A Journey Through My Collection: The 1980's
Although I was born in the 1980’s, I have always been very reluctant to embrace pop culture from the ‘80’s. It just never felt good to me, and I wasn’t especially nostalgic for it because it even felt off-putting at the time. I was surprised in recent years to learn that 1980 is considered one of the great years in movies. In my own collection I do have a few favorites: Fellini’s City of Women, Kurosawa’s Kagemusha, De Palma’s Dressed to Kill, Scorsese’s Raging Bull, Cimino’s Heaven’s Gate, perhaps my most favorite movie of all time the Empire Strikes Back and another in the running Kubrick’s The Shining. 1980 is considered the end of the cinematic ‘70’s and Raging Bull is considered the exclamation point of prestige cinema of the time, and Heaven’s Gate is considered the period to kill off free wheeling studios as things became more corporate for the rest of the decade. Other successful movies of the year were 9 to 5, the second highest grossing film of the year, Kramer vs Kramer, The Blues Brothers, Caddyshack, and Friday the 13th. While the Cold War was winding down, the themes of the 1980’s movies from my collection happen to mostly be a reconning of the glossed over Corporate takeover of America and popular culture. While the films became greater marketing venues for the studios and the movies became more about capitalism, the end of the decade also saw Gus Van Sant with one of the early indies sneaking under the radar with a microbudget prestige film, a reinvention of the spirit of the prestige ‘70’s, a theme that would only explode in the ‘90’s.
The Shining (1980)
I’m not the biggest reader of Stephen King, although I have read or listened to a couple of his stories, I have watched almost all of the movies based on his writings. For the most part, they are all really good at capturing a feeling that he creates in his writing, some of it is that he is so good with unique themes, but he also tends to work with directors that he is comfortable with. That wasn’t entirely the case with The Shining. Kubrick and King butted heads creatively, Kubrick had his own artistic vision that he executed perfectly and King was at a low point of substance abuse that did not allow for much of an open mind for creative changes of the source material. Mike Flanagan had already established a creative relationship with King on his previous movie, Gerald’s Game, a hidden gem straight to Netflix horror story of a woman left chained to a bed after her husband dies during a romantic getaway and the horrific things that subsequently happen, and terrible memories that haunt her as well. It’s a perfect survey of some of King’s favorite themes of eclipses, childhood trauma, toxic couples and haunting imagery. All that was missing was something more supernatural. Doctor Sleep is all about the supernatural, as a sequel to The Shining, this realizes the potential of the power to shine to an extent that it feels like Earth’s horrific version of the force. Light and Dark, jedi, and mysterious powers of the mind. I like to think of this as the glue that connects shining or the force with a galaxy far far away that has institutionalized the supernatural and Earth, where special powers are still a mystery and often untested or unknown. In my own head-cannon, I have also thought of Andrei Tarkovsky’s Stalker as laying hints to the force’s mysterious touch on Earth. On rewatch, I really love Doctor Sleep. I could have happily accepted an entire movie of the hospice sequences, but the greater connection to shining and the Overlook Hotel create a very full cinematic experience.
This is the power of Kubrick’s The Shining, that King could hate it so much at the time, but when the film version of the sequel book came along, it related back to the mythology and imagery of the film as well as I can assume the story points of the books. I am not much of a horror fan, but this is such a striking film in so many ways, that I can’t help but to love this as one of my favorite films of all time. It has an incredible power over people, not just in the very interesting documentary Room 237, a sometimes innovate, with some misguided interview subjects, but a mostly benevolent conspiracy theory filled take on the film. The Hotel is also recreated in Spielberg’s Ready Player One film, the closest Spielberg and King had come to working together, a movie that intends to have fun but perhaps overstuffs itself, but the moment that they enter the hotel and the music plays the hair on my arms stood up. Yes, it’s a house of horrors, but I can’t help but fantasize about getting a chance to live in that space, to wander, to read and to write. But let’s face it, I would end up wasting hours of the day on the normal time suck activities of the day. And I don’t think deciding on what to make for dinner would be possible, staring at those giant cans of food.
Time Bandits (1981)
The end of this movie lived in night nightmares for years of my childhood. And yet, when I rewatched this as a teen I absolutely loved this, and still do. This feels like a lot of other movies that are seemingly unrelated. There's something about the score and the parents at the beginning that gives me flashbacks to Clockwork Orange like the boy is Alex's younger brother. The minotaur was conflated in my mind for years with Pasolini's Oedipus Rex from the simplicity of the costumes and the golden sunlight. It only makes sense that the final scene where Sean Connery gives a knowing glance to the boy, and yet the boy is not freed from his thoughtless parents, his life is ruined and now doesn't have a place to live as all of the adults are either dead or fleeing away.
The King of Comedy (1982)
This came up as a film in an Italian Americans in Film class I took 20 years ago and at the time I had no concept of Scorsese directing anything other than coked masculine in the vicinity of the gangster genre. This was a surprise to me. And yet, it feels like this is as definitive of a Scorsese film as you can get in a lot of ways. There are a handful of kinds of Scorsese films, Masculine/Gangster movies like Casino or Raging Bull or Taxi Driver; the spiritual trilogy of The Last Temptation of Christ, Kundun and Silence; Weirdo movies like this, After Hours, Bringing out the Dead and Taxi Driver could venn diagram its way over here too; and then there's the music documentaries of Bob Dylan, the Band, George Harrison and the Rolling Stones. I think there's another category or two or three of his early films, his recent glossy films, his historical pieces and Hugo is its own thing altogether. What it really comes down to is that he is a fantastically good visual, stylized director with a sense of his soundtracks and scores, who knows his own writing style as well as those of collaborators very well and he knows what subjects he really loves.
Here, there is fascination with late night talk shows and celebrity as well as the dangers of fandom. De Niro is so uncomfortably weird in a way that is redeemed by the endearing weirdness of Sandra Bernhart. Jerry Lewis is such an authoritative figure as a comedian and as a "king" to be able to carry the film. This is so well shot and it creates a Late Night Comedy world that is believable that this show would exist in this form. That's a hard trick to pull off, it works on The Larry Sanders Show, but is questionable in The Joker and Late Night With The Devil. It's hard to ignore the idea that The Joker lives in a universe where Rupert Pupkin comes back and gets his own show that he hosts for two or three decades to the point that he finally becomes comfortable in his own skin to finally be a "king."
Local Hero (1983)
I hadn't heard of this movie before I got it as a gift. I didn't know what to expect, considering the fact that I am not a big fan of 1980's culture, and I had found that the year of my birth, 1983, seemed to be a year of entertainment that I especially do not enjoy. My memories of the '80's were that at the time movies and music had a hollowness to them, that synth sounds embraced pitches that lack depth and remind me of my own tinnitus. The colors of the time felt sickening and nothing felt new, everything was instantly dated. However, this is as near a perfect film, and a timeless film, as you can get. The humor is delightful, light hearted, yet possessing a bit of an edge. This treats the big business 1980's as a mixture of impostures and a dark underbelly, at odds with adults that really just want to capture a childhood purity. Amazingly beautiful in the way this is shot, the world of the company and the Scottish town are treated with incredible worldbuilding. I may have come to this late, but this has become a favorite. This is a reminder that while the culture was inundated with a lot of garbage and ugliness with a coat of paint over it, the 1980's were also a time where filmmaking started to really capture the beauty of prestige cinematography and pace and great works of art were still breaking through.
This is Spinal Tap (1984)
It is shocking how funny this movie still is after so many rewatches, considering the nature of comedy as an artform that does not lend itself to longevity. This movie is 40 years old and I have seen it at least a dozen times and I still get surprised by different jokes on each viewing. Frankly, on this viewing, I was shocked by how damn good the music is, considering the fact that this was not a movie whose soundtrack was crafted by a well known musician or group that was brought in to make it sound professional. The comedians wrote the music and performed it, and it came out sounding like a period appropriate group that would churn out hits. On this viewing I was surprised that the first or second line in the very first song there was a hilarious joke that I had never picked up on before because it just sounded like a radio hit on its own.
I have a dream that the sequel would be a mixture of the Winds of Change story of a possible CIA plot to use a popular band's song to start a revolution and Sugar Man where a guy didn't realize his song had made it big in a country on the other side of the world. They would have had an album they made in their heyday that was incredibly raunchy, but the master got lost and they never released it, only to find out decades later that it was stolen and released in a former Soviet Republic and the liner notes were badly translated to make it sound like they were singing about freedom, instead of something like golden showers or something. They go on a tour in this country as heroes to find that the regime that came to power after the soviets was really a strange oligarch that rewrote the nation's history in his image. They are a little blind to it being bad and are taken in by him, but also agree to write a new album for him. The album is not received well, the government is overthrown again and as they are fleeing in a helicopter, airlifted out, one of them remarks, "you know, the weird thing is that this exact situation has happened to us like two times before and I'll tell you it's a bitch to get those back royalties. Yeah, in South America and Asia. Same Album, too. You'd think that one of us would remember it."
Tampopo (1985)
Akira Kurosawa complained that he didn't have any contemporaries in Japan, that his films were more embraced in the west than in his home country. This very much is an example of what feels to me like an illustration of 1980's Japanese culture in film and it is very contrary to the outlook on life of Kurosawa's films at the time. I don't know about its impact at the time, but Tampopo has has a cultural footprint nearly 40 years later as a celebration of food and life and humor. The '80's were a strange time for these concepts in the US, by the '90's a lot of those ideals were flipped by the counterculture, but in Japan, the '80's seem like a jumping off point for humor and joyous and sexual art. It's great that Kurosawa had the imprint on the world that he had, but films like Tampopo bring a nice balance of light to the dark.
Mala Noche (1986)
When I started seeing movies through a serious lense in my formative years, Gus Van Sant is one of the first directors that I thought of as one of my favorites that was was making smart, artistic and funny films. It wasn't until I recently revisited his films. and found a French box set of a few of his films that I got my hands on the DVD for his first film, Mala Noche, which I had never seen before. I didn't realize when I ordered this that it was Region 2 and I would have to change the region on an old DVD player to see the movies. Worth it!
This is a great example of the amazing low budget debuts that came out of the '80's and '90's, and a surprising number of those movies still hold up and the directors are still making movies. This is startling for how great it looks, almost like an old Noir film with more recent techniques, great cinematography and zero inhibitions to be aqueer movie in a time when that was not a safe thing to do.
The Last Emperor (1987)
I probably saw this at a way too early age. I think it was one of the ten movies in the tiny Library in the town where my Grandparents had their summer house and I had free reign to sit through any tapes I could get my hands on. I think I was maybe ten years old and even at that age the sweeping story, amazing cinematography and full orchestra score was bold enough that the suicide attempt didn't scare me off and somehow I didn't remember there being nudity. This movie is great, it's hard to believe the Chinese government let it get made in the first place.
The Last Temptation of Christ (1988)
This is perhaps the most fascinating Scorsese movie because of how otherworldly this movie is, beautifully surreal, amazing acting and he creates something supernatural on film. Recently I watched an interesting range of movies depicting the life of Jesus, The Gospel Accorting to Matthew and The Life of Brian (funny how both movies have men's names in them, but neither is "Jesus") and all three have had very different, very insightful ways of looking at Jesus. "Matthew" is rather straightforward, however it is told from the perspective of a filmmaker that has to be hard for the church to accept. "Brian" tells the story from periferal vision from a fictional side character with the use of satire. And this is two full movies in, an almost straight telling of the life of Jesus with a perspective from Judas and a second movie where Jesus lives his life beyond the crucifiction where he is tempted with a life as a mortal man. I went to church as a kid and was always questioning until I didn't believe at all, and I love the storytelling in all three of these films and the spirit of the lessons of Jesus come through while allowing the audience to question things until the faith of suspending disbelief is rewarded.
The Abyss (1989)
While this is hardly my favorite James Cameron film, it is formative for so much of his career, both on the big screen and under the water. While he had pretty much figured out the secret sauce for a blockbuster movies with The Terminator and Aliens, The Abyss feels like his first truly epic movie in scale and runtime, although the theatrical cut seems to be the one that adds 30 minutes and pushes three hours. Cameron plays with an odd cast of characters, by the end of the movie it is almost comical to see all of these weirdos in one place. The effects look great, I’m not sure how much of it comes from revisiting postproduction in subsequent releases, but the final effects shot is jaw dropping.
Final Thoughts
My reactions at the thought of 1980’s films are of tacky colors and protagonists that on second glance might be kinda shitty, but this batch of films are examples of how beautifully shot movies can be when they’re shot on film by great directors that don’t give a shit to step on a few toes. These movies are a mixture of shocking and humorous and my two first watches of Tampopo and Mala Noche were pretty enjoyable.
Up Next!
Miller’s Crossing, Barton Fink, Reservoir Dogs, Blue, White, Red, Dead Man, Bottle Rocket, Titanic, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, The Iron Giant.
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