Week 1

It’s past midnight and therefore technically Sunday. My bad. In my defense, I did watch both movies before the deadline. But today was Christmas-deocration-take-down-and-general-winter-clean-up day at our humble abode. And tonight we had a fun evening with friends, eating some delicious soup and looking at photo highlights from 2015.

In short, I don’t regret my marginal lateness, and I hope you don’t fault me for it, either.

Bringing Up Baby (1938) 
Like many of the films on this list, I had already seen this one—but more than a decade ago. It’s actually much funnier than I remember, despite a slow start with stiff acting and clunky writing. I feel like several movies from this era sort of feel more like stage productions, at least early on. Movements are exaggerated and dialogue is expositional. But once Hepburn shows up, the film hits its stride. Which is interesting, because I guess Hawks wasn’t pleased with her comedic acting when filming began (but with the help of an acting coach, she figured out an appropriate persona for her character—one more natural than the one she tried at first).

The coincidences and escalating misunderstandings are, of course, absurd. But they’re supposed to be. If you acquiesce to its screwball nature and just go along for the ride, you’ll decide Baby works. It actually sort of reminds me of a Shakespearean comedy that deftly walks the line between funny and tragic.

I’m impressed, too, by the animal training (or at least by the movie magic that created such memorable scenes without any humans getting mauled). It’s almost enough to make me want to get a pet leopard. Almost.

My only misgiving about the film—and I suspect this might be a misgiving about a few films on this list—is the gender politics. Hepburn’s character is the comic foil—I get it—but the degree to which she is depicted as selfish and foolish occasionally feels excessive. However, as off-putting as that might be for some, it’s not a movie-breaker. Because not every female character in the film is presented this way. And I think it has more to do with her character being a foil than her character being a woman. She’s the Laurel to Grant’s Hardy, the Costello to his Abbott.

In short, I enjoyed Bringing Up Baby. It won’t be my favorite comedy on this list, but it won’t be my least favorite, either. Grant and Hepburn are a good duo. The plot is silly fun. And the jaguar is impressive.

The Deer Hunter (1978)

This is one of the films on the list that I hadn’t seen yet—at least not in its entirety. It’s not what I was expecting, but that’s not necessarily a bad thing. First off, the pacing and structure are interesting (even odd?), I think, for a war film (or any film). The first hour covers just over a day—the last day, in fact, before three young men from a Western Pennsylvania town head off to war. There’s a wedding and a hunting trip. Then we’re abruptly thrust into Vietnam for the second hour, where the young men spend much of the time as POWs. In the final hour, we get the aftermath of the war, as its lingering physical and psychological effects take their toll on the three. 

Second, the film is immersive and natural. It’s got a lived-in feel. From the ample time we spend with the central characters in that first hour—just hanging out with them, listening to their banter, watching them hunt, observing their drunken shenanigans at the wedding—to the brief, uncomfortable interactions with grateful townsfolk we witness when they return, Cimino does a good job making us feel like we know these guys, like we know the town, like we’ve been there and lived it. For better and for worse.

And finally, the film is pretty quiet and contemplative—filled with long takes and beautiful photography (especially during the hunting scenes)—occasionally punctuated by moments of extreme and graphic violence.

The overall tone and pacing makes the film feel familiar, yet uncomfortable, like we know—or at least understand—this place, these people, this situation. But we’d rather not. It’s a bad dream we’ve had before but we can’t wake ourselves from.

The film is occasionally heavy-handed, like during the unapologetically political “God Bless America” sing-along in the final scene. And the Russian Roulette sequences, which figure prominently into the story, are intensely thrilling and metaphorically rich, but their length and frequency are brutal.

But that’s the point, right? In a film that is otherwise so familiar and comfortable, we need these nightmarish elements to taint even the “good” that we witnessed early on. Everything’s different. Unlike Bringing Up Baby, Deer Hunter relies very little on exposition to tell a story. Cimino, instead, shows us this story. And for three hours, we live it.

What are your thoughts on these films?