The MacGuffin

There are some films that have become so familiar to us that watching them again feels a bit like coming home. We know the characters, we know the sequences, and sometimes we can even say the lines of dialogue before they come. They are so a part of who we are that we associate the film with our own upbringing. That’s how I feel every time I see Robert Zemeckis’s (1985). One of the essential films of the 1980s, I feel that it’s safe to say that just about everyone knows and has seen it, and for some of us, couldn’t fathom what growing up would be like without it. It does everything that you can expect out of pure entertainment—with names, places, and images that have lasted in contemporary popular culture. I’ve become so familiar with the film that I can’t remember the first time ever seeing it.

The opening shot is as striking as any you’ll see. Up high in the Peruvian mountains, amongst the clouds and mist, a line of soldiers, animals, and workers snake their way down a steep path. While the shot is taken from a distance, it’s clear that this moment is not manipulated at any point—those are real people steadily going through the dangerous cliffs of the rock side, with the green canyon thousands of feet below. This is just one of the many haunting images that populate Werner Herzog’s daring and ambitious examination of human nature, (1972). It’s a film that examines the depths to which obsession can take a person, created by a man who has made a career out of his obsession for the cinema. There are some filmmakers who do the work as a job, others because they simply enjoy it. Herzog does it because it is ingrained in his very being.

No other genre evokes a sense of place better than the western. You have vast rolling hills, expansive barren deserts, horses, hats and pistols, and sleepy towns where sheriffs and robbers shoot it out to the death. It’s a world long since passed, where those with gold and guns dictated the law. What I find so fascinating about westerns is that they are a representation of a place that once was—with people who perhaps lived lives that were similar to the ones we read about in folk stories, or watch in the movies. Survival and the hope of prosperity drove people toward these places, and motivated those who wanted to steal their way to a better life. There are a handful of great movies set in the Wild West, but very few have reached the plateau of Sergio Leone’s epic, (1966).

“…I coulda been somebody, instead of a bum, which is what I am”

Perhaps no other name in film acting is equated to that of an icon quite like Marlon Brando. He has been referenced and pointed to countless times, and his practice of the Method approach has become legendary. Brando has influenced actors who can be identified by their last names: Dean, DeNiro, Pacino, Nicholson. To say that someone is the “greatest” in anything is a hyperbolic statement, because an idea like that could never be truly measured. But it can be said that Brando, in his laidback, naturalistic, and even quirky manner of performance, helped transition screen acting to how it is seen in the modern day. You can even see the difference in approach in the films themselves, with other actors boldly gesturing against his more unorthodox style. That’s not to say that either is right or wrong, but one thing is undeniably certain: Brando stood out from the rest.

At first glance, the premise of Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger’s film (1947) was one that I was not entirely excited to see. The story about a group of nuns sent out to the high hilltops of the Himalayan Mountains to establish a school and hospital sounded drab to me. By its end, though, I was riveted. The film is about so much more than just nuns; it is about the repressed emotions and passions that come with vowing to become one. That’s where the true tension of The Archers’ (as Powell and Pressburger were known) story is set: in seeing who will be able to keep themselves in control, and who will fall in to the dark side and allow this new and amazing world to encompass them. It is a film about bold colors and enormous landscapes, about tension and eroticism boiling beneath the façades that our characters so desperately try to put up.

There are good filmmakers, there are great filmmakers, and then there’s Jean Vigo. In the history of great directors that have come and gone, Jean Vigo’s name stands in a class all its own. Very few directors have made such an impression on me with such incredible ease and simplicity. And he did so with only one film. (1934) is a movie that many may not at first point to as being one of the finest works ever made, but after one viewing of it, I was convinced beyond any doubt. But calling it a great work doesn’t necessarily describe the experience of watching it adequately. The film does not reach for the stars; it does not have an epic grandeur that so many others strive for. Its beauty is in its effortlessness, in its poetic sensuality and dreamlike realism. Within its minimalist, everyday-like nature, Vigo captured the splendor of life itself.

I once had a conversation with a friend in which we talked about great cinematic love stories. As the debate went further, I eventually pointed out F.W. Murnau’s (1927), thinking that they would enjoy it. After describing it to them, most notably the fact that it was not only in black and white, but a silent film as well, they very quickly lost interest in it, which disappointed me. I knew that this story, which tells the tale of two people recapturing their love for one another, would be something that would appeal to their tastes. Unfortunately, their own preconceived notions of what a silent film is prevented them from wanting to see it. It’s a shame, really, because I felt they were missing out not only on one of the great romances ever made, but one of the most moving and technically sound films ever produced.

“I drink your milkshake!” – Daniel Plainview

Paul Thomas Anderson’s There Will Be Blood (2007) is a grand, epic, strange, and mysterious film. It is just as curious as it is involving. What Anderson was able to accomplish was to present its story of a ruthless and greedy oil prospector at the turn of the 20^th century, and provide him with deeper layers that make him more than what he may seem at first. There is something hidden, bubbling just beneath the surface of both the character and of the movie itself. It’s hard to pinpoint, but we know assuredly that Anderson is giving us more than what is simply on the screen. Ambition and capitalism is taken to the extreme, where no one, including family and loved ones, will stand in the way of a man driven to insanity by his success. So far does the character go, that we doubt he’ll ever be able to return from the abyss.

“…And here ya are, and it’s a beautiful day.” - Marge Gunderson

This quote comes at the end of one of the most unique and memorable crime films of modern cinema, (1996). The character who speaks it comes from a small town, where everyone knows everyone else, and life is made up of small beautiful moments shared between those that love each other. Which makes it all the more confusing for her when she comes face to face with the person who is not of that lifestyle, who is a killer with no remorse, and whose sole motivation is money. It’s a juxtaposition that could only have come from the minds of Joel and Ethan Coen. With this movie, they created a classic story of unique quirkiness, where the characters themselves are just as memorable as the events that unfold. The film is unlike any other, where the people you least expect get thrown into a plot you wouldn’t think they could be a part of, but in the end, all of it fits together into a perfect whole.

Ask me what it is about movies I love so much, and I’ll tell you to see Cinema Paradiso (1988) for your answer. This Italian film, written and directed by Giuseppe Tornatore, is one of the great showcases for the magic that movies can provide. It’s not so much a film that you should see if you are a movie lover; it a film that you must see. We follow a young boy in a small village, witness his friendship with a sweet and kind projectionist, and understand how this child’s love affair with the movies would eventually shape who he would become as a man. It is lovely, nostalgic, and dripping with sentiment, but in the best way possible. All the fun, enjoyment, thrills, and amazement that come with falling in love with the movies is captured in almost every frame. The movie was made for movie fans, and to not find joy in it would be to turn against everything they stand for.