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Owlwise's Replies
It really is pre-Bourne, isn't it? :)
Still one of the loveliest & most striking memories of my young boyhood!
Wings Of Desire is the title you're trying to recall, and I agree that it's a wonderful film. Avoid the ghastly American remake City of Angels at all costs!
Farewell, Mrs. Peel, you're still needed.
Drugs were certainly a part of the experience, but not the sole driving force. They were one of many potential paths for inner exploration & expanding the possibilities of what was a rather narrow, materialistic worldview. Those ideas & concepts abounded then in all the arts, encouraging new & more holistic approaches to life—that's why there was so much creative brilliance then. To this day, I'll take someone using grass or LSD in a thoughtful way to someone using meth or speed or coke simply to get wasted. It was an entirely different & far more positive zeitgeist then.
Not only so critical, but so horribly nitpicky. Too many people seem to see a movie solely for the purpose of finding some flaw in it, so that they can crow about it online.
I agree with your disagreement.
And this is the inner experience of the film.
This is it exactly.
It's not about perceived film snobbery—is it so hard to believe that there are people who genuinely like & appreciate something that's artistically different? It's not meant to be viewed as a straightforward narrative, with a distinct & logic story arc; it's meant to be experienced as a totality, as a dream is experienced, as the welter of powerful memories are experienced, where time & place are fluid & overlapping, and emotional tones are what matter most. (And a binding thread can be found within this film, connecting what initially might seem random or confusing, if you give yourself over to it.)
Also, plenty of viewers don't pretend to love Citizen Kane, they flat-out love it.
Thank you for posting this link. The music works beautifully with the imagery.
It shows the complexities & contradictions of the inner landscape, the inner life, where dreams & memories & fantasies & fears are always alive & at work, even (especially) when we're not entirely conscious of them. It's not about plot or story or narrative, it's about the experience of being a person, with all the paradoxes & mysterious that come with being a person.
All meanings of the word are equally valid for this film—like life & human existence, it has a multiplicity of meanings, all of them true.
You know, those scenes <b>are</b> strongly reminiscent of many of Clarke's stories, now that you mention it. I've no doubt that he had more input than is sometimes assumed, even if the final vision & essence of the film definitely belongs to Kubrick.
It's definitely a B-movie, but it's a solid & really enjoyable B-movie that stands up to re-watching over the years. For me, it manages to capture that feeling of idealistic youthful dreams that somehow slip away, and that sense of bittersweet loss at what might have been. And it has a great soundtrack as well! Flaws & all, it's still better than a lot of A-list movies, to my mind.
I've read that Tom Berenger considers frank/Wordman his favorite role, as he's simultaneously the POV character for the viewer, the lead in a way, but he has to play it as an observer, not a catalyst—letting the other characters take the stage while he listens to them. Yet he makes us care about him.
My late Dad loved this movie, so that's another reason for my loving it as well.
For at least some of them, I think it was, or just doing what was cool & popular at the time. Which is different even from more middle-of-the-road kids actually intrigued by some of the ideas being tested, who might have incorporated a little of that into their lives for real—I'm one of those, I guess. I can smile ruefully at some of the things I embraced back then, but there's a fair amount that still makes sense to me—the best of it, I hope. Life is a lot easier with the intensity & fervor of youth in many ways; but getting older requires more depth & complexity, if done right. Or so it seems to me as I head towards my 67th birthday in just three more months. :)
The characters in both Secaucus Seven & Jonah are the real thing, however. They're trying to figure out what to keep, what to let go of, and how to live forward in a changed world, not to lose their integrity but not to cling to what doesn't work any longer, either.
The acting is uneven in Sayles' low-budget film, but overall it's a strong story, and also a fairly honest one. I completely agree with you about Sayle's work, which is always rewarding. :)
To this day I have very mixed feelings about The Big Chill. It does touch on the ways some people from my generation adjusted & sometimes compromised as they got older—don't we all to some degree?—but they never quite convince me that they were as genuinely countercultural in their youth as the script wants to make us believe.
The spoiler part of your post isn't entirely unbelievable, though, given the mores of their youth, which were more casual & giving about sex. They could easily have looked on it as a generous & considerate thing for friends to do for one another. It was a totally different zeitgeist then! I'm of an age with them & I could see it as generous & considerate for some, if not for myself.
I do agree that the characters all seem to be more "written" than actually lived. For a more accurate view of post-60s people, go to The Return of the Secaucus Seven; or even better, Jonah Who Will Be 25 in the Year 2000. The latter still isn't out on an American DVD, unfortunately, though it might be found online; but it deals with friends who are former young countercultural rebels, still trying to live out their ideals in a very changed world. None of them have the glamorous careers of the people in The Big Chill; they're far more realistic & complex than that.
They knew how to be sexy, witty, and classy, all at the same time, back then.
At least the Flash Gordon quote was meant to be campy & fun. Can't say that about a lot of the others.