Category Archives: 1990s

The Straight Story (1999)

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The Straight Story is based on the real-life journey of one Alvin Straight to visit his brother, who suffered a stroke. What makes it extraordinary is that he lived hundreds of miles away, and Straight made the journey on his John Deere lawn mower, going about 5 mph!

The material doesn’t immediately scream David Lynch, a man who has left his mark with more bemusing visions of Middle America. Still, in keeping with the story’s ethos, Lynch taps into his midwestern roots in the most charming and straightforward manner.

There is a sense that The Straight Story was a movie out of a different era and even a different century. Whereas now even our eldest geriatrics interface with smartphones, have high-speed internet at their fingertips, and any number of technical marvels, there was a time, maybe 20 or 30 years ago, when men like Alvin Straight reached back into bygone generations.

Alvin can barely see and walks with the assistance of a cane, but he’s obstinate. He was a sniper during WWII. Eats franks by the campfire and always has his cigars handy for a puff or two in the evening as he ponders the stars. His wife, who’s gone now, bore 7 children, and he still lives with one of them, his grown daughter (Sissy Spacek). I won’t say people of his ilk don’t exist anymore, but as we get more and more modernized, it seems less and less commonplace.

There’s a sense of the late ’90s about the movie that I appreciate because I was alive then, albeit very young, on the cusp of the possibilities of a new millennium. The year prior, I traveled with my family across the very same Midwest, though we used a much more luxurious automobile (I had only minor experiences in Iowa with tractors and other implements that felt completely foreign to a California kid). For Alvin Straight, these were his lifeblood as common to him as the water he drinks and the air he breathes.

He gives a glimpse into his own life on his parents’ farm, where he and his brother learned what hard work was as they turned daily chores and tasks necessary for their survival into games that they could play even as they looked up at the stars at night, dreaming about what might be out there.

Time and disagreements soured their relationship, so now, as they stand old and gray, they’re estranged from one another. You understand how it happens. Their generation was not always the greatest at expressing themselves or sharing their emotions. Still, we know they are present, and the fact that Alvin willfully makes this trip shows how deep the bonds of brotherhood go. He speaks through actions.

The film’s boldest and most valuable asset is its sense of time. It is pregnant with silence and comfortable with slowness out of necessity. It goes at the kind of languid pace that’s necessitated by the whole premise of Alvin’s journey from the very beginning. That tractor’s not going to sprout extra engines and zoom forward. The journey is the essence of incremental progress toward an inevitable end.

Like Pilgrim’s Progress, there’s a process to the journey, and it’s made up of all of these various interactions. Each one along the road feels like a specific representation of the human experience as Straight comes in contact with all sorts of folks. Lost souls looking for direction, Good Samaritans, fellow war vets content chewing the fat, men handy with tractors or quick to offer shelter or some form of hospitality.

There’s something radical about these folks in their very simplicity, running counter to the way the culture has moved even 30 years on. What we appreciate about them is their candor; there’s a laconic spareness and a straightforward reality to these people and their dialogues.

Alvin’s not needy, but he’s always obliging for accommodation. Some people try and blow him off the road, horns blaring, but others see the nobility in his mission. He will not be dissuaded or moved because there is something or someone at the end of the road to make all of this worth it. There’s never a second thought of his going through with it.

Sure enough, he passes through the valley and over a hill to find a dilapidated farmhouse. He yells out to his brother, and out steps Lyle (Harry Dean Stanton). They sit down on the porch to share their presence with one another. Words would be nice, but they hardly feel necessary. In a generation so often distracted by so many things (especially cell phones), what a radical thing to be completely present with another human being. Again, it’s a dying art that Alvin Straight all but mastered.

If we were not primed already, it’s possible the ending might seem underwhelming, but then we spent this whole time with this man. It was about his journey, the people he meets along the way, and what he represents. There’s something in his sinew and his makeup worth taking note of.

Richard Farnsworth was an actor I was familiar with thanks to Anne of Green Gables on VHS. He was instantly likable in a series full of so much drama and theatrics; there was always something so genial and grounding about him. The Straight Story would wind up being his last film, and as he neared 80 years, he was stricken with cancer.

This film stands as a testament to what he was as an actor and human being. Plain, straightforward, but ultimately replete with all kinds of truth and goodness. I haven’t gotten trite of late, so allow me just this one digression. Disney doesn’t make movies like this anymore. But then again, how would they ever top a G-rated David Lynch film about a truly mythical tractor ride?

4/5 Stars

Note: This review was written before David Lynch’s passing on January 16, 2025

His Motorbike, Her Island (1986) and The Rocking Horsemen (1992)

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His Motorbike, Her Island (1986)

There’s an immediate aesthetic artifice to His Motorbike, Her Island. Our hero is cool and simultaneously cruel representing a husky-voiced, brusque masculinity that feels no doubt appealing and equally toxic. He recounts his life’s observations through voiceover — the monochrome dreams making up his memories — and as such the movie slaloms easily between black & white and color.

It feels perfectly at home in its moment as part ’80s biker movie full of style. Some of this no doubt comes from director Nobuhiko Obayashi who always seems to have a propensity for commercial pop culture imagery. I would hesitate to call him a technician, and yet since he both edited and directed many of his films, maybe I don’t want to use the label because it sounds too austere.

His films are suffused with a vibrant energy and although the comparison misses the mark, the only reference I could think of was Richard Lester. I’d be interested in hearing who others bring up.

The movie’s premise is quite simple. Koh Hashimoto (Riki Takeuchi) runs errands on his motorcycle part time. His idle hours are taken up with a docile beauty name Fuyumi. He even gets in a duel with the girl’s older brother, who’s worried for her honor. Whether the outcome impacts his view of her or not, Koh, breaks it off. By his estimation, she’s boring (all she knows is crying and cooking).

Koh is looking for the Japanese version of the aloof dream girl, and he finds it in Miiyo. She captivates him with her confident vivacity, taking pictures of him, chatting in the onsen, and ultimately taking up his first love of motorcycles.

Their relationship blossoms when he visits her hometown out in the country during Obon, and we witness how the summer holiday is rooted in both a veneration and a celebration of dead loved ones. Koh’s captivated watching Miiyo dance during the festival proceedings. It’s something about her spirit he finds so attractive.

It also signals the film’s dangerous edges. Because if I wanted to distill His Motorbike, Her Island, down to its essence, we would need to talk about the intoxicating and reckless abandon of youth. It’s mesmerizing when it’s projected up on the screen in all its glory existing without worldly consequence of any kind.

Miiyo follows Koh and becomes infatuated by his singular passion: a 750cc Kawasaki. But it’s not just a supercharged motorcycle, and it’s not so much about an object made of chrome and an engine. It’s the adrenaline hit and emotional high of riding a motorcycle and riding it fast. It’s almost a dare for life to come at you head-on. For them, living life on on the edge like this is an obvious antidote to the malaise.

It’s both what attracts them to one another and threatens their ultimate undoing. Live fast, die young, has a poetic inevitably to it. I feel like I will need to watch the movie again down the road sometime, but there’s a pervasive sense that this motorbike, this island, this young man and this young woman take on a kind of mythic proportion.

Just like I never caught onto a perceptible rhythm of the monochrome and color, what we witness is not always an objective, tangible world. It exists in the hinterlands of memory, love, passion, and emotions just out of reach. The irony is obvious.

Sometimes, to feel alive, people need to get as close to death as possible. I’m not sure if this star-crossed, high-octane hedonism is still en vogue, but it’s easy to understand how it could seem attractive albeit misguided. There’s a hubris to it.

3.5/5 Stars

The Rocking Horseman (1992)

When I lived in Japan, I was flabbergasted to learn that there was a group that was bigger in Japan during the ’60s than the Beatles. It was The Ventures! This instrumental act kicked off the “Eleki Boom” as their iconic onomatopoeic glissandos (deke-deke-deke) captivated a generation of youth. These teenagers subsequently rushed out to buy their electric guitars and start their own bands during the “Group Sounds” explosion.

Although I didn’t think about it at the time, I’m a sucker for a good musical coming-of-age movie, and this landscape was ripe for such a story. Recently, when I came upon The Rocking Horsemen, I realized a void in the cinematic landscape had been filled thanks to Nobuhiko Obayashi

Fujiwara (Yasufumi Hayashi) feels like the most innocent and congenial of Obayashi’s boy heroes, a Ferris Bueller-type who instantly takes us into his confidence by not only providing voiceover but speaking directly to us.

OB’s films are easily placed in this provincial milieu outside the hustle and bustle of the big city. This gives them a kind of comfortable intimacy, and it’s only a small jump to place them in the past. In this case, Japan during the 1960s. I already mentioned that the movie covers a subgenre I have a private preoccupation with: form-a-band origin stories. That includes That Thing You Do! and Sing Street to The Commitments, Nowhere Boy, and School of Rock. What sets this one apart is the unique context and cultural moment.

Now I’ve been inculcated from an early age that the Beatles had the greatest music, but Fujiwara is coming of age with an ear raised to the admonitions of his elders. Pop music is puerile entertainment, cultural dregs compared to the sophistication of classical music. The Beatles included.

Then, his radio played “Pipeline” and he is changed forever. Any kind of snobbery quickly dissipates. The new sound assaults him as he reclines in his bedroom. There’s no escaping its force, and he converted for good, caught up in the same boom I read about. It was electric liberation.

Since a rock musician can’t look like a Buddhist acolyte, the first course of action was to grow out his hair. It occurs to me that one of the reasons I find these movies compelling is it involves some kind of youthful industry. When you’re young you don’t need to be told the odds. If you want to start a band, and that’s you’re impetus, you can go ahead and do it. No permission is necessary (parents notwithstanding).

In this way, Fujiwara meets his future bandmates. The first shares his interest in rock and turns his back on the more traditional setlist the school club follows. The rest of the members include a priest’s son, who’s the band’s source of worldly wisdom, and then a gawky dork who gets coerced into playing the drums for them.

If initially they fall together organically enough, they also premeditate how to best go about their business. In the end, they resolve to get summer jobs at a local manufacturing plant to save up to buy their instruments. These scenes are mostly transitory — only an end to the means — but as “Woolly Bully” plays over their assembly line, there’s a sense of optimism. They’re getting closer to their goal.

Ittoku Kishibe shows up again after Lonely Heart as a good-natured teacher who supplies American lyrics and ultimately offers to become their club advisor. It’s a small addition, but his tacit affirmation of their endeavors speaks volumes.

I’m fascinated by how pop culture can infiltrate and suffuse through the cracks of a society, especially in an international context. I met Japanese folks with very specified knowledge about Korn or Olivia Newton-John, Sam Cooke, Jazz or Punk music. Or think of the two teens in Mystery Train who go on a pilgrimage to Memphis in search of The King. Where does this come from?

While I wouldn’t call the general Japanese populous particularly aware of world culture, you do find these hyperspecialized niches of expertise. These boys glean their inspirations thanks to radio and import records, even older siblings who pass down a love of Nat King Cole.

A perfect example is Jan and Dean’s “Little Old Lady from Pasadena” played as our hero rides his bike through his neighborhood. It’s a totally different context from the California surf culture I was born and bred in. But it still reaches them on the other side of the world. The same might be said of The Animals, “Don’t Let Me Be Misunderstood.”

It doesn’t feel like a mistake that the first time the new band convenes and brandishes their new name — The Rocking Horsemen — they start playing, and it’s a flawless rendition of “Pipeline” (exactly like the Ventures recording). They make their debut at a show during Christmas with mixed results, but they disregard the critics and play their hearts out. What’s more, they gel and become galvanized as a group. How can you not under the circumstances?

But as school comes to a close, their journey together winds down too. Their first and last big show comes at the annual school cultural festival and with a set list including “I Feel Fine” and “Johnny B. Goode,” they can’t miss. We’ve seen this moment before in many a movie so it’s a kind of expected wish-fulfillment watching them go out.

When you’re an adolescent these are the kind of memories that stay with you. And in a final act of solidarity, Fujiwara now listless and despondent over the future, has his newfound brotherhood to come around him. They christen him their “Bandleader for Life.” So even as their journey as a band might have met its logical conclusion more than an impasse (not many make it like The Beatles), The Rocking Horsemen do have some amount of closure. The music and those relationships will never leave them.

4/5 Stars

The Thing Called Love (1993): River Phoenix and Samantha Mathis

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Seeing the Twin Towers on celluloid always brings a bit of a wistful reaction because there presence represents so much. It feels like a line in the sand and there are those who know that far better than me. The last time I recall having this sense was watching Peter Bogdanovich’s They All Laughed, and it’s little surprise The Thing Called Love begins with a very similar visual shorthand.

It says so much in a matter of moments as we watch Miranda Presley (Samantha Mathis) wearing her Yankees baseball cap, ride the greyhound bus with her guitar case by her side. Bogdanovich returns to another salient element of They All Laughed because The Thing Called Love is also a film enmeshed in the country music scene. New York might feel like an unusual mecca, but Nashville is not. That’s where Presley (no relation to Elvis) is heading. She’s got grand aspirations like so many wide-eyed dreamers.

Our hearts drop a little bit when the bus pulls into the parking lot of the Bluebird Cafe. It’s given the start to many fledgling talents and yet the line of eager musicians ready to audition quashes any optimistic expectations. Miranda’s no doubt destined for an arduous journey ahead.

Mathis and her real-life boyfriend at the time, River Phoenix have a meet-cute born out of circumstance. He jumps out of his truck late for the weekly auditions and pulls her into his lie so they can squeeze into the lineup. She doesn’t take kindly to his tactics and let’s him know.

It would be so easy to dismiss or even roll your eyes at these obligatory moments in the script. They feel to clean and conventional, but somehow the metanarrative and the candor of the young performers make it feel worthwhile.

Miranda gets her first rejection only to fall in with a community of her peers. She meets her momentary acquaintance James Wright (Phoenix) when he does a rendition of his tune “Lone Star State of Mind.” The track was actually written by Phoenix himself, an enthusiastic musician in his own right.

Their relationship is one mostly born of looks and mysterious glances that suggest so much in a way that is tantalizing and hardly anchored. Meanwhile, the Stetson-wearing Kyle (Dermot Mulraney) takes an immediate shine for Miranda, and it reveals itself through candid conversation and encouragement. Perhaps she knows as much as anyone else that he likes her. When you’re feelings are so genuine it’s hard to keep them concealed.

The movie feels need to make it into a love triangle as Miranda resigns to dance with Kyle and settle in a sense. But James is the mercurial artist with a caddish, manipulating charisma. He’s good with the lines to feed her even as he’s good with lyrics to sing in front of an audience and record deals he’s trying to finagle his way into.

There’s no continuity to him, and yet it’s hard to judge his intentions because even with mixed signals, he does seem to be drawn to Miranda. In one scene in the studio, he mostly ignores her and then in the heat of his performance, he pulls her onstage for an impromptu duet in front of the audience. He even takes her to a drive-in screening of The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance, and they write a song together. I suppose the rivalry between John Wayne and James Stewart for the affections of Vera Miles is a Hollywoodized version of our story.

Their trajectory is exemplified by wanderlust and spontaneity. James pulls Miranda away from her new gig waiting tables at the Bluebird so they can make the pilgrimage to pay tribute to the King. They must hold the title for one of the most unconventional wedding ceremonies as they get hitched in a Memphis supermarket, dancing the night away as the rain comes pouring down outside. It’s life without consequence.

However, cohabitation as a married couple is fraught with conflict. They weren’t meant to live this way with their personal dreams pulling them apart, and their marital expectations far from unified. James’s capricious tendencies reassert themselves, and Miranda feels defeated.

In the wake of an argument, she seems all but prepared to leave her dreams behind. She quits her job and hops on a bus back home only to turn right back around with one last mission to accomplish. She holds up in a cafe to pen her latest song, and as anyone who’s tried to conjure the creative muse knows, some ethereal inspiration just comes to her. Out of nothing something is born fully formed.

She plays her song, singing lucid and tender, all colored by her newfound heartache and experience. It’s not for anyone else, only an audience of one, and yet it’s through this creative paradox her songs finally discover an audience.

One of the movie’s most agreeable assets is Sandra Bullock who was still on the way up with Speed and While You Were Sleeping in her near future. She’s not immediately identifiable as a loquacious southern belle — it’s not what we immediately attribute to her persona — but it’s easy enough to like her candor.

And if Linda Lue Linden is a foil for Miranda, then Dermot Mulroney’s portrayal of Kyle fits opposite River Phoenix coming to represent not only a physical juxtaposition but a philosophical one as well. What holds them together is a love of country music even as their friendship is now complicated with the suggested ambiguity of a ménage a trois. Not everything is resolved.

Nashville will always be the ultimate film about the country music industry for how wide-ranging, pointed, and tender a portrait it is in the hands of Robert Altman. I won’t even feign a comparison with The Thing Called Love because it is a movie for a new generation reaching out to realize their dreams. And while it paints in this tangible atmosphere of southern twang and steel guitar, it’s best as a story of close-knit relationship.

I’m not sure if anyone would call me a staunch champion of Peter Bogdanovich’s films. I do like them a lot, and it does feel like a handful of them got a bad rap through faulty marketing and unfortunate circumstances.  If They All Laughed was marred by the Dorothy Stratten tragedy, then, The Thing Called Love carries the specters of River Phoenix’s untimely death.

He was in the company of his siblings, his girlfriend Samantha Mathis, at the club partially owned by Johnny Depp, as they performed some of his songs together. It seems like such an ill-fated conclusion. This isn’t the way life is supposed to end. For fans of River Phoenix, The Thing Called Love stands as a final testament to his talents, and it’s an unmitigated pleasure to see his passions for music and acting blended together. If the movie’s not his best, then it’s still a fine way to remember him.

3.5/5 Stars

Dogfight (1991): River Phoenix and Lilli Taylor

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If you’re a bit of a finicky nerd for cultural context like myself, you realize right when we hear Brenton Wood’s “Oogum Boogum Song” wafting down the city street from a car radio, we can carbon-date the scene to around 1967. A marine steps off a bus with a slight limp. He must have been in Nam, but we don’t know what waits in front of him.

Nancy Savoca’s Dogfight gets its name from a particularly uncomfortable ritual where a group of soldiers looks to scrounge up the ugliest girl they can find for an evening to dance and (hopefully) win the crown for finding the hag to rule them all.

The story takes us back to November 1963 on the eve of JFK’s assassination. The Vietnam conflict has yet to escalate and in the youthful age of Camelot, the peace corps, space races, and enduring American exceptionalism, the world still feels very naive indeed.

We are inundated by the rowdy bravado of four youthful marines, led by Eddie Birdlace (River Phoenix), who have a short stopover before heading overseas. The collective group mentality that bonds them fast and fierce also churns up this festering culture of vitriol and misogyny.

It’s probably just as much a part of what will give them a fighting chance to stay alive. Because even their boyish cajoling and catcalls ring with untrained naivete. They have yet to see death in the face, and for now, they feel indestructible.

Birdlace is just one of the boys, bellicose and burning with rage and impudence. Phoenix wears this quality behind his eyes to go with his high-and-tight haircut and the casual profanity permeating every conversation. He’s constantly operating through an economy of fear, payback, and entitlement. That means a snooty waiter gets dressed down with such a pointed outburst that not even Ferris Bueller could have conceived.

But he also knows how to turn on the charisma in a smarmy sort of way. It sets the stage for their competition as he winds up in a late night coffee shop trying to romance the young woman working the after hour shift.

Lilli Taylor transforms from a moody rocker in Say Anything or even her animated turn in Mystic Pizza, in a change involving more than a poofier hairstyle. Her entire constitution is different. She falls quite easily into her role as a sensitive waitress with dreams of folk singing and maybe meeting a boy to love. We believe that she might just fall for him. He could make her fall for him. But she’s also not a moron. She’s sincere and sees through the insensitive game.

It makes for an uncomfortable evolution as we sympathize with her compromising position and also watch Birdlace grow increasingly conflicted. This girl is a lot more than he assumed (and it’s not just about her looks).

The most compelling comparison I could offer is The Clock starring Judy Garland and Robert Walker. They’re both films about capturing a moment in time with a relationship that has a defined, even finite, beginning and end lending this heightened sense of meaning to every interaction.

Dogfight‘s vulgar and much more a movie for the ’90s even as it’s a film for the Vietnam era so different than the WWII reality Vincente Minnelli developed decades earlier. There’s often something a bit twee about these period efforts partially because we’re accustomed to experiencing the world through the nostalgia of black and white.

Dogfight also provides a more cathartic resolution. I’m not sure if it’s too rushed or what it adds exactly, and yet as an audience member, it gives us some form of wish fulfillment seeing two people reunited in a changed world. It makes the ambiguity of the prologue a bit clearer. There’s a purpose to the time jumps.

It can be summed up in an image: Birdlace is the one who’s come back from the shores of Vietnam 4 years later. He finds that same cafe and limps in. There she is. Surely she wasn’t waiting all this time? And yet they share an embrace in that cafe that’s long and awkward — extended out. The way Phoenix hunches over on her shoulder almost feels like the posture of a little boy. That’s it. We want to believe that these kinds of small, intimate connections are in fact possible in the unknowable chaos of the world at-large. It’s a vein of hope in a tumultuous world.

Phoenix’s career was always morphing and maturing in all manner of ways. In hindsight, we can watch how he took early nebbish roles like Explorers and Family Ties guest spots only for Stand by Me to be a stepping stone to a varied future. Running on Empty garnered critical acclaim, but then he zigzagged his way through an array of projects as diverse as I Love You to Death, Dogfight, My Own Private Idaho, The Thing Called Love, and yes, even Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.

He never seems to be duplicating himself, and it makes for a mostly enthralling viewing experience. Because here is a performer who seems locked in and totally engaged with not only his craft but the poetry of moviemaking and at such a formative age too. Dogfight is an imperfect film built out of period artifice, but it also has these pockets of magic thanks in part to Phoenix and Taylor.

3.5/5 Stars

Pump Up The Volume (1990): A Gen X Jeremiad

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Pump Up The Volume is a movie that tackles the existential malaise of the generation beyond After Hours and Something Wild. I’ve never been particularly good at charting the shifts in generational demographics, but the film is definitely an adolescent jeremiad for Gen Xers.

In truth, I only learned about the movie from a work colleague who is a generation older than me. The sense of upfront and personal alienation spoke to him as a high schooler and probably a whole generation of the discontented.

Although Allan Moyle’s movie doesn’t make the rounds too often, you can immediately sense its cult appeal and also a certain level of prescience in speaking to the teenager’s dilemma. I’m not sure if it’s merely a post-war phenomenon, but it’s certainly something Millennials, Gen Zers, and whoever else follows can certainly resonate with.

Harry Hardon (Christian Slater) is a local DJ who hits the airwaves at 10 pm sharp every evening cued by his theme song, Leonard Cohen’s “Everybody Knows,” and backed by a steady flow of alternative music, personal commentary, and raunchy gags. He’s garnered quite a devoted following.

Within the confines of the film, he builds a cult of personality as a nighttime provocateur, and it’s so easy for him to represent the profane bombastic nature of youth. His viewership cuts across high school cliques to encompass nerds, punkers, beautiful overachievers, and everyone in between. Because everyone of a certain age can identify.

As he puts it, parents, teachers, TV, Movies, and magazines tell you what to do, but you know what you have to do — your purpose is to get accepted, get a cute girlfriend, and think of something great to do the rest of your life.

For those crying out for an alternative, less conventional existence, it can feel like a suffocating road to the American Dream. It’s easy to feel lied to or at the very least feel like school and the world haven’t fully prepared you for the brunt of angst weighing on your mind.

Christian Slater is required to do a lot of the heavy lifting throughout the film, and it relies on his charisma because in many of his scenes, he’s just speaking to an audience out in the dark somewhere (both over the radio and in the movie theater). Somehow it works though DJing is only a small aspect of his life.

By day, he’s Mark Hunter a disenchanted teen. His father is on the school board, they’re in a great district, but he’s also the new kid on the block and doesn’t have any friends. He exists on the outskirts mostly unseen as a diffident disciple of Lenny Bruce stuck in his own thoughts and unable to socialize. By night, well…he comes alive.

Samantha Mathis almost feels like a bad girl version of Molly Ringwald, dark-haired, pretty, and spunky as Nora De Niro. She, like all the rest of her peers, is captivated by Harry because of what he represents to all of them. It becomes her mission to figure out who he is as she scrounges around school and sends letters to his P.O. Box as bait. Eventually, she learns the identity of their mild-mannered Clark Kent.

It does feel like Pump Up The Volume is on the cusp of a new decade while still channeling the remnants of ‘80s film culture. There’s a War Games-like wunderkind ingenuity where a single teenager seems capable of taking on all manner of adults, government organizations, and what have you even as he muddles his way through the usual adolescent romance and alienation.

It escalates following a classmate’s suicide and a broader probe within the highly-touted school as the principal looks to bring down an iron fist on any troublemakers and keep her pristine reputation. The only problem is that the masses are getting more and more unruly and brazen as they rebel against the school’s primary enforcer, Mr. Murdock.

Then, the FCC is on Mark’s trail prepared to shut down his clandestine operation. It’s not a game anymore. We’ve gone large-scale. If you’re like me, you’re always under the assumption he’s going to be caught; they’re going to nab him, and still, he always finds a way to outsmart them.

I couldn’t help likening Harry to a prophet of the airwaves, a Howard Beale for the angsty teenage population as he exhorts them to “Do something crazy!” But what I appreciate about the movie is how he eventually kicks his version of a nihilistic spiral.  Early on he opined that “Being young is sometimes less fun than being dead.” Then, he changes his mind. Hang in there he says. It can only get better.

He and Nora take his radio show on the road for one last evening of insurrection before signing off for good as the local teenage population’s cult hero. He becomes a legend in his own time and even if his frequency dies, there’s a nation of others to rise up and take his place.

I’m not sure what the contemporary implications of Pump Up The Volume were; it could have been negligible at best, but even though this movie is not always talked about, there’s a sense it spoke into the zeitgeist of the times.

It’s not a large production, it didn’t make a ton of box office, and it hardly has the enduring reputation of John Hughes’s most prominent works. Part of this might owe to its coarser even darker subject matter, though it’s rarely bandied about with the same frequency as Heathers. But this very same punk mentality wrapped up in the anxieties of the suffocating structures of high school, middle-class meritocracy offers a foreboding portrait of the future.

It still manages to be a movie of common ground, reassurance that we are not alone, and that the days ahead can get better. It’s not a movie about stewing in death and insecurities but acknowledging them and putting them to rest. In their place, we can have romance, friendship, and camaraderie.

I’m not for glorifying delinquency per se, but it is a movie, after all, and Slater makes it quite an intoxicating thrill. Especially when we don’t have to witness the aftermath or live with any consequences. Somehow, he can ride off as the hero we always wanted, knowing deep down inside maybe we have something inside ourselves that can still be expressed — it’s waiting to be expressed. Whatever your opinion, it’s fairly optimistic, and this is in its favor all these years later.

3.5/5 Stars

Irma Vep (1996)

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Our entry point into Irma Vep as an English-speaking audience is Maggie Leung, and although this is a French production from Olivier Assayas, it’s almost as if he’s provided us an avatar. The cinematic Maggie in the film becomes our window into the world created around her.

Although the film is from a bygone generation, it’s modern in the way of filmmakers like Jim Jarmusch who seem curious, open-minded, and intent on fleshing out stories that spill out across different cultures.

Cheung is congenial throughout, and it’s no wonder she has become a luminary figure in world cinema. In The Mood for Love will immortalize her and Tony Leung for posterity’s sake. But in Irma Vep she feels so much like a contemporary person we can comprehend and understand intuitively. She’s an actress yes, but there’s something down-to-earth and so personable about her.

In a film of  continual strife, she seems to be this enduring ray of optimism and warmth for everyone around her. Although her being an outsider carries with it a certain naivete, she’s also excited to work and do something she finds to be enjoyable.

Even as the local crew gripe with one another, most everyone is amenable to her, speaking English and doing their best to make her feel at home regardless of what they think about her casting. One of her primary acquaintances is Zoe (Nathalie Richard), a fiery costumer who helps her navigate the chaos by transporting her around the city and welcoming Maggie into their nighttime commune of technicians. She also harbors a little crush on the film star.

It’s a wonderful confluence of worlds being smashed together and even with its humble handheld camera sensibilities, we recognize the international scope of the production. This is what French cinema, what European cinema, can afford us if we burst through our myopic Hollywood blockbuster lens.

It has a brash energy to it that fits in with the up-and-coming directors of the ’80s and ’90s. Some had been to film school, others knew about the French New Wave, and out of it was birthed a generation of films full of grit, life, and personal expression. Assayas might be a few years older, but he looks intent to say something very particular.

Part of me wonders if this period of film is dead as our technology gets more advanced, and it becomes cheaper to shoot better quality footage that more easily hides budgetary restraints. Obviously low budgets are still a part and parcel of making it in the industry, but with filmmakers like Richard Linklater or even Assayas here, there’s a certain simplicity to their work where their personal vision in some ways outpaces or totally transcends the limited resources at their disposal.

I was thinking how much ’90s energy the film embodies when it harnesses Sonic Youth’s “Tunic” doing a survey of Maggie’s hotel room when she returns home late at night. We are constantly bumping up against the self-reflexive nature of the movie with Cheung playing a film version of herself. She is the Hong Kong action star who Rene Vidal (Jean-Pierre Leaud) believes is the only enigmatic beauty in the world who can play the modern incarnation of his heroine: Irma Vep.

When she’s not slinking around her scenes or getting fitted in a latex catsuit, she’s being interviewed by a French journalist about John Woo action cinema and French stars like Alain Delon and Catherine Deneuve — real constellations of film history.

It’s almost second nature to trace the lineage from Day for Night to Irma Vep even as it’s indebted to the silents: Les Vampires in particular. Jean-Pierre Leaud’s eccentric mad scientist behind the camera spouts off his director-speak between sips of his 2-liter Coca-Cola. It’s his mercurial nature guiding the whole production and thus sending it toward a tailspin of discombobulation.

Day for Night is often about this illusion of cinema where you don’t know where the movie ends and reality begins. Irma Vep has some of that — Cheung becoming a nighttime cat burglar quickly comes to mind — but its greatest debt to the earliest project is portraying the behind-the-scenes mayhem of a film production.

So much goes wrong; there’s chaos and personal troubles. Watching films such as these, it’s a wonder movies get made at all. If I’m sometimes uncompassionate toward Hollywood, then Irma Vep gives Assayas license to bash the French film industry whether it be navel-gazing directors or unprofessional crews. However, for all the criticisms he lobs its way, he’s still a part of it, and revels in its traditions because it still manages to be deep and rich. One must appreciate how both can be true at the same time. So it is with Irma Vep.

Leaud is the first of the main players to evaporate into the silence. Then Maggie drives off in a taxi, and we never see her again in the flesh. The film itself descends into a hypnotic montage of shapes and images and rhythms, with eyes scraped out and a kind of gutted soundscape.

What it is exactly? You tell me. All I know is I felt something. Irma Vep is a reminder that the moving image has unadulterated power, and it’s what’s made the movies such a mesmerizing opiate for over a century. We’re still finding new layers and new forms of self-expression in them all these years later. I hope this does not die out any time soon.

4/5 Stars

Rushmore (1998)

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Through his quintessential use of camera, space, and symmetry, we already see the formation of Wes Anderson’s now easily attributed style incarnated in Rushmore. It makes us aware we are watching a movie just as it makes us keenly aware of the filmmaker. There is a meticulous storyboarded quality to it with telling POV and overhead shots laying the groundwork for his unmistakable aesthetic.

For some, this is a turn-off. It totally ruins the so-called suspension of disbelief. You don’t want to be reminded you are watching a  movie. You want to disappear into it. But Anderson’s style is so particular it’s hard not to marvel especially because it’s not simply a case of form over substance. This movie is about something meaningful.

Jason Schwartzmann proves himself an exquisite choice to play our lead. Max Fischer is a young teenager with such an impressive array of extracurriculars and side hobbies, he has no recourse to fail all his classes at Rushmore prep school. He’s too much of a driven, daydreamy kind of person to get stuck with his textbooks for hours on end. His aspirations seem to be focused on something more. 

One of those might be romantic love as the ancients would come to understand it. I think of the scene where he first makes the acquaintance of the pretty literature teacher, Ms. Cross (Olivia Williams) on the bleachers. Anderson frames them in individual shots, but then Max keeps on sliding out and back into the frame. It’s not in a continuous camera movement. Instead, these orchestrated moments add together to give us a sense of what’s going on – both good-humored and slightly awkward. 

But we must also talk about Bill Murray. I’m no Murray historian, but Rushmore and with it, the actor’s continuous collaboration with Anderson, seems to mark a distinct shift in his career. It may not be a Reinnaissance, but it effectively took an SNL phenomenon known for comedy films like Caddyshack and Ghostbuster, only to provide him a fresh dimension.

Perhaps it was always there before, but whether it was Anderson seeing it in Murray or Murray finding inspiration in Anderson’s material, I don’t see his work in movies like Lost in Translation or Broken Flowers coming to fruition without a spark.

It’s not that Murray is unfunny in any of these roles. Instead, like Robin Williams, Jim Carrey, and the like, he’s able to somehow take those comic eccentricities with his own core humanity, and make it deeply impactful.

In Rushmore, Murray gets his Dustin Hoffman “Graduate” moment submerged in the pool at his son’s birthday party. The allusion is straightforward enough. Meanwhile, Max goes and falls in love with his teacher — resurrects Latin class and tries to procure her some new aquarium tanks all as devoted acts of affection. He has other passions too.

He directs his own stage version of Serpico and the lifelike train noise and walkie-talkie sound effects mimic the attention to detail Anderson would have admired. But these are not all the stage elements. Because there’s a recurring sensibility that brings attention to the performance nature of the movie, whether it’s the curtains being pulled away with the changing of the months or Max’s never-ending thespian endeavors.

I’ve never known Luke Wilson’s filmography well, but I found his cameo almost endearing as he becomes the target of Max’s jealous and impudent ire. He’s not willing to relinquish Ms. Cross to any man even if he has no hold on her either as her junior.

This and other shenanigans get him expelled from Rushmore. Being caught smoking or failing his classes is far too mundane. He tears up the baseball field for the ground-breaking of his new aquarium. Thereafter he’s off to public school with a wounded heart, though he encounters several sympathetic spirits including Margaret Yang (Sara Tanaka).

Still, the movie becomes a love triangle with a 15-year-old and Murray’s grown man(child) going at it in their attempts to hurt one another like vengeful kids in the schoolyard. It proves how fickle they can be. But that’s not to say unlikeable. Because Herman and Max became friends and then turned into rivals. 

In fact, there’s a precociousness to Anderson’s adolescent subjects even as his adults have flaws and insecurities. It’s as if all his characters are on the same plane of existence. This is not Peanuts. There’s no chasm between the relatable kids and the unknowable adults. I’m not sure this makes it more realistic; Anderson does not strive for realism, but it reminds us that we all are not too dissimilar as people.

Dirk, Max’s most faithful friend, and Herman share a conversation near his car that in any other film would probably feel ludicrous; here they are able to speak to each other as equals, and they are not the only ones given this luxury.

It’s easy to feel sympathy for Rosemary because she has lost her husband, and she did not ask for Max to fall in love with her. She tries to navigate their interactions with warmth, but his boyish impulses and irrepressible spirit mean he’s never going to let her be. He can’t comprehend how one does that.  For a teenager, she must feel like Mrs. Robinson. In her own world, she’s just another confused and lonely person trying to make sense of things. 

At first, I was trying to figure out the purpose of the soundtrack: It’s full of agreeable British Invasion tracks from the likes of Chad & Jeremy or The Faces. The easiest answer is how it comes to represent nostalgia but also the prep school malaise. It’s Anderson’s version of the Simon and Garfunkel soundtrack for Dustin Hoffman — compiled for a slightly different segment of society and an emerging generation. It exudes a contemplative melancholy not without its quirks and humor.

From my vantage point, I can only watch Rushmore retroactively, having seen much of Anderson’s career unfold, but it does give me a different way in which to appreciate it. Here we see him coming into his own; he has a Truffaut-like eagerness for the cinema, and money hardly seems to be the signifier or measure of his film’s success.

Now he commands larger budgets and even more intricate and sprawling productions, but Rushmore shows what he is able to do as a filmmaker with his own sense of inventiveness, flair, and surprising resonance no matter the restraints put upon him.

For me, this is often the measure of a sublime director, and Anderson signaled his ambitions to the world with this movie. I found myself instantly fond of the film, and I can see this affinity only growing with time. Again, I appreciate the allusiveness of his films — how they are steeped in movie tradition and what feels like technical virtuosity — but even more so I feel compelled by these particular characters. What’s more, I want the best for them.

4.5/5 Stars

Noises Off… (1991): From Stage to Screen

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In the olden days, a stage production — or shall we say “the theater” — was blessed with a certain cultural cachet not extended to moving pictures. While this dichotomy hasn’t totally eroded, given the directions movies have gone, Noises Off…is buoyed by the stage for another reason.

Rarely have I witnessed something that totally blurs the line between performance and reality in such a self-reflexive manner. Noises Off… began as a highly successful play about a stage production going off the rails due to inadequate rehearsal times and the backstage histrionics of an amorous cast of characters. In other words, the original form fits the function.

Just by merit of the medium of film, it cannot be as intimate as the stage nor is it performance art in quite the same manner, though the director tries to stretch out sequences as long as they will contort to maintain the pace.

But the stage, because it is live, requires actors who are able to keep up with the utter mayhem of the material like trained athletes. Both the controlled and wildly chaotic nature interpolate into one storyline. So you obviously lose some of that instant spontaneity acquired by no other means.

If anyone knows that fact it’s Peter Bogdanovich, an avowed theater aficionado. He doesn’t let the story sag; it’s always zooming along, and it still manages something almost palpable. The trick is not fiddling too much with the concept nor trying to contort it in some grandiloquent way to fit the cinema.

The structure of the story itself is just as crucial in developing this cumulative impact. The Three Act Structure begins with the frantic rehearsal hours before they are set to perform. The long-suffering director (Michael Caine,) who might be on the edge of a nervous breakdown, is running out of time and dealing with temperamental actors asking for motivations or just absent-mindedly showing up late to set. He’s also romancing his leading lady (Nicolette Sheridan). The issues are there for comedic effect, but we have yet to reach impact — that requires a theater full of people.

Next, we follow the show from behind the curtain. The preparations are frantic, actors are missing, and the backstage crew, Julie Haggerty and Mark Linn-Baker, run around like two stage chickens with their heads cut off. It doesn’t change when the performance begins either because the whole story is based on timing — cues and a bustling scenario with slamming doors and traded props. It’s everything we’ve already seen, albeit from the inside out, ignited by male feuds (John Ritter gives Christopher Reeve a bloody nose) and private lover’s quarrels filled with bitter malice.

The show from the cheap seats is the worst (or best) of all as this mounting discontentment disrupts the foregone storyline with all kinds of private barbs and acts of pettiness played out on the stage. The key is how the fictional audience eats it all up because each absurd miscue feels like the next great flashpoint of brilliant comedy. It’s the height of farce.

One of my few reference points is Hellzapoppin’ even as the earlier film was often about the endless possibilities of non sequiturs. What they have in common is this almost Vaudevillian sense of gags and payoffs — where each character has a shtick that can be called upon at any given moment. This isn’t method acting so objects don a different meaning as tokens to carry out gags, and Noises Off… brings them to a fever pitch. Sardines and telephones, flowers and bottles of bourbon. A pickaxe bandied about by all, each carrying varying attentions.

They effectively blend the space where two planes of existence bleed into one because these same tokens are exchanged and traded both on the stage and behind the stage. I joined the fictional audience in laughter even more heartily because, in many ways, we get to see the interworking of the beast in all its comedic underpinnings.

If we’re observant and stay with them, we see where the story has gone off the rails and the “unscripted” chaos that exerts itself on the storyline. The so-called “audience” snarks at each snafu because it’s a hilarious faux pas — the pratfalls are even better because they are “real.” And here you have the joy of Noises Off where it brings out these double-meanings or double realities and fictions.

We get the benefit of being both an audience member and a backstage observer. Because we know that all this world’s a stage and all these people merely players. Like Hamlet, it is only a play within a play, but it broaches into our space with startling verve and a raucous sense of precision.

I am reminded of the security guard; he sits in the wings watching all the madness quizzically with a raised eyebrow. What a crucial insert he proves to be because comedy is so much about the reactions to the stimuli. He reminds us how zany all this fracas is just in case we need a point of reference — a threshold to ground us back in reality.

Since they cannot help being in a cinematic space, the cast is tip-top including some faces I’m often quick to forget about and others who I miss dearly. John Ritter and Christopher Reeve are a joy even if this is hardly remembered compared to their greatest exploits. Carol Burnett is a comedic jewel. Bless her. Marilu Henner brings back all those fine memories of Taxi reruns. Denholm Elliot had such a long and illustrious career, but a doddering part such as this made me appreciate him even more.

The transition from stage to screen would not work as whole-heartedly without its cast, and I love them all in spite of their doltishness. In fact, it’s probably precisely because of this the movie works. Noises Off...would have been quite the sight to behold on stage, but it doesn’t lose all its merits in the hands of Bogdanovich, who makes it still a worthwhile and totally jocular experience. My primary barometer was my own personal reservoir of laughter. I couldn’t control it, and that speaks volumes enough for me.

3.5/5 Stars

Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud (1995): The Opposite of Loneliness

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Claude Sautet’s Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud positions itself as a certain type of film. There are no thrills about it. We come to notice the normal rhythms of shot-reverse-shot along the 180-degree line. This comes because the movie is so invested in conversation. Unlike his earlier Max and The Junkmen, there is no crime or bank robbery to spice up the narrative. It relies solely on the presence of its two titular stars.

You could go two ways with this. Either you find Emmanuelle Beart’s face deeply enigmatic or it’s empty, all but emotionless as she goes through the paces of life. Because it’s true her performance is defined by her expressions or lack thereof. Her pursed lips, unflinching doe-eyes, the self-assured posture.

Likewise, you could say it’s either crisp or bland in both content and manner. Each verdict is subjective, even preferential, and thus I am open to giving Beart and the picture the benefit of the doubt.

Opposite her is Michel Serrault playing a distinguished, older gentleman who has seen more of life yet bears his own share of hangups. The common denominator is not just loneliness in a foreign land like a Lost in Translation; I think it goes beyond that to a want of day-to-day companionship, even as a form of convenience for both parties.

Because one has to admit although we’ve seen these types of movies play out, it’s still an unlikely friendship, platonic though it maybe. They receive a reintroduction at a cafe through a mutual friend. We know they come from two different stations in life. He with his divorced wife and grown kids. She with a failing marriage to a couch potato of a husband.

Fortuitously, Sautet’s “drama” does not stoop to illicit levels in order to be novel. This would waste the premise. Instead, it readily courts digressions that more than suit the amicable characters and the subdued world they’ve been born out of.

Monsieur Arnaud offers to sign her a blank check, no strings attached, and he genuinely means it. She agrees to help him with his memoirs. Perhaps she’s partially repaying a debt yet there’s also a desire to be altruistic. She sees a bit of a need and also deeply admires what he represents. Computers scare him; “They have memory without memories” as he says.

Nelly comes to know the judge-turned-businessman through the dictations of his autobiography. Moment by moment, he waxes poetic or reminiscences about his wife. He notes how “one day he became a monster” and they divorced; he must have been in an acute stage of his normal misogyny at that time. It’s terrifying to note the utter banality of the admission.

Meanwhile, behind them, his vast study full of volumes and texts is deconstructed after he gives the okay. It’s as if he’s cleaning up his life; all those material possessions he has don’t serve much of a purpose anymore.

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These are our main players, but around them are a plethora of supporting characters, in fact, more than one might expect in a story like this. We meet Monsieur’s daughter on one occasion and get acclimated to the family life of their mutual acquaintance Jacqueline, who proved instrumental in introducing them. Nelly meets someone — Arnaud’s publisher — who very confidently asks her out to dinner. She accepts. Her own spouse is seeing another woman, and they all seem very civil about the arrangement.

Certainly, Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud fails to cater to Hollywood expectations, and, therefore, it succeeds by capably taking on its own alternative outcomes. Because we don’t feel privy to their lives. At first, it seems there’s no chemistry or at least nothing that endears them. The mundane building blocks that make up their interactions are precisely that. It’s relatively easy to lose interest and still, somehow it grabs hold of me just enough to leave an impression.

I’m not an adequate judge to discern whether this is solely a blatant generalization, but many of the most remembered actresses and actors on the European landscape in the last 25 years seem to play as the antithesis of the Hollywood elite. Yes, they share beauty and charisma, but they approach characters and acting in a different manner altogether.

It’s not full of hyper-action, histrionics, or emotional outpourings all the better for telegraphing a performance. Their work becomes focused instead around muted, toned-down reactionary micro-actions where aloof and often subtler approaches to scenes take precedence.

There is one individual scene in Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud where they do blow their tops in what feels highly uncharacteristic of both of them. It appears to be a turning point in their relationship. The beginning of the end, if you will. As she gets up from the computer and rushes out of the room toward the door, she turns back briefly. Her face is almost sheepish. He looks on rather glumly (wishing he could revoke the words that came out of his mouth, no doubt) as she says she can’t come the following day. “The day after?” she asks tentatively. He nods as she exits.

It’s so minimal, but to me, it articulates the essence of this film. We get this nugget of drama and normally we are told this is what we are building towards; this is what we are meant to be drawn to when, in reality, it’s the final act of mitigation that feels the most human. Because we are not usually hot and cold people. Our emotions are a continually fluctuating gradient of everything we think and say and express on a given day. The scene’s simplicity captures this rather well.

I had also briefly forgotten what Sautet’s earlier film was blessed with. The house party near the end reminds us. His earlier picture had color and joy. Although it can get overshadowed by all that is dour and melancholic, these moments prove integral. Music, and dancing, instances where people feel alive even for a minute. It gives them a momentary lightness of being to counteract any negativity. This only makes relationships more complex.

Nelly’s boyfriend is not content in maintaining the status quo like she is; he wants to move in together. The other option is the door and since she’s not ready for further commitment, she exits the restaurant dejectedly with one last furtive glance. Of course, she goes to Monsieur Arnaud, and he offers up his empty home. It’s slightly uncomfortable in the subsequent interlude as he watches her sleep peaceably. We edge into cringe-worthy territory…

Yet again we are reminded how much he cares about others opening up to him. He wants to be wanted by others so far that he’ll give them checks and bend over backward, even being “blackmailed” by an eccentric former work associate. Is it a sense of chivalry left over from earlier generations? Perhaps. It’s also a symptom of late-onset loneliness.

The perfect capstone is a visit from his wife; her partner has recently died and now they are both alone. Although they are not completely patched up as a couple, they do agree on a spur of the moment excursion to see the world and the grandkids, gravitating toward each other under the circumstances. Again, it’s not romance, but it exemplifies how people need other people. Regardless, it catches not only Nelly but the audience off guard with the inherent abruptness of it all.

Those seeking out some obvious closure between our title characters will not find it because it proves to be a felicitous anti-Hollywood ending. Not because it’s a total downer but for the very fact there is no illusion of finality. The undetermined states of life are slightly unwonted and yet at the very same time, it fits Nelly and Monsieur Arnaud to a tee. I have only had a brief acquaintance with Claude Sautet to date. However, from the little I know of him, it seems like a fine picture for him to end his career on. It’s not for everyone but then again, what movie ever really is?

3.5/5 Stars

Whisper of The Heart (1995): Take Me Home Concrete Road

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Whisper_of_the_Heart_(Movie_Poster).jpgWhisper of The Heart is wholeheartedly a Japanese anime and yet learning John Denver’s “Country Roads” holds a relatively substantial place in the plotline might catch some off guard. After all, as the metropolitan imagery establishes our setting, we hear a version of the song playing against the bevy of passersby, cars, and convenience stores.

Director Yoshifumi Kondō boasts animation both simple and clean yet ever so attractive for those very same reasons. It positively glows with nostalgic yellow hues and employs anime’s preoccupations with the most intricate details — moths drawn to a light being just one prime example.

When I lived in Japan, I became fascinated by foreign music and how it gained a foothold in the country. You only have to look to jazz, The Ventures, The Carpenters, or Mariah Carey to see how deep their imprint is on the collective culture. The same goes for John Denver who made tours of Japan on several occasions.

But whereas musicians often become icons, sometimes Japan cultivates an environment where nuggets of culture can take on a life of their own. This theme serves as a perfect breeding ground for Ghibli’s classic coming of age story.

Shizuku is, at her heart, a spunky and feisty heroine with the kinds of hope and aspirations that often seem buried in a very restrained culture like Japan. In her middle school existence, an unknown person named Amasawa becomes an almost mythic figure in her life as they have checked out all the books she’s so voraciously eaten up in her nascent but ambitious literary odyssey.

They look to be a kindred spirit. It takes a fortuitous meeting with a commuting cat on the JR line to sustain her adventure. The disaffected animal leads her to a Secret Garden of sorts. This one is not found in nature but in the home of a delightful old man.

Because Whisper of The Heart is full of the blushing love of adolescence in its many tangles found throughout the student body. It’s no different in Japan, at least on the emotional level, or for that matter, the utter denseness of the male sex.

But it’s also a very particular world where dwarves and fairies can coexist with the mundane elements of everyday life. Shizuku comes to realize this when she reaches the end of her adventure — the peculiar second-hand shop cluttered with clocks, violins, and shiny doodads of all shapes and sizes. It’s run by a genteel proprietor who also happens to relate to her not so fictitious phantom: Amasawa.

This looks to be the working of Hayao Miyazaki behind the scenes because no matter how mundane we might perceive the world to be, he’s always allowing for bits of magic to seep in and liven up our existences. Implicitly, he always seems to be suggesting we need the richness of our imagination girded around us to make the most out of life.

He also employs the most amicable cultural appropriation, turning Denver’s down-home “Country Roads” into a lively, bright-eyed violin jam session in a Tokyo back parlor. It’s the strangest incarnation of the song I could have ever imagined and yet somehow it manages to be apropos. I only need to remember pop instrumentals of “Daydream Believer” during my former days frequenting 7-Eleven’s in Tokyo. It fits the aesthetic.

But back to Shizuku. Her newfound companion dreams of being a Violin maker and going off to apprentice in Italy. Not to be outdone, she wants to write stories. She’s charged with empowerment and then the subsequent doubts ambushing anyone who’s ever endeavored for such a thing. I am reminded of the artistic encouragement churned up by C.S. Lewis and J.R.R. Tolkien that blessed the world over with two of the most formidable fantasy worlds: Middle Earth and Narnia.

Because we need people who will gladly court our ideas, gives us encouragement, and supply even the brief inkling that our passing daydreams are not complete balderdash. If they provide enjoyment or engage with beauty or goodness for just one person, perhaps even this makes them entirely worthwhile.

The sagely old man charges Shizuku that craftsmanship of any kind is never perfect. But we must begin. We need to start somewhere. To pilfer the film’s own metaphor, we are all unburnished stones waiting to be polished to the point of perfection. There’s the necessity of time and effort to make it work. The diamond must be pulverized. The brass burnished. The grain sent through the thresher. 

Again, Miyazaki’s imprint is all over the picture because he is always and forever the spinner of benevolent fairy tales paired with creative inspiration. His avid imagination never ceases to mesmerize. Surely there are lots of magical beings, soaring through the air, lands full of castles and kings, and yet the seat of it all is found in the revelation these very things can exist in our everyday reality. They need not be distant. Far off lands can come to meet us, be it through books or writing, music, or people with memories that extend far beyond what we see and know.

It’s easy for me to laud Whisper of The Heart for being timeless. Yes, we see word processors, a dearth of cell phones, more antiquated train services, and yet so much of the interactions, the yearnings, and the derivations are universal.

I must turn my attention only to the sound of cicadas, the warning bell near the train tracks, or the clink of a mailbox at the front door. They are so basic, so unextraordinary, and yet they sound so familiar. To my ears, they remain almost comforting. Because this movie is comfort food, whether you fancy udon or steak and potatoes.

Full of warmth. Love. Longing. Passion. Miyazaki and Ghibli have captivated the world over with such sensations. Yoshifumi Kondō more than proved himself capable of eliciting this same type of wonder. It’s only a shame he was not able to give us more films. But there only needs to be one solitary act of creation to leave an impression. Whisper of The Heart is an unassuming monument to his career.

4/5 Stars