MY MOVIE SHELF: Thelma & Louise

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 156  Days to go: 112

Movie #282:  Thelma & Louise

They like to discuss Thelma & Louise in Women’s Studies courses. It’s not hard to see why. Here’s a film about two women (Geena Davis as Thelma and Susan Sarandon as Louise) — which, let’s be honest, is not all that common a thing in the first place — who have always just sort of lived under the shadow of what society expected them to be without really questioning it, but, when things take a terrible turn, wind up taking a turn themselves, and start doing things on their own terms, looking out for themselves, with no concern for what anybody else does or wants or says.

Some will no doubt say the film undermines any sort of positive feminist image it might have had by virtue of the fact that these women go on a crime spree and spend most of the film running from the law. I disagree, though. It’s true that they’re fugitives, but I think that’s kind of beside the point. They’re fugitives, yes, but only because they know how unfair the legal system is, and how unlikely it is that anyone will believe Harlan (Timothy Carhart) was raping Thelma or that she didn’t deserve it even if he was. Louise, especially, has lived through that system before and she fears more than anything having to face it again. That’s an indictment of society as much as it is the poor decisions these women make.

To be sure, they make some bad decisions. They make a lot of truly awful decisions, and the whole thing just snowballs as they get in tighter and tighter jams and keep making worse and worse decisions, but they’re their decisions. For probably the first time in their entire lives, Thelma and Louise are setting their own course, and there’s something incredibly liberating in that. No, I don’t think the movie is telling women to be criminals or to shoot at all the men who wrong them or anything like that, but I do think it’s saying how freeing it is to live your own life, to stand up for yourself, and to not take any fucking crap.

Of course, a lot of the film is feminist fantasy as well. Have a dump of a husband who patronizes you and/or condescends to you and doesn’t appreciate you and lords over you like your master instead of your partner? Have a vicarious affair with J.D. (Brad Pitt), the sexiest, most charming thief in three states. (“There he is, going. I love watching him go.”) His hot and heavy night with Thelma — and, more importantly, her manic, screaming, so-excited-she’s-vibrating reaction to it the next day (sporting the best sex hair anyone ever did see) — is another form of freedom, of Thelma liberating herself from the bonds of her unhappy marriage and her need to be demure in order to take the man she’s overwhelmingly attracted to and get rewarded for it in the form of, I’m guessing, forty billion orgasms. Yes, he turns out to be just as much of a shit as the other guys, just in a different, more thieving way, but he also opens up an entirely new world to her that, both she and Louise admit later, she has a bit of a knack for.

And speaking of feminist fantasies, if you think there’s a woman alive who hasn’t thought about putting the smack down on some gross fucker who can’t stop with the unwanted lewd remarks and comments while she’s just trying to go about her day, you are living in a dream world. I’m not saying we’d all like to blow up their trucks, but it’s not the worst idea.

On the other hand, I’ve also heard it said that the movie actually undermines a feminist viewpoint by having a “male savior,” in the form of detective Hal (Harvey Keitel), there to champion their cause, and to protect them from their fates — to protect them from themselves. I disagree with this as well, because, in the end, they’re not protected by him. They don’t choose his way. They choose their way.

Of all the talk about Thelma & Louise, however, the ending is the most discussed element in the film — usually in a negative light. I’ve heard countless people over the years praise the film “until the ending.” It’s been called stupid and disappointing and awful and everything else under the sun. But how is their ending different from the end of Bonnie and Clyde? How is driving off a cliff different from dying in a hail of bullets? How is refusing to be taken alive different for these criminals than it is for any other? If anything, it cements the point even further that Thelma and Louise, for better or for worse, have discovered a life in which they make their own choices, and they’re living it to the bitter end. As far as I’m concerned, that’s what feminism is all about.

MY MOVIE SHELF: A League of Their Own

The Task: Watch and write about every movie on my shelf, in order (Blu-rays are sorted after DVDs), by June 10, 2015.  Remaining movies: 209  Days to go: 210

Movie #168:  A League of Their Own

Hey, does anybody know if there’s any crying in baseball? No one’s ever said.

A League of Their Own, in case you were born yesterday or have lived in a cave the past twenty-two years, is the tale of Dottie Hinson (Geena Davis) remembering the year she played for the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. She has a competitive relationship with her kid sister Kit (Lori Petty), takes on a leadership role within her team, the Rockford Peaches, builds a grudging respect and collaboration with their drunken manager, Jimmy Dugan (Tom Hanks), and is seen as the best, most important and most dynamic player in the league.

I love stories about women and about their relationships, and this is a really well-told story. It’s the story of a women’s professional baseball league that is officially titled with “Girls” in the name and how it’s simultaneously freeing and objectifying. It’s about women lifting each other up and succeeding together. Some of these women have been put down all their lives, some of them have never learned to read, some are venturing out of their tiny little small-town existences for the first time, some are their families’ breadwinners, and all are finding camaraderie, companionship and a world of opportunity they never knew was there before. It’s such a refreshing change from lots of stories about women, that almost always involve a steep rivalry. Here the only real relationship rivalry is between Dottie and Kit (almost entirely on Kit’s side, since Dottie doesn’t know what Kit’s problem is half the time), and they’re sisters, so there’s more love than animosity, and always will be. If you focus on just the conflicts, you miss the part where Kit makes a plea to Dottie for her very well-being at the beginning of the film, begging for the chance to leave their hometown and to be someone, and Dottie gives it to her. You’d miss how supportive she is, how much she praises her. You’d miss how they come together at the end, mingling happy and sad over the result of the World Series, but with a love for each other that binds them together stronger than time or distance or even baseball can break. You’d also miss how they stick together in Fort Collins, Colorado, as Marla (Megan Cavanagh) is trying out for the scout Ernie Capadino (Jon Lovitz), and if you miss anything to do with the scout, you’ve done yourself a grievous wrong.

Ernie Capadino is the most perfect perfect perfect character in this film. He’s brash and cold and cuts to the chase, and literally almost every single line of his is hilarious. Whether he’s sarcastically cutting down the “milk maids,” as he calls them, and their naiveté, or offering to drum up a pistol for a man whose job is so boring Ernie would kill himself if he had it, or simply going home to “give the wife a little pickle tickle,” he’s fantastic. But the absolute best moment is when Marla lifts her head to show her face to him at, let’s say, not the most advantageous angle. He makes a face that is priceless in its shock and disgust, and it is my favorite face of all time.

There are parts of the film that feel clunky to me — the framing in the present, the silly earworm song about the league (even though it was the real song of the league, it’s still so oddly wedged into the film), and the casting of Madonna as a woman who liked to show off her bosoms named “All the Way” Mae Mordabito, to name a few. But so much of it is strong and moving (and funny), that the ill-fitting aspects are easily overlooked. Tom Hanks’s performance grows on me every time I watch it, always giving me a slightly greater glimpse at all the nuance he put into this role that initially struck me as just bluster. Yes, hitting Stillwell Angel (Justin Scheller) in the head with a glove is a perfect moment, but so is the time he wrestles away the telegram and solemnly delivers it to the player whose husband has just died in the war. (If you do not bawl your eyes out in that moment, even when you know it is coming, you’ve got a stronger constitution than I.)

One of the things that has always struck me about A League of Their Own, though, is the opening scene. A grandmother is preparing to go on a trip across the country to the induction of women (and the All-American Girls Professional Baseball League) into the Baseball Hall of Fame. She’s reluctant, but her daughter is insistent and as they are leaving, the woman’s two grandsons are playing basketball. To the older, she offers a reminder that his younger brother is still smaller, no matter what he does, so give him a chance to shoot. To the younger, she says, “Kill him.” I’ve thought about this so many times, how this woman’s relationship with her little sister growing up (because we will soon find that this is an older Dottie Hinson, played by Lynn Cartwright in these opening and closing scenes) frames how she treats and encourages her grandchildren. It’s something we all do to a certain extent, of course. Our experiences inform our perceptions. But I find it infinitely interesting all the same.

It’s as if Dottie feels regret toward her relationship with Kit, as if it’s somehow Dottie’s responsibility that Kit feels inferior to her. And yet, being that older, protective sibling, she’s going to feel responsible for her younger sister. It’s fascinating how cyclical these patterns are, and I honestly can’t tell you if I think Dottie is justified or not in her regret (not that anyone has to justify regret, but you know what I mean — does she have a reason, something she did, etc.). I might be the only person to focus in on that, but I come across it a lot — in how my experiences have shaped by behaviors, how my kids are shaped by their experiences, and how much of an excuse that gives us, if any, for the way we act going forward. It’s a puzzle.

I also like the funny parts, I’m not a monster. I like the decorum classes. I agree that “avoid the clap” is good advice. I like the idea of calling someone Betty Spaghetti, and if I knew anyone whose name rhymed with spaghetti, I’d be on it. I like Rosie O’Donnell as Doris, but I love her dad and her admirers just a little bit more. I love “singing to Nelson.” I love thanking God for “that waitress in South Bend.” I’m a fan of an uncomfortably long pee joke. I like Ann Cusack learning to read “grabbed her milky white breasts,” because, after all, it only matters that she’s reading. I like Garry Marshall as fictionalized candy pioneer and league owner Walter Harvey, who keeps his socializing short and sweet. I like David Strathairn as Ira Lowenstein, who, until Jimmy scratched his balls for an hour in the 5th inning, didn’t know if he was drunk or dead. I like dirt in the skirt and “accidentally” hitting jerks in the stands with baseballs. I even like seeing Tea Leoni playing for Racine. And heaven knows I love all those really well-done baseball montages.

However, with only four teams in the entire league? There are way too many games in a baseball season. I will die on this hill.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Beetlejuice

This is the deal: I own around 350 movies on DVD and Blu-ray. Through June 10, 2015, I will be watching and writing about them all, in the order they are arranged on my shelf (i.e., alphabetically, with certain exceptions). No movie will be left unwatched . I welcome your comments, your words of encouragement and your declarations of my insanity.

Movie #26: Beetlejuice

It occurred to me today, watching this for perhaps the thirtieth time, that I didn’t really understand this movie when it came out. I was thirteen, so I got the gist, but a lot of the darker references — and a lot of a jokes, to be honest — were lost on me. I thought it was great and hilarious, of course, but I suspect that came from the off-beat nature, the frenetic score and the unrestrained performance by Michael Keaton as Betelgeuse that all combined to make it a movie that seemed great and hilarious, even if you didn’t get all of it. (And I suspect I wasn’t the only one who didn’t quite get it, considering the Beetlejuice cartoon that ran from 1989-1991, featuring characters Beetlejuice and Lydia as friends.)

Over the years, though, my appreciation for the film has deepened significantly. It’s a tight, raucous comedy — a sort of controlled chaos. Even the opening is intentionally discordant. With the camera panning across the peaceful countryside of a small northern town, it could be mistaken for a much different film if not for the score — a frantic, jarring, jumping series of notes that practically made composer Danny Elfman a household name (at least among cinephiles). The score lets you know there is something unsettling about this sleepy scenery, and that feeling is confirmed when the camera stops on a large Victorian farmhouse and a giant, hairy spider — bigger than the windows — crawls over the roof. The perspective and tone shifts again to reveal the house and the town are all part of a scale model built by homeowner Adam Maitland (Alec Baldwin, almost disquietingly thin as compared to his current self). He and his wife Barbara (Geena Davis) are taking the world’s first staycation, reveling in the chance to hang wallpaper and avoid friends. They make a quick run into town for supplies from their hardware store (an innocuous dog trotting through the edges of each scenic location change), then crash their car through a covered bridge and into the river below when trying to avoid the (same) dog that crosses their path. Within a few short minutes of the opening shot, the quiet, homebody Maitlands arrive home from their crash into the river to discover they’re dead — at least the third twist against the expected and the movie’s been on for maybe ten minutes.

The movie wastes very little time on exposition or unnecessary scenes, and saves itself from having to by making the nature of death and the dead a mystery the Maitlands don’t understand any better than the audience does. They sort of fumble through their new existence and when the urbanite Deetz family (Jeffrey Jones as the jittery Charles, the never not-perfect Catherine O’Hara as the style-conscious Delia, and teenaged Winona Ryder in her breakout role as proto-goth Lydia) moves into their home, they seek to haunt the interlopers out, with no success. The nefarious Betelgeuse is actually sort of tangential to all this. He tries to insert himself into the Maitlands’ dealings with the Deetzes, and Keaton’s performance just takes over from there. It’s so dynamic, in fact, I think most people forget the movie isn’t really about him at all. Still, his draw is undeniable, and he makes something dark and ultimately quite frightening in concept a comedic tour de force. It’s easily the most iconic role of Keaton’s life, even surpassing Batman.

The two calypso numbers are also iconic and fun, and the netherworld is full of visual gags. The bulk of the movie, in fact, is joke upon joke with barely a breath in between, on top of a rather simply constructed framework. I think that’s what makes it work so well, actually. Dealing with life and death, even comically, a film can get bogged down in its own mythology. Beetlejuice doesn’t, yet it still brings heft to Lydia’s loneliness and depression, to the Maitlands’ affection for her, and to the terror of the séance and final showdown (again, masterfully scored by Elfman at a terrifying, escalating pace). I didn’t get that at thirteen.

Awesomely, this movie has sort of grown up with me, in my own mind, experience and perspective. At sixteen, I could definitely relate to and understand Lydia better than I had at thirteen. I felt her disconnect from her parents and her longing for someone to nurture her. In my early twenties, it was Delia who caught my attention because I wanted to be stylish and expressive and understood artistically, while still believing I had all the answers. A few years ago, I could’ve been like Charles, actively looking for a way to relax and get away from all the stress in my life. And now I’m more like Barbara and Adam, happy to be at home spending time with my family. In that way the movie is universal and timeless. I look forward to experiencing it many more times.