CinemaRian Blog

Under discussion:

Tron  (1982)

I didn't actuly expect Tron to be a good movie, but I did think that it could be a fun movie in a cheesy 80's sense. Unfortanley, the movie is cheesy, it's not cheesy enough to be funny, and the film takes itself way too seriously to be much fun.  Sure, it looks cool, but the complete banalality plot, dialouge and characters make the movie completley uninteresting after the novelty wears off.

The film was the second of the Disney studio's attempt to cash in on the late 70's/early 80's sci-fi craze (The Black Hole was the first).  I also have a sneaking suspicion that they were also trying to come up with a new Disney World attraction and decided to test the waters with a movie.  In fact, while watchign the film, I thought it might have worked better as an IMAX film or some kind of big formulist art movie instead of its standard action plot.

If you havn't seen the movie, pause for a second and think of what the plot is.  You're right!  An evil business tycoon (David Warner) has stolen the video games written by Kevin (Jeff Bridges) and made millions off of them.  While investigating, Kevin ends up being trapped inside tycoon's big computer where is captured by what are apparently security protocol files and forced to play track and field events, such as frisbee and lacross.  He escapes and-you know what happens.

Although character development isn't supposed to be the point in a movie like this, it's so non-existant in Tron that it's almost like a Bresson film, without the ideas of course.  There are some heavy handed religious metaphors- (the prorgrammers are suppost to be God) that are also pointless.  The whole film is so cold and detached that it's rather dull. 

What really works about the film are the formal elements- the movie does indeed look cool.  Everything set inside the computer except the actors and the frisbees (I mean "memory disks") is early CGI, with a very intersting color scheme.  The sound design and the synthizer score by Wendy Carlos are also very strong. I think that this might have been really cool cineamtic experince if there was no story, maybe just no dialouge- an early 80's meditation on technology and humanity, a la Laurie Anderson.  The near tragedity of this film is that Steven Lisbereger created images that had never seen before by human eyes and wasted them on a standard action plot and says absolutley nothing with it.  Unfortanley, Lisberger was to talented to have completey failed and have made what we really, really wanted to see- a cheesy 80's movie with lots of bad laughs either. 

Tron (1982)

Under discussion:

Klute  (1971)

For a long time, I thought that Klute was going to be one of the greatest thrillers that I had ever seen.  By the end, I was bored and wanted the movie to be over.  This could have been a masterpeice with some judicious editing.

The movie is brillantly concieved, with the most psychologically three-deminsional characters you'll find in a movie of its type.  There are two protagonists: John Klute (Donald Sutherland) a conservative PI who is hired to find his friend Tom (Robert Milli), who has vanished mysteriously, and Bree Daniels (Jane Fonda) a world weary prostitute who holds the only clues.  Bree is an aspiring actress and sort of enjoys being a prostitute, because it allows her much needed control.  The movie works for a long time because Pakula (who directed the masterpiece Sophie's Choice and the excellent The Pelican Brief) creates a detached, cerebral tone, which is probably similer to how Klute looks at the world.   Pakula also establishes an interesting dynamic and relationship betwen Klute and Bree -Klute always says exactly what he means and just solve the case, Bree is always acting and trying to be clever. 

Spoilers ahead!  The movie began to lost me when a compleatly predictable thing happens- Klute and Bree sleep together, and then Bree actually begins to fall for Klute, and vice-versa.  Although I belevied that this is something the characters might do, I think a more interesting dramatic idea would have been for Klute to resist Bree's charms and for Bree to fall for him due to his morality and stabilty.  I didn't really beleive the end, where the couple go off together- I can see why Bree is attracted to Klute, but what does Klute have for Bree, beyond the physical?  Furthermore, the love story is actually rather boring and kills of a lot interest and suspense Paukla has been carefully building up.  There is nothing in these scenes you havn't seen in a million times in other movies.

Also, I should note that Jane Fonda is excellent as Bree (she won an Oscar).  Since Bree is always acting, we could be confused as to her actual motives by a lesser actress, but Fonda subtley shows us when she is really saying what she means, or when she is lying, even to herself.  Although he has an easier role, Donald Sutherland is very good as well, giving an appropriatley bare-bones performance. 

I am giving the movie a mild reccomendation, mainly for the first forty five minuets and a few intersting scenes after that.  But this was a major blown oppurtinity-somebody needed to tell Pakula to throw out what didn't work and keep was great, which was amazing.  What's left is an amalgamation of the mediorcre and the brillant, a movie that is banal at one moment and facinating the next.  Oh, if someone had only taken out those unecessary thirty minuets.

Klute (1971)

Under discussion:

A Passage to India  (1984)

Although it wasn't intended as his last film, A Passage to India allows David Lean to go out with a bang.  This the sort of big film that should really a summer block buster- an intelligent, beautiful and perfectally acted epic.

Based on the novel by E.M. Forester (which is often considered to be one of the greatest of the 20th century, and I am ashmed to save I have not read), this was one of the first movie I had seen in a long time where I genuinley did not know what was going to happen next.  There are not twists in the thriller sense, but like life, the movie often goes in a direction that we do not expect.  For that reason, I will not describe much of the plot, and I feel that the less you know going into the film, the better.

Set in India (duh) during the British rule of the 1920's, the movie is really an ensamble piece. The main plot revolves around the nominal protagonist, Dr. Ahmed Aziz (Victor Banerjee).  By a strange happenstance, Dr. Aziz befriends the elderly Mrs. Moore (Dame Peggy Ashcroft, who won an Oscar for her performance), as well as her future daughter-in-law Miss Quested (Judy Davis).  Their relationship plays out among the backdrop of political uphevil against the British rule in India, with a lot racisim against the native people from their occupiers.

All of the familer epic Lean elements are here.  An historical subject, great photography and art direction, a Maurice Jarre score, and lots of trains.  Unlike virtually most directors of epics, Lean was able to make his movie an intellectual experince as well as a visual one.  His super-spectacles cost millions upon millions, yet he never sold out to the lowest common demonator.  In fact, I would probably say that this is his smartest film (with maybe Great Expectations coming close).  The movie lacks the romanticism of Doctor Zhivago and the spirituality of Lawrence of Arabia, but in its place is his most firmly political arguments.  It's a pretty strong commendation of British imperalism, although it never resorts to presenting the argument as an after school special.

So see this movie. Like all Lean epics, the same rule of thumb applies- see it on as big a screen as a possible, with a good quality sound system, and take a passge into history.

A Passage to India (1984)