Frezno's Criterion Challenge: March 2023 Trip Report

Sorry this was late, I was out of town when the month ended. I also have a cold, so before I flop back onto the couch as a sniffling mess... Welcome back to the third iteration of this thing, in which I watch a bunch of movies for the Criterion Challenge. Last time was... Well, it really ended on a dour and depressing note. Not that I don't mind getting real sometimes, but it has to be said that last film was a real downer. We might hit more of those in March, but the beauty of picking from 40-odd movies is that you can set the tone as you please. So, to kick off another month of the Criterion Challenge, it's a palate cleanser as we begin with...

9. I Wanna Hold Your Hand (1978, dir. Robert Zemeckis)

Goddamn. This was his first movie? This was the start of a legendary career? Back To The Future? Roger Rabbit? Forrest Gump? It all starts here, with a madcap comedy about Beatlemania? It sounds wild when you put it like that, but then you watch the movie and realize it's all here. All of those famous movies that lay ahead for Zemeckis and his partner in crime Bob Gale are period pieces dripping with nostalgia, and it all starts right here. It's near-perfectly timed, too. The established general "nostalgia cycle" is 20 years, but with this film we have Zemeckis and Gale in 1978 ruminating on the Beatlemania of 1964, just 14 years prior. It is almost, but not quite, half a lifetime ago for those now middle-aged girls who would look back upon those days with fondness. For reasons that would bog down this capsule review, it's a nostalgic mindset I've been in myself for my own days of half a lifetime ago. A 30 year-old watching this movie would have been 16 during the events of the film, and I'm sure there were more than a few of those in the audience of the Ed Sullivan show that night, screaming their lungs out.

It's a simple story, though exaggerated for comedic effect. Those hypothetical girls back in 1964 probably just bought their tickets and lost their minds. The girls in this movie go through all sorts of zany hijinks to get a glimpse of the Beatles and get to their show, and every turn has irreverent youthful energy as the establishment is shocked and appalled at this young rebellion. Zemeckis manages to make the threat of a boy getting his moptop shaved off into a looming threat, and that's a cinematic accomplishment. All of the girls' fannish nature comes out in different ways, but I think my favorite is how Nancy Allen plays it. Her exposure to the Beatles results in this sensual orgasmic pleasure that is for her and her alone. Not only is there the scene where she sneaks into the empty hotel room of the Beatles and does some very suggestive shit to one of their guitars, but at the end of the movie at the concert, the visual language is clear. The Beatles bring her to orgasm. It's not subtle at all. Not only is it a fun little movie, but it's fun to see all the little idea seeds that would pop up later in Back To The Future: I mean, a climax atop a tower during a lightning storm, that ends in a lightning bolt coming down? Come on. This was great, though, and just the palate cleanser I needed. Well worth a watch, but what will I watch next? 

10. The Awful Truth (1937, dir. Leo McCarey)

Another funny film, and one of the oldest I've ever watched. We have older on the challenge list, but for now this is about as far back in time as I've gone. What's funny is how progressive it feels for a movie from the late 30's. This is a movie about a married couple who get into a fight within the first ten minutes of the film and end up getting separated, their divorce pending finalization within 90 days. That honestly surprised me, a movie being this frank and mature about the subject of divorce. I say mature, but really our two leads are kind of immature. I don't mean that as an insult, because that's part of what makes the movie charming and hilarious.

At almost every turn, Cary Grant's Jerry is deliberately buffooning and faux pas-ing his way into his ex-wife's life. His antics continually block the romantic advances of her new suitor, and there's this smug satisfaction hiding behind Grant's affable outward person that just radiates from him. Not to be outdone, Irene Dunne's Lucy gets him back good near the end of the film, when she has to pretend to be Jerry's sister instead of his ex-wife when she's invited to his new fiancée's fancy place for a party. She's in that situation because of equal farce and reflexive lying on Jerry's part, but it's nonetheless really funny to see and a cathartic bit of "see, I can dish it out too" from her. 

Like the last film I watched for this, it is a comedy, so there's not too much more I can say beyond that it's quite funny in parts, with lots of general buffoonery and zingers and all sorts of other screwball things. Considering that the category for this part of the Criterion Challenge was "Animals In The Collection", I should also mention Mr. Smith. Mr. Smith is the dog the pair own, who's staying with Lucy while they sort out the divorce. Not only is the dog cute and a real howler whenever Jerry plays the piano, but he also manages to get in some romance blocking of his own despite Lucy and Jerry's attempts to keep the dog from spilling the truth. I don't have too much more insight into this. It's a charmingly amusing picture from long ago, and again is a great palate cleanser from the more serious stuff. Perhaps I'll go back to the dramatic well for the next film. Let's see.

11. Blood Simple (1984, dir. Joel & Ethan Coen)

Speaking of incredible filmmaking debuts out of the gate... First we had Robert Zemeckis with I Wanna Hold Your Hand, and now here is the first film from the Coen brothers. Theirs is a filmography I have only dabbled with lightly: I really loved Fargo, and I have vague fond memories of Burn After Reading. Both those films have many strengths, but what stands out in my mind is the way that they combine crime thriller with dark comedy, the former tinged and tainted by the latter as a tangled web of coincidence and error ensnares the players, making things simultaneously horrible to watch and a grim hoot. That all started right out the gate here with Blood Simple. To explain the movie would be to ruin the movie, so it's thankful that these are tiny snippets of brevity. The film's first half is this slow burn which lets us marinate in the lives and squabbles of its central players, jealously and vengeance burning in the heart of the man whose wife has been sleeping around with his bartender employee. 

It's as if the Coens have lit a stick of dynamite with an extra long fuse, and we watch it slowly fizzle and creep forward, burning ever downward... and then, kaboom. What follows is sudden violence and a comedy of errors, a sheer dance of misunderstanding from multiple players. It's a complicated tango. I didn't know why Ray the bartender, when coming upon the scene of a crime, started to fucking tamper with it and hide the body. Were I some sort of critic who dings a movie for narrative contrivance and "plot holes", no doubt I would ding the film and move on. I'm not that kind of critic, and thus tried a revolutionary tactic called trusting the movie and letting it take me where it was going. That trust was rewarded as the misunderstanding and assumption was spelled out. A smarter critic might have pegged it from the get-go, but I own up to my own misunderstanding and assumption. I myself got caught in the comedy of errors.

The final act is its own terrifying thing, hinting and implying that the man Frances McDormand left her husband for might be just as bad, if he's capable of the horrible things he did in the dark second act. Then it's a tense blood-soaked struggle for survival and freedom. This is a hell of a movie, and the artistry and craft on display here is another home run out of the park for two guys whose genius would be realized en masse a decade later with Minnesotan accents and a wood chipper. An absolute banger of a crime thriller, this, and a welcome example of not reading a movie's intent immediately.

12. Mishima: A Life In Four Chapters (1985, dir. Paul Schrader)

Holy Christ, what a film. Something about the name of that director sounded familiar to me. Among other things, Paul Schrader was the writer of a little film for Martin Scorsese called Taxi Driver. There's definitely a lot of that DNA in this story, which is kind of wild because it's a real story. This is four chapters of the life of Japanese novelist and playwright Yukio Mishima, who from my brief tangling with him in this film was a complex individual. A very real man with strong beliefs, beliefs in Japanese nationalism that led him to attempt a coup in 1970 and commit seppuku when it failed. The film builds up to this, and it's an actively horrific thing to see play out as Mishima and his loyal devotees take military leaders hostage and demand for radical nationalist change in the country they hold dear.

I should abhor Mishima for this, and yet the film presents his life and belief for us in such an interesting way that I can't help but feel some understanding for him. That is not the same as agreement, to be perfectly clear. I'm horrified by his crime and some of his beliefs. The film often dives into lavish adaptations of parts of his work, with bright and vibrant colors and a hazy dreamlike filter. It's as if we're diving into the imagination of Mishima himself, and seeing the garden of imagination which has sprung forth from him. It's important to show this, as even just this sample explains who Mishima was as a creator, and why he was driven to do the terrible thing he did in 1970. I even felt a shred of pity as he tried and failed to rally the army to his cause during his coup attempt. As a fellow writer, I know the worst hurt is when your words fall on deaf ears. Again, that pity is at odds with what he actually believed and died for, but it's an honest emotion I felt. This was a masterpiece of a film for the way it presented the life of this complex and fascinating individual. I do not agree with what Mishima did, but I understand enough of what he held dear in the world to know why he felt he had to do it.