February | 2014 | Asian and Entertained

United States of Nebraska

Posted on February 28, 2014 by babemoby

On Imdb, I saw a thread asking if there were really places in the U.S. like Hawthorne, Nebraska, as pictured in Academy Award Best Picture nominee “Nebraska.”

Let me start from the beginning.

“Nebraska” is about an old man named Woody who received a letter in the mail from a company similar to Publishers Clearing House, saying that he was the winner of $1 million. As we all know, and everyone in the movie knows, this is basically a scam to get people to sign up for magazine subscriptions. Woody doesn’t seem to understand this, despite his wife and sons telling him repeatedly it isn’t real. But one of his sons, David, says he’ll drive him from their home in Billings, Montana to Lincoln, Nebraska, where the office is located. He knows his dad is no millionaire, but David is bored of Montana and his job selling stereos at one of those dying home entertainment stores you see in strip malls that you wonder how they stay in business. And he wants to do something nice for his dad and also just get him to shut up, so David decides to take him on the half-day’s drive to Lincoln.

On the way, they stop in Woody’s childhood hometown of Hawthorne. It’s a sleepy little aging farming town that you might pass if you ever take a long road trip, that to you is just one name out of hundreds you’ll pass on the freeway. It might have been a hotspot for industry at some point in its history. Now it’s reduced to the older folks who moved there for the work and then retired, and it’s filled with family diners and the chain restaurants and retail stores that for some reason decided it might be profitable to have a branch there. Their children have all moved away, because they wanted to find a place a bit more lively, except those certain kids who never found their way to college or the military. Mostly nothing happens, but the people there like it that way.

Poor, poor Woody. He’s not a nice guy, and would hate to know someone felt sympathy for him. He still has a sharp wit though. In this scene, he’s gone and lost his teeth again.

When they hear about Woody’s prize, they get excited because mostly nothing ever happens there. Eventually, all the family decides they want to vulture his supposed winnings away from him, though even they probably realize that it’s too good to be true.

But yes, these little towns do exist. Despite what the media and entertainment worlds will have you believe, there is life between New England and LA, and not just Chicago. Maybe that life has a fading pulse, but it’s out there. No, these people don’t care what happens in your big cities. They’re content to know the news around town. Forget MSN and CNN (and the Internet altogether in some places), these folks want to know if the town is going to keep doing leaf collection in the fall. But they might check out the local Fox News station to see if they can mine some material to hound the newspaper about. The most read pages in the paper (yes, they still read newspapers) are the obituaries and police logs. They’re interested in whether anyone they know has died or been arrested.

I know this because I’ve lived in it, and in my road trips, I’ve dropped in on a few these small towns. I currently live in apartments in a college town, where half the population is the students. Most of the businesses where I live are bars and clubs because it’s a college town in the middle of nowhere. There’s also a lot of restaurants. And that’s about all there is. Located next to my apartments is abandoned farm land.

But these small towns do have the most colorful names. Forget Chicago or Philadelphia or Detroit, that’s weak sauce. Check out Horse Cave, Kentucky. That’s a real place. Or New California, Ohio. I wonder how it got that name. Did someone really stop in Ohio and think it reminded them of sunny Cali? They obviously weren’t here in the winter. There’s also Coxsackie, N.Y. I don’t think I want to know why they named it that.

Watch the film. It’s in black and white, which I know is a turn-off to many people, but it really helps capture the dullness and mundaneness of most people’s real lives.

But Bruce Dern’s turn as Woody is pretty awesome. He’s one of those old guys whom you wonder how much of him is even there most of the time, but he’s still got such a sharp wit when you get him to open up.

It's interesting to see Will Forte do something different. "Nebraska" could never be confused for a companion piece to "MacGruber."

It’s interesting to see Will Forte do something different. “Nebraska” could never be confused as a companion piece to “MacGruber.”

Will Forte is a revelation as David. I thought his comedy on “SNL” was mostly hit or miss (with emphasis on “miss”). Here, he plays the straight man very convincingly, and this is a good environment for his dry as a drought-addled desert sense of humor. It’s great when he tells his relatives he’s stuck working at the entertainment center because of the recession, and you just know that isn’t true. This is a breakout role for Forte, as he’s moved on from big, commercial, cornball comedy to obscure, indie, boring comedy. But boring in a good way in this case, if that’s even possible. It would have been nice to see him recognized in this awards season, as odd as it feels to type that.

And don’t forget about June Squibb. As Woody’s wife, Kate, she’s the sassy, dirty old lady, whom all the guys wanted back in her day, taken to a whole new level of wit and raunch. It’s truly brilliant, and it’s great to see her recognized with an Oscar nomination this year.

The comedy here is so dry that it might require a beverage to soothe your parched throat as you watch it, but if you enjoy that sort of thing, this is quite a gem director Alexander Payne has farmed up. It’s slow as a day working retail in a small town, and it’s certainly not for everyone. But personally, I think it’s a shame that it came out this year with such strong contenders for Best Picture, and I don’t want to see anything but “12 Years a Slave” take that award this year. I don’t know that this would ever be a winner, but looking at the winners from the last few years, I think it could have topped them.

If you’re truly adventurous, stop in one of these towns sometime and eat at the local diner. Then just drive around town and check out the scenery. It doesn’t matter which town, they’re all basically the same. But you might just come away with a better appreciation for what you have in the big city.

There’s a whole world out there beyond the metropolitan areas. These little places don’t dot the landscape of America’s heartland, they blanket it. The big cities are the real few and far between spots on the map. Does living in a small town really compare to big city living? No, but the people living there like it that way.

100 Movies … 100 Posts: #89. The Sixth Sense (1999)

Posted on February 22, 2014 by babemoby

This is post #12 in my series, 100 Movies … 100 Posts. In this ongoing series, I’m watching and writing about each film on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest movies from #100 to #1. I’m not just writing a review of each movie. I am going to write a piece about whatever I find most pressing, as a critique of the film, an address of the issues it brings up, or my own experiences with the film. It will serve as an examination of the list itself and of political issues in Hollywood and the film industry.

Without further ado, #89 “The Sixth Sense”

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“You’ve never told bedtime stories before. You have to add some twists ‘n’ stuff.”

*****SPOILERS*****

Bruce Willis…

is in this movie

*****END SPOILERS*****

I don’t normally put spoiler tags on my writing, as I usually bust the entire movie apart and don’t concern myself with spoiling it but in this case, I will warn readers that there are spoilers for this film in this post.

That’s because I’ve heard that if you already know the ending to “The Sixth Sense,” then there’s no point in watching it. I took this advice for 15 years, and had I not decided to do this current series, I would have probably taken it to the grave.

As it turns out, if you know Bruce Willis’ Dr. Malcolm Crowe is one of the dead people Haley Joel Osment’s Cole sees, that advice is only partially true. As it is, it’s an interesting take on depression for Cole, and a rather creative ghost story for Crowe. It is also a good warning that a bad therapist can royally fuck someone up for life, especially children.

I assume in watching this film already knowing the ending, it probably lost much of the thrill it was intended to have. I can’t really say if the ending was predictable, because though it makes sense in the film that Crowe was already dead, I don’t know for sure if I would have guessed that.

“Yippie Ki…” SNORE

Then again, I’m not sure I would have cared. Willis is pretty good at playing a certain role: the badass. He’s fun to watch as John McClane, he’s pretty good in “Pulp Fiction,” and he can hold down a starring role in any action movie, and he won’t ruin anything. But he’s just not a very good dramatic actor. In “The Sixth Sense,” he is just kind of boring. There’s nothing that makes his ghost psychologist very interesting, and that makes it hard to care about him fulfilling his purpose or whatever. It’s easily the weakest piece of the film. Unfortunately, that’s the main story, especially as it contains the twist at the end.

Bruce Willis in “The Sixth Sense”

I could see how some of the early scenes toward the beginning of the film, such as the one where Cole comes home and his mother and Crowe are sitting there, could be kind of bizarre or eerie, even a little creepy because of how awkward it comes across, if you don’t know about The Twist. If a therapist is chilling with your mom and they’re not talking, that’s a pretty big red flag. When you go to psychological counseling, your therapist is there to serve as a sort of friend to help work out your problems with you. If they’re not outgoing or pleasant or interpersonal enough to have a conversation with a child patient’s parent when they have a spare moment together, then that’s a bad sign. Knowing the ending in advance, the scene just comes off as goofy because Crowe doesn’t know he’s a ghost but he’s just kind of hanging out there. The same is true when he tries to talk to his wife at dinner but she won’t talk back to him. It kind of makes him feel like a sad sack Casper, which no one can take seriously.

On the other hand, the relationship between Cole and his single mother, Lynn, played convincingly by Toni Collette, is quite touching. It’s good to see a realistic portrayal of a single mother and her struggles. Usually, it single mothers in films are either totally perfect or totally dysfunctional. Not that either of those extremes is entirely unrealistic, but it’s good to see a more balanced, nuanced approach. The quality of their story can be attributed to the actors’ talent, as both Osment and Collette put on impressive performances and rightfully received Oscar nominations for their work. Their relationship wavers between frustration and vulnerability, but the audience gets the sense that they genuinely care for one another. They’re both such likable characters that you want to see them get through Cole’s maddening affliction and get their lives together.

I see box office.

Cole’s condition of seeing dead people all around him is a pretty good representation of a certain type of depression. Some people who are afflicted might have a fascination or fixation on death, and that can cause them to want to harm or kill themselves. And then it begins to touch on how people with depression have to start working to put their own lives back together. Of course, it’s an allegory, as there’s a supernatural element at play here, but it’s interesting to see how Cole’s problems affect him and his relationship with his mother.

It’s also interesting how director and writer M. Night Shyamalan indicts the medical industry, especially the psychology field. The beginning of the film shows Crowe celebrating an award he received for some kind of special achievement in his field. And then one of his former child patients shows up horribly messed up and puts the blame on Crowe. Psychology is a difficult field to work in, as it’s almost a pseudoscience since there’s no surefire way to work with the mind. Medical work is a lot of educated guesswork as it is. It’s not always simple to diagnose illnesses, as anyone who has had recurring issues can attest. Mental issues are even less precise. But it seems that Crowe might have been more focused on personal accolades than helping people. It’s difficult to work with adults, but even more so with children whose minds are still developing. If you’re not careful, it can cause major problems.

But the disturbed, violent mental patient is an ugly trope that is far too common in movies. Not only does it get old, but it can promote a fear of people with mental disabilities.

The film also hits on issues with emergency rooms and bad doctors. A doctor, played annoyingly by Shyamalan, calls child services when Lynn takes Cole to the hospital because he has cuts and bruises on his arms that came likely from the ghosts. Of course, an ER doctor wouldn’t find ghosts beating up a kid a very likely story. But there’s no real sign that Lynn is an abusive parent. This is not an unrealistic situation, as parents who take their children to the ER for injuries can sometimes face scrutiny, even if they aren’t physically abusive. So, it’s nice that they addressed that.

For the most part, this film is a case of trying to do way too much and, as a result, accomplishing very little. It’s a ghost story and a family drama and a cautionary tale and a thriller and a horror movie. It smacks of throwing shit at a wall and seeing what sticks. For movies in general, less is more is a good approach. If you do only a few things, but you do them really well, it’s a great movie. If you are going to do a lot, then you probably can’t cram it all into two hours. If your stuff is really important, maybe you can stretch it to three hours and if it’s really good, then people will find it worthwhile to sit through. But even if it was all fleshed out, it wouldn’t have made much of a difference in this case, because aside from Cole and Lynn, it isn’t all that compelling.

The horror bits with the ghosts were especially weak. The director throws out cheap scare tactics with loud noises and things, often gory things, flashing across the screen. And the one creepy story that is shown is disturbing but feels tacked on to move the plot. The movie would only be thrilling on first viewing, if even that. The solution to Cole’s problems is too instantaneous. Depression like his could take years of struggle even after coming up with a plan for recovery. The names of the characters are pretty ridiculous as well. Crowe’s medical patient who comes to visit is named Ben Friedkin. Get it? Sounds like freakin’! And Cole’s last name is Sear, like “seer.” So clever. Not really.

He’s not a doctor. He just plays one when he gets bored behind the camera.

Asian Sighting: I guess Asians have to claim M. Night Shyamalan as one of our own. After this movie, there was so much buzz around this guy. I remember everyone was talking about this movie and there’s a wild twist at the end, so you have to see it. The film was inexplicably nominated for best picture in 1999 (must have been a bad year). It’s almost baffling that of the movies that came out in ’99 that this is the one that made the top 100 list. But I imagine Hollywood expected Shyamalan could be the next Spielberg. But then “Unbreakable” came out the next year, and although that was a better film, it didn’t generate nearly as much attention as “The Sixth Sense.” The highly anticipated “Signs” followed a couple years later, and it seemed to get the critics back on his side. It was also a better movie than “Sense,” but still not great. Then “The Village” came out, which was terrible, and that was the end of the line. Everything of his since then has been universally panned. It’s amazing that companies still pay him to direct movies at this point, but they do. Shyamalan is the dictionary definition of both a one trick pony and also the law of diminishing returns. He popularized the twist ending, and now we have to endure it in nearly every film. It’s unexpected when there isn’t a twist. He could never resist the big twist at the end, even if he made a decent movie otherwise, like “The Village.” Shyamalan’s low point is “The Last Airbender,” with a 20 on MetaCritic, which chewed up an enjoyable franchise and apparently vomited it all over a film reel. It’s not that he has no talent, because it’s clear from most of his movies, even the bad ones, even “The Village” that he has some good and even great ideas. He just hasn’t been able to translate those ideas into a good cohesive work. He’s still young at 42, so he probably isn’t done trying. Let’s hope he finally gets it together one of these years and gives audiences a real classic to enjoy, if only so we don’t have to sit through any more annoying trailers for his shitty movies.

This is a Womple

As I said earlier, Osment was so good in his role in this movie that it’s a shame his career seemed to stall once he hit a certain age. He was awesome again in “A.I.,” and he was good in “Secondhand Lions,” which is a pretty fun movie. Then he just kind of fell off the map. He didn’t burn out spectacularly like many child stars do. He just exited the public eye. I could understand audiences experiencing fatigue with him, as he was pushed pretty hard as the next big star. But good child acting doesn’t necessarily translate to good adult acting. Since 2003, he’s mostly done voice acting and played something called Womple in a couple movies. He’s apparently begun to resurface in “Alpha House” and “Spoils of Babylon,” neither of which I’ve seen yet. Hopefully he’s on the right track to a great acting career.

Collette has had continued success playing supporting roles in indie movies like “Little Miss Sunshine” and bit parts in some bigger films. She had a starring role in “United States of Tara” as well. She’s always enjoyable to watch.

“The Sixth Sense” isn’t totally worthless if you already know the ending. But knowing the ending does cloud your view of the movie. I’d be interested to know people’s experience watching the movie back when it came out not being aware of what the twist was because that’s simply something I cannot experience. I’m not sure it’s necessarily worth watching even if you have somehow managed to avoid the spoilers for 15 years and have just been saving it for an incredibly rainy day. And even if you have, reading this piece has totally ruined it for you. Sorry.

*****END SPOILERS*****

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Next up, #88. “Bringing Up Baby”

100 Movies … 100 Posts: #90. Swing Time (1936)

Posted on February 18, 2014 by babemoby

This is post #11 in my series, 100 Movies … 100 Posts. In this ongoing series, I’m watching and writing about each film on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest movies from #100 to #1. I’m not just writing a review of each movie. I am going to write a piece about whatever I find most pressing, as a critique of the film, an address of the issues it brings up, or my own experiences with the film. It will serve as an examination of the list itself and of political issues in Hollywood and the film industry.

Without further ado, #90 “Swing Time”

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When I was young, I loved swing time.

In the summer, my mother would take me to the park, and I would be so excited. Sitting in her station wagon, I would be restless the entire way, bouncing up and down as much as I was able with my seatbelt on. My mind was filled with so many swings I would swing on when we got there. There were the normal swings, of course. But then there was the tire swing, and even the couples swing, though that one wasn’t as much fun, since I was so small, I could barely move it. Finally, we would arrive at Blacklick Park, where true joy awaited. I would toss off the seat belt, open the door, jump out, and declare, “It’s swing time!”

So, to my disappointment, this film wasn’t about that kind of swing time.

In actuality, this is the sixth of 10 movies featuring Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dancing, and probably the last one I will ever watch. I considered making a joke about that to show my disdain for the film before I watched it. Now that I’ve seen it, though I can’t envision myself ever watching another one, I wouldn’t be at all opposed to doing so.

After all, how can one get too upset about a movie where one of the major plot points involves cuffing pants. That’s not some kind of ’30s double entendre. At the beginning of the film Astaire, here known as Lucky, misses his own wedding due to a mix up about pants cuffs. His friends all tell him he can’t get married without cuffed pants. So he sends his buddy, Pop, to the tailor to get his pants cuffed. But the tailor explains to Pop that you don’t cuff that type of pants! He shows Pop photo after catalog of those pants with no cuffs. “No cuffs! No cuffs! A thousand no cuffs! A million no cuffs!” So by the time Lucky gets his pants back and makes it to the church, he’s so late all the guests have left.

No cuffs for you! Next!

Margaret’s (Betty Furness) father is so upset at Lucky for missing the wedding. But Lucky explains to him that he was busy with a business venture, and that’s why he missed the wedding. By business venture, he means he was gambling with his buddies. But Lucky says he’s headed to New York to make more money. So, never one to pass up money, Margaret’s dad says that’s swell, and if he makes $25,000 in New York, he can come back and marry Margaret. She also thinks that would be swell. And Lucky agrees that it sounds pretty swell as well, so they make a deal. Sounds like a swell way to start a relationship.

In New York, still wearing his no cuff pants, Lucky runs into a dance instructor, who just so happens to be Ginger Rogers, or Penny, in this case (get it? Lucky and Penny in a movie about a gambler). And thus starts what will prove to be a tumultuous relationship full of dancing, singing and frustration. After all, how could they make a movie without some tumult and frustration?

If you haven’t caught it by now, the comedy in this early rom-com is pretty hammy. I suppose the ’30s were a pretty hammy time, so that makes sense. You can pretty much tell from this paragraph whether you’ll enjoy this film or not. If you know anything about old films, you already know what I mean. But even I found a few bits amusing here and there.

Not this Ricky Romero either…

It is pretty silly that, if you look at romantic comedies today, compared to “Swing Time,” the formula for making rom-coms hasn’t changed a bit. Guy falls in love with a woman, but he’s got a personal problem he’s got to resolve, and he also has competition. In this case, the personal problem is that he has a woman back home to whom he’s betrothed. And the competition comes in the form of Italian conductor Ricky Romero (not the pitcher for the Toronto Blue Jays, though not totally unlikely that they’re related). But at the end, everything is resolved, and the guy gets his girl like the audience all expected he would, but not without some creative scheming.

Lucky and Penny spend most of the film dancing and romancing. There’s more to it than that, but the trademark of the Astaire-Rogers duo is dancing. They dance at the dance studio. They dance in the dance hall. They dance to show they’re happy. They dance to show they’re conflicted. They sing too.

Dancin’

And who can complain about the songs? This writer is not well-versed in musicals, but the songs are meant to tell the story, and that’s what they do in “Swing Time.” They convey the feelings and emotions better than any dialogue could do. Both Astaire and Rogers are great performers, and they put on quite a show together in creative fashion.

Though the formulaic story has remained the same for the last 80 years, it is interesting to see how much New York has changed since 1936, and also how much it hasn’t changed. In their initial happenstance meeting, Lucky trades his lucky quarter to Penny for change, so he can get cigarettes from the vending machine. I don’t recall the last time I saw a cigarette vending machine, but you certainly won’t find one on the streets of New York these days. You can hardly get them from the stores today. Lucky, of course, lives up to his name and hits the jackpot with the cigs. He gets two packs of them out of the machine, and more change than he put in. So he runs after Penny and tries to get his lucky quarter back.

She tells him no, and please go away. They bicker back and forth as they cross the street. Then a police officer stops them and asks what the trouble is. They explain the situation to him, and he immediately takes Lucky’s side, saying he’s a well-dressed gentlemen, what with his uncuffed pants and all, and Penny should just buzz off. Of course, the cop takes the guy’s side, and if the same thing happened today, the outcome would be similar, except it might involve tasers and the woman being knocked unconscious and taken to the station. In a rather progressive move for the time, Lucky tells the officer to not be so harsh on her. It’s only then that the cop tells Lucky that he should be grateful for the cop being there.

Another funny difference is the lack of any physical romance. There’s not even an onscreen kiss in this film. The closest we get is when Lucky is getting ready for his blackface Bojangles performance (more on that in a minute), where Penny comes in to wish him good luck. A man comes in looking for them causing the couple to be hidden behind the door. When it closes, there’s Lucky with lipstick smeared on his face that completes the blackface getup.

And then this shit happens (skip to about 1:25 if you don’t feel like watching the whole thing):

There are many white people who have defended this performance, notably including Roger Ebert, who said this is the only blackface performance he wasn’t offended by. There was also a piece in the New York Times in 2011 defending the piece, albeit poorly. Supposedly, this dance was intended as a tribute to Bill “Bojangles” Robinson, as Astaire was an admirer of his, especially as he often went uncredited in his films, because he was black.

But it’s difficult to see how this performance could be considered a tribute. The Times article says Astaire’s lips and eyes aren’t enhanced with makeup as in traditional blackface. But if you watch it, his eyes and teeth are blindingly white, and they visually pop out of his face contrasted with the dark shoe polish he’s wearing on his skin. And how could you not notice his teeth with that ridiculously goofy grin he’s sporting the entire time. And Astaire’s performance comes across as a caricature. Look at this clip from a Bojangles film for comparison:

Watching both of those clips, Astaire’s performance appears to be greatly exaggerated. He wildly flails his torso, arms and head as he dances, whereas Bojangles’ performance is much more relaxed, only moving his legs as the rest of his body remains still.

Regardless of what Astaire may have intended, this is a pretty blatant example of the minstrel show’s impact on society at the time. Even the Astaire-Rogers films couldn’t avoid a reference. And by reference, I mean nearly five minutes of exaggerated blackface tap dancing with some gross caricatures thrown in for good measure. Sounds like a marvelous thing to take a date to see.

When Penny finally discovers that Lucky’s been juggling two women, a la Scott Pilgrim, she decides she’ll have to marry Romero, the competition. It’s a very quick turnaround. Lucky heads back to see his other woman, dejected. But he finds out she’s planning to marry someone else anyway. Swell! Now Lucky can marry the woman of his week-long dreams.

But, oh no, the wedding date is already set for today! Told you it was a quick turnaround. Looks like Lucky’s in a pickle because he still loves Penny. But he and Pop come up with a scheme to sabotage the wedding. And you guessed it, it’s the old pants cuffs routine. When Romero shows up to his own wedding late because the guys took his pants, Penny decides that she can’t marry a guy who doesn’t have pants. So, that’s it, wedding’s off. Romero says oh well, and conducts his own band, still pantsless, as the Lucky Penny dances off into the sunset together.

Aside from the horribly racist dance scene, there’s nothing too bad about the film, really. It really is your typical romantic comedy with some enjoyable music and dancing, the likes of which aren’t really seen in movies anymore. But I’ve seen some horrid romantic comedies, and this one is not so bad. It’s likable even. So, if you’re a certain type of person who loves watching those certain types of people fall in that certain type of love, this could certainly be your type of film.

But fellow swing enthusiasts, be warned, though there might be plenty of swinging in this movie, there aren’t any actual swings.

If you need good ideas for a first date, you could try swing time. Who could turn that down? Or you could try “Swing Time.” But I think we all know the first option is the better one.

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Next up, #89. “The Sixth Sense”

100 Movies … 100 Posts: #91. Sophie’s Choice (1982)

Posted on February 6, 2014 by babemoby

This is post #10 in my series, 100 Movies … 100 Posts. In this ongoing series, I’m watching and writing about each film on the American Film Institute’s list of 100 greatest movies from #100 to #1. I’m not just writing a review of each movie. I am going to write a piece about whatever I find most pressing, as a critique of the film, an address of the issues it brings up, or my own experiences with the film. It will serve as an examination of the list itself and of political issues in Hollywood and the film industry.

Without further ado, #91 “Sophie’s Choice”

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The first thing I thought just five minutes into this film was “this is such a hipster movie.” In the opening monologue, a Southern man whose nickname is “Stingo” deems himself, “unacquainted with love and a stranger to death.” He says he’s headed to New York, “the Sodom of the North.” He begins his “voyage of discovery in a place as strange as Brooklyn.” Damn, what a hipster.

As he moves into his apartment, the audience sees him carrying in several crates full of SPAM. Hipster. He notices the light fixture above him shaking, and thumping coming from the apartment above his. He hears a creaky mattress and the vocal sounds of the love-makins. That perfectly nails apartment life, but still, hipster.

A short time later, he witnesses the couple fighting on the stairwell. The man is berating this woman who responds with a Polish accent. The man tells her he should send her back to Poland. Then he notices Stingo watching them and comes over to talk to him. His name is Nathan, and learning that Stingo is from the South, insinuates that Stingo’s favorite sport must be lynching. So, Nathan is slamming Stingo assuming he’s a racist, based solely on where the man is from, as if that makes Nathan superior, immediately after berating his girlfriend out in the open. Sounds like a lot of the liberal fauxgressives you run into on the Internet. And also, hipster.

Seriously, what hipsters these two are.

Thus begins the whimsical tragedy that is “Sophie’s Choice.” Sophie being the Polish woman who had been yelled at on the stairs, played by the incomparable Meryl Streep. The year is 1947, and Sophie is a survivor of the Auschwitz concentration camp during World War II. She somehow believes that Nathan (Kevin Kline) is her miracle, who is saving her from the horrors she had to experience back home. Andrew MacNicol’s Stingo is a young writer who is trying to understand the world and his place in it, while he lives in a New York apartment without a job, and he’s writing a sort-of autobiographical work about a 12-year-old boy who lost his mother (it’s about him). In other words, hipster.

Such whimsical times.

So, the film is mostly about these three people and how they become the greatest of friends, doing whimsical things like going to the fair and drinking wine and discussing the peculiarities of the English language. As Stingo eventually gets to spend some time alone with Sophie while Nathan is out doing God knows what, they start to talk about their pasts. Stingo learns all about concentration camps and what it means to love and lose in a whole new way that he never knew before. Poor Sophie, with her identification number tattooed on one of her arms and her suicide attempt by wrist-cutting tattooed on the other, tells her terrifying stories a bit at a time about her life in Poland as the Nazis took over and sent her people to concentration camps, if they didn’t just kill them outright. Stingo learns, as the audience does that Sophie’s entire family was killed. Her father and her husband were supposedly being transported to a prison camp, but she learned later that the Nazis just shot them instead the next day. Her daughter was taken away from her and sent to the crematories. Her son was sent to the children’s camp, but she never learned about his fate. It’s really damn sad and depressing.

Meryl Streep gives a heart-rending performance as Sophie.

Streep is a golden goddess here. This is one of the great performances in all of cinematic history. It might be the best performance I’ve personally seen by anyone, man or woman. She’s able to take this delicate woman who is basically a husk after all she’d been through and instill in her such a vibrant, endearing, playful personality. But you can tell she’s masking her true emotions, hiding them from the guys and even from herself, because they’re just far too painful to live with all the time. On top of that, she has to spend much of the film speaking Polish and German, which would be no easy task to learn. Most films today don’t bother with that and just let everyone speak English all the time with bad foreign accents. But Streep takes her character through such a wide range of emotions, especially as she works through Sophie’s flashbacks of the concentration camps. She’s terrified and frail, but still mentally sharp. It’s a wonder to behold watching Streep bring this character to life.

Meanwhile, the audience has to endure Kline’s performance as Nathan, as he grows more and more possessive of Sophie. I say endure, not because of any fault of the actor. On the contrary, Kline is so fun and lively, and alternatively so mean and nasty, he’s also quite impressive in his role. But the character of Nathan is difficult to watch because he’s the type of guy you’d want to be friends with most of the time. But sometimes, he becomes madly jealous of Sophie for no reason at all, and he becomes so frightening, you fear that he’s going to erupt into violence. The viewer can see why Sophie was attracted to him in the first place, but can’t understand why she remains so devoted to him with all he puts her through. But that’s the way abusive relationships work.

And that’s … Stingo.

And Stingo is basically the blank canvass that the audience follows who doesn’t really know anything about anything but prompts Sophie to talk about her past and provides a third wheel for the love triangle between the three main characters. I suppose it’s a matter of preference, but I didn’t find Stingo particularly likable. He just reminded me of too many people who are so passively self-absorbed that they come off as friendly and supportive but eventually reveal, either on purpose or by accident, that they have ulterior motives. In Stingo’s case, it seems like he just wants to get laid and have someone else provide some direction for his life. There’s an ugly episode in the middle of the film, where he’s introduced to a woman who has read some stuff about sexuality that’s turned her into a self-described “sex-maniac” and a “nympho.” Stingo is practically salivating over this woman. But when he finally gets her alone, it turns out she had read so much about fucking, but she was too afraid to actually fuck. That leaves Stingo mildly disappointed or something. It felt dirty watching this. Just, yuck.

And it seems like they were going for a Freudian thing between Stingo and Sophie. Stingo’s 22 and Streep was 36 when this film came out and Sophie seems to be around the same age. There’s nothing wrong with being attracted to someone who is older, but the film seems to hint that Stingo sees her as sort of a motherly figure because he lost his own mother at such a young age and hasn’t met a woman who has returned his affections. Though Sophie does have a beautiful personality, Stingo seems to have such a burning interest in the hardships she experienced in Germany that it feels like that’s part of what attracts him to her, which is kind of creepy and exploitative.

It turns out Nathan is schizophrenic, and that’s why he’s such an ass sometimes. Apparently, he lied about having a good job with a pharmaceutical company, when in actuality, he’s just a janitor there. It’s why he likes to dress as if he’s from the 1800s (not just because he’s a hipster). The mentally disturbed man is such a played out trope. That’s all we ever see of mentally disabled people on film, and his illness serves simply as a plot point meant to lead the movie toward its tragic ending.

There’s also something about him being Jewish and Sophie’s father having been a professor in Poland who advocated the Final Solution for Polish Jews. So that’s a point of conflict, to say the least.

When Nathan threatens Sophie with violence, she and Stingo flee. As they sit in a hotel room together, Stingo gets up the balls to basically ask her to run away to the South with him and marry him and have his children, which seems like a very insensitive and inconvenient time to do so, especially as they hadn’t been romantically involved at all up this this point and she’d just left her abusive ex, like a few hours ago, “Talladega Nights” style. Then they make love, and Stingo proclaims in his voiceover that he’d found his golden goddess. She leaves and heads back to Nathan the next morning before he awakes.

As you might guess, that was a poor decision on her part.

In the end, Stingo has learned his life lessons, and it helps him become a better writer or understander of life or something.

I know that hipsters as we know them today didn’t exist in 1982 (or in 1979 when the book was written), but it feels like this movie may have been a key influence in modern hipster culture. Or maybe it wasn’t, but it sure felt like it could have used some Mumford & Sons at some point. That’s not necessarily a bad thing, but it’s not really my thing. Not all the time anyway.

The film does paint a horrifying but probably accurate picture of how a Polish woman might have been treated by the Nazis. They all wanted to get her bed and when she refused their advances, they did things to her that would destroy her. Even when she was emaciated and pale and her head shaved, they still lusted after her, because she appeared to be of the Aryan persuasion. It probably does a good job of showing how difficult life would have been for a young Holocaust survivor.

But despite the fascinating character of Sophie, “Sophie’s Choice” is a pretty exploitative melodrama. Even though she’s is an interesting character, using the Holocaust as the background for a character who basically serves to give meaning to Stingo’s whimsical life feels wrong. Despite that, it’s hard to not recommend the movie, if solely to witness Streep’s incredible turn as Sophie. I can’t praise it enough to do it justice. She literally is the movie. But, on the other hand, perhaps she wouldn’t have been so amazing without the rest of the movie around her. I’m not totally convinced of that, but it’s a possibility. I personally came away from the film thinking about all of its problems.

But maybe that’s simply because I’m not enough of a hipster.

This is what you get when you Google “hipster.” That appears to be Sophie and Nathan on the left.

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Next Up, #90. “Swing Time”