Movie posters

The Searchers

THE SEARCHERS (1956). John Wayne and Jeffrey Hunter spend years searching for Wayne's niece (Natalie Wood), who was abducted as a child by Comanches. Far from a picaresque adventure yarn, The Searchers is director John Ford's forceful meditation on racism, revenge and obsession -- one of the most powerful ever filmed. And Wayne's portrayal of a brutishly obsessed "savior" is downright frightening. (119 mins)

Jonathan Lethem said of Wayne’s portrayal of Edwards that he was “tormented and tormenting ... his fury is righteous and ugly, at once, resentment branded as a fetish.”

While the movie was primarily set in the staked plains of Northwest Texas, it was actually filmed in Monument Valley. This geographical space became the icon of Ford’s America.

In a 1964 interview with Cosmopolitan magazine Ford said:
“There’s some merit to the charge that the Indian hasn’t been portrayed accurately or fairly in the Western, but again, this charge has been a broad generalization and often unfair. The Indian didn’t welcome the white man... and he wasn’t diplomatic... If he has been treated unfairly by whites in films, that, unfortunately, was often the case in real life. There was much racial prejudice in the West.

Within the movie there is the dialectic of mobility vs stability, trail vs hearth. Ethan’s mobility is seductive at first but then becomes problemetized by his racism.

The traditional icons of white vs native, civilized vs virile. In order for Ethan to match the virility of the other (the Indian), he must become an outsider to civilization. Interestingly, Ethan loves his brother’s wife, and it is the impotence of the borther that causes her death.

In this film, “someday this country is going to be a fine country”, in Easy Rider, “this used to be one hell of a country”

Many now draw the parallel to the hype created to draw us into the war on Iraq. Have we again been lead by one who is creating an Other for us to hate?

The intro is striking- a brick wall and the theme, “what makes a man to wander, what makes a man to do wrong?”

Pee Wee's Big Adventure

PEE WEE'S BIG ADVENTURE (1985). When his treasured bike is stolen outside Chuck's Bike-O-Rama, Pee-Wee Herman (Paul Reubens) is devastated -- and he'll do anything to get it back. Working off a hot tip that his wheels may be stashed in the Alamo's basement, Pee-Wee leaves his girlfriend (Elizabeth Daily) and sets off on a whirlwind cross-country adventure. Quirky filmmaker Tim Burton directs this classic comedy with an all-star cast that's too long to list. (90 mins)

Was it really funny, or was it just creepy?

One of the striking differences about Pee Wee is that although he already lives in a fantasy world, he still requires a road trip to actualize his "self."

Loss of the bike is a loss of transport and yet this creates the structure for the road trip and thus Pee Wee's ultimate transformation.

What is Burton trying to tell us -- "I've really learned something out here -- humility"-- and yet, at this point Pee Wee is still at the beginning of his quest.

Play on Tropes/Iconic moments: Asian Butler, Fighting in a pool, breaking down a door with a shoulder, noir lighting in the basement, shadows in the alley, keystone kapers, amneisa as a plot device, dreams as dance acts, ET, recap at the end of the film, Wizard of Oz, Bambi, Return of the Jedi, Hobos, Buster Keaton / Charlie Chaplin

Repo Man

REPO MAN (1984). This is a cult classic from Alex Cox (director of Sid & Nancy. Lacking role models and a purpose, baby-faced delinquent Otto (Emilio Estevez) finds a code of honor and a higher calling when he hooks up with a band of contemporary "knights": the repo men. A "seasoned" auto repossessor (Harry Dean Stanton) shows Otto the ropes, and when a big reward is offered for an elusive 1964 Malibu, Otto dodges G-men, cops, religious kooks, and more, in a frenzied quest for the car. Does his fate lie in its trunk? (93 mins)

The use of the alien is a significant plot device- a commentary on "freaks", a reference to fears of radiation and nuclear devices, a reference to 50's B movies, and perhaps even a nod to the need for something to believe in despite the empty consumer culture of the 1980's.

The character of Miller is that of "The Fool", a long used plot device for delivering important information in a subtle way.

This film is tremendously post-modern in the disappearance of the critical distance; the text embraces the object of commentary. In this case what is the commentary? Consumerism? Bad films? Loss of meaning?

And yet the text also mocks everything. It mocks the hippies and the 1970's, it mocks the punk counter culture, mocks the government and scientists. What is left at the end for us to believe in?

Wild at Heart

WILD AT HEART (1990). Barry Gifford's neopulp novel inspired this controversial cult film from director David Lynch. A star-crossed couple on the lam (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) is in for the most gruesome ride of their lives when they encounter a handful of bizarre -- and perhaps murderous -- strangers (played by the likes of Sheryl Lee and Willem Dafoe). (124 mins)

Some of the themes:

Elvis as:

Rebellious prototype
Camp humor
Nostalgia for the 50’s

Baudrillard says of the 50’s “ the real high spot for the US (‘when things were going on’) and you can still feel the nostalgia for those years, for the ecstasy of power, when power still held power.”

“To ridicule and to celebrate are reversible and interchangeable”

Flame as symbol of rebellion (like Badlands)

Again there is the impetus to start a family (like True Romance), but on the road, they are actually sexy and sensual

Like other post-modern road films the journey gets diluted, restricted, circumscribed, and minimized.

Dream-like ending- surrealist strategy of not distinguishing between the dream world and the real world (making freams real)

In the end, the car is actually stuck in traffic- not moving.

Traditional family represents stasis and being on the run turns them into a dangerous, mobile pair.

Note of the Week (for Badlands)

Peacock feathers....

Themes of the Road Trip Movie (a mid-season introduction)

Season Three of Rowhouse Film Festival is called "On The Road." Starting with a quintessential road movie, Easy Rider, we'll explore the genre of the road film as a manifesto for freedom & wandering, and as the anti-establishment American dream.

We all go on roadtrips and inevitably they have marked meaningful moments in our lives. So what is it about the open road and us driving down them that is so compelling for us (and filmmakers) to try to capture?

Very loosely, this is what we're trying to explore here this season by examining 12 films about being "On The Road." We've built and organized our series around a few obvious themes, general sub-categories (perhaps meaningless) that they all can fit into: the buddy flick, romance on the road, the lone rider on a quest, and the family who strike on the road for new beginnings.

But what we find when we look a little further into what is now become a genre in American film making -- "the road movie" -- are the inseperable iconography of the car and the horizon which surrounds it. Most strikingly we see in cars an individualist mode of transportation, a modern interpretation of a rugged cowboy's horse. And the expanse of open road articulates a similar manifest destiny to modernize and to make the unknown known.

And yet, mining the cinematic history of these mobile obsessions, we might find that the films themselves repeatedly focus on the consequences of a culture moving away from the stabilizing structures of community and communication. There is often desperation and turmoil which send our travellers adrift in a desire to find significance and perhaps stability in the contemporary world.

Badlands

BADLANDS (1973): Young garbage man Kit Caruthers (Martin Sheen) and his girlfriend, Holly (Sissy Spacek) hit the road in South Dakota on the run from the law. Writer-director Terrence Malick's script (for his feature film debut), based on a real outlaw couple in 1958, does not judge its characters as they make their way to the Badlands of Montana, leaving a trail of senseless and random murders in their wake. (95 mins)

Thoughts from Badlands...

Utilizes the stark landscape and verite cinemetography

• The woman is the storyteller while the action is done by the man- in other words, the laconic voice over in the begining represents apathy rather than agency.

• Kit deisires to become a rebellion like James Dean, and yet his dream is to move to Canada and get a job on an oil rig (rather a blue collar worker's dream)

• Play-acting by Kit and Holly

build a treehouse and play house

kit plays a soldier who must protect their camp

Holly plays at being a cheerleader and an outlaw

• There is a futility to the chase that Kit is loathe to admit- it ends because he runs out of gas.

• Kit is likeable- even glorified by the police at the end and we, as the distance audience (like Holly), can comment on the lack of real disctinction between good and evil, law and disorder.

• "Outlaws belong in society"
  
  
  
  

Note of the Week (for True Romance)

True Romance

TRUE ROMANCE (1993). In this darkly comic web of crime, murder and mayhem from writer Quentin Tarantino and director Tony Scott, novice prostitute Alabama Whitman (Patricia Arquette) and her lover, comic book store clerk Clarence Worley (Christian Slater), become a Bonnie and Clyde for the 1990s. When Clarence kills Alabama's pimp, the newlyweds ride off into the sunset -- with $5 million worth of cocaine in a suitcase and the police and the mob on their trail. (123 mins)

Here are a couple of things that came up during the discussion:

*One of the most interesting things about True Romance is that despite it being a film about two supposed rebels, what we see in the end is a picture-perfect family -- mom, dad, and baby living happily ever after on a beach somewhere. But then again, the narration (the voice of Alabama) tells the viewer that if Clarence had died in the shoot out, "things would have pretty much turned out the same." This echoes her blasé introductory voice over in the opening scene.

* Despite being a road film, the two protagonists (and thus we) aren't seen a lot on the open road. But it still feels like a "road movie" through and through, especially if you consider some of the symbolism of the road: it's a place on which this good-natured couple is forced to traverse after leaving their cozy, safe (if not somewhat stagnant) lives in Detroit; it's where they arguably mature and come of age as they travel through LA, a city of endless intertwined freeways; and it represents the means to their paradise -- they get off the road and settle into their lives on the beach, a kind of paradise, as we see in the final scene.

*The issue of Clarence's moral character came up too: Was he an innocent comic book-loving nice guy who found himself needing to defend his wife's honor and was in fact forced into a life of violence? Or was he always a bit of a rebel who just hadn't found his cause? One could argue that Alabama became his cause, and he did, after all.

Note of the Week (for Down By Law)

We love well-formatted notes. :)

Down By Law

DOWN BY LAW (1986). When fate lands three hapless men -- an unemployed disc jockey (Tom Waits), a small-time pimp (John Lurie) and a strong-willed Italian tourist (Roberto Benigni) -- in a New Orleans prison, their adventure toward escape and freedom begins. Director Jim Jarmusch delivers a twisted comedy filled with fine performances and sharp black-and-white frames from cinematographer Robby Müller. (107 mins)

Some themes that came up in the discussion:

*As noticed by a few people, for a "road movie" Down By Law has a striking lack of on-the-road scenes and an absence of a actual car, and yet we sense the arc and denouement of a road trip film here. How is it that we still feel more or less ok with categorizing film in this road movie genre? Or do we not?

*If not, perhaps it's because we are responding to a quality -- general to most of director Jim Jarmusch's films -- of ambiguity, and a sense that nothing is ever realized from the journey, that it may all be pointless. In his often farcical or satirical films, the characters have been described as seeming "listless" or "jaded," and this signifies a movement away from Hollywood and back to independent filmmaking. In fact, Jarmusch is known to have distanced himself from "high concept" and MTV aesthetics, and particularly in this film the slow and ambiguous action on the road is itself a rebellion to the crash-and-burn quality in mainstream Hollywood cinema, especially in the road genre. As one critic says, "Jarmusch embraces the artificiality of performance and the performance of artificiality." Stylistically, there is the feeling of stasis, due in part to his long single takes and sparse editing which reflects his resistance to intermingling the the styles of televion/advertising with filmmaking

*Jarmusch's characters (who are often somewhat listless) don't have the same kind of more traditional metamorphosis or transformation that we see in other more mainstream road movies (like Thelma & Louise for example). So in the end do we, Rowhouse Film Fest members, leave satisfied that this road trip had gone somewhere meaningful -- either literally or metaphorically?

Roberto (played by Roberto Benigni, who might remind a modern-day viewer of Sasha Barron Cohen's character, Borat ... or vice-versa) is hardly jaded at all; he is talkative, confident, of course comedic, and is even oblivious of his own comedy -- which is exactly what makes it comedic in the first place. His scene are filled with culture clashing and language barriers and are played perfectly by Benigni who offers relief to an otherwise muted, more subdued film.

*Yet Zack (Tom Waits) is the opposite: he is almost completely silent during his time in jail -- that is, except for when he is asked by Jack (John Lurie) to prove his identity; and he does just that during his fake broadcast scene where he instantly transforms himself, for a moment, into the cool, New Orleans DJ , using his invented radio voice, which is in fact just a ruse for how sad, down-on-his-luck, and alcoholic his really is. Zack is perhaps the saddest and arguably most pathetic character in this film of listless escaped convicts. He seems more concerned about his shoes than his albums (his source of employment), for example, when he's thrown out of his girlfriend's apartment and into the street.

*Some last questions posed by the group: Does this film feel similar stylistically to Easy Rider, a now classic independent film of it's era? And what is it about the "I scream, you scream, we all scream for ice cream" scene that is so compelling?

*Lastly, and perhaps most importantly, how f-ing cool are these two cats? (Below: Jarmusch & Waits, 1984). Wow. (Nice shoes indeed, Tom!)

Note of the week (for Thelma & Louise)

Note of the Week (for Easy Rider)

For the Easy Rider screen, this it little treasure was left behind. Anyone want to claim it, or anybody want to attempt to decipher? :)