MY MOVIE SHELF: Little Miss Sunshine

 

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: 38 Days to go: 28

Movie #402:  Little Miss Sunshine

Little Miss Sunshine is a portrait of a family. Not an Every-family, though. A very specific family. Uncle Frank (Steve Carell) has just attempted suicide and is being sent home to Albuquerque to live with his sister Sheryl (Toni Collette), who is a working mom doing her damndest to be supportive of her children and her husband and to keep everything running as smoothly as possible, be it dinner or activity scheduling or what have you. Sheryl’s husband Richard (Greg Kinnear) is a motivational speaker who is neither renowned or successful but who is dead set on practicing what he preaches and therefore insists on everyone presenting themselves as winners at all times. They have two children, Dwayne (Paul Dano) — who hates everyone and has taken a vow of silence until he can join the Air Force to fly jets in what is no doubt several years, as he is only 15 — and Olive (Abigail Breslin), who is a sweet and unassuming seven-year-old who has won her way into the Little Miss Sunshine pageant in Redondo Beach, California. Last but not least is Richard’s dad Grandpa Edwin (Alan Arkin) — inappropriate in every conceivable way while also being pretty amazingly loving and generous to Olive (and to his son as well, when necessary) — who, because he got kicked out of his retirement home for shooting heroin and God knows what else, also lives with them. In short, these are not universal characters defined by tropes, stereotypes and clichés. These are very particular people with a very particular story. And that story is failure.

Richard having the career aspirations that he does, he does not accept failure. He gives endless lip service to the differences between winners and losers and what it takes to differentiate yourself as one of the former. Never, ever, ever let yourself be the latter. And yet as the family travels from New Mexico to California for Olive’s competition (which she has sworn, at her father’s insistence, that she can win), they are inundated with indignities, humiliations, let downs, setbacks, and utter, inescapable failures, one after another.

As these failures mount, and everyone’s spirit but Olive’s is broken, it becomes crucial that they get her to her pageant on time. It’s imperative that something good come of their trip. However, when they arrive they are faced with the shocking and unsettling reality that Olive doesn’t fit in with the other contestants. Olive is seven, and she looks it. She has long, unstyled hair. She wears no make-up. And her only curves are those associated with childhood, like the roundness of her perfectly proportioned belly or the lack of any “womanly” hips. Comparing Olive to the garishly dolled-up appearance of her competitors, Olive’s family fears she’s about to suffer her own disappointing failure, and they seek to stop it. Sheryl, however, knows how much this has meant to Olive (and to Grandpa, who choreographed Olive’s dance), so she gives her a choice. Does Olive want to compete, or does she want to go home? Either is okay. Both paths still lead to her parents being proud of her. Olive, God bless her, chooses to compete, and she proceeds to perform the most inappropriately sexualized dance — to a highly sexualized song — this pageant or any other has ever seen. And it’s fantastic.

Olive’s performance is honestly one of the funniest moments in film just on its merits, but it’s also incredibly thoughtful and heartwarming. Here is a girl not at all sexualized in the way literally every single other seven-year-old in the competition is, and yet it’s her overtly sexual dance to “Superfreak” — which, to be clear, Olive doesn’t get the meaning of AT ALL — that offends the parents, contestants and organizers of the event, with a few awesome exceptions. Meanwhile, her family knows how off-putting this is, and they see clearly how uncomfortable everyone else is, but as long as Olive doesn’t see it, doesn’t feel singled out by it and isn’t made to feel uncomfortable about it, her family is okay with it. So they clap. And they dance. And they prevent anyone from taking Olive off the stage prematurely by wrestling guards and by acting as backup thrusters to Olive’s booty shaking. It’s hilarious, to be sure, but it’s also an unbelievably warm showing of unconditional love and support of this little girl and the preservation of her innocence in a room full of people seeking to age her before her time. And with that one moment, suddenly this trip of abject failure has become one of irrefutable triumph.

So Little Miss Sunshine does find a way to speak to the masses after all. Maybe the movie is telling us to find the joy in life, or to not take things too seriously. Maybe it just wants us to keep an open mind. Maybe it wants us to know that sometimes every single thing goes wrong but that one single thing going right can turn it all around. Whatever it is, it manages to tell an incredibly inclusive story, applicable to the lives of a great many people.

MY MOVIE SHELF: The Sixth Sense

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: 185  Days to go: 128

Movie #253:  The Sixth Sense

When you come across a movie like The Sixth Sense, an instant legend for its shocking twist ending, it can be difficult to imagine watching it again once you know the trick. It’s like the ultimate spoilery movie, and nobody wants you to talk about it at all lest you give something away to someone who hasn’t seen it yet. In my entire life, I’ve only come across two films like that, in which the whole world seemed to be buzzing about the end of a film without actually revealing what that end was. The Crying Game was the first one. The Sixth Sense was the other. I’ve never actually seen The Crying Game — it was just a smidge before my time — but I’ve watched The Sixth Sense a bunch.

The Sixth Sense has a big reveal at the end, it’s true, but it’s structured in such a way that even knowing the trick beforehand doesn’t diminish the effect of watching the film. Indeed, multiple viewings can be used to appreciate the way the film is structured, intentionally withholding, intentionally opaque, in order to keep the whole truth at bay. Like the way no one ever looks directly at or interacts with Malcolm (Bruce Willis) except for Cole (Haley Joel Osment). Or the way Malcolm’s never shown getting from place to place. He’s simply in the restaurant or with Cole or at his desk, never in transit.

The movie is also beautifully, eerily atmospheric. Every shot, every note of the score, every whispered line of dialogue is calculated to create an ominous tone. More than any kind of traditional horror or slasher flick, this film’s portentous nature is incredibly frightening. The air is tense with the anticipation of what may happen next, even though a large swath of the film doesn’t reveal any ghosts at all. It’s like the Jaws method of suspense filmmaking.

Separate from that, I really love Toni Collette here as Cole’s mom. More and more each time I watch it, in fact. She’s so tough, so protective, so hard, and yet so vulnerable and so scared. She is so fierce and so loving, and the scene when Cole tells her about her mother is as touching as they come. Plus she wraps her mouth around a gnarly Philadelphia accent in an unexpected and delightful way. It’s a lovely, layered, understated performance, and I think it holds the whole film together emotionally in a way that just the fear can not.

It can’t be easy to be M. Night Shyamalan. The Sixth Sense was so huge, so revered, that the expectations for all his subsequent work — at least those first several projects — were impossibly high. And no, he hasn’t come close to meeting them, even as the bar has gotten progressively lower. But even if the only great thing he does in his career is this movie, it’s still a really great movie. Most people don’t even get one great thing.

MY MOVIE SHELF: Muriel’s Wedding

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: 188  Days to go: 188

Movie #189:  Muriel’s Wedding

Right after this movie came out, Daniel Lapaine (who played the strikingly beautiful David Van Arkle) used to follow me around in a white limousine. It was very embarrassing. (That’s my story and I’m sticking to it.)

The first time I saw Muriel’s Wedding, I almost couldn’t bear to sit still for how uncomfortable it made me, how squirmingly, cringe-inducingly awkward Muriel (Toni Collette) is. You can’t watch this movie without feeling part sympathy and part disdain for her gross incompatibility with the whole social structure around her. She’s an unbelievable misfit, and she wears the pain of that on her sleeve. And in her face. And seeping from every pore of her body. She’s so hard to watch, and so, so great to watch. It’s one of the reasons Muriel’s Wedding is so beloved to me.

I know what it feels like to be left out. I know what it feels like not to fit in anywhere. I know what it feels like to want nothing more than to win (at life, at love, at literally anything) and only be told (in actual words or merely through actions) that you are nothing, that you are useless, that you’re a burden, that you don’t matter. And that’s Muriel’s whole existence.

Muriel is so beaten down by her father (Bill Hunter) — as are her mother and all her siblings — that she lives almost entirely in a fantasy world. I know what that feels like too. I know how necessary that fantasy can become, how you cling to it, how it becomes the only thing you focus on — to the detriment of other opportunities, sometimes. When Muriel meets Rhonda (Rachel Griffiths) on Hibiscus Island, she forms an instant, strong bond. Her life is instantly better. She has more freedom, she is more alive, and she finally comes into her own in a lot of ways. She sees this, and yet she doesn’t. The emotional damage done to her by her father and former “friends” hangs on. So even when she gets asked on a date, she doesn’t understand that it’s just because of who she is. She thinks it’s because she’s changed her name and run away. When things go bad for Rhonda, and when Muriel is confronted by her father, Muriel returns to that fantasy state. She gets involved in David’s Olympic schemes for the same reason he does: “I want to win. All my life, I’ve wanted to win.” Muriel’s response: “Me too.”

So much of this film goes straight to my heart. I’m much more a movie person than a music person (uh … obviously), but I know exactly what Muriel means when she says her life is “as good as an ABBA song.” It’s so familiar to me.

I understood her desire to be married, I applauded her choice of wedding march song, and I love that she finally stands up to her father. The only regret I have for her (which I understand, but still find unfortunate) is that she leaves David. Their night together was so tender, so heartfelt. Sure, they don’t love each other, but he thinks he could like having her around. I agree. When she leaves him, though, she’s never looked more beautiful and sure of herself. It’s kind of incredible the transformation that comes from within her.

Muriel’s Wedding is a lovely film. It’s not perfect, but it’s lovely. It speaks to empowerment and self-esteem, and to finding yourself when everyone else puts you down. It’s about finding your place and people who love you. It’s about friendship and love. Plus, it employs ABBA songs to excellent effect (the “Waterloo” performance is the best thing ever, for the costumes and the faces and the fight that breaks out), while also getting a really good Blondie tune in the mix. It can be hard to watch, but it’s also so great to watch — and so, so worth it.