#21: The Grapes of Wrath

Okay, so I'm living in Monterey County, CA, home of world famous Nobel Prize winning author John Steinbeck, and I'm realizing that I have no concept of what he wrote, or why. (My literary ignorance is a little embarrassing - I skipped AP English in high school because I was going to major in Computer Science in college, and, yes, I was quite lazy my senior year.) So, I figure that this is a perfect opportunity to familiarize myself with a renowned author's work, as well as take another movie off my AFI list.

Going into the movie, I had a very vague notion of what to expect, plot wise. There's dust, depression, hardship, and some farmers. Other than that (and the 7 Oscar nominations and 2 wins from the DVD case) I really didn't know what the next two hours would hold. I was eager to educate myself, (yes, reading the book is something I plan to do) and come away with some appreciation of Steinbeck's work.

So, after the movie I can honestly say that it was not what I had expected.  I don't think that I had a clear mental picture I had in my head for the film, but for whatever reason, I think that I had pictured it taking place in the 1800's - even though I knew that it was a depression era story.  That is to say that it was much more modern than I had expected.  The movie itself was very well done and holds up well over time.  A lot of movies from the 40's and 50's end up coming across as very corny: corny acting with very dated dialogue. The Grapes of Wrath, however avoided that, for the most part.

The story was very good - the hardships of the Joad family as they are forced, by a combination of bad weather and farming modernization, to leave their Oklahoma sharecropped farm in search of work and a better life in California. As I learned a bit later, Oklahoma had the highest rate of tenant farmers and, when the system began to fall apart, there was a large scale migration of people to California looking for work. The movie follows the family as they travel, detailing the hardships on the road as well as the ones they face in California. Desperate for work, they fall victim to a farmer's strikebreaking scheme, as well as face distrust and incivility in the many migrant camps which they stay in during their travels.

The movie had many poignant scenes, most revolving around human dignity, or the loss thereof. The diner where Pa buys bread; the treatment and lack of information at the strike; the shot woman at the transient camp; when they reach the government camp in California and are treated fairly.

I found it to be a very thought provoking movie. While it was a story, in every sense of the word, I also saw it as a historical piece, a quasi-documentary made by people who had lived through and could remember the Great Depression. I don't know that a film made in modern times would be able to capture some of the same feelings that a film made so close to the source time period could.  It brought to mind the unity that America experienced after 9/11.  It's a shame that it takes disasters like these to bring the country together as one.

#15: Star Wars

This is a tough movie to write about, since, to me, it is the movie, so I'm going to take a slightly different angle for Star Wars. The world certainly doesn't need another rehash or review of Star Wars, as it has become so ingrained in our culture that you'd be hard pressed to find someone who didn't at least have a passing knowledge of Luke Skywalker, Darth Vader, and their adventures among the stars. In addition to that, a quick trip into any Wal-Mart can attest to the legacy of commercialization that Star Wars has given us. I don't feel the need to analyze those things, so instead I'm going to write about what Star Wars means to me, and my personal memories surrounding the movie.

To begin, I honestly cannot remember a time in my life without Star Wars. My earliest memory as a child was seeing The Empire Strikes Back at the King of Prussia mall near Philadelphia. I have a vivid visual memory of two things: the moment the wampa bursts onto the screen, and how the theater looked from the parking lot. These memories illustrate that Star Wars has always been a part of my life. Probably more than anything else, it shaped my early life and stimulated the growth of my imagination. Because of the merchandising throughout the 80s, it's difficult to separate the actual movie from the toys that were a ubiquitous part of my childhood. For that reason, I'm just going to focus on the latest incarnation of the film.

I remember when the original Star Wars was re-released in theaters as part of the "special editions" of the trilogy. It was the spring of 1997, and I was still a plebe (freshman) at West Point. We were not yet allowed to have stereos or listen to music (though we'd all discovered the new phenomenon of "mp3s"). I was in my room on this particular day, when I suddenly heard the wonderful sound of the Star Wars theme. I quickly left my room and discovered that the Yuks (sophomores) across the hall had purchased the soundtrack! They felt pity on me and left their door ajar so that I could sit on the floor and listen to the music. I've seen Star Wars so many times that I was able to close my eyes and watch the movie in my head while listening to the soundtrack. It was a moment of perfect solace in an otherwise hectic and stressful time.

I knew, at that point, that I had to see the new release, at any cost. Fortunately, while restricted, we were not completely forbidden from traveling our first year. I happened to have at least one weekend pass that semester, so I used it to visit my parents. The first day that I was home, I immediately saw the Special Edition. It was an amazing experience, and one that I wanted to repeat. The following day I drove to the mall and saw it again. It was – again – an amazing experience. After the movie, I got into my car to head home, but never made it out of the parking lot. I didn't want the emotional high to end, so I looped around the parking lot, re-parked the car, and went back into the mall to see the movie a second time. I can honestly say that that day, away from the rigors and pressures of my first year at West Point, was a magical day that will always hold a special place in my memory. For one amazing afternoon I could forget about the stresses of life and be a part of a grand adventure, far, far away.

The final time that I saw the Special Edition on the big screen was back at West Point, at our cadet AAFES theater. It was a packed house, since most of the two underclasses had not seen it. I had gone with a group of friends from my company, and I was the only one who'd previously seen it. I was excited, one to see it again, but also to see how other people would react to it. I was, once more, blown away by seeing my absolute favorite movie in the theater again, but thoroughly disappointed by what went on around me. The people I'd gone with, while nominally Star Wars fans, were bored and actually didn't like the movie. I was shocked, to say the least. I knew that they wouldn't have the minute familiarity with the movie that I did to pick out each and every new digital detail. (Heck, I even noticed things as insignificant as the view out of the door of Luke's garage when he was cleaning R2-D2 and C-3PO!) I wasn't ready for their general apathy at seeing Star Wars in the theater.

In retrospect, some of the sour feelings may have come from the general exhaustion that all plebes live with at West Point. Some of these same friends would, two years later, be watching a 9+ hour marathon of the original trilogy with me, in order to get ready for the release of Episode I...which I saw on opening night...in costume... But that's a story for another time, on another blog.

#100: Yankee Doodle Dandy

Okay, for my first movie to get this thing rolling, we'll start at the bottom, with #100, Yankee Doodle Dandy. Now, I have not seen some of these movies in over six years, and I'm using my foggy memory and the spotty notes I wrote just after viewing them, so take the first few of these that I write with a grain of salt.

Yankee Doodle Dandy is a musical detailing the life of actor/composer George M. Cohan, whom I'd never heard of prior to watching. I'm no musical history scholar, and I found him a rather despicable fellow, very arrogant and full of himself. During the movie I was actually rooting against him, hoping that he would fail. The movie probably meant more to audiences of the time, who would have been familiar with Cohan and his work.

Educationally, I learned that he wrote Over There and Yankee Doodle Dandy (natch), and these two songs, which have endured over the years, apparently were at the heart of the major criticisms during his life – he only could write lowbrow, patriotic, flag-waving material for the masses.

The scene that most struck me at the time of viewing was when Cohan, fed up with his critics, set out to write an intelligent drama to silence them. The night of the premiere, however, he opted to be down the street starring in one of his trademark patriotic shows, rather than at his 'serious' piece. The drama was so terrible that the reviewers left during the second act. Cohan closed it two weeks later.

Looking back, six years removed from my original viewing, I had not remembered that particular scene (good thing I've saved nearly every .doc file I've ever typed!), but two things that do stick out in my mind are:
1) the vaudeville scenes from Cohan's youth. To a modern audience they seem odd, and I watched them with a historical fascination of a bygone entertainment medium. I can imagine viewers of Yankee Doodle Dandy, familiar with both Cohan and vaudeville seeing this as a wistful remembrance of days long past, watching it as they are in the relatively 'new' medium of motion pictures. Kind of how I feel about computers whenever I watch WarGames...
2) STIX NIX HIX PIX - don't ask me why I remember this, but after this movie I understood the Animaniacs song Variety Speak.

I can say that this is a movie that I probably would not watch again, and I am a big fan of musicals. It's most likely because I was unfamiliar with Cohan and his work, so that didn't draw me in. Also, as a movie character, Cohan was unlovable and unenjoyable to watch. In my humble estimation, he was the Lee Greenwood of his day. Sure, we all know Proud To Be An American, but could you have identified it as a Lee Greenwood hit?

Opening of the blog

I hit upon a stroke of genius today. Okay, maybe it's not so original, but it finally hit me. While struggling to figure out if I liked this 'new' (new to me, as I finally decided to test the waters) idea of blogging, I realized that the blogging format fits perfectly with a project that I've wanted to do for a few years. That is: watch all 100 of the American Film Institutes's Greatest American Movies, and record my thoughts on them. I had begun this project in 2002, when I was living in Texas. At the time my roommate and I thought it a stellar idea, while our friends thought we were nuts (though they did grill us each Monday about our weekend's viewings). The project was put on hiatus while we deployed to Iraq during OIF I, and it never got back on track (I left Texas and subsequently got married and moved to Korea). Thankfully, I have a wife who's just as crazy as I am and was totally willing to dive into this with me. So, sometime in 2006, we resurrected the project and began watching movies again. Not as regularly as I had in Texas, but at least we were making progress.

This brings us to present day and me testing out blogging. My past passion and desire to watch the movies, then discuss them with friends finds a perfect outlet in blog form. I hope you enjoy reading my thoughts on the films from the AFI 100 Greatest Movies* list.

(*For the purposes of this project I'm sticking with the original list published in 1996, since that's what I began the project on. Once that's done I'll think about the 2006 updated list.)