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: 191 Days to go: 134
Movie #247: Shining Through
I’ve never really hated Melanie Griffith the way some people do. Maybe it’s because my introduction to her was Working Girl, inarguably the greatest thing she’s ever done. Maybe it’s because I’m not somehow offended or insulted by a woman with a breathy voice, nor do I assume it makes her dim or vilify her for playing “airhead” roles (not that I think she does this, on average, any more than other actresses — there’s an outcry about the dearth of quality roles for a reason). I don’t know. All I know is that I like her fine. I love Working Girl. I love Shining Through. And I really like Now and Then. I don’t even mind her remake of Born Yesterday (I actually think of her constitutional amendment scene any time the subject comes up), and just last night I happened across her hooker-with-a-heart-of-gold flick Milk Money on some channel or another and stopped to watch the rest of it. On purpose. So she’s not the most transformative actor. Neither are lots of people who still make popular movies. We all get by.
Shining Through is about a woman named Linda Voss (Griffith) being interviewed by the BBC for a documentary on women who played a part in WWII. She’s in awkward aging makeup (awkward because that’s always awkward, no matter how well it’s done) and she clumsily (on purpose, because the character is unfamiliar with the process) begins her tale. It’s possible that the main reason I’m so drawn to this film is that I saw in Linda Voss a kindred spirit. She loved the movies, you see, and she became fascinated with the war through them. As a half-Irish, half-Jewish girl from Queens, with grandparents who immigrated directly from Berlin and family still living there, Linda had a personal interest in the war with Germany as well, but until she met Ed Leland (Michael Douglas), she had no entry into the war effort itself.
What follows is a story of romance, intrigue and betrayal, set entirely in Linda’s flashback. She discovers Ed’s connection with military operations by using her knowledge of war movies to deduce his dealings, and she finds herself eventually placed in Berlin as a temporary operative under the supervision of Ed’s contact, code name Sunflower (John Gielgud). She chronicles her harrowing time there, from her disastrous attempt at her initial mission to her devastating relationship with dear friend Margrete (Joely Richardson), to the fortuitous and treacherous situation she finds herself in with high-ranking officer Franze-Otto Dietrich (Liam Neeson) — a dynamic that is fascinating not just for the precarious position she is in amid all her incongruous deceptions, but in the way Dietrich increasingly acts toward her, never dismissing her as an inferior (as Ed had done in the past, referring to her as “only a secretary”) and even taking her as his date to an opera (which Ed, once, simply brushed her inquiries about with “It’s not for everyone”). If he wasn’t an enemy combatant who wouldn’t hesitate to kill her if ever he knew her true identity, Franze might have been a better match for Linda than Ed had ever been in the past. And yet he never has a chance at her heart.
There are wonderful things here, too, about Linda’s character. She’s hot-headed and rash at times, calm and calculated at others. She believes in things passionately. She’s her own person. She does incredibly dumb things and incredibly smart things, just like any regular person thrown into the fray with a lot at stake. She’s brave and bold and horribly naive at times — traits that can both help and harm her — and she can be stubbornly, maddeningly single-minded. But she’s not just some woman who falls in love with a fascinating man and waits for him to come back to her. When she gets the chance, she goes out and makes something of her life, driven by her own deepest desires, and is willing to accept and attempt to conquer the hardships that come with it.
Shining Through is a movie my mother and I both love together, which also, no doubt, endears it to me. It’s not a great movie, by any critical standards, but it’s left an impression on me that’s lasted all these years. I always, for example, hide things in my gloves since seeing this film. And considering I learned that from this movie and Linda learned it from one of hers (“Did you ever see a movie called Victory at Dawn?”), it feels like synergy: Two opinionated girls living decades apart (okay, one’s fictional, whatever), learning everything they know about life from the cinema. Makes me think somebody out there gets me after all, and maybe they’ll hire me to be a spy or something. (I’d be a terrible spy, but I could totally be an actress or something. Call me, Hollywood!)
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