THE LAST PICTURE SHOW (1971)

Neha says
The Last Picture Show leaches the hope and life slowly and painfully out of its unhappy and restless characters’ just as its black and white artistic cinematography paints a bleak, colorless portrait of a small town, Anarene, Texas of 1951. Made in the 70’s but as an ode to the time that it’s been set in, the black and white visual experience not only enriches the movie but compounds the emotional, thematic, intellectual and nostalgic gravity of its plot and in terms of a movie experience there’s Bogdanovich’s supreme command over his narrative that makes his story leap out of the screen with its sense of realism, deceptively giving you the illusion of it’s characters drifting through time but perceptively the character stories and the varied sub-plots are all moving, scene by scene towards a moment of truth.

Director Peter Bogdanovich’s narrative takes a piercing look at a transitional period of American life and culture. Think about the 50’s when war and economic distress along with the advent of television isolated people, took them away from community living and boxed them into claustrophobic shells of loneliness and despair! And that’s about the time when a little dilapidated theatre, a symbol of bringing people together witnessed change, not of the most valued kind, when it’s forced to shut down and with the last picture show that marks the last happy memory witnessed by this town with two good friends bonding over a movie, what then takes over is an acceptance of life long frustrations and disillusionment in its absolute form. Not an uplifting time at the movies that’s for sure but in it’s tragedy and it’s thematically rich, finely drawn and studied characterizations, the film is an evocative and deeply unsettling journey.

At its centre is Sonny played with a gut wrenching honesty and humility by Timothy Bottoms who observes life through his relationships with the older and wiser; through the mid-life angst of his football coach’s wife Ruth Popper played with a pitch perfect restraint by Cloris Leachman; through the words and memories of Sam, the Lion, played with an arresting intensity by Ben Johnson. Sam owns the town’s only hot-spots-the pool parlor, the theatre, the café bistro and is like a father figure to Sonny. In a wonderful scene with Sam and Sonny out fishing by the tank, Sam echoes the film’s underlying philosophy “You wouldn’t believe how this land has changed.” And when the camera pans horizontally across a flat and empty Texas landscape with Sam recounting his youth, lost love and free spirit, it strangely mirrors Sonny’s life as a high school teenager who’s adventurous enough to run off with his college crush to get married. But coming back to that powerful scene at the lake, it ends with a heartfelt cry when Sam says, “Being a decrepit old bag of bones, that’s what’s ridiculous.” And the irony is Sonny’s life is going the same direction with generation after generation experiencing the same rite of passage, the same disillusionment and the same acceptance of it in spite of how things change around them

And then there’s Billy (Sam Bottoms) who’s mentally challenged but the epitome of innocence who sweeps the streets relentlessly, symbolically trying to hold on the last remaining threads of a communal past. He’s Sonny’s last vestige of hope and their relationship endears you with its gentleness and bashfulness but with Billy’s eventual fate comes a coming of age moment for Sonny as well where all illusions are shattered and reality hits home. The film also explores the progressive, uncomfortable but flagrant sexual awakening of its society seen through the likes of a young and manipulative Jacy Farrow played with an icy hauteur by Cybil Sheppard, adding yet another revealing dimension to the story.

This is in many ways a director’s film and Peter Bogdanovich’s story telling echoes his love and understanding of cinema, tradition and change. With a poetic and multi layered screenplay, clever use of country music and aesthetic camera work that goes a long way in creating a mood and tone for the film, penetrating, Oscar winning performances, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is a deceptively simple and passionately provocative piece of art.

Ira says

The Last Picture Show opens quietly with a wide shot of a dusty Texas road and a young boy listening to country western music, on the radio of a beat up old heap of a car that he’s finding hard to start. We see him in black and white, the colour palette for the entire film, a choice unheard of in HOLLYWOOD since the 60’s and one that, 31-year-old director Bogdanovich made very consciously for the film, made in 1971. The young boy is silently joined by another; they smile at each other, the first swings the other’s cap the wrong way around on his head, a gesture of complete understanding that is repeated at least half a dozen times in the film, as they share a very secret, special, obviously familiar greeting of acknowledgement, warmth and acceptance. (Some of the most powerful parts of this one are in fact the silences)

Whirring around on unnaturally desolated roads, blaring the cheerful music, you vaguely start to sense what the film suggests so acutely throughout, and it’s really only at the end when you can fully make sense of that opening scene. That short car ride is marked by something palpable, alive, hopeful, and yet stifled. It expresses the muted exuberance of carpe diem, the very promise of life, of adventure, the gung ho spirit of the Midwest, of an age of cowboys long gone (later mirrored in a wonderful speech by the erstwhile Ben Johnson sitting by a water tank). Alas, it’s only the promise. And the strange thing is, as realistic, at times funny, uncomfortable or moving THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is, it is also undoubtedly sad and very much rooted to a specific time in American history and culture.

SONNY (Timothy Bottoms), is of course the protagonist here and while the film is really about his journey on the surface, it’s also the journey of all its characters and the journey of a town, a country and a society that is on the brink of transformation. The story of a land and its people who, as much as they are bound to their small town life, must also face larger and imminent winds of change. ‘The last picture show’, the advent of television, the end of an era, the inevitable blurring of social, sexual and conventional mores, the redefining of society, and yet the eternally human, relevant realities of war, of adultery, of loneliness, of love and most of all of growing up.

Bogdanovich does an incredible job of maintaining a tone and mood for the film that doesn’t change in its quiet, frank determination to be brutally honest, non judgmental, and almost methodical so whether its adolescent sexual exploration, nudity, humiliation, death, a slap in the face, a kiss on the mouth, there is a powerful starkness in it all so that it hits you that much harder. He makes you feel the repression, the sadness, and passive aggression of his characters without the melodrama in a vein of realism that is very much part of the films world and underlying social, cultural and emotional fabric. I found aggression a very interesting theme in this one and Bogdanovich explores this quite wonderfully. Hinting early on in the film to ideas of a call to arms, to wake up and live, to be free of that oppressive burden of conforming to what is ‘expected’, he sets up the inevitable tragedy of not being able to do so.

In an amusing sequence just after the first scene in the film SONNY, BOBBY and DWAYNE are chided by different groups of older men, in different ways about the previous days football match where they played ‘all right’, but if they only knew how to ‘tackle’, then victory would have been theirs. The repetition is funny, the subtext, not so much. To me, a strong reminder of a typically American go getter attitude but also a satirical look at the idea of masculinity and the ‘social’ role of a man, an idea that like feminity, and a woman’s role, is explored deeply by the film.

Bogdanovich doesn’t shy away from exposing latent or overt aggression in women either. Jacey will stop at nothing from playing sweet, innocent damsel in distress to moving as easily into guises of sexual predator and gold digger even as she is constantly guided by her own mothers experiences. And Jacey is played by a young lady making her big screen debut here, Cybil Shephard. (I remember Shephard most from her “Moonlighting” days, the popular TV show from the 90’s that starred her and BRUCE WILLIS!). It was amazing to see Jeff Bridges and her looking so young and standing out with stellar performances here even with some big-weights in the cast. All Bogdanovich’s actors, particularly Burnstyn, Johnson and the little known actress Cloris Leachman amongst the older set, are very strong.

Much like the plays of Sam Shephard or the films of director Sam Mendes today, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is on the surface a social drama and bittersweet slice of AMERICAN life set in 1952, but it also becomes a true classic because of its richness in subject and character making it stand the test of time. Revealing, entertaining, disconcerting, uncompromising in its grittiness, and human in its character follies, its as relevant and satisfying in 2010 as it must’ve have been back in the 70’s. It will take you a while to accustom yourself to that world, the leisurely pace, and the style where Bogdanovich stays away from fuss, from frills, from anything extra, and from drama of any kind. Keeping his frames clean, his landscape uncluttered, his characters real, and his camera steady, watching, firm, he takes you into a world however far removed in history, geography or cultural context, is universal and often painfully close to home.

DO THE RIGHT THING (1989)

Neha says
Disturbing, real, layered, political and provocative-DO THE RIGHT THING is simply a brilliant example of a director in sync with his times. Be it thematic threads of racism, immigration, violence, a need for identity and belonging or even a critique on the black man prototype -Lee uses the film’s platform not just to convey the black man’s voice but also the common man’s voice.

Lee also uses this story of a predominantly black, lower class Brooklyn community to meditate on two different political school’s of thought-one of Martin Luther King who preached non-violence as the right thing to do and one of Malcolm X who supported violence in the face of self defense. But these political dogmas have a different reality in the real world and that’s the crux of Lee’s storytelling. And Lee’s not advocating one over the other-he’s just putting together a case study of different individuals and contrasting mindsets and seeing how they ping pong off each other, testing how if at all these two theories could coexist . So whether it’s black vs. white, love vs. hate, peace vs. violence, politics vs. the common man’s angst-it’s quite revealing to see how a simple catalyst as a heat wave can destruct the delicate peace treaty of the neighborhood and when it comes down to it-the right thing to do is rather undefined, subjective and even manipulated for self-serving causes.

Lee spends the first 45 minutes to painstakingly create a sense of community and while it’s energetic, it never feels overcrowded and while the characters reveal themselves in textbook fashion, they are just so intriguing and nuanced at a human level. Be it the radio jockey (Sam Jackson) who reports on the days events or three middle aged black men sitting on lawn chairs, talking about all and sundry-from politics, to fatherless children to Korean immigrants and how they are stealing the black man’s job to Smiley (Roger Guenveur Smith) who stammers incomprehensibly about Martin Luther King and Malcolm X to Da Mayor (Ossie Davis) a friendly neighborhood drunk (and my favorite character) to many more small interesting characters, Lee’s real approach to his characters and his keen eye for the mundane has you involved.

But the heart of all the action is at an Italian man’s pizzeria. Sal (Danny Aiello) prides himself for the goodwill he has with the locals and believes he belongs to this black neighborhood. His son Pino(John Turturro) on the other hand hates the neighborhood, the black man and his life and projects his anger onto a black delivery boy Mookie (Spike Lee) On a very hot day Buggin Out(Giancarlo Esposito) along with rap music lover Radio Raheem (Bill Nunn) decides to shut down Sal’s pizzeria as Sal doesn’t have any black man’s photographs on his wall of fame but when an accident ensues, a riot breaks loose with suppressed rage finding a violent voice and all the characters coming together and participating in the chaos.

The performances and characters work but it’s really the well realized setting that is the glory of the film. It’s commendable that at the time inspite of the controversy and politics of it all, Lee made a film that raises important questions and one that doesn’t aim to be politically correct. By the end you know and can appreciate Lee for what he’s trying to do even if at times the conflict feels a tad outdated. The ambiguity about what it means to “do the right thing” in a real context, in an urban world with complex individuals is what provokes Lee’s narrative and leaves us equally affected with ample food for thought.

Ira says

Do the Right Thing is the best Spike Lee film I’ve seen. Only the writer -directors 3rdfeature, he does all the ‘Right’ things here, and does em well. Saturated, orange- drenched, aggressive street dancing and a minimally clad, provocative Rosie Perez dances to the opening credits as Public Enemy’s energetic rap song, “Fight the Power” plays loudly in the background. This is a tune that will repeat itself at two other significant points in the film and serve as a reminder of the character of RADIO RAHEEM, who’s fate brings in the films unexpected, but very effective climactic point.

I loved how Lee creates a mood from the word go, how a radio jockey, the one and only Samuel L Jackson (hell, salute to him for holding his breath for some really, really long bits of dialogue in this one) opens the film providing an unmistakable ethnic flavour instantly. And as gently political as the commentary begins to get, it is no sooner drowned by a flurry of characters and a host of vociferous but casual references to the HEAT- a very symbolic, very metaphorical heat that everyone is talking about.

The heat, Radio Raheem and his big boombox are three motifs that are hard to ignore throughout the film. Reappearing unexpectedly and always intrusive, RADIO and Public enemies are for me as overtly political as the film gets. While abusive language and expletives abound, (hell almost every sentence has a cuss word be warned), and tensions between groups rise during the course of act one, they fall as easily, community seems stronger than anger, and the bonds of friendship or family overpower any suggestions of imminent aggression. Apart from a short scat like interlude somewhere along the films halfway point, where characters from different ethnic groups carry out verbal racial attacks towards one another, and the climax of the film in act 2, its not until the closing credits, marked by contradictory but powerful quotes from Martin Luther & Malcolm X, do we feel a burning undercurrent of racial, or as Lee would go on to call it in his fifth film, ‘jungle’ fever, of any kind. And thank god for that.

For the most part, Lee focuses on his story and the world around Sals famous Pizzeria instead. The saturated colour palette he uses in the film creates an atmosphere of sensual mellowness and scorching temperatures; the precise sentiments that the African American community existed in. And I loved how everything is always accompanied by rich, soulful music. Music is central to the films atmosphere, ranging from rap to Latin to jazz and blues, often cued by Jackson’s voice who speaks as a wise, rhyming, omniscient narrator . Lee’s style is unique and engaging that’s for sure, and his direction very assured for a director barely in his thirties. I really liked too, the camera work- the tilted Dutch angles, hand held unsteadiness, the slow pans, zooms and low angle shots convey just the right sense of a suburb that is somewhere, slightly askew.

Lee’s good at directing himself , giving MOOKIE a very real, underplayed, endearing sort of indifference. Not the violent type, MOOKIE’s a guy who takes long showers on his lunch break, a guy who isn’t the best husband or father but still looks out for his sister and his friends and shows moments of tender affection for his shrill Hispanic wife, a slightly hysterical Perez. “Do you love me?” She asks him on the phone with a pout and a whine. “I dedicated a song to you on love radio, if that aint love I don’t know what is?” he whispers back into the receiver. He works in the film, so does she, even as they yell and argue and giggle like teenagers through a sexy ice cube scene with nudity and dim lighting.

Lee does well in balancing characters and colours without too much drama. While arguments occur, voices are raised and name-calling is normal for almost everyone in Brooklyn, what I loved most is the almost constant mirth and humour in the film. A lot of that comes from its very vibrant, very colourful, very memorable characters. So we have SAL, VITO & PINO- the Italian famiglia, Da mayor & Mother Sister- an African American older couple, Jackson’s ‘the love daddy’, Radio Raheem, and the 3 idling old timers who are too lazy to do much of anything, and go around remembering the old times, teasing one another and cursing the ‘Korean across the street’ who’s successful grocery business is to them, just a ‘beep beep shame’.

A social commentary, and a film that integrates the ‘we and ours’ vs. the ‘us and them’ into its narrative well, this one to me is a character driven drama and comedy above everything else, Lee ensures a tone of levity throughout, making the harsh reality of the final half hour that much greater. While racial concerns and prejudices, communal issues, and minority specific details ranging from African American, to Italian American, to Hispanic and Korean are part and parcel of the landscape, (Lee’s favorite setting, Brooklyn, NY circa 1989), he doesn’t let his tone get bitter, partial or judgmental. Tensions rise and dissipate, fights occur and dissolve into laughter, relationships strain, ease and strain again, its hot, its differentiated, but its home, and humour helps sail it all through. Till inevitably, something, somewhere has to explode. And it does. As Mookie goes to meet Sal to get his money at the end of the film, there’s a shot of him bending down to pick up some crumpled notes before he walks away. An image that reminds you of the one lingering question that the film leaves you with, what is the right thing and who decides? This time, you do.