It has been a while since my last AFI post. The process of watching all these films takes a lot longer than I'd hoped, plus finding them is also somewhat problematic. Netflix is great in this, but I wish that all one hundred films were available for streaming. Unfortunately, this is not the case, so wait I must.
Either way, I have seen two more films on AFI's list: The Graduate and Raging Bull. Both are really good films, but for some reason I had a real problem connecting with the characters on an emotional level, which is why I'm also including a film I loved, Yojimbo. My last entry in this project was very women-centric, and so it is fitting that that this entry covers quite the opposite. All three films have a heavy masculine focus and perspective. Women do play an important role in all three films, especially The Graduate, but all three are decidedly more masculine films. It's good to be an equal opportunist, isn't it?
Once again, I do include spoilers for each of the following films. You have been warned!
The Graduate
Okay, so I'm hoping this entry won't quite as long as my last entry, which I'm sure wasn't all that much fun for most of you. However, this one might be just as long.
I'd heard a lot of good things about The Graduate, so I'd been looking forward to watching this film. It's a shame I didn't find it as engaging as others have. The film seemed to lose me in its second half, about the time when Benjamin (Dustin Hoffman) falls in love with Mrs. Robinson's daughter, Elaine (Katherine Ross). This didn't make all that much sense in comparison to the rest of the film, and frankly turns Ben into.... well... for lack of a better term, a slut.
The real power behind this movie is not Benjamin, although his nervousness in the beginning and his inability to focus are endearing traits; the real story of this film is Mrs. Robinson herself (Anne Bancroft). From the very beginning of the film, Mrs. Robinson dominates every scene she's in, and the film's best moments are when she is clearly leading Ben to do what she wants. There's even a moving moment when Mrs. Robinson, drenched and wearing no makeup, asks Ben not to take Elaine out, which Ben does at his parents' insistence.
It is at this point the movie loses me. Not enough time is spent on Elaine's character, and Ben's abrupt shift in obsession is unsettling. Of course, this may have been Mike Nichols' intention all along as a commentary on adolescent rebellion. The final shot of the film is by far the most intriguing. After fleeing her own wedding with Ben, Elaine and Ben board a bus and sit in the very back. Laughter overtakes them for a a minute or two, but the laughter gradually subsides and we are left with both Ben and Elaine facing forward, unsmiling, seemingly unthinking, or perhaps thinking too much. Maybe this is the point they are beginning to consider an intriguing point (a point Roger Ebert raises in his Great Movie review of the film): What do they have in common? And really, who are these people sitting in the back of a bus? Neither question is answered by the film. The only character who shows complexity in the film is Mrs. Robinson and it is she who leaves the most lasting impression. Everyone else, including Ben, is merely a sideshow.
Raging Bull
Martin Scorsese is one of those director's I've heard a lot about over the years, but somehow managed to miss most of his films, and the first I saw was not one of his better efforts, or at least not one I particularly enjoyed: Gangs of New York. While Gangs of New York has some beautiful shots and an intriguing storyline, it is completely overshadowed by the brilliant performance of Daniel-Day Lewis, and Leonardo DiCaprio just isn't a strong enough of an actor to hold his own against Lewis' powerful character. I wanted DiCaprio's character to fail, and that's not what the focus of the film, so in that respect, it failed. A better representation of his style was first seen a few years later when I got the chance to see The Departed.
Raging Bull is closer to The Departed in style, technique, and overall quality. However, as with The Graduate, I didn't feel an emotional connection with the characters on the screen. Yes, Robert De Niro is phenomenal as Jake LaMotta, as is Joe Pesci as his brother, but what I found most intriguing about the film is its technical brilliance.
Plenty of people have written about the ferocity of the fights, which were editing amazingly well, but what I enjoyed most was the more subtle (and not so subtle) parts of the film that lay the foundation for the brutality of the fights themselves. Take, for instance, the end of LaMotta's first fight in the film: After clearly knocking his opponent senseless, LaMotta is shot at eye level and then the camera shifts to a slight low angle shot, barely even perceptible. This is brilliant foreshadowing of not only the outcome of that fight, but how LaMotta will struggle throughout the rest of the film. A low angle shot, of course, indicates power and by shooting LaMotta from a slight low-angle Scorcese is indicating that LaMotta, while a gifted boxer, will not get the outcomes he so desires. And sure enough, the judges of that fight hand the victory to his opponent. This motif holds true throughout the entire film, all the way up to the film shot, where LaMotta is rehearsing how he plans to repair his relationship with his brother. The film ends without any type of closure: We do not know what happens once LaMotta leaves the frame, and we're not meant to know; LaMotta is meant to linger on in our consciousness, ever struggling, ever fighting.
Also, pay attention to the dialogue. It's repetitive and confrontational at every turn, rarely is it calm and understanding. The dialogue itself mimics a boxing match, with its repetitive jabs, blocks, breakaways, and undercuts. The quieter sections of the film serve only as a rest between rounds until the fighting starts again. Raging Bull is a boxing match that never ends.
Yojimbo
This next film is not among AFI's 100 Best Films for obvious reasons, but it is a film I have seen recently and a film I liked enough to put it up along with the other two films in this post.
Yojimbo is directed by a filmmaker I greatly admire, and one who is a huge inspiration to many of today's most famous directors: Akira Kurosawa.
The film itself tells a rather simple tale: A wandering samurai finds himself in a village overrun with gang violence; two rival gangs are fighting over control of the town. The samurai concocts a plan to pit both gangs against each other so they basically kill each other. Of course, the plot is a bit more complex than that, but the beauty of Kurosawa's style is that he can juggle a large cast (with many different alliances and motivations) and a complex plot without sacrificing the emotional elements of the story.
After Raging Bull, Yojimbo is a far more subtle film. It doesn't strive for wild angles or a quick, furious editing style. Instead, Kurosawa uses more naturalistic elements to help build the tension. Follow the intensity of the wind throughout the film; it grows more and more fierce, blowing dust all over the place, as the film progresses. And it draws heavily on a Western motif, or is it the Western motif that draws heavily on Yojimbo? After all, it inspired Clint Eastwood's A Fistful of Dollars.
Having not received a satisfactory emotional payoff from The Graduate and Raging Bull, Yojimbo provided plenty of emotional payoff, but maybe that's because it didn't have an enigmatic ending. Every loose end was accounted for and tied off, with the exception of the lone samurai of course, who continues his wandering as he must.
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