"The Deer Hunter" (1978)

 

“Can’t we just comfort each other?...  Did you ever think life would turn out like this?”  Linda, the girl-next-door, to the elusive war veteran Michael, in “The Deer Hunter”

Two epic films about America, made in the 1970s, end with the singing of a song. 

“Nashville” (1975), a comic panorama of character and music, concludes with a crowd of concertgoers singing the upbeat, ironic “It Don’t Worry Me” after a sudden tragedy.  Three years later, “The Deer Hunter”, a searing portrait of an American community and its rituals, ends as a close-knit blue-collar group sings “God Bless America”, turning it into a requiem for a friend devastated by Vietnam.

The two films, while very different in content, style and tone, reflect the country in a time of uncertainty, a nation on the verge of a Bicentennial, a people divided between embracing their resilience and questioning their values.

Both films stirred hours of controversy and debate.  “The Deer Hunter”, especially, given the harrowing three hours leading up to its perplexing conclusion, left audiences sad and reflective, if not totally drained.

Modern audiences, pummeled by the double whammy of a devastating virus and an antagonistic political season, can readily identify with these emotions.

Like “Nashville”, “The Deer Hunter” is once more relevant to our moment, posing many questions and stirring us in deep, indefinable ways. Covid-19, from its ominous origins early in 2020, to its resurgence during a contentious change in leadership, has made us feel insecure and fearful, and has required unprecedented sacrifice.  It is as close as this generation has ever come to wartime.  And this pandemic-war doesn’t seem to be over yet.

Although “The Deer Hunter” is set during the specific era of the Vietnam war, it is more symbolic than literal, so it allows us to project onto it whatever we to bring to it.  The film’s almost mythic imagery works on us unconsciously, like a Rorschach test.  Part of the film’s power lies in the inability of the characters to adequately express their feelings; their inarticulate grasping results in our being emotionally devastated on their behalf.

Director Michael Cimino and his gifted cast (Robert DeNiro, John Savage, Christopher Walken, Meryl Streep, John Cazale, and scores of authentic extras), working from an epic, slightly unfocused script, has crafted a metaphor for the horrific effects of the Vietnam war on a Russian-American steel-mill community, and by extension, for our horrific twin crises of pandemic and politics.

The protagonists, Michael, Nick, and Steven, are on their way to Vietnam.  On the eve of their departure, Steven marries his pregnant girlfriend, Angela, but secretly confesses that the baby is not his.  Michael (DeNiro), a quiet, stoic man’s-man, is an expert hunter.  He observes a strict code of masculine conduct, and believes in killing a deer with one shot.  He is silently devoted to his best friend Nick (Walken), who quietly adores Michael, but is too sensitive to share Michael’s masculine coda. 

Both men are attracted to Linda (Streep).  She loves both men, chastely; Nick suddenly proposes to her before he departs.  Linda, who is beautiful, loving and almost wordless, is like a conduit for Michael and Nick to have their own, non-threatening homoerotic relationship.   

Their three friends, Stanley, Axel, and John, are good-hearted and dumb to varying degrees. John, who owns the bar, sings in the church choir. Axel is a bear whose vocabulary consists mostly of the f-word. Diminutive Stan is a hotheaded lady’s man, a misogynist, and a braggart.

The movie is divided roughly into three sections. 

The sweeping first hour immerses us inside of Clairton, Pennsylvania, a prototypical blue-collar town.  Elaborate set-pieces introduce us to the characters, and how they live: the hellish flames of a fiery steel mill; a deer-hunting expedition in the mountains; an elaborate Russian-Orthodox wedding and the raucous reception that follows; and a quiet moment of drunken camaraderie.  Many average viewers have complained that this section goes on too long, and doesn’t significantly develop the plot.  

To me, this brilliant first section is actually the most important in the film.  It is here that we are totally engulfed in American images and iconography.  It sets off associations and levels of meaning that haunt us as the film goes on.  There are American flags, war veterans in their VFW hats, red-white-and blue bunting, and a grocery store called Eagle.  Old women carry a towering wedding cake past young, naïve girls who frolic in their dresses and new hairdos. There is the steel mill and the cathedral.  A beat-up classic American car drag-races with a semi-truck. There is the corner bar playing popular American hits on the jukebox. There’s the majesty of the mountains.  Guns are a given,  even for small kids. Beer is everywhere.  In all, we are surrounded by a typical, masculine American culture that is taken for granted. 

The whole film seems to move along vertical lines, the camera slowly moving upward or downward, to suggest height and strength.

In an ironic twist, the music in this first section blares with Russian folk-songs and hymns, while the three buddies, who are gung-ho to fight the communist threat in Vietnam, seem to deny their Russian origins.  (Later, when asked if his last name, Chavatorevich, is Russian, Nick denies this more directly by answering, “No…American”.)

In the manner of a legend, there is grim foreshadowing: a drop of wine spilled on a wedding dress; a Green Beret soldier who wanders into the bar at the wedding, almost catatonic with disillusionment; and the look of surprise and resignation in the eye of a dying buck who has just been shot. Deer heads adorn the walls, composed in shots with characters who are vulnerable, or have been or will be hurt.    

The second hour of the film is a symbolic depiction of hell.  The movie jumps from a quiet piano interlude in a bar to the fields of Vietnam in the midst of battle.  The film’s cutting from the bar to the war sequence, with no buildup or preparation, ranks with some of cinema’s greatest cuts (the blown-out match in “Lawrence of Arabia”, the weapon hurled into the sky in “2001”.)

This section is utterly frightening in its fast-paced, intense imagery and chaotic sound.  Suddenly we are devoid of anything suggesting the American culture we have relaxed into for the previous hour.  The sudden feeling of alienation amid the scenes of carnage is incredibly potent, and there is no turning back.  The next time we see an American flag, it is flying over coffins that are being loaded for transport. The sudden appearance of the song “Midnight Train to Georgia”, heard in a sleazy Saigon strip club, has never sounded so sad.

Michael, Nick and Steven are reunited, captured, and imprisoned under a remote, waterlogged hut and forced to play Russian Roulette with other prisoners, and then each other. This sequence was notorious for its gore, and stirred controversy for its racist depiction of the Vietnamese.  But this sequence is meant as a metaphor, a concentrated image of the random death and suffering of war, told from the point of view of Americans who have been trained to hate the enemy.  It is not meant as a literal depiction of Vietnam.  Additionally, especially for audiences in 1979, it recalls the infamous image of a Vietnamese man being executed by a gunshot to the head. The sequence forcefully makes its point, and is unforgettable.  

They escape.  Steven drops to a river during an airlift, and his body is permanently broken.  Michael tries to save him, and gets him to a hospital.  Nick is left behind, later wanders AWOL through the underbelly of Saigon.  An unscrupulous French businessman lures Nick into an underground game of Russian Roulette, where he wins a lot of money, becomes a mindless drug addict, and loses himself for good.  (The Frenchman is a vague reference to France’s involvement in the war before America’s.)

In the final, third hour, Michael returns home after a year or so, a decorated Green Beret who has survived being wounded.  He is impatient with John, Axel and Stanley, his friends who stayed behind, because they have not changed. He finds their bumbling behavior trivial after what he went through.  He finds Angela, who cannot speak due to grief, and learns that Steven is in a VA hospital.  Michael tries hunting again, and corners a beautiful buck, but purposely misses him.  When he shouts “Okay” to the deer, and then to the heavens, it is as though he is sending Nick a message that he no longer believes in "one shot"; Michael even tosses Stanley’s little pistol away.  Michael and Linda try to talk to each other, but he cannot express his love for her, feeling that it would betray Nick, who is still missing.

This final hour has a feeling of desperation, of life never again returning to normal. And then, there’s a clue of Nick’s whereabouts, and Michael returns to Saigon to try to save him.

The three sections of “The Deer Hunter” aptly represent the three phases of our national tragedy with the pandemic.

First, there is America, its people and culture, a feeling of freedom and individualism, a resistance to rules and restrictions, a culture of rituals and national symbols, all which are taken for granted.  A deadly pandemic never entered the consciousness, with no way to prepare for what we would lose because of it..

Second, there is the sudden contagion, without warning, taking people quickly and at random.  While not bloody and violent as the war itself, it is nonetheless increasingly fatal. The anxiety, the restrictions, the curfews, the curbs on personal freedom, even the resistance to those restrictions, are what getting through a war must feel like, but exacerbated by incompetent leaders and their mindless acolytes.

Third, there is an attempt to recover, even though it isn’t over.  In the film, watching Nick play Russian Roulette for money somehow strongly represents the current, defiant, almost perverse wish to return to a pre-pandemic normal, to revive the economy in spite of unknown danger, to make money even if there might be a random bullet waiting in the chamber.

Meryl Streep, playing Linda, conveys so much with so little dialogue. So it is interesting that Linda, of all the characters, utters the two simple lines of dialog that explode with meaning when applied to our situation.  In a time when we are reminded constantly to stay away from each other, her question to Michael, “Can’t we just comfort each other”, elicits a response that is sad and regretful.

And to her question, “Did you ever think life would turn out like this”, a response is neither necessary, nor possible.

"Nashville" (1975)

 

Last Saturday, November 7, Joe Biden was declared the winner of the US Presidential Election.  The coronavirus altered the nature of this election, in which millions chose to vote by mail, and in-person voting was complicated by the need for protective face-covering and social distancing, which were unfairly construed by many misguided Americans to be political acts in themselves. 

A divided country chose the winner by more votes than any other president has ever earned.   It seemed appropriate, on this politically historic occasion, to revisit one of American cinema’s most exhilarating and challenging films, Robert Altman’s “Nashville”.

The same day as the election was called for Biden, Americans filled the streets in an unprecedented release of celebration, while the number of reported covid-19 cases was at an all-time high.  The elation over the change in American leadership, simultaneously with the anxiety of a worsening pandemic due to the incumbent’s incompetence, made “Nashville” a meaningful choice for my post-election viewing.   Forty-five years after it was first released, this film remains a prophetic metaphor for America’s collective anxiety, celebration, and confusion.

How to describe “Nashville”?  What is it about?  On the surface, it’s part episodic comedy-drama, part concert film.  It is a chronicle of five days in the country music capital of the world, leading up to a political rally/concert for an enigmatic Replacement Party candidate named Hal Phillip Walker.

Like a series of snapshots of America just before its Bicentennial, “Nashville” chronicles twenty-four characters, whose lives touch, move apart, intersect in interesting ways, and come together in the film’s finale. 

It is during the sequence at the political rally that the film reaches a stunning climax; and then it ends.  We are left in a state of ambiguity, a roller-coaster of horror mixed with hope.

It is more accurate to describe “Nashville” as an epic and multilayered character study.  There are country music stars, hangers-on, and wanna-be singers; politicians and promoters; spouses and children; families struggling through a generational inability to communicate; heroes and impostors, soldiers and rednecks, angels and assassins. 

It is impossible to give enough credit to the actors who embody these characters, many of whom created their own costumes and wrote and performed their own songs.  Worth special note are Henry Gibson and Lily Tomlin in their film debuts (Gibson as the arrogant country star Haven Hamilton; and Tomlin as Linnea, a lonely mother of two deaf children, and the sole white singer in a Black gospel choir); Ned Beatty as Tomlin’s husband, a smarmy attorney; and best of all, songwriter Ronee Blakley in the crucial role of Barbara Jean, a beloved country singer on the brink of collapse.

Also terrific are Keith Carradine (who wrote and performs the Oscar-winning “I’m Easy”) as a talented but womanizing member of a rock trio; Keenan Wynn as the kind uncle of the promiscuous “L.A. Joan” (Shelley Duvall); Geraldine Chaplin as the dubious BBC reporter, who is our wacky surrogate of sorts;  Michael Murphy as Hal Philip Walker’s slick promoter; Robert Doqui as a hard-drinking, cynical black man who resents the success of black country singer Tommy Brown (ex-football-player Timothy Brown); and Gwen Welles as Sueleen and Barbara Harris as Albuquerque, two aspiring singers of questionable talent, who encounter failure and fame in very surprising ways.

These characters move through a world of iconic ideas and images: a world of Black pride and racial tension; of talent and disability (sometimes one and the same); of infidelity and devotion; of traffic jams and race-cars, school buses and auto junkyards, rooming houses and country estates, hospitals and airports; of church services and motel room trysts.

Moving in a cycle from honky-tonks to the Grand Old Opry and back, it’s a world that culminates beneath the columns of Nashville’s Parthenon (a replica of the ancient Greek monument to Democracy) under an enormous American flag, waving to the rhythm of Barbara Jean’s soulful tribute to her Idaho home. 

There are many songs in “Nashville”, patriotic, nostalgic, cornball, seductive, and heartbreaking, that form the movie’s upbeat soundtrack, and which are essential to the film’s fabric, mood, and message. No other movie feels quite like “Nashville”, due in large part to its music.

Running through, like a thread that can’t be pulled lest it all unravel, is Hal Phillip Walker's  campaign truck with loudspeakers, roaming the streets, blaring the candidate’s platform in his own voice, weaving through characters and events.  Although no one pays much attention, Walker’s ideas sound less crazy today than in they did in 1975: fighting oil companies; removing lawyers from congress; taxing churches; changing the National Anthem; and abolishing the electoral college.

The film is like a tapestry of America at a crossroads after Vietnam, Watergate, and political and cultural upheaval of the era, seen in bits and pieces of disparate behaviors and situations, slowly coming together in a panoramic conclusion.  Instead of a clearly defined picture taking shape before us, we get something more ambiguous: a contradictory, poetic sequence that almost defies description in words.  It leaves us with residual, conflicting emotions that are at once both despairing and exultant--just like our fractured country today, fighting a pandemic after an historic election.

“Nashville” is also a pointed satire about the cult of celebrity, the fleetingness of success, and of the dangerous convergence of politics and celebrity.  It also takes a critical and often hilarious look at advertising and self-promotion in the parallel worlds of country music and politics.  The movie’s opening credit sequence is a wonderful parody of the old K-Tel record commercials on TV, like an advertisement for the film itself even as the narrator says it will be presented “without commercial interruption”.

In the glorious movie renaissance of the early 1970s, audiences became more active participants in a film, willing to bring their own energy and vigilance to watch the entire screen carefully, to listen more acutely, and interpret symbols and images in a more literary way.  Our active attention was often rewarded with an entertaining and artistic experience that lasted far beyond the initial viewing.  It stirred our emotions, challenged our thinking, moved us to action, and stimulated heated conversation about a film’s deeper implications for our lives.

“Nashville” was the culmination of that Hollywood renaissance, which was a creative ferment in reaction to the turmoil of the era. Audiences came to accept characters over plot, downbeat endings, cinematic innovation, grittier technique, violent images in service to a higher purpose, and more realistic subject matter that reflected our world.

I fear that American audiences no longer know how to watch a movie like “Nashville”, which needs a viewer’s active attention to be fully enjoyed and appreciated.  The seemingly haphazard, freewheeling style makes it challenging to keep track of the myriad characters and relationships at first; but director Robert Altman, screenwriter Joan Tewkesbury, editor Sidney Levin, and a marvelous cast soon create a familiar world that becomes easier to relax into as the movie goes along.

There is a pattern to what at first seems to be a liberating kind of chaos on the screen: the subtle, red-white-and-blue color scheme; the imperceptible, painterly movement of the camera (especially the zoom lens for emphasis); the carefully layered episodes showcasing the characters in combination with each other; and the experimental use of an 8-track sound recording system, which offers bits of exposition, offhand dialogue, and political commentary, sometimes all at once.  Even a careful viewer might need two or three viewings to take it all in.  By the final hour of this 156-minute masterwork, the movie has taken shape, and we become deeply involved.

The skill with which Robert Altman delivers this classic piece of cinema becomes obvious in the final sequence at the Parthenon, in which almost every character, major or minor, has gathered with the crowd to participate in the political event.  After mere glimpses of these people living their lives and making us laugh and think, we marvel at how well we have come to know them, and how completely Altman has created a world that we have become a part of.  Even late in the movie, some of the characters have a few surprises left to reveal.

That’s why the shocking climactic act, and its aftermath, are so confounding, and its impact so powerful, and even exhilarating.  While nothing is spelled out, and the future of these characters remains open-ended, we have enough material to complete the narrative and draw our own conclusions. The more you can bring to the film, the richer the experience is.

“Nashville” elicits emotions similar to what we might feel after a national tragedy, and/or the emergence of a new leader.  The film ends with the crowd joining in to sing a song.  The refrain, sung repeatedly before the fade-out, “it don’t worry me”, is rich with ambiguity, and speaks convincingly to the conflicting ignorance/resilience of a people in the midst of a crisis.  When children in the crowd are shown singing this refrain even without understanding what has happened, and police are briefly seen moving through the crowd, the implications, while chilling, can be interpreted in different ways.

What makes “Nashville” a great film is its epic scope, its continued relevance, and its capacity to surprise us.  It combines many contradictory ideas and personal stories into something that captures the ever-changing American landscape.  If you immerse yourself in it, give yourself over to its unconventional methods, and watch and listen carefully, you won’t find a more original, unusually entertaining movie as “Nashville”. 

"The Exorcist" (1973)

It is customary around Halloween to watch scary movies.  Before the pandemic, theaters showcased horrific first-run releases and revived old classics.  Still, supernatural stories and creature features of every level of quality, and from every decade, are shown all month on television. 

In this year of horrible political and social strife, along with the worst health crisis in 100 years, people are generally anxious, if not terrified of what awaits just around the corner. Even on cable TV, Turner Classic Movies used an apt tagline to promote its annual Halloween offerings: “2020 feels like a horror movie!”

In the nearly fifty years since its notorious release, “The Exorcist” has been called the scariest movie ever made.  It seemed like the right season, and the right moment in our history, to take another look at this horrendous work of cinematic fiction.   Maybe it would distract me from actual events that have become, to quote “The Exorcist’s” promotional trailer, “almost beyond comprehension”.

Based on the sensational best-selling novel by William Peter Blatty, loosely based on a purported true incident in 1949, “The Exorcist” is an account of the ghastly demonic possession of twelve-year-old Regan McNeill, and her physical and spiritual degradation.  Her mother, Chris McNeill, an actress filming a movie on location in Georgetown, slowly comes to the realization that Regan’s darkening mood, supernatural strength, blasphemous obscenity, violent self-abuse, murderous behavior, and grotesque physical transformation are well beyond the reach of psychiatry.

She appeals to a local priest, Father Damien Karras, who is naturally skeptical of her request.  Karras, a Jesuit psychiatrist, whose aging mother is near death, is in the midst of his own crisis of faith.  Regan’s episodes of shocking and disgusting behavior, especially her speaking in tongues, provide Karras with enough proof for the Church to approve the archaic ritual known as exorcism, used to expel demons. To help Karras, The Church sends for the powerfully faithful elder, Father Merrin, as the exorcist.  The film’s mysterious prologue suggests that Merrin has encountered extreme evil before.

This is certainly prime material for the darkest of horror.  The book was long and graphic, with enough character development, and meditation on the nature of good and evil, that the shocks, which took hold of readers and physically sickened some of them, were somewhat justified.

When rumors began that the film would be released late in 1973, helmed by director William Friedkin, who won an Oscar for 1971’s edgy, documentary-style thriller “The French Connection”, public interest grew.  When word came out that the book’s bizarre episodes would be graphically depicted---things that had been banned as obscene even in a new era of permissiveness—the buzz was irresistible. 

I think it is more interesting to consider “The Exorcist” in retrospect, when the stories surrounding its exhibition and its unprecedented audience reaction became legendary. Anticipation about what the film was willing to depict, and what lines of decency would be crossed, created initial long lines of curious people who waited several hours to get into theaters.  The shock value of the film was in large part due to viewers’ hyped, heightened expectations going in.  Audiences were already anxious before the opening credits; those who came totally unprepared must have felt the same primeval, gut response that those who read the book had experienced (especially those with an aversion to the sight of blood, or other bodily fluids).

The word-of-mouth about the movie’s effects-- green vomit spewed on priests, the infamous masturbation with a bloody metal crucifix, the 180-degree head-spin, the levitations and the eerie voices shouting depraved language from the mouth of a once-innocent child—brought mobs of audience members eager to see for themselves. 

Stories about people becoming hysterical, passing out from fright or disgust, or staggering into the lobby physically ill, were the stuff of news headlines for months, and helped make “The Exorcist” one of the biggest moneymakers of all time. 

While some called into question the ethics of involving a minor in this brutal spectacle, even with the use of a body-double in some scenes, it was not a hot-button issue in 1973. Many critics appreciated the technical skill and visceral nature of the movie, which went on to earn 10 Academy Award nominations, including Best Picture.

I have my own strange affection for the movie, for reasons that have little to do with what’s on the screen.  As an aspiring high-school filmmaker, who was equally fascinated and disturbed by the stories I was reading (it would be months before I actually saw the film), I grabbed my super-8 movie equipment and made my own version, titled “The Exorcism”.  A projector that I had received as a Christmas present, which allowed dubbing of sound and dialog directly through the projector on a magnetic strip applied directly to the film, let me have fun and experiment with visuals and sound effects alike. 

My 14-year-old sister gamely portrayed the possessed girl and her mother; and two classmates agreed to portray the priests.  It was hard work, but we enjoyed every minute, setting up lights, creating effects, and using bad jokes and puns instead of obscene dialog, and humorous effects instead of terrifying ones.  The result was hilarious, and made me a celebrity for the first and only time at school.

Seeing “The Exorcist” today from the comfort of my living room, as the pandemic surges across the globe (without the giddy energy of crowds primed to be scared, or even sickened, by the experience), the film seems less an exercise in carefully mounting horror as it does a masterpiece of physical and psychological audience manipulation.

The movie is an unpleasant experience, frequently ugly, with few lyrical scenes, and little attempt at beauty, or even the comfort of spirituality.  It is meant to shock and leave you shaken, and it is effective; but mostly because it is aggressively loud and intermittently repulsive, not scary in any sustained way.

“The Exorcist” is structured, oddly enough, like some grisly Hollywood musical. We go to musicals to see the song-and-dance numbers; viewers watch “The Exorcist” for the shock sequences.  There are long stretches of exposition, punctuated by brief but potent episodes of shock and horror. Whether it’s a shaking bed, a string of guttural language, or an unspeakable act of evil, each episode is more intense and grotesque than the last one.

That’s how the film maintains a sense of dread, leaving us in fear of what outrage the film will depict next. The moments of shock do not, for the most part, develop the plot (nor do many interludes in Hollywood musicals).  The final exorcism scene, 20 minutes’ worth of darkness and noisy terror, functions like a dream ballet from a Gene Kelly dance sequence, but a foul and demented one.  We aren’t meant to feel sympathy with the girl or her mother. (If anything, the story belongs to Father Karras, who is often overshadowed by supernatural events.) 

We are meant to witness a phantasmagoria, and in that sense the movie delivers; but the material is full of opportunities to provide more depth, to give us more to take away from it, which the movie mostly squanders.

As unbelievably intense as these scenes are visually, I believe what makes “The Exorcist” such a terrifying experience is its use of sound to manipulate the viewer in a physical sense. There are many scenes of sustained, unpleasant noise, a barrage of sounds we cannot escape (screaming, medical testing, and supernatural voices) which build tremendous tension, which stop with a cut to the next, completely silent shot.  We feel the physical effects of the noise when it suddenly stops: the heart pounds, our blood pressure rises, the anxiety intensifies in the same way as it would from listening to a deafening, broken car horn. 

There are also numerous “boo” effects, like a sudden, loud ringing telephone, an unexpected flareup of a candle in a dark attic, or the scream leading out of an uneventful sequence.  These make us jump, in a fight-or-flight response, before we are confronted with a visual horror that might repulse us.  One cannot block out the experience by averting the eyes, because it takes us too much by surprise, and the sound effects are almost always worse.

If one studies the film closely, we are exposed to all of its cinematic fright techniques during the movie’s 15-minute prologue with Father Merrin in Iraq. All of the manipulations of the movie are here: the sustained noise, the mysterious visuals, the sight of a metalworker’s milky white eye (foreshadowing Regan’s frightful white pupils), his escape from a fatal collision with a fast-moving carriage containing a woman with a demonic visage, and a supernatural appearance of a hellish statue, accompanied by  sounds of dogs growling, slaughtered pigs squealing and bees buzzing menacingly.

These and other subliminal visual and auditory tricks affect the viewer unconsciously, and leave us thinking we have witnessed something utterly terrifying.  The truth is, we have been manipulated into thinking so.

Something else disturbed me in my recent viewing: the film’s assumption that audiences, unconsciously or otherwise, fear Islam.  As the movie’s opening credits begin, sinister music, like a piano wire being scratched, sets up a tone of mystery.  As the film’s title cuts in, blazing red across the screen, we hear on the soundtrack the voice of a man in Islamic prayer. While it establishes the location of the prologue, it also makes an unfortunate connection between Islam and evil, arousing our ingrained, unconscious suspicion of The Other, especially in a film in which Christianity plays a central, heroic role.

Even with the objections the film raises decades after its release, there are a couple ideas within “The Exorcist”—both metaphorical and tangible—that make it a perfect movie for the era of coronavirus and the political circus it created.

The most obvious parallel is the idea that a mysterious “illness” has invaded an innocent child.  The transformation is frightening, just as the sudden onset and deadly symptoms of covid-19 fill most of us with fear.  For believers, the possibility of demonic possession remains remote but nonetheless real; the possibility of contracting this novel virus is also real, but not so remote. Thus far, medicine has not produced a cure, although many of us look to science for hope, if not pray for a miracle.

In a bigger way, Regan’s transformation is a perfect, metaphoric image of our culture’s malaise.  The ugly effects of decades of ignorance decaying our ideals, of insults hurled about with no apparent consequence, the defiance with which people behave with harmful effects to themselves and others, and the hope that someone or something might come along to make things better…all of these feelings are aroused by watching “The Exorcist” today.  Rather than help avoid the problems outside, “The Exorcist” illustrated different ways to feel anxious about them!

One monolog, delivered by Father Merrin as a warning to Karras prior to the ritual, is prophetic, and pertinent to our current state of misinformation about our political and health dilemmas:

“…He is a liar. The demon is a liar.  He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us. The attack is psychological, and powerful. So don’t listen to him! Remember that. Do not listen.”

There has never been another film like “The Exorcist”, even though it has been endlessly imitated, and influenced countless horror movies since.  Like many films of its era, it could never be made in today’s Hollywood.  Whether you appreciate (let alone actually enjoy) it or not, everyone involved gave the best of their talents to create a convincing, technical marvel of shocking impact, if not a lasting work of art. 

Best of all are Max Von Sydow as Father Merrin, whose presence alone lets us breathe a little easier; Jason Miller as the troubled Father Karras; Ellen Burstyn as the volatile, concerned Chris McNeil; Linda Blair, who suffers the torments of the damned, as little Regan; and veteran actress Mercedes McCambridge, whose distinctive husky voice provides the demon’s voice, and the most memorable shocks in the movie.

William Peter Blatty did an admirable job paring down his novel into a workable screenplay, managing to give cinematic life to things that would never have been dreamed possible.  He sparred with director Friedkin about the inclusion of quieter moments of dialogue that lent some meaning to the infernal goings-on.

If “The Exorcist” lacks substance for contemporary viewers, especially non-believers, it rests on Friedkin’s shoulders for eliminating that substance.  (Blatty ultimately prevailed; an “extended cut” released several years ago restored at least one crucial dialog between Merrin and Karras that gave the audience some guidance into what it all meant.)  The final cut was approved by a director who assumed that audiences would be impatient to sit through too much exposition before the horror began.

If you enjoy being scared, or even brutalized, by a horror film, then give yourself over to “The Exorcist”, and let it work its evil magic on your psyche.  On the other hand, I don’t think any movie can capture the terror of this election year as the pandemic rages on.

"The Russians Are Coming! The Russians Are Coming!" (1966)

 

“I thought all the nuts went home on Labor Day.”   Police Chief Mattocks (Brian Keith), assessing the madness, in “The Russians are Coming…”

“The Russians Are Coming, The Russian Are Coming” is a hilarious satire that pokes fun at American and Russian bluster and mistrust during the 1960s Cold War.  It boasts a large cast, and a script that intercuts many amusing subplots. It all happens on a chaotic Sunday in a small New England town. “The Russians are Coming…”  is a silly, witty, raucous, sentimental, ultimately pointed barb at American foibles. 

It is expertly directed and energetically performed, with sly commentary served up with every laugh.  The movie glides by, carrying us along on a madcap spree, reflecting with laugh-out-loud understanding (and gentle embarrassment) our national character.

Given the perspective of history, and a rising political intrigue between America and Russia that may be more dangerous than before, the film seems almost naïve, a period-piece, an easy, sitcom-like pipe-dream of peaceful coexistence. 

Ultimately, the film distills all of the wild misunderstandings into a cliffhanger of a climax, a scene that plays like a metaphor for the impossibility of finding agreement until the most vulnerable among us face a tragic outcome.

The film is like a Hit-Parade of great actors and comedians of the era:  Carl Reiner plays the hapless writer who almost starts World War 3; Eva Marie Saint is his practical wife who winds up saving the day; Brian Keith portrays the grumbly, no-nonsense Sheriff; Jonathan Winters is a disorganized deputy with a large family; and Paul Ford does his typical routine, playing a blowhard ex-military general with a pathetic memorial sword.

Alan Arkin, in his film debut, is the Russian soldier who is desperate to do what’s right, but panics with comic results.  Arkin is marvelous, speaking flawless Russian, and slowly coming undone under a deadpan façade. Theodore Bikel is convincing as the buffoonish submarine captain.

Director Norman Jewison handles the logistics of the complex plot with ease. It’s a conventional-looking comedy, but he and his editor, Hal Ashby, introduce some subversive, New Wave techniques (Russian dialog delivered without subtitles; scenes cut in mid-sentence; a contemporary, French-style soft-focus for a romantic interlude).  

Johnny Mandel’s score is fun, blending Russian themes and a satiric military march with fifes and whistles.

I won’t try to describe the entire plot, but here’s a summary:

A blustery Russian submarine captain brings his boat too close to the sleepy fishing village of Gloucester Island, and runs it aground.  A group of Russian sailors enters the town to find a motorboat to help move their sub back to sea. Then the mayhem begins.  

Arkin and his crew meet Reiner and his family, struggle to find car keys, and almost destroy the house. They encounter an old woman (who despite her age can deliver a fierce kick) and her oblivious husband;  tie up a gossipy telephone operator (who later gets tied up to the writer in the movies funniest scene); and evade the skeptical town sheriff and his motley crew of deputies; 

The town drunk scurries to mount his reluctant horse, Beatrice, so he can warn the  residents of an invasion a-la Paul Revere. 

The Russians borrow a station wagon that runs out of gas; rummage through a dry-cleaning shop for everyday American "disguises"; and conduct a quick English lesson to try to pass as locals. 

A young Russian sailor, ordered to guard the writer’s family, has his gun stolen in a melee, and later falls in love with the family’s babysitter.

Gossip, misinformation, and misguided fear escalate the situation out of control like the old game of “telephone”. What started as an accident has blown up into the takeover of the country by Russian parachutists, who have landed at the small airport.  The other residents of the island are driven into a panic of comic misunderstanding.

Armed with guns and weapons of all sorts, the villagers amass at the harbor to confront the self-important submarine commander, who orders the ship's big guns directed at the gathered crowd.  Two young boys climb up the church steeple to get a better look, and observe as the townspeople and the Russian sailors, all of them nervous and frightened, freeze in a standoff, ready but unwilling to face the carnage of a gunfight.  

This sudden life-or-death crisis makes us hold our breath; the camera slowly moves over the crowd with weapons drawn.  It is a protracted sequence that doesn’t seem to end.

And then, something happens that horrifies the townspeople and the Russians, creating a new, more urgent crisis: one of the boys up on the church steeple is in mortal danger.  To resolve it, both sides must forget their differences.

The scene’s most obvious parallel for today's audience is the standoff between Russian bureaucrats, who hope to misinform us and throw our election, and American voters.  

But the more intriguing parallel suggested by this standoff is the unfortunate stalemate between those Americans who accept mask-wearing and following safety protocols during the pandemic; and those who steadfastly align themselves against all of that, thinking that to do so makes them look weak (ironically, the law-and-order crowd.)

As characters from America and Russia came together in a human pyramid in this scene, I had an unfortunate thought about vulnerable people, especially children, who are suffering and dying because of stubbornness.  I wondered: if this scene took place during our current polarization over the politics of mask-wearing, would some people be so busy holding to their position that they wouldn't care what happened to that child?

“The Russians are Coming…”, reminds us of our ignorance, our lack of understanding, and our arrogance.  We seem to thrive on chaos, the movie says with a laugh, until chaos brings us to a deadly moment of truth.

Watching this movie today, where even solutions to ending a deadly pandemic are dividing us, “The Russians are Coming…” gives us reason to pause, and think about how maddening our divisiveness is, as well as the idiocy of equating safety with the loss of Liberty.  

There’s plenty of folly to go around, and we all can see ourselves in some of the characters in this movie.  I suspect that only those who share a certain political viewpoint could laugh at themselves here; others would take offense to the humor, or just won’t get the joke.

"On Golden Pond" (1981)

 

“Your fascination with dying is beginning to frazzle my good humor.”  Ethel Thayer (Katharine Hepburn) to husband Norman (Henry Fonda), “On Golden Pond”

The pandemic has robbed us of a year of our lives, maybe more. Young people and seniors, especially, have had so much important time ripped away from them.  The danger of contagion, the risk of serious complications and fatality, make it impossible to escape. 

The limitations placed upon us by the virus have delayed or destroyed common rites of passage for the young, like graduation, prom, athletic achievement, and dating, things that can never be recaptured in the same way later on.  For those in their mature years, the activities that were planned for retirement have been interrupted, maybe indefinitely, cheating seniors out of social connections, cultural experiences and travel, while their years of health and mobility pass quickly by.   The very old have it worst of all, being completely cut off from life in the little time that remains to live.

A few weeks ago, I took another look at the 1980 Oscar-winning “Ordinary People”, which dramatized the challenges of a depressed high school student after his straitlaced family suffers a terrible loss.  Recently, I re-visited “On Golden Pond”, the story of an elderly couple adjusting to life’s final chapter.  To my surprise, the two films are unlikely companion pieces.

Although not similar in style or plot, both films examine characters for whom death has become a constant presence. The connecting thread in both films is a sense of being cheated out of an important phase of living.  Young Conrad Jarrett in “Ordinary People” is unable to accept his brother’s death and contemplates suicide; old Norman Thayer in “On Golden Pond” obsesses about his encroaching departure from life.

While “Ordinary People” is an intense and cathartic look at depression and suicide among the young, “On Golden Pond” is a comic drama about aging and dying that approaches a number of difficult subjects, and then smooths them away.  It’s pure comfort food, an easygoing piece of pop entertainment that doesn’t want to devastate us.  To its great credit, it provides us with an experience that is rare in modern American film: it lets us identify with an elderly couple, approaching their last sunset together, played by two of cinema’s most enduring icons.

Ethel and Norman Thayer (Katharine Hepburn and Henry Fonda, both of them splendidly, unashamedly older) arrive at their cabin on Golden Pond, somewhere in New England, to spend another summer together while there is still time.   Norman, who is about to turn 80, has heart trouble and is starting to forget things.

They go about their daily routine, canoe on the lake, watch a pair of loons who symbolize their partnership, and enjoy some peaceful, good-natured sparring.  Ethel is energetic, outgoing, and fiercely protective of Norman.  Norman is dryly humorous, cynical, even bitter about the decline of his mind and body, and the inevitability of death.  Ethel is able to take Norman’s rants in stride, and tries her best to help instill in him a sense of confidence, and competence.  It is no easy task. 

In this particular summer, they are visited by their daughter Chelsea (Jane Fonda, Henry’s actual daughter), with whom Norman has had a troubled relationship.  Chelsea and her new fiancé, Bill (Dabney Coleman), are on their way to Europe, and ask Norman and Ethel to take care of Bill’s thirteen-year-old son, Billy (Doug McKeon), for the month that they are away.

The first third of “On Golden Pond” is the most effective.  It is leisurely paced, and filled with honest sentiment.  We get to know the two main characters, observe their relationship, and glean bits and pieces of their past.  This first section comes together with a mood of autumnal reverie, intimacy, and metaphoric farewell.  If the film ended there, or developed into a 2-character piece about Norman and Ethel's relationship, the movie might have been a true cinema classic.

The immediate conflict between 76-year-old Norman and 13-year-old Billy becomes the focus of the middle section of the film.  

When Bill and Chelsea return to see that Billy and Noman have become best buddies, the long-buried tensions between Chelsea and her father come to the fore, while Ethel plays referee, in the film’s final section.

The second two thirds attempt to add depth to the theme of aging.  We are introduced to relevant ideas: the clash of cultures across generations; the unresolved issues between parents and children; the swift passing of time, and the need for reconciliation; the terror of life-threatening illness, and of losing one’s memory; and the heroics of caregiving.  

Each one alone could make great drama; but after touching on them, the film doesn’t fully develop them. “On Golden Pond” prefers a feel-good approach, so its issues aren’t examined too deeply, and we want more.   

In several moments throughout the film, just as a point is about to be made, and a climactic resolution reached, the movie backs off to idyllic (and admittedly beautiful) images of nature, with Dave Grusin’s music playing on the soundtrack. 

Grusin has written a beautiful recurring theme.  It sets an emotional tone that honors the characters and tugs at the heart.  But Grusin overplays his hand, and overwrites his score.  In one glaring sequence, when Norman loses his way and panics, Grusin’s music pours on the dread, in case the audience won’t know how to react.  It would have been more effective to  play the scene without music, using only natural sounds, and allow us to feel Norman’s dilemma personally, making his terror more relatable. 

Some of the humor is badly dated (the word “lesbian” is used a couple times just for a laugh). The screenplay contains some landmines of stereotypically “cute” elderly behavior, for comic effect (like flipping a middle finger, or uttering the words “old poop”).  To the actors’ credit, especially Katharine Hepburn's, they mostly sidestep these hazards.

Hepburn consistently amazes in a breathtakingly physical performance. She is able to modulate her dialog around her pronounced tremor, so that the rhythms are natural, and we can understand every word.  Her exquisite skill in conveying feeling, her eyes and face registering every nuance, her tearful expression of heartbreak, her spontaneous and natural laughter, are the culmination of years of brilliance by this veteran performer.

Hepburn’s Ethel is like an elder version of the strong, supportive wife she played in “Guess Who’s Coming to Dinner”; but here she pulls out all the stops.  She’s a marvel as she powers a motorboat, imitates the loons, delivers dramatic monologues, goes toe to toe with her co-stars, sings and dances an old campfire song, dives in the lake, swims to the rescue, and tearfully tends to Norman in a tense moment.

Henry Fonda is a treasure in this role, which was his swan song.  His Norman is every vulnerable, exasperating elderly relative or neighbor that most of us have ever known. Fonda plays the role gamely, handling his barbs and mind-games, drawling his dialogue in that familiar voice, but creating a unique character, even when the script forces Norman's more frustrating aspects.  

For this role, Fonda won his first, well-deserved Best Actor Oscar, for which he was also a sentimental favorite.  Hepburn nabbed a Best Actress Oscar as well, her fourth, a record that holds today.

Jane Fonda plays a supporting role as their misunderstood grown daughter, still trying to live up to her father’s impossible expectations.  She is wonderful in what is really a thankless job (more later).  Dabney Coleman has a terrific exchange with Norman, and stands up to him gently and firmly, in what may be the best monologue in the script.

13-year-old Doug McKeon, playing Billy, holds his own with the veteran actors, in an amusing display of toughness, while befuddled and mystified by the old man he is forced to spend time with.  His natural progression from resistance to respect, and finally love, holds the center of the film.  McKeon’s and Fonda’s scenes are filled with humorous suspense, surprise, and smiles.

As much as this film moves me, I have some unresolved feelings about “On Golden Pond”.  These feelings were unexpected, and ironic, since I am getting closer to Ethel and Norman’s age.  Criticizing this film feels as though I'm disrespecting my own departed grandparents; but as the script is written, I never really believe in the conflict between Norman and Chelsea.  

Had it not been for the casting of an actual father and daughter duo, I wouldn’t have cared at all.  Fortunately, Jane and Henry Fonda were cast, and are playing out a psychodrama of some kind between them, one that goes beyond the confines of the script.  That makes their relationship intriguing, and worth caring about. 

We are asked to accept Chelsea as a frustrated adult who hasn’t moved on.   There is some business about her not visiting for long stretches, but almost nothing about what happened between her and Norman in her youth, or why they have become alienated from each other.  

In a heated exchange, she accuses him for his over-competitiveness, and his liking to “beat” people (the suggestion of abuse is unfortunate and probably unintended).  The disconnect between them is oversimplified:  Chelsea doesn’t know the model car she rented, which makes Norman grumble.

Later, she must prove herself to Norman by doing a backflip into the lake. That backflip, which she could never do before, is meant to represent all of the ways she disappointed Norman; when she finally does it, she earns Norman’s approval because now, I guess, she is one of the boys.

That Norman does not accept Chelsea on her own merits is never clearly explored. How exactly has she wronged him, besides rarely visiting?  Chelsea is set up to be some sort of a villain; even the loving, understanding Ethel berates her for complaining, slaps her in a sudden fit of anger, and advises her to get on with her life.  

But Norman demonstrates little tenderness for Chelsea, and we don’t get much background beyond the pallid hints that are dropped at intervals.  This is the fault of the writing, and of unimaginative direction.  While the film clearly sets up Norman and Ethel as the golden heroes of the piece, I found myself taking Chelsea’s side, and Ethel and Norman’s united front against her doesn't feel right.

This subplot is a flaw, in my opinion, but it doesn’t diminish the power of the central relationship.  Near the end, when it looks like Norman might be down for the count, Ethel’s outpouring of emotion, and her preparation for mourning, are so real, it is impossible not to feel the pain of a possible loss.  Hepburn utters the film’s most honest sentiment: “This is the first time that I really felt we were going to die…You’ve been talking about death since we met but this is the first time I really felt it.”

Over the last year, the pandemic has made death seem ever-present.  People in their later years are facing their mortality even more than they normally do.  The virus is all around us.  We are constantly reminded of the danger.  Time is slipping away as we isolate ourselves, and hope for a breakthrough. The politics surrounding the disease also add to already unbearable anxiety.

We do what we can to stay healthy, stay calm, stay alive.  Connecting in any way we can with people, keeping physically active, and seeking positive messages help relieve some stress. So do movies, especially when they give us characters who prevail over obstacles we all face.  In times like these, it's a comfort to keep company with characters like Norman and Ethel Thayer, flaws and all.

"The Wizard of Oz" (1939)

 

“Somewhere…the dreams that you dare to dream really do come true.”  “Over the Rainbow”

“The Wizard of Oz” is not so much a movie as it is a ritual.  It is a cornerstone of the childhoods of millions. As such, it is nearly critic-proof, and almost impossible to look at it objectively today solely on its merits as a motion picture.

Having said that, when I am able to pull myself out of the spell it casts on me, I must say that “The Wizard of Oz” is a superior piece of movie craftsmanship.  It is beautifully photographed, terrifically designed, with sly humor and deep sentiment, awe-inspiring special effects, and such efficient storytelling  and direction that it goes by like a flash.  It is a rare cinematic classic: every single frame of this film is an iconic moment.

Made in 1939, which is considered to be the greatest year of the Hollywood renaissance, “The Wizard of Oz” was not an immediate success in theaters, competing with classics such as “Gone With the Wind”, “Stagecoach”, “Wuthering Heights” and “Goodbye, Mr. Chips” for the attention of moviegoers. 

It was not until the 1960s, when it began its annual broadcasts on network television, that it found a mass audience of kids of all ages, and became the beloved experience it is today, part of the fabric of American culture.

I remember “The Wizard of Oz” better than I do some parts of my childhood.  My earliest memories of it are all in black-and-white, when my sister and I sprawled on the floor in front of our family’s Zenith black-and-white console TV.  Once our family could afford to join the ranks of color-TV owners, I still recall my excitement, when I first discovered that the scenes in Kansas were the only ones in sepia tones, while the sequences in Oz were in gorgeous, fanciful hues!

Even though I have practically memorized the film, I still enjoy it, in the same way I enjoy a familiar meal, or a drive along a well-loved, well-traveled road.  I looked at the film again recently, in the spirit of nostalgia that brought me back to “Born Free” a couple of weeks ago.  It's filled with relevant messages, and  illustrates ways to live and stay true to our convictions in a world that the filmmakers could never have imagined in 1939.

I wanted to reconnect with that part of myself that has not completely disappeared, a product of a set of values and a point of view that the world once took for granted as right and good. Movies like “The Wizard of Oz” reinforced this world view in our young imaginations, during the powerful moment of childhood when we internalized things that became the code by which we lived our lives.

These things---virtues like kindness, caring, intellect, fair play, and conviction-- are now openly mocked in this time of pandemic uncertainty and political nightmare.  They seem to be in danger of disappearing altogether.

There may be those who are still unfamiliar with “The Wizard of Oz”, whose influence on our culture makes it the “Star Wars” of the pre-1970s era.  (The difference is that “Wizard of Oz” is respected as a work of popular cinematic art, without decades of “Oz” sequels, action figures or Fan Conventions, all the things spawned by "Star Wars", that make the Lucasfilm franchise  less like cinema, and more like an assembly line, or an amusement park.)

For those who are not familiar, “The Wizard of Oz” is the tale of Dorothy, a poor Kansas farmgirl who leads a seemingly dreary, neglected life with her Aunt Em and Uncle Henry.  Her only confidant is the feisty little terrier, Toto.  Dorothy dreams of escape to a beautiful, magical place over the rainbow, one that she heard of in a lullaby.  She sings of her yearning to Toto.  

When Toto is taken away by a cruel neighbor, Dorothy runs away after Toto escapes and comes back to her. She meets a kindly, absent-minded traveling showman who gently urges her not to leave home.  Just as she gets back, a tornado uproots Dorothy’s house, and before she can take shelter with her family, she and Toto are whisked away by the twister to that magical land over the rainbow. 

To get back home, Dorothy must follow the advice of a Good Witch, face her fear of the evil Wicked Witch, and travel to see the Great Wizard of Oz.  Along the way, she meets three amusing companions: a Scarecrow without a brain, a Tin Woodsman without a heart, and a Cowardly Lion. 

Together, with Toto always near, they make the dangerous adventure along the Yellow Brick Road to see the Wizard of Oz to ask him for the things they want most in the world.  On her journey, Dorothy learns some valuable lessons about her heart’s desire.

The movie is filled with color, energy, and magic, and creative creatures like munchkins, talking apple trees and flying monkeys. There are some truly terrifying moments, and lots of music and songs.  One of the songs, "Somewhere Over the Rainbow", is an American standard.  It is impossible to believe that “Over the Rainbow”, one of the most beautiful songs ever written for a movie, was almost cut out of the film, because the studio felt it slowed it down.

This is Judy Garland’s best-loved role, the one for which she will always be remembered.  Her wistful rendition of “Over the Rainbow” hit me deeply, as I listened to it during the most uncertain and anxiety-producing time in my life.  Its beautiful melody and simple tone of longing help us to release our pent-up emotions, and give us a way to imagine our escape from an as-yet inescapable situation.

The song’s image of a trouble-free world of acceptance made it an anthem of gay men, who wanted a place to be themselves without fear.  Now, instead of feeding my sense of gay martyrdom, the number shakes me to my foundation, makes me sad for where we are now, and fuels my hope for a healthier, kinder future.

I don’t really need a place where troubles melt like lemon drops: I would be satisfied to return to that idyllic week four years ago, after the Chicago Cubs won the World Series, and before the last Presidential Election.  As crazy as the world might have seemed then, it was nothing compared to today.

(If only we had paid no attention to the man behind the curtain.  Maybe we can take that to heart this time.)

No movie has ever created a more intense and authentic-looking tornado sequence than “The Wizard of Oz”, even with Hollywood’s primitive tools for special effects in 1939.  The funnel cloud, the billowing dust, the creeping movement toward the house, the objects buffeted and flying up into the vortex, the freight-train like din of the howling wind, the suspense as Dorothy and Toto are in danger for their lives: this sequence has never been matched for its physical spectacle as well as its power to propel the narrative.   

It also feels like a metaphor for the unpredictable health danger now in the world's midst.

Was there ever a more frightening villain in American movies than the Wicked Witch of the West?  Actress Margaret Hamilton’s already unusual, sharp features are made up in a hellish green-and-red mask of pure malevolence, her bony fingers constantly probing as if toying with a victim like a spider. 

It is a physically and vocally demanding performance by Hamilton, in which she creates a character totally devoid of sentiment and empathy.  Like a virus.  Or a political figure gone haywire. She not only has a supreme power to destroy, but has no feeling other than shrill anger and contempt. She exists only to instill fear. 

It makes sense that such a strong presence in the film has to be destroyed at the climax.  My sister and I watched the movie as kids especially to see the famous scene where the Wicked Witch is doused with water and melts away.  As she cries in shock, sinking into the floor, she laments the end of her “beautiful wickedness”.  Today, those very words carry a lot of ironic weight.

I often say that animals, particularly dogs, will save our humanity.  Toto, who is ever-present and usually in the background, comes to the fore when Dorothy is imprisoned in the Witch’s castle, and becomes a hero.  The fact that Toto saves the day never surprised me, even as a child, and I reacted then (and now) with a silent cheer.  

Today, Toto seems to stand in for all of the dogs who have been companions during the virus, a presence in the background of the crisis who have extended themselves in friendship, who help us forget the trouble around the corner, and force us back in the moment.

What was once a society on the move, has been stopped in its tracks for months.  Dorothy has the ultimate travel experience to the most exotic of destinations.  Once she is safe back in Kansas, she realizes that everything she loves is right in her backyard, and that she would never need to look for happiness anywhere else.

“The Wizard of Oz” is like a cautionary tale for the travel industry.  Will we accept that we won’t travel again like before? Will we discover that we can’t be happier than we are at home?

We all sentimentalize our childhoods.  We romanticize our families and homes of origin, choosing to downplay the drudgery and even the pain of our earlier days.  Maybe that’s why I get so emotional at the end of “The Wizard of Oz”.  Just as Dorothy proclaims “there’s no place like home”, forgetting that she WAS ignored and her dog was imperiled before her long journey, I tend to remember the best parts of my growing up, and the things that I miss.

As a culture, trying to survive a pandemic with very little information, and having to let go of things we loved, before the disease made them unsafe or disappear altogether, we probably have a sentimental, romanticized image of what life was like before all of this happened, and we all yearn in our own way to escape to a place where we can all relax again.

"Born Free" (1966)

 

Recently, the Phoenix Zoo closed, another victim of the pandemic.  My husband and I are members of the zoo, and live close enough to walk, if we choose to make the thirty-minute hike.  Although we visit there maybe only four times a year, we love all of our visits.  Especially enjoyable are the early morning hours, when many of the animals are out and active; and the night strolls of the colorful Zoo Lights event, during the winter months around the holiday season.

Before it reopened  with the typical list of (barely enforced) safety measures in place, the closing of the Phoenix zoo made me sad, and fittingly nostalgic.  Yet another one of my favorite getaway places was off-limits, further limiting those unique opportunities for enriching the mind and the senses, enrichment that makes life more meaningful.

To deal with these feelings, I regressed to memories of childhood zoo visits.  The Chicago area, where I was raised, has two world-famous zoos:  Lincoln Park Zoo, located near Lake Michigan in the same-named neighborhood; and the sprawling Brookfield Zoo, situated in a working-class western suburb about a mile from where I grew up.

Between grade-school field trips and family outings, I might have visited the zoo seven or eight times a year, during the fleeting Spring and Summer months (we never went in the winter).  Each time, I felt a giddy sense of awe,  a renewed thrill of seeing exotic animals from around the world, which I had only seen from pictures in books and on television, and that I would never find roaming the parks and forest preserves of Chicago.  

No matter how many times I saw a lion or a giraffe, a flock of flamingos or a plodding bear, I was filled with respect and affection for them, and I never grew tired of them.  I still don’t.

While the zoo was still a Covid-memory and off-limits, I decided to have another look at a movie I had not seen in many years, one that seemed appropriate to this precise circumstance: “Born Free”.

“Born Free” was a rite-of-passage for most middle-class suburban kids during the 1960s.  Parents everywhere took their children to packed theaters to see this wondrous, true story about George and Joy Adamson, a husband-and-wife team of British naturalists working in Kenya. George is a senior game warden and conservationist, and Joy is a naturalist and artist.

When a notorious man-eating lion and his mate are killed by humans in self-defense against an attack, George and Joy rescue and raise one of the three orphaned lion cubs. They name her Elsa.

The film is a simple chronicle of the adventures they share with Elsa, in scenes filled with laughter and danger, as Elsa grows into a beautiful lioness who is nevertheless attached to,  and dependent on, her human companions. As Elsa matures, and starts to display some of her natural instincts, George and Joy make the heartbreaking decision to prepare Elsa to return to the wild, where she can live free, rather than in captivity in a zoo.

I remember as a youngster being absorbed by the film. I loved watching the antics of Elsa and the other animals, and fascinated by their natural behaviors.  I was also moved deeply by the film's bittersweet resolution, and the way the film tugged at the heartstrings, even though I knew even then that boys were not supposed to cry at movies. 

But there are two components of “Born Free” that are especially memorable from my first viewing as a nine-year-old.

First is the opening scene, which traumatized me, before the lion cubs appeared in their playful frolicking.  A group of Kenyan women, gathered at the local brook to wash their clothes, are stalked by the killer lion who, it turns out, is Elsa’s sire.  One woman looks up and screams, as the lion lunges toward her.  

We do not see the woman attacked.  Instead, we see the rapidly moving water, as a pile of clothing floats by; and then the water flows red.  This was terrifying for me as a child and a testament to the power of suggestion in films, especially those meant for young viewers.

The second most memorable component of “Born Free”, which still resonates, is its score.  The title song, and the heart-rending music by the great John Barry, were everywhere on radio and TV, and were covered by many popular singers and orchestras of the day.  The song from “Born Free” was an indelible part of my life's soundtrack.  It stirs up my memory of this tale of human-animal friendship and survival.  The song and the score were tremendous smash hits, and won the film its two Oscars.

The film played in theaters when audiences were more open to stories about wild creatures.  Animals appeared more frequently in movies than they do now, and stories about nature were regularly on TV, especially live-action shows like Mutual of Omaha’s Wild Kingdom, Jacques Cousteau ‘s oceanography specials, and fictional series like “Daktari”, inspired by another big zoo-hunter movie, Howard Hawks’ “Hatari”, from 1962.  Movie screens also featured a steady diet of Disney nature documentaries for years, which always brought crowds of families.

“Born Free” was, and still is, the most powerful, entertaining and popular of its kind.  I still lose myself in Elsa’s story today, but I also have more perspective on it as a piece of filmmaking.  The film was based on Joy Adamson’s international best-selling book, a narrative with photographs about her odyssey with Elsa the lion. As simple and compelling as the story is, this film must have been a really complicated shoot.  

Credit is due to director James Hill for solving what must have been a series of logistical nightmares, working on a remote location, battling heat and insects, wrangling the animals to get the behaviors necessary to tell the story, and deliver a family-friendly yet powerful finished work.  George Adamson himself acted as advisor to the project.

Playing George and Joy Adamson, Virginia McKenna and Bill Travers were themselves a married couple who appeared in a few films together. Their portrayals were so natural and heartfelt (especially McKenna) that they nearly stole the show from the fictional Elsa!  It’s not easy to incorporate so much of one’s self into a dramatized character based on an actual person.  Both McKenna and Travers triumphed with strong performances, and their characterizations introduced generations to the Adamsons and their important work for wildlife.

These two actors would forever be associated with “Born Free”, and in turn the experience changed their lives.  After “Born Free”, McKenna and Travers became avid animal activists, and eventually created the Born Free Foundation, which sought to advocate for wild creatures and prevent their captivity.  They also created the Zoo Watch, in which they would visit zoos to check on conditions in which wild animals were kept captive.

Although I didn’t know it then, “Born Free” helped change me, too.  Identifying so closely with a cuddly creature who evolved into a magnificent animal, and who would never again be happy with human companionship—in fact, whose instincts might make her dangerous to humans—planted in me the seeds of affection respect for animals  If it worked on me in sentimental ways, it was all for good.

“Born Free” was such a milestone in my early moviegoing life, that today I choose to overlook my feelings of ambiguity about the film’s message of freedom balanced against my love of visiting the zoo.  It’s ironic that a zoo was considered too confining for a creature like Elsa who was more or less domesticated, but “Born Free” had the best intentions at heart, so irony has no place as I watch it today.  

And today especially, zoos like the Phoenix zoo are painstaking in creating the most spacious, natural-feeling environments for the animals in their care.  Captivity, yes.  Confinement, no.

Watching “Born Free” today in a less innocent time (for me anyway), and in a world that is more divided and complicated partly due to the pandemic, I have to consider the very idea of freedom, and of what it means to live free.  Elsa, even when she adjusted to a free life in the wild, had to observe hierarchies and certain rules of behavior just to stay alive.  Whether you abide by the rules of the jungle or, in a modern society, the Rules of the Road, ignoring them could be deadly.

Living with this virus, too, requires adherence to a certain set of rules, whether it be distancing or mask-wearing, or whatever is recommended to avoid catching it. So many have misconstrued these rules as a threat to one’s personal freedom.  But not observing them, like not stopping for a red light, might have lethal consequences.

Animals have more common sense, I think.