See A Patch of Blue (1965), staring Sidney Poitier who by that time was already a seasoned actor. Recall that Poitier only two years earlier, he was the first Black actor to win an academy award for his role in (white) Lilies in the Field, where he played a Magic Negro for sure. One interesting sub plot in that film, which seems to underscore it’s play on race, Poitier is the only ‘American’ in the film, save for the stingy white man. It’s one of those message films. Got the message?
Yet, we gotta love A Patch of Blue. Poitier plays another Magic Negro who appears from out of nowhere just when the white protagonist is in distress (see the first five minutes of Imitation of Life, or just watch The Pelican Brief or The Legend of Baggar Vance to see more Magic Negroes). Of course, the blind girl drops her precious beads, and he’s more than willing to help her. This is where the trouble starts: the two ‘inadvertently’ touch, and this is a prelude to the ‘dangerous’ intimacy they will share. Then outs her: In the plot of the film, the magic Negro character that Poitier portrays is the first to actually acknowledge her blindness, and to not do so in the negative way in which we are introduced to her, through her angry folks at home.
We watch as the two outsiders briefly lament about how differently they see the world around them, including flashbacks of the girl describing what might have been her last vision. She describes her disfigurement as if becoming a nigger. Of course, they play around the race line, and show that she can ‘see’ difference, yet race is invisible to her despite how tall or short they are and how differently they talk. Race, this scene seems to say, is so simple that even a blind person doesn’t trip over it the way able-bodied people do.
Next the negro performs this stock character’s most distinctive magic feat: In true Magic Negro style, Poitier turns moral leader and in the process of just a short, casual conversation, he is the first person to ever reveal to the white outcaste that she’s not nearly as ugly and incapable as the world seems to tell her. He plants the seed of pride. Magic Negros are chock full of pride.
The Magic Negro character, which later morphed into the black-best-friend, is beyond reproach, totally unlike any and all ‘other’ negroes, and especially mulattos. And, equally true to form, he won’t challenge the natural, if not unjust, order of things; his raison d’être is to demonstrate that magical negro moral fortitude, despite the negro’s ‘natural’ disadvantages. In these films’ the negro’s subordinate status is portrayed as natural because racism is usually never challenged, and the white-best-friend is always color blind in stark contrast to the uncool whites. This common fantasy helps distance reality from reason by showing that social inequality is not really all that bad because negroes apparently come out unscathed; magic Negroes have none of the rage more commonly associated with mainstream stereotypes of blacks. Moreover, the characters are always dedicated, happy even, to teaching the benevolent white characters on how we persevere.
There are few clearer examples of this fantasy than the Magic Negro in the Green Mile. Despite having the power to heal and even give life, the Magic Negro accepts his death penalty and in a coup of plots, the big, black, Magic Negro absolves his white-best-friends- the benevolent prison guards, distinct from the bumbling racist sissy they demonized and threw out just to make sure we knew which whites were good.
Like I have pointed out in an earlier critique of the Green Mile, consider the closing scenes of Imitation of Life, where the white-best-friend learns after years of service that her Magic Negro maid/nanny/best-friend has a life outside her whitopian, suburban home, and has maintained ties to other Black people for years. At the maid’s funeral, we see her tragic mulatto daughter vowing never to deny her mother again, as Mahalia draws out a moving hymn in the background. The scene actually shows how the Magic Negro character got over- how she persevered. One wonders where was the Magic Negro’s soul in the Green Mile, for in spite of his circumstances relative to the white-best-friend who is shown to almost succumb to all that pressure, the Magic Negro always chooses life. Watch to see if 1965’s A Patch of Blue deviates from this formula.
When it comes to Hollywood and representation of African-American women, I propose that the present decade might be viewed as beginning with Monster’s Ball (2001) and ending with Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ By Sapphire (2009). The two films have much in common. First, there is Lee Daniels, the producer who, for years, fought tirelessly to bring Monster’s Ball to the screen. Daniels is director of Precious. Then there is Lionsgate, theatrical distributor for both films in the U.S.
But Monster’s Ball and Precious have more in common than just Daniels and Lionsgate. Significantly, both films feature poor, black women at the center of a tale that employs “deviant” black sexuality as a theme. Monster’s Ball, of course, gave us Halle Berry as the hypersexual Leticia Musgrove, a working class widow who seduces a white racist prison guard. Precious gives us an overweight teenager, Claireece “Precious” Jones (Gabourey Sidibe), and her mother, Mary (Mo’Nique). Mary and her husband have been molesting Precious since infancy. As the film’s title indicates, Precious is based on Sapphire’s 1996 novel Push.
In the film, the depiction of Precious’ molestation by her father is sufficiently graphic, though fleeting, and the abuser remains anonymous. Onscreen we never actually see the father’s entire face, and offscreen there is no mention of him in the credits. Perhaps, in not identifying the man, filmmakers were trying to avoid the kind of attention that The Color Purple (1985) received for its portrayal of black men. The casting of a man, Lenny Kravitz, as the delivery room nurse who cares for Precious after she gives birth—and who in the novel is gendered as a woman—should further serve to allay any potential criticism regarding black men.
Black women, however, do not fare as well. Though only hinted at in the film, Mary’s sexual abuse of Precious is quite vivid in the book. Nonetheless, Mary does spend a considerable amount of time onscreen terrorizing Precious with relentless beatings and verbal attacks. Mary clearly wears the face of evil in this film.
Another factor that ties Monster’s Ball and Precious together is critical acclaim. Halle Berry made history when she became the first African-American woman to win the Leading Actress Oscar for Monster’s Ball. Precious is the only film ever to receive the Audience awards at both Sundance and the Toronto International Film Festival. Last year, when Slumdog Millionaire—another film about impoverished non-white people—won the People’s Choice Award at TIFF, it went on to win a slew of Oscars, including “Best Motion Picture of the Year.”
Audiences, that is to say, predominantly white audiences, love this film. With a cast that includes Mo’Nique, Kravitz, Mariah Carey, and Sherri Shepherd, and executive producers, Tyler Perry and Oprah Winfrey on board to sing the film’s praises, black audiences are going to love Precious, too.
Bolstering the film’s chances as a serious Oscar contender are credible dramatic performances by the film’s cast. Though the nomination process has not officially begun, in public appearances, Sidibe has already been asked how she would respond to winning the Academy Award.
Technical elements are commendable, as well. A drab mise-en-scene and actors deprived of hairdos and makeup imbue the film with a sense of realism. Combined with its voice-over narration, at times, Precious feels like a documentary. At other times, clever fantasy sequences that break away from the realism have more of a slick Hollywood feel. For both Precious and the audience, these fantasies provide much needed escape from the hell that is Precious’ life. More importantly, perhaps, these fantasies allow audiences to derive pleasure from seeing Precious as a glamorous model or an attractive singer in the choir, as someone other than who she really is.
For the screen, Precious has been transformed from an excessively harsh, highly sexualized young woman who is difficult to care about—at least in the beginning—into a rather innocent and likable character that audiences can root for right away.
The screenplay also modifies Push’s crude delivery. With illiterate prose, Sapphire tried to update Alice Walker’s The Color Purple to 1980s Harlem. Though it never happens in the film, in the book, Precious actually reads The Color Purple. In an Associated Press interview, Winfrey, who played Sofia in the movie The Color Purple says that, “Precious feels like a Celie who lives in Harlem”. Though there are similarities, Push is no Color Purple. Its vernacular lacks the lyricism and poetry of Walker’s Pulitzer Prize-winning novel, and produces a style that is more gimmick than genius.
What Push does attempt to do—unlike the Precious screenplay, which panders to a “mainstream” audience—is to position Precious as a political subject. In the novel, for example, Precious often paraphrases Louis Farakhan. In the film, Precious never mentions the Nation of Islam leader. Push also implies that there is a connection between America’s history of white supremacy and the pathological blackness that oppresses Precious. The film, on the other hand, divorces Precious and Mary from any history, recent or past, that might have contributed to the abominable social circumstances in which they find themselves.
In much the same way, in Monster’s Ball, and against all evidence to the contrary—a Southern setting, an execution (“lynching”) of a black man, a family of racist white men, and a sexually aggressive black woman—many audiences and critics refused to see Leticia as an historical subject. The dominant reading of the film is not that it reinscribes racial ideology and long-held beliefs about black women’s sexuality. But rather, the preferred interpretation is that interracial “love” can transcend generations of racism.
That Precious has survived, and has the will to move forward is certainly a testament to the human spirit. Not only has she been physically, psychologically, and sexually abused by both parents; she is overweight, semi-illiterate, and she’s on welfare. She also has two babies by her father, one with Down’s syndrome. To top it off, Precious is HIV positive.
In naming the film’s website address, “we are all precious”, marketing executives tell us that Precious can stand in for anyone who has ever had a problem and not given up. In this “post-racial” era, a character like Precious need not represent just the poor, the downtrodden, or the historically oppressed black woman. And since we are all precious, there is no need to question why, in one of the richest nations on earth, any child would have to grow up this way.
Despite how high the odds are stacked against Claireece Precious Jones, the message of Precious, we are instructed, is one of inspiration and hope. The only hope I am left with is that the Academy, which rarely honors African Americans, won’t offer yet another award to a film or individual actors at the expense of sanctioning racial ideology about black women.
There is nothing worse than child abuse of any kind - physical, psychological, sexual. It’s a demonstration of power perverted, of adults taking advantage of impressionable and vulnerable minors in the cruelest, most shocking way conceivable. For a long time, it was a hidden shame, the subject of hush-hush whispers across suburban fences and the occasional sensationalized nightly news broadcast. But sometime around the mid ‘80s, the cause of exploited children everywhere gained a massive international profile. Today, we’ve gone to the opposite extremes, making the protection of kids our main social priority. No longer is the subject pushed back into the shadows of family scandal. Instead, it’s offered up as a kind of callous cautionary tale, a reason for mothers and fathers to stay ever vigilant - both of their own actions, and the unforgiveable acts of others.
So where does this leave a movie like Precious (actually entitled Precious: Based on the Novel ‘Push’ by Sapphire)? Within its undeniably powerful narrative and bravura performances is something so dark, so literally unwatchable at times that the level of pain which our overweight teenage heroine endures seems worse than inhuman. It’s beyond Herculean and almost otherworldly in its terrifying truth. But this raises another, almost unthinkable issue. Why? Indeed, why does an audience have to sit through what ends up being nearly two hours of emotional and physiological torture for a final pronouncement that seems to do little except confirm the hopelessness of the situation? While amazing acting and concise direction can carry us past such problems, the overwhelming bleakness of being dragged through this character’s unfathomable torment leaves you feeling stained…and unsatisfied.
Kevin Smith is the Richard Pryor of lo-fi independent cinema. No one in modern moviemaking works better “blue”. He is a sorcerer of scatology, a God of the dick and fart joke. And yet, just like the late, great comic, he’s a wiz at turning profanity into the profound. Unlike some who work in the medium of miscreance, there’s a meaning and a depth to his perversion. Smith is also one of the original “geeks”, standing alongside the Tarantinos and the Andersons of the craft in a desire to take film back for the true film fan. From the movies he’s made to the proposed projects that never really got off the ground, he represents the best of the genre’s original defining DIY spirit. While others merely grab their camcorder and create, Smith does something even better - he let’s his words, and by them his ideas, do the incessant talking.
So it’s odd for a medium that celebrates vision and “the image” (Blu-ray) to now house a trio of the writer/director’s least stylized turns - and yet there exactly is where we find early works like 1994’s Clerks, 1997’s Chasing Amy, and 2001’s Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. Smith will be the first to admit that he knows very little about the optical art of film. He has a journeyman command of mise-en-scene, but beyond that, he’s more My Dinner with Andre than North by Northwest. But when it comes to language, when it comes to making powerful statements out of some of the most repulsive concepts conceivable, he’s a genius. Argue over his ultimate success rate all you want, but Smith stands as a singular artist in an arena overloaded with copycats, wannabes, and deluded never-wills.
True, there is something to be said about the scruffy monochrome charms of Clerks. Smith used his own time in ‘retail’ to revisit the directionless lives of proto-slackers Dante (Brian O’Hallaran) and Randal (Jeff Anderson). The former works at the rundown Quick Stop convenience store. The latter avoids his responsibilities to the video rental place next door. Together, they pick on the customers and each other, using a combination of pop culture trivia superiority and four-letter denouncements to get their point across. When Dante is coaxed into working on his day off, he figures it will be a typical shift filled with idiots and weirdoes. Instead, he learns some shocking news about his current girlfriend and some equally upsetting information about the long lost love of his life.
With its focus on fellatio, its random lapse into implied necrophilia, and the nonstop curse laden assaults of its leads, Clerks would seem like the perfect candidate to have its motion picture mouth washed out with soap. As a matter of fact, as part of the many bonus features provided on this 15th Anniversary Blu-ray Edition of the title, Smith explains how the MPAA, horrified by the onslaught of F-bombs and graphic descriptions of genitalia, went and awarded an NC-17 to the film - not for hardcore sex or mindlessly gruesome violence, but for mere extrapolation of the English language. While he won the eventual legal battle, he set himself for a reputation that, often, he truly doesn’t deserve. Certainly there are times when Smith relies of crudity to sell his humor. But there are just as many laughs gained from Star Wars, dairy product expiration dates, and - of all things - lung cancer.
At its heart, though, Clerks is about relationships. In fact, almost every film Smith has made centers around friendship, love, the trouble with both and the devastation that comes with the loss of (or threatened loss of) same. For Dante and Randal, it’s all about being partners in crime, about wasting their lives in a mutually agreeable state of discontent. While they struggle against the connection between their shoddy life and their sense of self-worth, they are a cocksure illustration of the phrase misery loving company. For them, life is hockey, handing out, and complaining…a lot! Even when Dante goes off and deals with the various ladies in his life, we sense how out of place they are in his existence. Smith mines this material for lots of insights, as well as many moments of outsized wit. As a result Clerks remains a defining debut, a symbolic shot into the darkened domain of legitimate moviemaking. Oddly enough, it turned him into a rebel, a tag he wouldn’t shake until three years later, if then.
For most, Chasing Amy is Smith’s “mainstream” film, even though it deals with such unusual storyline topics as outsider comics, alternative lifestyles, and racial/gender intolerance. Artist Holden McNeil (Ben Affleck) and “inker” Banky Edwards (Jason Lee) are responsible for the cult creation Bluntman and Chronic, featuring the fictional adventures of two stoners based on real life dopers Jay (Jason Mewes) and Silent Bob (Smith). While at a convention in support of their militant black (and closeted gay) friend Hooper X (Dwight Ewell), Holden meets up with fellow ‘funny book’ author Alyssa Jones (Joey Lauren Adams). Instantly smitten, he tries to hook up with her. He soon learns that there is a barrier to their future love affair - she’s gay. In fact, she is adamant about not being “into” men. This doesn’t deter Holden as much as quicken his resolve. Of course, the eventual highs and lows of their courtship puts a strain on everyone…even Banky.
Like a raw nerve tweaked over and over again by emotions both radiant and revealing, Chasing Amy is as close to a masterpiece as Smith has ever created. While Clerks II and Zack and Miri Make a Porno also share such a tag, the writer/director delivers a devastating deconstruction of the male ego with this ‘penetrating’ portrait of affection and defeat. Smith knows the territory - the accompanying commentary track makes it very clear that Silent Bob’s title “tale” hits rather close to home. He also finds actors in Affleck and Adams who aren’t afraid to bare it all - including their most intimate fears and vulnerabilities - in service of a narrative which finds them fluctuating between the joys of passion and the anger of insult. Even Banky gets involved, his narrow view of Holden’s feelings turning a childhood spent inseparable into suspicion and subterfuge.
Of course, Smith keeps everything bubbling away with his standard flurry of foul-mouthed inspiration. Before their friendship turns sour, Banky and Alyssa share a Jaws-inspired conversion over cunnilingus-derived injuries that is priceless, while a high school nickname - “Finger Cuffs” - gets any equally unhealthy going over. Adams does lipstick lesbian chic really well, but she’s also great at what Smith labels “the experimental chick.” You see, Alyssa is not all she claims to be and by his horrible actions, Holden turns equally questionable - and inexcusable. Yet we care about them and want to see their relationship blossom. While the last act decision by our hero on how to “solve” things seems shockingly stupid, the rest of Chasing Amy is magnificent. It reminds even the casual Smith fan of the man’s mastery with people, and the particulars of their lives.
It would be nice to say the same about Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back. However, this full blown “fan film” (as former Miramax chief Harvey Weinstein labeled it) really has its weaknesses. When our two pot dealing dipsticks learn that Bluntman and Chronic has been optioned for a Hollywood movie, the boys seek out old pal Holden McNeil (Affleck in a funny cameo) to get their movie check. They soon learn that Banky (Lee) owns the rights to the property and that there are hundreds of Jay and Silent Bob hating fans on the Internet. Determined to silence Messageboard Nation once and for all, the guys decide to hitchhike to California and stop the production. Along the way, they learn some ‘rules’ of the road, befriend a group of gorgeous jewel thieves, and wind up confronting their clueless onscreen doppelgangers - James Van Der Beek and Jason Biggs.
Like one massive inside joke that only regulars to the View Askew Universe will get, Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back is the ultimate measure of Smith’s undeniable nerdiness. It is top heavy with homages to everything the filmmaker holds dear - genre types, character cliché, longstanding personal and professional friendships, spot-on satiric spoofs of Tinseltown types - that when it ends up less than successful, you wonder where the problem lies. Of course, you have to have a working knowledge of 2001 popular culture to get some of the jokes (like why Biggs is constantly called “pie-f*cker”) and the Good Will Hunting sequel stuff is obvious in a still rather clever way (no one does self-effacing better than Matt Damon). Yet these are mere moments in a movie made up of lots of Jay and Silent Bob buffoonery - and while it may seem sacrilegious to say it, the pair tends to wear out its welcome.
It’s not just the incessant talk about “feline femininity”. It’s not the whole acronym as dirty joke dynamic. Heck, we even buy the duo as craven monkey caretakers (or in this case, a great ape). It’s just that, with all the things Smith could have had his iconic duo participate in, a weird hybrid of hot chick crime spree, road picture, and dweeb romance just doesn’t seem to work. Sure, we’re laughing, especially when Wes Craven and Gus Van Zant show up, but we aren’t getting the reciprocal depth that usually comes with a Kevin Smith movie. There are no grand insights here, no interpersonal inspirations of epiphanies. You want to hear Luke Skywalker curse like a sailor? No problem. Need Chris Rock to relish in his pissed-off African American activist bit? You got it. Want cameos from almost every Smith film and character to date? Here you go. But if you want the same kind of emotional impact of Chasing Amy, or even Clerks, you’ll be looking for a very long time.
All the while, Smith and several in his cast and crew offer alternate narrative overviews of the productions. Each disc comes with these definitive conversations, chances to hear the true dirt behind the frequently filthy get-togethers. Smith can be self-deprecating to fault and he tends to point out things we’d otherwise ignore, but he is such an exceptional storyteller, so swollen with the gift of gab that he can’t help but be enchanting. The rest of the scattered features tell the rest of the tale. The same goes for his movies as well. Be they no budget or Summer blockbuster, heavy with star power or captained by capable nobodies, Kevin Smith makes movies that are a triumph of talent over taste, of linguistics over lewdness. Even if a 1080p transfer and beefed up audio do little to amplify these titles limited artistry, they can’t dilute Smith’s scribing superiority. It’s what makes him this generation’s fresh prince of the foul.
It holds too many titles to be totally beholden to just one: most popular movie of all time (adjusted dollars or straight admissions, of course); greatest example of classic Hollywood filmmaking ever; best adaptation of an otherwise questionable work of popular fiction; greatest film of all time; racially insensitive embarrassment (and often, downright horrific in its intolerance); over the top; melodramatic; superbly acting; and a fascinating piece of filmmaking. Still, for all the badges it’s forced to wear, Gone with the Wind never really gets the tag it seems closest to actually achieving - that of a modern day Greek tragedy. You see, built into Margaret Mitchell’s highly romanticized vision of a pre/post Civil War South is a central figure so flawed, so twisted by destiny in both successful and sinister ways that you just can’t help but see the artistry of ancient civilizations at work.
Our tragic “heroine” is, of course, Scarlett O’Hara (Vivian Leigh) - spoiled brat daughter of Irish plantation owner Gerald and his distant wife Ellen. Long in love with neighboring well-to-do Georgian Ashley Wilkes (Leslie Howard), the belle is devastated when she learns that the man she adores plans on marrying another. Even though Melanie Hamilton (Olivia De Havilland) is the salt of the Earth, Scarlett is convinced that Ashley can be hers. When she is rejected, she runs off and marries the first man who asks - Melanie’s brother Charles. Suddenly, the Civil War starts, putting everyone in peril. It is also at this time that Scarlett meets the man who is destined to wander in and out of her life for the next few years - Charleston dandy and all around he-man gadfly, Rhett Butler (Clark Gable). The battles both personal and sovereign begin, and Scarlett is soon a widow.
When Sherman finally reaches Atlanta, the O’Haras and Hamiltons must find a means of escape. Naturally, Capt. Butler finds a way of saving them. Returning to her home plantation, Tara, Scarlett discovers her mother dead and her father demented. Determined to “never be hungry again”, she woos the interloping carpetbaggers who come to Georgia after the war while taking up with older man Frank Kennedy (who just so happens to be one of her sister’s beaus). When he dies in a skirmish with “the Yankees”, Scarlett becomes a rich widow - and soon, an even wealthier business owner. Of course, Butler has never gotten over the wily little vixen, and they soon are married. They even have a child - a young daughter named Bonnie Blue. But as Butler dotes on his offspring, Scarlett is still pining for Ashley. It’s an obsession that will lead her down a path of personal ruin.
Even 70 years after the fact, Gone with the Wind remains the stuff of legend both on and off the screen. Over the decades, a dedicated scholarship has surrounded the film, the kind of in-depth discussion and analysis reserved for only the finest works of cultural significance. In the case of Wind, what Producer David O. Selznick went through to realize his vision of Mitchell’s best-selling tome is indeed filmic folklore made even more mythic. We see it scattered throughout the amazing 70th Anniversary Edition box-set - from commentary tracks that explain the lengthy development process to documentaries which dig deep into every facet of the film. Perhaps the most crucial was the casting, a literal free-for-all that saw many of the modern Tinseltown luminaries (Errol Flynn, Bette Davis) vie for roles that would eventually go to others - and then become iconic.
Selznick somehow stumbled upon British unknown Vivian Leigh (amidst a who’s who of available superstar talent) and the perfect tour de force of nature was unleashed. Everything about the actress’s portrayal is dead-on: Scarlett’s conniving juvenilia; her unwilling stubbornness; her passion and drive; her flitty sexuality, her untethered heart; the fiery jealousy, the inherent weakness; the hubris that makes her think she can succeed at all costs; the blindness to unwittingly destroy the innocent; the balls to break the strong. When she points a pistol at a Yankee soldier, determined to defend her birthright, you just know the man is getting a face full of lead. That it barely fazes her speaks volumes for what Leigh brings to Scarlett. Without a deft touch, the character would be hateful. The Oscar winner makes her truly epic.
The same goes with Gable. He is locked in a roll as sideline to Scarlett, given a last act trifecta of moments to finally shine. But when he’s standing there, moustache speaking volumes and squint substituting for libido, we can feel the sexual chemistry boiling in the broad shouldered hunk. Gable was only 37 when he took the role of Butler, but he comes across as a man more worldly wise and school of hard knocks educated than individuals twice his age. When he tries to talk down the Southern “gentlemen” who are fired up to defend the honor of the South against Lincoln, you can see his smug resolve in every syllable. Similarly, when defending the madam who has helped both him and various Atlanta causes from behind the shadows of social scandal, you will never see a more fierce protector. Granted, he gets his blubbery bow when disaster hits a little too close to home, but for the most part, Gable’s Butler is the cocksure calm within a halting historic maelstrom.
But perhaps the most underrated turn belongs to Olivia De Havilland as the Christ-like angel Melanie - a woman Capt. Butler refers to as the only genuinely nice person he ever met. While Leslie Howard’s Ashley is so weepy we hardly see what Scarlett wants with him, we get the connection between the wimp and his wondrous wife. She’s non-judgmental (at least, not outwardly), finds the good in almost everyone, and even when she fails to fully disclose someone’s better nature, she inherently realizes why they are hiding behind such vile hatefulness. Some have found her openly naïve (she never seems to “get” that Ashley and Scarlett are smitten with each other) and generous to a fault, but when she helps Scarlett dispose of a recently deceased intruder, you can tell that the goody-goody act is covering up for a much stronger, much braver soul.
Together, this talented trio takes Gone with the Wind through its most unusual narrative structure. Indeed, this may be the first film that plays like its set-up and sequel all in one. Both stories are jumpstarted by Scarlett throwing herself at - and being resoundingly rejected by - Ashley. In the first half, she suffers through the Hells of war. Men dying. Brutal surgery and rampant disease. The destruction of her family and home. The loss of her social identity and heritage. While it may take some viewers aback, Gone with the Wind laments the loss of Southern gentility (and the people as property aspects that go with it). Even Butler chokes out a few words about “dem darkies” every now and then. While the African American cast including Butterfly McQueen, Hattie McDaniel, and Oscar Polk do their ethnicity proud, the first part of the movie is like a mint julep smothered in a minstrel show.
The second part - much better, as it gives the former servants some humanizing scenes - is more of a battle for individual valor. Scarlett gets rich, continues to ruin lives, and becomes a scandal. Her new husbands hand her money and prominence, but the unrequited love she feels for Ashley is destined to destroy her. She just can’t help it. It’s her nature…the core of her being…her fatal flaw. This is why Gone with the Wind is so much like a work by Aeschylus or Sophocles or Euripides. Heck, even during those moments when Leigh and Gable conversationally spar like players in a screwball comedy, we think more of Shakespeare than Hawkes or Capra. While the film is definitely locked into the era-appropriate manipulations of highly drawn dramatics, there is a darkness to the last act of the film that really burrows beneath your skin. Indeed, when Gable renders his classic line, it’s less of a slap in the face and more of a three hour in the making epiphany.
With bravura director from Victor Fleming (though many have been credited, it is his Technicolor vision, along with that of replacement cinematographer Ernest Haller that makes this movie look like a series of canvas masterpieces come to life) and a script agonized over by Selznick and several of the 1930s best writers - including F. Scott Fitzgerald and Ben Hecht - Gone with the Wind is still dated, but it’s a dynamite kind of antiquity. The new DVD (and even better, Blu-ray) brings out the marvels in old form moviemaking: the controlled camerawork, the gorgeous lighting, the then-experimental and boundary pushing special effects. Of course, once we get into the meat of the added content and learn of the various tricks employed, including several dozen dummies substituting for wounded war casualties during the famous train yard triage scene, the power of such old fashioned flash is minimized. Bu it cannot be discounted.
Nor can one ignore the wealth of information in the bonus features. Full length overviews of the production provide as much detail as currently possible. Archival footage shows director Fleming in full-blown dictatorial mode, while actors and historians are interviewed about the film’s lasting appeal. Impact is gauged with a comparison to historical accuracies (and many inaccuracies), while 1939 is celebrated as ‘the greatest year in Hollywood’. We even get bits on the restoration process, the reasons behind the Civil War, and a TV movie starring Tony Curtis as a desperate-for-a-leading-lady Selznick. Topped off with a six hour retrospective on MGM entitled When the Lion Roars, the red velvet box set almost crumbles under the weight of its attempted thoroughness. While it could never be all encompassing, it definitely stands as one of the definitive compilations of the digital era.
And yet, for all its ballyhoo and cleverly marketed merchandising, it’s the characters from Gone with the Wind that continue to stir our imagination. Sure, Mammy, Pork, and Prissy are about as close to an all out hate crime as Golden Era Hollywood ever comes, but they aren’t completely demoralized by their human chattel challenges. Similarly, for all his lily-livered laments, Ashley Wilkes loves his wife and son. Rhett Butler may be a cad, a rogue, a scallywag, and any number of additional outdated epithets you want to hurl. But he’s also suave and smooth - and a savior when situations demand it. As two sides of the strong Southern Belle symbol, Melanie and Scarlett stand as pillars in a sea of quicksand, women willing to use their guile and their wits to work wonders on an antebellum arena torn between two conflicting ideologies (and too much male pride). Naturally, it’s that fatal flaw that keeps coming to the fore, leading to only one creative conclusion - tragedy. That’s why Scarlett O’Hara is so put upon, and powerful. That’s why Gone with the Wind remains a certified cinematic gem.
Who would have thought it? Marla Singer is the sanest, most honest person in the entire piece. Even through all her hypochondria and emotional rollercoasterism, she puts the cracked combination of Tyler Durden and “Cornelius/Rupert/Everyman” in its place. Revisiting David Fincher’s fascinating post-modern masterwork Fight Club on Blu-ray for its 10th anniversary reveals a wealth of these kinds of previously undiscovered gems. What about Chloe, the dying woman so desperate for a last act roll in the hay that she advertises her various pleasure devices during her support group? There’s Raymond K. Hessel, the freaked out liquor store clerk who becomes Tyler’s first (of supposedly many) “human sacrifices” and, Lou, the faux Mafioso who gets a ‘mouthful’ of Fight Club’s foul purpose. And of course, there’s Robert Paulson, the big softy with “bitch tits” who ends up representing the most powerful of Project Mayhem’s many ubiquitous symbols.
Far beyond Edward Norton and Brad Pitt, who play the rebel yell yin yang of a split personality with revolutionary leanings better than any single actor ever could, and a director so in tune with the material that it seems to be flowing directly out of his own Id, it’s great to see this adaptation of Chuck Palahniuk’s perturbing novel get the afterthought critical respect it so richly deserved (and yet missed) the first time. Yes, Messageboard Nation loves to rewrite the history books on all their favorite films, and to read their various rants on the subject, you’d swear this was 1999’s most heavily praised and commercially successful film. In truth, the controversial nature of Fight Club‘s material - which many saw as a celebration of mindless violence and individual brutality - saw it as one of the decade’s most divisive efforts. Only in hindsight did it become the black-eyed Mona Lisa.
Indeed, a few short years later, it is now viewed as a milestone, a benchmark in the careers of everyone involved. For Fincher, the story of a young man discovering the beauty - and the inherent danger - in embracing your inner maleness become a commentary on an entire sub-generation of dejected men. Thanks to Palahnuik’s brilliant deconstruction of the bottomed-out baby boom, complete with IKEA “nesting” instincts and designer mustard mandates spoke volumes back when Clinton was canvassing the White House, and now, two regime changes later, it seems even more prescient. Fight Club has always been about taking back your life from the corporate schism, about beating the system up before it beats you down. Now, in a world where bad decisions, not bombs, caused many of the most prestigious lending houses to crash and burn, Tyler Durden’s chemically-induced chaos doesn’t seem so outlandish. In fact, it seems downright reasonable.
The main story remains as strong as ever - a young liabilities analyst (Norton) for a major auto manufacturer has trouble sleeping. Seeking solace from local self-help groups, he realizes that getting lost in other people’s problems helps him cope better with his own. Then another treatment “tourist” named Marla Singer (Helena Bonham Carter) shows up, and throws our hero off his game. He tries to negotiate with her, but she’s more desperate than he is. During a lengthy business trip, our lead meets up with designer soap maker Tyler Durden (Pitt). They strike up an awkward friendship that finds the duo eventually living together in a run down house on the edge of town. From there, they begin something called ‘Fight Club’ - a weekly meeting where men can get together and blow off their frustrations and fears in a flurry of fists to the faces and solar plexus.
Before long, Tyler decides to take the recreational release to new levels. He recruits an army of sorts, and soon, the newly named “Project Mayhem” is tackling corporate greed, franchised phoniness, and the continued dehumanization of the entire race via less than legal means. When our unnamed player complains, Tyler grows more distant. After a particular tense exchange, they part company. But Project Mayhem is now going international. It is up to our guide to discover Tyler’s motives, his true identity, and how an aggressive type of non-erotic male bonding turned into a terrorist organization.
Fight Club is still today a definitive film, a statement as strong as any rock anthem and twice as packed with power chords. It reels from flights of vivid imagination and keens with art so impressive that few can fathom its brilliance at one sitting. To hear Fincher tell it (his commentary is one of several spellbinding additions to the Blu-ray release, along with a fabulous 1080p transfer and audio update), the movie was a compact experience - scripted, storyboarded, cast, and presented without any major studio input or interference. Even when they balked at some of Palahnuik’s more maverick ideas, Fincher fought for the essence, if not the actual scene or line of dialogue. Sometimes, the reinvention made things much, much darker (Marla’s classic “grade school/abortion” lines). At other instances, the film version of Fight Club fleshed out the author’s ideas, giving realism and authenticity to what could be viewed as the fictional version of The Anarchist’s Cookbook.
But as the wealth of bonus features argue, Fight Club endures because its about the shared experience - between cast and crew, characters and audience, philosophy and individual ethos. It’s about emasculation and the inability to overcome same. Fincher surprises us when he explains how uncomfortable the MPAA got with any questions of sex (especially Tyler’s “rubber glove” bit with Marla) but then passed on most of the violence. Instead, Britain made him trim material from the infamous Angel Face (Jared Leto) beat down, arguing it was too horrific (we see both versions, and other deleted scenes here as well). As the actors share anecdotes and discuss motivation, we begin to understand how forward-thinking this movie really was. While Fight Club argued for a dethroned patriarchy to rise up and reestablish their place on the social food chain, it also illustrated the indirect rise in geek empowerment. Of course, the men in the movie pounded each other into submission using physical force and stamina. The nerds beat them to prominence with a motherboard and a highway full of information.
Indeed, in today’s gloomy, Palin obsessed media-cracy, a planet where information overload takes the place of rationality or true thought, Fight Club is more of a distant voice that a shouting street preacher. It still resonates in ways Palahnuik and Fincher can only imagine and truly helped redefine a demo in peril. But now, even in a fully fleshed out home video primer, it remains a lesson to be studied and learned, a series of lunatic lectures you either buy into, or berate as being out of touch and troubling. At its core, it can seem like sinew and sweat, testosterone and ‘roid rage rebellion. But inside of each one of these little boys lost is someone who has seen the systematic re-sensitizing of the father figure turn the powerful into the pathetic. As Tyler Durden says during one of the movie’s most memorable scenes, “If our father is our basis for God, and our fathers abandoned us, then what does that tell you about God?” In Fincher’s effective masterpiece, the answer is on every single frame. It’s up to you to find it.
