I Hate George Lucas

I Hate George Lucas

Every year Hollywood releases a couple hundred feature films; Most of them are bad. Very few of them show much artistic vision or talent. And of the select features that are worth $7.00 and two hours of your life, only one or two excel in the art of film making. It has become quite apparent that movie studios make film not for the betterment of this art, but for benefit of that company’s stock. Movies are shot and re-shot to appease the test audiences who are quickly becoming directors ex post facto.

So what makes a movie great? If film is an art, then what is its purpose? It is there to move you. It is there to stir your senses. It was created to convey a message. It is the manifestation of an artist’s vision. The films that best accomplish this are called great. Three of these such films are highest in my favor. They showcase film making at it’s best. These films move me emotionally, mentally, and visually. The three I speak of are: The Deer Hunter, Blue Velvet, and The Manchurian Candidate.

In The Deer Hunter we see a group of friends, like any other, who go through a most extreme Vietnam experience. Blue Velvet, a the dark underworld is revealed to small town America. The Manchurian Candidate shocks us with mind control and presidential assassination.

"One Shot"

All of these films share a few things in common, even though they are all from different decades. The most striking characteristic in The Deer Hunter is its use of building. The Deer Hunter spends nearly an hour around a wedding that has little to do with the plot. However, without it, the film would lack the character development that is key to the story. After the wedding and after the first hunt, the whole group of friends come back to Welsh’s Lounge for one last round. The bartender John, sits down to the piano and begins to play. The bar goes quiet and everyone kind of catches their breath. The sad music is an ominous end to that part of their lives.
The Deer Hunter begins with the classic story of three friend: Mike, Nike, and Linda. Mike and Nick are the best friends and Linda is Nick’s girlfriend. Of course Mike is secretly in love with Linda, but he must keep that love at arm’s length. His love for Nick is much stronger. After Mike returns from Vietnam without Nick, Linda’s love for Mike begins to show. And that is the strength of emotion that Mike needs to go back for Nick.

Blue Velvet also used a style of building. It starts from the moment credits appear in front of a slowly waving blue curtain with the always foreboding music of Angelo Badalamenti. This moves right into Bobby Vinton’s do-wop song of the movie’s title, and everyday scenes from Lumbertown, USA. A passing fire truck, kids crossing the street, and old man having a stroke on his front lawn. Though the movie jumps more or less into the discovery of a human ear in a field, I found out that the originally four-hour movie was cut down to two hours. This would account for the use of somewhat nervous dialogue at the movies beginning. From there the mystery builds to a near climax of horror in what the sadistic Frank Booth calls the "joyride".

The Manchurian Candidate chooses to build using some of the most mazing cinematography seen since Citizen Kane. Director John Frankenheimer uses a press conference to show what is really happening and what the many television cameras see, all in the same shot. The effect is to give us a scene of argumentative confusion from across a large room, using relatively small shots. Even before that scene, using a single 360 degree pan, the scene turns from a ladies club talking about Hydrangeas to a communist brainwashing exhibition.

"Now its dark."

The transformation of characters from good to bad, or bad to worse, is paramount within these films. Each film uses a trigger to manipulate the characters. In The Manchurian Candidate the trigger is a game of solitaire, in Blue Velvet it is the use of lights, in The Deer Hunter it is Russian roulette. Each time the triggers are employed a new charcter takes hold, or returns to normal.
The use of the red curtain is very pronounced in nearly all of David Lynch’s films. This is the director’s trigger. It is so powerful, that even in the black and white beauty of The Elephant Man, the curtain can trigger without the aid of color. Its employment in a film of only light and dark is even more apropos. In Blue Velvet scenes without curtains, Frank will say, "Now its dark." or, "Now its light." This however is his own trigger or evidence of its use.

Perhaps the most intense of triggers is the one used in The Deer Hunter. There the main characters are forced to play Russian roulette with each other at gunpoint. The scene is cramped and grainy, and as Mike begs Nick to pull the trigger of the gun on himself, Nick’s character trigger is also pulled. We see this again near the end of the movie when Mike goes back to the falling Saigon to save Nick from the underground Russian roulette tournaments. Mike returns Nick to the first trigger by setting up the scene again. Then he tries to bring Nick back reality with memories of home.

Mike: Remember the trees? Remember all the different ways of the trees? Remember that? The mountains, remember that?
Nick: One shot.
Mike: One shot.
Nick: Yeah.

"Oh God Ben."

I’m not one for happy endings. The storybook happy ending is the antitheses of good cinema. It takes a profound ending of introspection for a film to move me emotionally. When the hero saves the day, and gets the girl, and rides off into the sunset, I am only left with a lack of depth for the film.
The Deer Hunter is the one film that I am guaranteed to cry at the end of. As I watch it more and more, just the knowledge of these character’s conclusion is enough to bring a tear to my eye. The way in which director Michael Cimino gathers the characters all together at the end to sing "God Bless America", is the most profound moment I have ever experienced in a film. It is a moment of sorrow, love, and patriotism that ends a journey we all have followed through the story. It puts the whole three-hour movie into perspective, and assures us that this was not just another anti-war movie.
Blue Velvet takes a different approach by mocking the happy ending. It ends as it begins with the fire truck, children crossing the street, and now the first robin of the season. Now with the addition of Julie Cruise’s haunting "Mysteries of Love" playing in the background. But then fades into Isabella Rossellini’s rendition of "Blue Velvet" and the curtain reappears. This kind of introspection is seen in other films
like American Beauty, and The Road Warrior.

In The Manchurian Candidate Raymond Shaw takes control of his brainwashing, assassinates this mental captors, and with the realization of the previous acts, takes his own life. In the last scene Marco puts it into puts it into perspective by reading off the heroic acts of his contemporaries. Then with disgust, breaks down with the crime committed against poor friendless Raymond Shaw. For lack of more fitting words, he says, "Oh hell. Hell." The audience is right there with him.

"The End"

These were all great movies of their time. They were called shocking, disturbing, and great. They are still some of the finest examples of American film making today. But today with a record number of people frequenting the theaters, paying sky-high prices for tickets, movie companies are putting out blockbuster films to entertain the masses. Cookie-cutter scripts, plots, and characters take up more celluloid then ever before.
In the recent history we have seen the addition of roman numerals to films that wish only to prolong the end of a story. Remakes of classic movies is ridiculously prevalent. Is Hollywood taking it’s cues from Washington now? What’s next, Citizen Kane II?
Forget it Jack, it’s Chinatown.