Alliance and the Empire. The opening sequence takes place on the ice planet of Hoth and involves those lumbering, elephantine Imperial Walkers, the toy version of which was very popular in the Christmas season of 1980. (It is strange how many kids back then wanted a toy that represented the “evil” side in the battle.) What follows is a harrowing escape attempt by the crew of the Millennium Falcon into an asteroid field, lessons on the power of The Force, a series of hide-and-seek moments on a far-flung mining colony, and a climactic light saber battle between Darth Vader and Luke Skywalker (Mark Hamill)—and a revelation about Luke’s parentage that still stands as one of the greatest plot twists in film history. However, rather than keep its primary focus upon Skywalker as Star Wars did, this film gives all three principal characters—Luke, Princess Leia (Carrie Fisher), and Han Solo (Harrison Ford)—a more equal focus, and the characters (and the actors’ portrayals of them) deepen as we get to know more about them. The central portion of the film intercuts between Luke’s training in the ways of the Jedi on Dagobah, Han and Leia’s attempts to hide out in Cloud City under the protection of Lando Calrissian (Billy Dee Williams), and Darth Vader’s varied attempts to find the three rebel leaders. Such an interweaving of locations and plot threads keeps The Empire Strikes Back a compelling watch. A couple of new characters are introduced in this episode, most notably Yoda, the diminutive Jedi master who trains Luke in the ways of the Force, and fanboy favorite Boba Fett, the bounty hunter out to capture Han Solo. Yoda is a true boost of adrenaline to the plot with his witty aphorisms and enigmatic, even confusing explanations of the Force and its Dark Side. When it comes to comic relief, only R2D2, who is quite “verbal” in this film, comes close to stealing the focus from Yoda. By the way, despite having “died” in the first film, Obi-Wan “Ben” Kenobi (Alec Guiness) is also still here although he is more of a spectral presence this time around. The ending of The Empire Strikes Back provides no true sense of closure, but it does set up the final part of the initial trilogy, Return of the Jedi, with a sufficient amount of intrigue without making the audience feel cheated.

Oscar Wins: Best Sound and Special Achievement Award for Visual Effects

Other Oscar Nominations: Best Art Direction and Best Original Score

Coal Miner's Daughter (1980)

Coal Miner's Daughter, a nominee for Best Picture of 1980, is the story of country music superstar Loretta Lynn. Well, to be honest, it's really more about the story of Lynn's lifelong romance with her husband, Doolittle or "Mooney." Rather than have a biopic that focuses primarily on the rise of Lynn's career, the filmmakers have chosen to keep the emphasis on the ups and downs associated with her marriage, particularly as they affected her career at times. It's an intriguing move because it takes most of the emphasis away from what Lynn is perhaps best known for doing, her music, and puts the story squarely in the tradition of romantic movies. However, this is a somewhat unconventional love story.

Sissy Spacek plays Lynn, and while she doesn't really look all that much like Lynn to me, I have to give her credit for never trying to do an impression of the superstar. Spacek sings on her own--her voice is not dubbed by Lynn--and, as a result, she becomes much more realistic in the role. She won an Oscar for her portrayal. I might have preferred a win by Mary Tyler Moore as that tightly wound mother in Ordinary People, but you can't argue with the depth of Spacek's portrayal in this film.

Her husband is played by a young and impossibly handsome Tommy Lee Jones. Jones has a tough job to do in this film. He has to remain likable despite being a womanizer. Lynn should know better than to fall in love with Doolittle. After all, he got his nickname "Mooney" from his dangerous work as a moonshiner. Yet the film suggests that you can't stop people from falling in love although her parents certainly do their part to keep their 14-year-old daughter safe from the advances of Jones' former soldier. It has to be the sense of adventure he represents that excites her so, and Jones certainly depicts that with all of the emotions that devilish grin of his can muster.

Lynn co-wrote the book on which the film is based, and she used the plain language with which she always speaks. The film mirrors that sense of plainness in its depictions of various stages of the Lynns' marriage. The wedding night is a disaster, for example, and she is one of the most inept housewives ever, it seems. He gets a job in a coal mine, a job he hates, and it isn't long before he hits her and later starts cheating on her. The kids come in quick succession, and the family doesn't seem to be making much financial headway until Doo (Loretta's own nickname for her husband) buys her a guitar for their anniversary.

When the film allows Spacek to sing, you begin to see just how enticing performing was to Lynn. The first audience (at a Grange Hall) gives her a thrill, and it isn't long before her career becomes the focus of the marriage. She writes a song for herself, "Honky Tonk Girl," and it becomes a hit thanks to the two of them driving around asking deejays to play it. I really enjoyed watching the performances throughout the second part of the film. Lynn's debut at the Grand Ole Opry, for example, features Ernest Tubb, and I can remember seeing him perform a couple of times when I made it to Nashville. You also have to admire how quickly she's able to react to events in her life and turn them into songs. It's not long after she finds Doolittle in the back of a car with another woman that she writes "You Ain't Woman Enough to Take My Man," one of my favorite Lynn songs.

By the way, there's also a couple of moments set in Tillie's Orchid Lounge, which I have also visited. It looks a lot cleaner in the movies, let me tell you. When I had a drink there back in 1994 or so, the walls were stained from all of the cigarette smoke and the smell of alcohol permeated the place. Legends die hard, I suppose. Or, perhaps, they've cleaned the place up to appeal more to tourists.

There's a key cameo by Beverly D'Angelo as Patsy Cline, who befriended Lynn and even helped her in her career. The two of them have a couple of songs they sing together, and both of them have strong voices. Again, these are not attempts to copy the singing of the actual stars. I suppose it's more of an homage or even a suggestion of how the "originals" really sang. Cline's death was quite a blow to Lynn, and the significance of that moment is powerfully demonstrated in this film.

If I have any harsh criticism of the film, it's probably the handling of Lynn's alleged mental breakdown. It just happens so quickly. Suddenly, Lynn's taking pills to help her sleep and fight off headaches; there's no gradual increase in her drug usage. She and Doo are fighting all the time, but she wants him with her on the road. The reasons for their fighting are not always apparent, but perhaps it's just the hardship of being on the road all the time? He and the members of the band have to feed her lines to her songs so she can remember the words, but in performances depicted only moments before, she's just fine on stage. It's all there, but her collapse on stage seems as if it comes out of the blue when, in truth, there had to have been a series of signs that Lynn's health was deteriorating.

I have always admired Loretta Lynn. I think she stands now as the greatest female singer country music has ever produced. If you look at the catalog of her songs, many of which she wrote herself about her own life, you'll see some of the best titles ever put on vinyl (or, now, CD). Coal Miner's Daughter isn't a comprehensive look at the life of this amazing woman who overcame extreme poverty to become one of the most celebrated women in the world, but then it doesn't claim to be that anyway. It is, however, a glimpse into a key aspect of who Lynn is and how she got to be that way. That is reason enough to watch this film.

Oscar Win: Actress (Spacek)

Other Oscar Nominations: Picture, Adapted Screenplay, Art Direction, Cinematography, Film Editing, and Sound

Raging Bull (1980)

I think I finally understand why Raging Bull, nominated for Best Picture of 1980, lost the award to Ordinary People. As remarkable an achievement as it is, Raging Bull is almost too clinical in its depiction of the way that violence permeates one man's life. Ordinary People, on the other hand, is a very emotional film that strikes at the heart of the family. I think, given those choices in 1980, the Academy went with the one that had the most emotional resonance for them.

That's not to say that Raging Bull doesn't have quite a powerful impact on a viewer. This is a brilliantly filmed movie, one that uses its black-and-white cinematography to full effect. It allows Robert DeNiro, then at his acting peak, to burrow into the character of real-life boxer Jake La Motta. And the screenplay is a marvel of construction, allowing us to see the progression over time of La Motta's inability to restrain his violent urges.

This is certainly one of the greatest films ever made by Martin Scorsese, and it's widely considered his best. (I still think Taxi Driver might deserve that designation, but no matter.) As in others of his pictures, Scorsese is here examining the culture of violence and how it has permeated America. La Motta is but one example of a man whose life spirals out of control because of his inability to contain the brutal urges he feels. He cannot merely "keep it in the ring." He beats up his wife and his brother, and he seems incapable of stopping himself from always making the wrong decisions about his career and his future.

To me, one of the real strengths of the film is the series of boxing matches that are depicted. There's almost a poetic beauty to the beating that two men inflict upon each other in the ring. It's pretty tough to watch at times, certainly, but the use of slow motion and the sound effects editing provide a different context for viewing the pummeling. Maybe it's that dissection of the art of boxing (a metaphor for the violence of everyday life?) that proved too much for Academy members. As much as they admired the overall achievement of the film, they just didn't "feel" the depth of pain that a man like La Motta suffered. Perhaps he just seemed like a brute to them, and they chose instead to honor a movie that tugged at their hearts more directly and softly.

Ordinary People (1980)

Ordinary People won the Oscar for Best Picture of 1980, famously beating out Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull. Everyone knows that Raging Bull is one of the best films of the entire decade of the 1980s and probably should have won the Academy Award easily that year. But after watching Ordinary People, it's easy to see why this smaller, quieter film resonated so much with the voters. It's not on a par with Scorsese's film, certainly, but it's still an exceptional movie, perhaps even more so for being the directorial debut of Robert Redford. Few people can make a movie of this consistently high quality on their first try.

Ordinary People is a film about how we deal with loss. The Jarretts, an upper class family from the North Shore of Chicago, have recently experienced the death of their older son, Buck, in a boating accident that also involved his younger brother. The father, Calvin (played with great understatement by Donald Sutherland), is trying to hold his family together; he's the peacemaker, the intermediary. Beth, his wife (played by Mary Tyler Moore in a role that is a complete 180-degrees from Mary Richards), has seemingly closed herself off emotionally to both her husband and her remaining son; she was always closer to Buck when he was live, so his death makes her even more remote. The surviving son, Conrad (Timothy Hutton--more later), has been recently released after being institutionalized and is trying to reintegrate himself into his school and the community, and he's struggling to do so.

Hutton won the Oscar for Best Supporting Actor for this role, and he is amazing. He seems completely at ease in the part, able to demonstrate just how tightly Conrad has kept his feelings under wraps. However, in his scenes with his new psychiatrist (played with great humor by Judd Hirsch), he allows himself to reveal his frustrations and his fears and his desires. It's one of those performances that you watch and then wonder why the actor didn't have a bigger career. Was he just too difficult to pinpoint in terms of appropriate roles for his talent? (I think the same might have been true for Hutton's dad, the marvelous Jim Hutton, someone I always admired as an actor but who was also sadly overshadowed too many times.) Hutton is completely realistic as this teenage boy; he inhabits this role as he were truly having difficulty returning to "normal" society.

This film is quiet. Many scenes are slowly paced, and characters are often silent as they watch others or look out of windows or other unobtrusive behavior. It's really a film about how we don't communicate with each other, despite our obvious desire to change our behavior. We seem, the film suggests, to prefer silence. I remember being at my mother's house in one of the suburbs of Chicago when this film was being made and then seeing it later and realizing just how many people were like my own family. We don't always talk about how we really feel, and Ordinary People ably demonstrates the devastating consequences of such behavior.

The Elephant Man (1980)

I couldn't watch The Elephant Man, a 1980 nominee for Best Picture, in one sitting. I kept turning it off and coming back to it after a break of a couple of hours or even a couple of days. This movie is just incredibly painful to watch. I think it's about the ways we are cruel to each other, and the depths of human cruelty displayed in this film are just too much for me to sit through for more than a few minutes at a time.

It's the story of John Merrick (played by John Hurt in award-worthy make-up), whose physical deformities have led to him being abandoned to a Victorian era freak show where he is put on display and frequently tortured and tormented by his "owner." He is rescued, at least temporarily, by a physician (played by a young Anthony Hopkins) who first wants to study him but who later befriends and tries to protect Merrick. The movie shows how, over the course of time, Merrick achieved a measure of notoriety among the elite of London society, who came to visit him at the hospital and talk with him about various subjects. He exhibited a nimble mind and a taste for artistic expression. I particularly enjoyed the scene depicting his first time watching a theatrical performance; it's a powerful, resonant moment of our collective ability to welcome others.

The first person other than the doctor to recognize the amazing soul inside the hideous figure of a man is an actress named Mrs. Kendal. She's played here by Anne Bancroft in what amounts to little more than a cameo, but what an impact her few minutes on the screen have. She manages to demonstrate both her initial revulsion over Merrick's appearance and how she overcomes that emotion, eventually becoming one of the so-called Elephant Man's closest friends. Bancroft was great in almost every part she played. Here she's so full of warmth and generosity; it's a joy to watch her. It made me realize just how much we lost when Bancroft passed away a few years ago.

It's the few heart-warming moments like the ones involving Mrs. Kendal that allow you to get through the rest of the film. I hope you don't misunderstand and think that I don't like The Elephant Man. This is truly a brilliant film in many ways, including its beautiful black-and-white cinematography, and it's perhaps one of the best films David Lynch ever directed (yes, I know, save your suggested alternatives). But what makes it so sharp (and challenging to experience) is its willingness to show us so much of the negative side of human nature: our greed, our willingness to abuse or take advantage of others, our tendency toward cruelty to and even hatred of those who are different from us. This is an emotionally wrenching film. If you didn't have a few moments of kindness and positivity now and then, I don't think you'd be able to watch it all the way through to the end. Thankfully, I did manage it. I don't think I will be able to watch The Elephant Man again for quite a while, but I'm grateful to have seen such an indictment of humanity coupled with a message about our capacity to love our fellow human beings.