"The Incredible Shrinking Man" (1957)

 

“I had presumed upon nature. That existence begins and ends is man’s conception, not nature’s... All this vast majesty of creation, it had to mean something.  And then I meant something too.” -- Grant Williams as Scott Carey, in the final moments of "The Incredible Shrinking Man"

As the pandemic drags into the middle of September, a sense of numbness has set in. Call it Covid-fatigue.  I can see it in the diminished frequency of my writing.  

Re-visiting old movies, and writing about their renewed relevance for our situation, started out as an exciting idea. It provided me with a way to parlay my inarticulate thoughts and feelings into a sort of coherent diary of the months during the pandemic, and to chronicle my state of mind during this health nightmare. 

Anxiety over the unknown dangers of the coronavirus, and uncertainty about the duration of lockdowns and social distancing, fueled my initial, nervous energy to find new relevance in these films, and to keep writing about them to maintain a sense of purpose and stay sane.

In writing about movies, the subject I loved best, I might encourage a brand-new audience to discover films that do not deserve to be forgotten.   I wanted to make a case that these earlier films, which were important in their day, matter as much today as when they were popular, some maybe more.

Lately, Covid-fatigue, like a new, free-form anxiety, has had a paralyzing effect.   I was afraid that my pipeline was running dry, that I had run out of movies to write about in this way, that the project was coming to an end.   

Not only that, but the health crisis, which has its own set of obstacles and dangers to overcome, has become entwined with politics, so that it is becoming more difficult to deal with Covid-19 by itself without dragging in our depressing, political national drama. 

It is bad enough to be in a state of mourning for the death of a familiar way of life, which I now see is like the depression stage of mourning.  Add to it the barrage of petty, angry, irrational politics which have co-opted the pandemic, and turned it into a weapon to divide us, and it requires an impossible amount of energy to navigate it all.

It sometimes helps me to regress a little bit, and remember the things I enjoyed as a child, to bring me back to myself.

So, there was something reassuring about watching “The Incredible Shrinking Man” a giddy-scary, slightly silly yet surprisingly profound black-and-white science fiction melodrama from 1957. As a child in grade school, I loved these atomic-age thrillers, mostly set in the desert southwest, featuring gigantic lizards, enormous spiders and prehistoric creatures wreaking havoc on crowds of regular people. (My husband would say that I have never completely outgrown my love for them).

The simple premise of “The Incredible Shrinking Man” has main character Scott Carey (Grant Williams) being covered by a mysterious mist while out on a boating excursion with his wife, Louise (Randy Stewart).  Suddenly, he begins to shrink to nothingness, confounding the medical community, and creating a media frenzy.  As he shrinks, his heartbroken and understanding wife pledges to help him recover. Carey, dwindling ever faster, tries to befriend a circus midget, before needing to be housed inside a child’s playhouse. 

After a terrifying encounter with the family cat, that Louise thinks has killed him, Scott is lost in the basement, struggling to survive, trying to find shelter in a matchbox, and competing for scraps of food with a hair-raising black spider that is already three times his size.

It’s comforting to watch this for nostalgia, to recapture the thrills I used to have in the safety of my parents living room, where I tuned in after school on the old Zenith black-and-white console television.  It was enough back then to wait with dizzy anticipation for the scary moments, the special effects (which I prayed were actually real somehow), and for the creatures that had me staring wide-eyed, until the inevitable letdown of their destruction before the films ended.

A second reason I find “The Incredible Shrinking Man” comforting is that It goes beyond the simple surface adventure.  With the second half of the film virtually a one-man show, we hear Scott Carey’s thoughts as he narrates for us, inviting us into his feelings of terror and determination to survive.  He also considers what it all means: what it means to be human as he disappears, and whether he matters in the vast universe, even as he shrinks so small that he can fit through the tiny holes of a window screen.

Along with the unusual intelligence of the script, and the moving (if occasionally overwritten) reflections on the meaning of life, “The Incredible Shrinking Man” allows me to observe a character in the midst of surreal, extreme circumstances, who uses his wiles and his strength to keep on living, even as the odds of survival turn more and more against him.

There’s an apt metaphor here. I myself don’t feel like I’m shrinking, but rather that my options in life are dwindling because of the necessary mitigation of the virus.  And while I can hope for a return to normal life someday, with better leadership and a good vaccine, Scott Carey doesn’t have that hope.  

More than that, as Scott shrinks, the everyday surroundings and items of his life actually grow to dangerous proportions: a benign storm drain in the basement floor can be a deadly whirlpool; a wooden paint-stirrer might give way to his plunge into an abyss; and tiny critters we barely notice, even a family pet, become mortal enemies.

For me, it’s the metaphor of a world becoming too overwhelming, and feeling helpless to make a difference, that works in this film. The virus, the political instability, and the creeping incivility around us today is captured in images Scott Carey’s world as it grows too big and dangerous around him. 

But just as Scott does in the film, I find ways to adjust, to survive, to avoid danger, and to make my life matter.  Unlike him, I have the support of special loved ones, and good friends, to help me through, which he loses as the film goes on.

The movie is extremely well-made for a picture of this genre and lower budget.  The special effects are quite good.  By today’s standards, some of the photographic effects are weak, and some of the music cues are laughably over the top; but other effects, like Scott’s encounters with the cat and the spider, are shockingly good (and gory). The sets are top-notch, clever and very plausible, recreating mundane objects of his home in gigantic replicas, of furniture, pencils, mousetraps, and spiderwebs.

Best of all are the performers.  Grant Williams is somewhat limited as an actor, but is so watchable that we don't really care.  Here, he finds the right character for his capabilities.  He is appropriately athletic and moves well.  His narration is even more heartfelt than his delivery of dialogue on screen. It’s enthralling to watch him fashion a weapon out of a needle and thread, cut his clothing to fit his smaller body, and convey in his eyes the quick thinking as he makes life-or-death decisions.

Even better is Randy Stewart as Louise.  Her complete commitment to the role, her playing it completely straight as a woman slowly losing the love of her life, is so convincing, that it lifts the entire film into a higher level of believability.  I think it’s the purest, best piece of acting I have ever seen in a film of this type.

After finding comfort in watching “The Incredible Shrinking Man”. I have also found new energy to keep my writing going.  New classic movies are emerging for me that reveal new light on various facets of our pandemic.  A few will provide apt comparisons not only to our dealing with Covid, but to the political circus we are trapped in.

And once I write what will eventually be my last piece for this blog, I may finally pass into the final stage of mourning the old life, just as Scott Carey did: acceptance.

"Ordinary People" (1980)

 

“Isn’t it time we got back to normal?”  Beth Jarrett (Mary Tyler Moore), a cold, grieving mother denying the turmoil around her, in ‘Ordinary People’

How many of us have desperately uttered the above quote lately, months after Covid-19 has upended almost everything?   And how many, in positions of power, have said it prematurely in the midst of the chaos of the pandemic, which is not yet ready to let that inevitable normalcy return.

Back in April of this year, I read accounts about how the pandemic took its toll on healthcare professionals.  The war-zone atmosphere, and the overwhelming illness and death around them, with little personal protection for themselves or their families, produced intense feelings of anxiety, guilt, and loss of control.  Some workers took their own lives in despair.

There was even a brief story about a hospital that was so short on rooms, that patients who were admitted for suicidal depression were kept for observation in the corridors.

I just happened to re-visit “Ordinary People”, the hit 1980 film based on Judith Guest’s best-selling novel, during Suicide Awareness Month.  Today, especially during the health crisis, depression and suicide are increasing, especially among young people.

There are many possible reasons for this: fear of the virus and its effects, including death of family and friends; disruption to a period of significant growth and development; a sense of hopelessness about the future; and the anxiety and loneliness of forced isolation, during a time in their lives when social interactions are crucial.

“Ordinary People” was a critical and popular success at the time, and was unusual in its depiction of the effect of attempted suicide on an American family.  It also stood out for its sensitive, positive portrayal of psychiatry, addressing the stigma around it while demonstrating, in a concentrated fashion, its potential to heal.  

The film has fallen out of favor in some circles, I assume by those who are uncomfortable with any film that has the power to honestly touch one’s deepest emotions.  Because of that power, and because it provides a way to identify with a young person struggling with feelings of guilt and hopelessness, “Ordinary People” might be more important today than ever.

The directorial debut of actor Robert Redford, “Ordinary People” is a compelling story and an actor’s showcase.  Its tone of somber control, and its explosive emotional release, moved audiences and members of the Motion Picture Academy alike.  The film won four Oscars, including Best Picture and Director. 

Conrad Jarrett is a quiet, anxious, good-natured high-school student, a singer in the school choir and member of the swim team. He lives with his parents, Calvin and Beth, in an affluent North Shore Chicago suburb, with all of the comforts that one might expect, even take for granted.  Bad things don’t seem possible here, or at least they should be easy to overcome by people who have it all.

Conrad’s life seems quiet and normal, almost excessively ordered and polite.  The film opens with typical domestic scenes and school activities.  Still, something is just a bit off; even the most commonplace dialogue seems fraught with subtext.

When it is finally revealed that Conrad has recently spent four months in a psychiatric hospital for a suicide attempt, the calmness and forced normalcy of the opening scenes seem almost grotesque.  Right away, we discover that Conrad is troubled by nightmares of a boating accident which he survived, and which his charismatic older brother, Buck, did not.    

His parents try in completely different ways to move on from the tragedy, or, more accurately, they devise ways to ignore their pain; and they have opposing strategies to deal with Conrad’s presence.  Theirs is a life of stock markets and golf games, Christmas spent in Europe and cocktail parties with show tunes around a piano.  Conrad is a constant reminder that the easy routine of their life cannot be recaptured. 

His father, Calvin, is openly loving, and tries hard to encourage Conrad, but his enthusiasm is almost naïve, and he can barely hide his worry and inability to truly connect.  

Conrad’s mother, Beth, is in a private hell of loss and an inability to feel.  She keeps Buck’s room intact, almost as a shrine; there are hints at an unhealthy closeness with Buck, and her deep pain over his death can’t disguise her resentment for Conrad having survived.  She is perfunctory, even cold, with Conrad, and he correctly reads it as hostility. 

When Conrad sees a psychiatrist at Calvin’s urging, to help deal with his unresolved anxiety and sorrow, the resentment between Beth and Calvin comes to a head.  She is ashamed of the idea of her well-bred, Protestant, keep-up-with-the-Jones’s family needing a psychiatrist---especially Dr. Berger, a Jewish psychiatrist—while Calvin himself visits Dr. Berger, at first to check on Conrad’s progress, but really to discuss deeper issues he must face with his marriage.

Robert Redford is not a flashy director.  He wisely pays attention to his characters, places them front and center, and closely observes the nuances of their expressions and body language to reveal truths about them that are otherwise difficult to portray on screen.  His filmmaking style is clean and professional, at times somber and controlled to reflect this material. 

But Redford is anything but bland.  Aside from his work with the actors, each one of whom gives a career-best performance, Redford pays attention to small details that give scenes and characters a surprising depth, for those who look closely. 

The casual, lived-in feel of the 1980s hairstyles, clothing, and beat-up cars of the high school students is very authentic; and some of the thick Chicago accents are surprisingly right.  Conrad’s nervous tics, captured almost accidentally without drawing attention to them—like his knee bouncing under the dining room table, or his fingers flicking during a quiet conversation with his doctor—tell more truth about him than any dialog. 

In a brief but meaningful shot, with the camera directly above a kitchen table, two orange juice glasses are placed in unison, followed by a third glass almost as an afterthought, a perfect symbol of the complicated feelings of a broken family.  Ditto the three napkins in their napkin rings, in a drawer as Beth lingers over them. And Beth constantly climbs the stairs of her desperately well-ordered home; the muffled sound of her footsteps on the carpet is like her repressed rage.

Redford’s laser focus on his characters, with help from a no-frills screenplay by Alvin Sargent, gives “Ordinary People” an unusual dual distinction: it has an undercurrent of melancholy, and also a sense of things about to explode from under the surface.  The almost suffocating atmosphere of home and family, and the heartrending missed opportunities for honest feeling and communication, is like a silent cry.  

One moment, when Beth and Conrad almost connect before the phone interrupts them, is filled with regret. As the film progresses, the intensity of the exchanges between characters is riveting, and both tragic and cleansing.

The score, based on themes adapted by Marvin Hamlisch from Pachelbel’s “Canon in D Major”, works by drawing out feelings of sorrow, and then absolving us from them.  It is used sparingly, and given a high dramatic charge when Conrad has a breakthrough.

Timothy Hutton, who won a Supporting Actor Oscar in his film debut (even though he is basically the lead character), is refreshingly natural and open on-screen.  We can’t help but like him and suffer with him, as he tries to re-enter a life whose tragedy he feels responsible for.  Hutton’s smile reveals Conrad’s pure joy, and his moments of confusion and heartbreak are real.  Hutton’s father, actor Jim Hutton, died before the filming began, which might have given Timothy a reserve of emotion to draw upon.  

In the climactic scene with Dr. Berger, Hutton escalates the intensity, and the scene is almost too painful to watch, but you can’t look away.  The final effect on the audience is like a catharsis of therapeutic psychodrama.

As Dr. Berger, Judd Hirsch, known best as a comic actor on TV sitcoms, gives the film a jolt of subversive energy.  When he comforts Conrad after the difficult breakthrough, it is real and stirring.  In just a few crucial scenes, Hirsch creates a great character, played with sensitivity and devil-may-care directness.

Donald Sutherland shows his versatility in the more low-key role of Calvin.  I loved his vocal inflections as he labels Conrad’s most mundane achievements as “great”.  During his slow self-discovery with Dr. Berger, his sense of nervousness almost parallels that of Conrad's. 

In a small but important role, Elizabeth McGovern (“Downton Abbey”) is a charming breath of fresh air as Conrad’s school friend and fellow choir member at school.  She is completely awkward and believable as she helps Conrad back on the road to finding love.

The most difficult role, that of Beth, was cast against type with famous sitcom star Mary Tyler Moore.  It is a remarkable portrait of a woman in denial who cannot let herself feel any more pain, with a level of mourning and self-loathing in her portrayal.  

We may dislike Beth for her coldness toward Conrad, but we understand her, too, her losses and her desire to maintain whatever semblance of a life she can, shallow as it may be.  Moore has a stunning moment near the end, silently gasping and struggling to say something she is physically unable to say: maybe “I love you.”  Moore was deservedly nominated for Best Actress.

There’s a scene where Conrad meets up with Karen, a girl who he befriended in the hospital.  She tells him “let’s have the best year ever”.  His smile hides his trepidation.  It is a line that we might all wish for in the coming year, even if it feels hard to believe.  Karen’s eventual suicide precipitates Conrad’s difficult self-revelation and healing.  

In some odd way, “Ordinary People” may represent a wish fulfillment for us all.  In spite of the global tragedy of this year, along with the other disasters, conflicts and indignities, and against all indications to the contrary, we all hope to heal, get our lives back, have the best year ever.  

Or, at least, a more normal one.