My top films of the 1980s
May 26 '02
The Bottom Line In a decade filled with generic Hollywood product, there were also films that mattered, if only people knew where to find them.
I grew up in the 80s, though I hadn't heard of the lion's share of the films listed below until much later. It's funny, really... movies like Crocodile Dundee and The Breakfast Club fade into the background while these only grow in stature. Really, isn't that enduring quality what distinguishes the truly great films?
First, ten runners-up (in alphabetical order):
Being There- Peter Sellers anchors Hal Ashby's bone-dry satire of television and politics. Slowly builds to the most striking final shot of the decade.
Blade Runner- Classical detective noir meets the 21st century in the most visually influential of its time.
Blue Velvet- Another of Lynch's indelible fever-dreams, this one set in an idyllic small town with a twisted underbelly. Dennis Hopper is truly frightening.
Brazil- It's a mess, sure, but a blessed one, and visionary as well. There are few more disturbing and funny visions of the future.
Fanny and Alexander- Ingmar Bergman's swan song, about a brother and sister coming to grips with their father's death. Like a summation of his great career, with unexpected reserves of tenderness.
Out of the Blue- Director Dennis Hopper's cult favorite about a teenage outcast learning to survive in spite of her highly dysfunctional family. That the great Linda Manz has worked so infrequently since this film is a profound loss to cinema.
The Stunt Man- Richard Rush spent the better part of a decade making this carnival-ride/mindscrew of a film. Peter O'Toole is perfect as the hyper-controlling director who plays with the life of stuntman Steve Railsback.
The Unbearable Lightness of Being- The book was unfilmable, they said, and so what Philip Kaufman did was to lay bare the adaptation process, making the film less about being faithful to the text as making a film about his reading of the novel. That it also works on its own is a miracle.
Vagabond- Director Agnes Varda crafted a documentary-style portrait of an essentially unknowable drifter (played by Sandrine Bonnaire), and in the process, she made a poetic comment on the isolation that is so commonplace in the world today.
Withnail and I- Another cult hit here, about two British roommates in the late 60s, and their misadventures with drugs, the countryside, and one roommate's gay uncle. Richard E. Grant creates one of the great movie characters as roommate-from-hell Withnail.
And now, my top 10:
10. Stranger Than Paradise
Jim Jarmusch was one of the great discoveries of the 80s, emerging with this deadpan black-and-white comedy. A girl arrives from Hungary, connects with her deadbeat cousin and his friend, and the three of them end up driving to Florida. What distinguishes the film is the presentation, wherein Jarmusch observes his characters in a way that illustrates perfectly the idea that "from the sublime to ridiculous is but a step."
9. My Dinner With André
Many of the greatest films out there are visual masterpieces, but Louis Malle's film is one of a few great movies just to listen to. It seems so simple, two guys at a table, meeting for the first time in years, but what makes it work is how we become so caught up in their conversation that the words play inside our heads, allowing us to imagine the situations they're describing- from the simple pleasures of a cup of coffee in the morning to a cult of people who are buried alive.
8. L'Argent
Robert Bresson made a career out of rigorous examinations of sin and guilt in society, and in this, his last film, he explored the way society is tied together by tenuous bonds of trust and law. A forged bill finds its way into the hands of a lower-class truck driver, and he is sent to prison only to emerge years later, scarred and violent. The film, in the end, isn't a simple parable about how the rich and guilty go free while the poor take the fall, but about how we're all implicated in the suffering of others.
7. Wings of Desire
Here's another great film about listening, albeit one also married to a wonderful visual style. Two angels wander around a decaying Berlin on the verge of reunification, observing humans and listening to their thoughts. Finally, one is so moved by people that he decides to "fall" and become human himself. Director Wim Wenders' masterpiece is a lovely testament not only to listening and observing but also to the joys of real human contact and interaction.
6. Do the Right Thing
Perhaps the great document of American life in the 1980s, Spike Lee's film shows the various entanglements in a Brooklyn neighborhood. During the course of one hot summer day, tensions mount, and small disagreements and age-old conflicts escalate into a startling climax. Though many have seen it as a film that breeds racial unrest, Lee's vision isn't that easy to dismiss, and in the end the film is less a call to violence and revolt than to a plea for love and sympathy- with violence as the last resort if love doesn't happen.
5. Superstar: The Karen Carpenter Story
It's a 45-minute short starring Barbie dolls which has been kept out of release because of music rights issues. In spite of this odd pedigree, Todd Haynes' debut film (the decade's best debut) is a strangely poignant examination of a tragic figure and the eating disorder that took her life. While the film occasionally wanders into the arena of kitsch, it's also highly informative on the issue of bulimia, and in the end allows Karen's story to speak for itself. If you ever get the chance to see this, by all means do so.
4. Come and See
Russian director Elem Klimov's dramatization of the Nazi invasion of Byelorussia is perhaps the best and most brutal war film I've ever seen. A teenage boy leaves his home and joins the local militia only to be confronted with terrors beyond his wildest imagination. The story builds to the extended siege of a town and the barricading and burning of its residents inside a church. What makes the film work is its immediacy, its ability to locate beauty and horror in war, and finally its subordination of any potential message to the realities of war itself.
3. The Sacrifice
Andrei Tarkovsky's last film is slow and difficult (par for the course for him), but also rewarding for those with the patience for it. When a professor on an isolated island hears on the radio that World War III has begun, he despairs and scrambles for a way to save those closest to him. Eventually, he discovers a way to stop the war, though at great personal expense. Tarkovsky's film is like a prayer for the world in a time of potential war and impending apocalypse, one that is no less powerful today.
2. Once Upon a Time in America
Another final film, this one directed by Sergio Leone, circle back and forth through the life of a small-time New York City hood (Robert DeNiro). We see his childhood, his early days as a criminal, the good years, his long spiral into oblivion, and the source of his overriding guilt. The film is big and ambitious as few films are today, and director Leone had a peerless knack for iconic stories and images. This film must- MUST, I say- be seen in its long form, for the truncated version loses all its poetry and its power.
1. Decalogue
Ten Commandments, ten one-hour films. Over the course of ten hours, Krystzof Kieslowski transformed the Ten Commandments from etched-in-stone "thou shalt not" tenets of Western civilization into everyday moral struggles situated in the real world. This masterpiece (originally made for Polish TV) is not a religious film, but it knows that even as religion becomes less significant in modern society, the guilt it has fostered in all of us still has a strong hand in our decisions. It's not enough to call this the best film of the 1980s- it's one of the greatest films ever made.
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hkoreeda
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Member: Paul Clark
Location: Ohio
Reviews written: 35
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About Me:
What's the polite term for "unemployed wannabe critic"?
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