Nancy’s Top Ten Nancyiest Musical Numbers:

I should make some universally “greatest” lists sometime, but generally I like to just make the lists of my favorites, full of Nancy-isms and all that junk.  I guess if you want greatest, go to AFI.  But film is just a personal thing, you guys!  There are so many cultural, stylistic and personal reasons that a person is drawn to a film and they call it “great” when really it just appeals to all of their sensibilities.  Trying to extract that and find the certifiably “best” musical number is a lost cause.  But it is definitely at least interesting to see different people’s personalities and what draws them to certain musical numbers.  Right?  Right, you guys???

10) Audrey Hepburn in Funny Face 

 

Funny Face is a silly & cheesy but adorable forties musical, about how a fashion photographer (Fred Astaire) is training a low-key book-keep and philosophy nerd (Audrey Hepburn) to be a model, because they need someone who looks “brainy”.  Audrey’s character keeps running off and getting into intellectual mischief (which is frankly the best kind of mischief!) and Astaire chases her down in a smoky, red-lit French bar, where she refuses to be pretty and insists on dancing around in a (stupid) black jumpsuit.

It’s so beatnick-y and douchebag-tastic that if it was anyone else, I’d just be sitting there with my arms crossed saying “Oh, shut the fuck up.  LISTEN TO FRED ASTAIRE HE’S YOUR BOSS”.  But honestly, Audrey is just so cute and silly, and the musical is so fun and sharp, and the dancing so mesmerizing, it is a hard number to resist.  It certainly deserves a spot in the top ten slot if only because it showcases such a fun and unique energy that is distinctively its own, and it’s wonderful to see Audrey in this kind of silly role.  It’s both out-of-character for her, yet impossible to imagine anyone else doing it.

 

9)  No Strings In Top Hat 

The go-to scene in Top Hat is “Dancing Cheek To Cheek”, but that scene sums up the problems I always have with Fred and Ginger, which is too graceful, too lucid and lovely.  Granted, I do love it, but the energy that Fred Astaire can bring when he is not being overly gentlemanly is absurd.  I like his schoolboy, playful dances as opposed to his grandiose numbers.  I like an athletic tap, which is why I’ll never be a huge fan of Astaire over Gene Kelly.  What I love about “No Strings” is that it showcases someone dancing in a way that isn’t necessarily choreographed (although it probably was), but illustrated how much fun tap can be when you are just fucking around.  I also love “Isn’t It A Lovely Day To Be Caught In The Rain”, because that is essentially flirting through tap.  But the solitariness, the energy, the boyish fuckery and silly obnoxiousness of No Strings…reminds me of my life maybe?  This is basically what I am like in my room, minus the style, grace and bachelorhood.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HCoXVmNxSIM&feature=related

8) Tra La La from An American In Paris

Frankly, An American In Paris is not a great movie.  The story is weak, but the musical numbers are fantastic, so you can sit through a sort-of-not-great film in order to get to them or just youtube them.  If you are a Gene Kelly purist, sit through it, if only for the snarky Oscar Levant moments.  Oscar Levant plays the grumpy piano player who lives in the same building as Gene Kelly’s character.  Levant was a famed piano player, and apparently exactly like he was in this scene – grumpy, silly, misanthropic and serious about his piano playing.  He *nails* it, and Gene Kelly’s perfectly fluid tap accompanying it is absolutely fantastic to watch.  It’s silly and goofy, like all the best Kelly numbers, but also has such a lovely cadence, and a beautiful lovesickness to it that rivals the eagerness of “Singin’ In The Rain” before it devolves into brotherly silliness.  I seriously considered putting “I Like Myself” from It’s Always Fair Weather, the lovely number where Gene Kelly is astonishingly tap-dancing on roller skates.  However, I think Tra La La sums up more so what I love in a Kelly number – the goofiness, the athleticism and the lovesickness.

 

7) Anyone Here For Love from Gentlemen Prefer Blondes

This one is a bit of a newbie in my life, so maybe I have just got New Musical Jitters.  But the juxtaposition between Marilyn Monroe and Jane Russell in Gentlemen Prefer Blondes  is so literally black-and-white, it’s one of the more endearing dynamics I’ve seen.  Gentlemen is famed as a quintessential “Marilyn” movie, which overshadows how much Jane Russell kicks ass as her brainy, tough, sassy brunette sidekick.  And while Marilyn croons about how pretty she is and how she wants diamonds while wearing a pink dress, Russell marches into a gym and practically screams “fuck me” at all of the muscular dudes getting stacked around her.  The choreography of all of the Adonises surrounding her with regimented exercise routines is sharp and practically perfect, and watching Russell wiggle around their Grecian bodies is so retro-forties sexy.  I would have loved to see Fred Astaire’s raised eyebrows at this number.

6) Step In Time from Mary Poppins

A problem I often have with large-scale musical numbers is that the unique personality, the spunk and essence of individuality, to each dancer is lost in “a number”.  This number avoids that because each dancer is being, quintessentially, a replica of Dick Van Dyke’s chimney sweep.  It’s like watching a million Agent Smiths do a dance routine.  This dance is so full of that happy, bad-Cockney essence of his character.  Which is awesome, because that way you get the splendor of a giant dance routine – all of the bodies moving in symmetry and contrast – without detracting from the strength of the character.  Also, I grew up on this one.  So suck it, objectivity. 

5.  Nicolas Brothers in Stormy Weather 

So, it’s hard to write a blurb for this one, because normally I make myself sit and watch it, and then write my reactions, but every time I watch this video I get up and tap dance.  Fred Astaire called this the greatest tap number ever filmed, and he’s totally right.  It’s energetic, wild, and choreographed in a way that feels natural and fun.  The smiles of Fayard and Harold make it all seem casual, which is absurd because they are literally defying gravity left and right.  It is impossible to think of anyone else doing what they do, like when they hit the ground in the splits, and then bounce back up without using their hands.  That’s a joke.  That’s an alien dance routine.  That’s not something that human beings can do.  Add that magic to the fact that they seem to be having so much fucking fun, and the fact that they make the whole procedure look so goddamn effortless, and yeah, I mean, you pretty much have the greatest tap number of all time. 

4) You'll Be A Dentist from Little Shop Of Horrors

God fucking damn, I love Steve Martin.   Little Shop Of Horrors is fantastic and fun movie, but the addition of Steve Martin’s character is what really drives this into overdrive.  This song is so catchy, so sadistic and so funny, and watching Steve, knowing how brilliant he is, dance all over the place and stick whirling drills into people’s mouths.  It’s subversive, hilarious, strange and catchy.  It’s the Steve Martin equivalent of Sweet Transvestite and there’s nothing I like better.

 3) Portobello Road from Bedknobs and Broomsticks

Another bad-cockney ensemble number that gets my heart strings all a-fluttering.  Bedknobs and Broomsticks is an amazing movie from the early Seventies, set in London, regarding the trials and tribulations of becoming an official witch.  It has all the fun and energy of Mary Poppins, but with a wonderful spookiness coming from it's subject matter.  It's a great Halloween movie for kids, and a great all-of-the-time movie for Nancys (and Nancy-like entities).  Portobello Road is hands-down the best number - it starts gritty and somberly, and escalates into one of the most fun, energetic, versatile and colorful dance numbers I've ever seen.  And it's subject matter!  A single street devoted to small shop, knickknacks, talismans and different dance routines?  Which contains a secret spellbook that Angela Lansbury needs to continue her witching training?  How much more Nancy can you get?

2)  Mein Herr from Cabaret

Oh.  This is how much more Nancy you can get.  Sally Bowles is my girl.  I think she speaks to every loud and bombastic lady, who drinks too much and flirts too much, who is too flippant in her actions and frivolous about the things she attributes worth to, who is silly and callous, but is fun and caring and oddly sincere, who can be self-absorbed and manipulative at times but will cave and expose herself as the needy person she is moments later (not that I'm any of those things, I'm just a fan of bowls).  Mein Herr is ominous, very german, and very gritty-sexy.  The low-key acrobatics on the chairs are fantastic.  The dull and defeated look in the dancers eyes is such a unique and honest expression to find in a dance routine.  And most importantly, Liza nails it.  This is possibly the Nancyiest musical number on the list, trumped only by 1) for reasons that will soon become obvious.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=chdpiSX2ino&feature=related

1) Moses Supposes from Singin' In The Rain

There is no better musical number.  Honestly, this encapsulates everything I fucking love about musicals, old Hollywood, tap-dancing, Gene Kelly, Donald O'Connor, speech classes, ahhhhh.  Sally Bowles may be more like me than Don and Cosmo, and I'd probably be more likely to get drunk and sing Mein Herr over Moses Supposes (although really, who knows?  I'm a crazy lady).  But there is nothing, nothing, nothing like a perfect old tap number, silly, happy and amazingly choreographed.  This is the greatest, not Nancyiest, but greatest musical number.  But...it's also kind of the Nancyiest. 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TKlub5vB9z8

Portland Pie Company!

The decision to skip ahead to Portland Pie Company came from a decision to eat someplace with ‘atmosphere’, which certainly says something of the kind of pizza we will be getting here.   I have heard wonderful things from tons of people, and my good friend James calls it his favorite pizza.   So expectations are incredibly high.

Smell : The smell was not too overpowering in the restaurant or when I stuck it up to my nose like a ridiculous child.  But I will say that my friend Kevin’s office is right above it, and I do remember walking up to his office, sniffing around and suddenly realized I desired pizza.  So that says something.  2.5/5

Appearance : Perfect!  Nice crust, nice brown bits, just a few cheese pockets, not too much, *and* cheese strands that came apart when you pulled off a slice.  I always think that part is very important to the pizza anticipation experience.  Point being, I’m sold.  5/5

Cheese: Texture was perfect here.  Stringy, chewy, but for the most part stayed on the pizza, although occasionally falling off.  The flavor was not overpoweringly mozzarella-y…I find this is the paradox with pizza – good taste = too sticky a texture, whereas a stringy texture leads to a “meh” taste.  I’m going to go with 4/5.  

Crust:  We ordered the beer crust, which may have been a mistake, but I have not made any rules as to all crust having to be white.  The crust had an awesome flavor and a really, really nice texture.  My only complaint is that it was so thick, the taste of the sauce and the cheese may have been overpowered.  I find myself craving more mozzarella-y flavors and more sauce.  This again, however, may be another pizza paradox.  For a pizza to get the appropriate thickness for the sake of consistency and lack of floppiness, as well as hearty flavor, it will overpower the flavor of the cheese and sauce.  So, for the time being, until I impressed by finding the crust of my dreams, I am awarding the crust with a 4/5

Sauce: Almost the perfect amount of sauce, although I found myself craving a little more.  I think it needed a little bit more kick, a nice, spicy oregano flair, or even some rosemary, black pepper or salt.  Something a little extra.  But it was yummy, and almost the correct distribution.  It’s getting, again, a solid 4/5.

Overall experience: A nice atmosphere, lots of options on the menu, and a decent price for what you got.  The pizza came straight out of the oven, and I was asked if I needed another PBR three, count them, three times!  It is that kind of attentiveness that I appreciate in a pizza place, although it was yummy enough I didn’t need a constant flow of Milwaukee’s best to null the pain.   Honestly?  Not a damn thing wrong with that pizza experience.  I will say, however, that I did not fall off my chair with perfect glee.   

So, I give it a 4.5, with an average of 3.9 for the piecemeal evaluation.  

The piecemeal evaluation is the same as Pizza Joint, which I thoroughly agree with.  Because, based on individual aspects, Pizza Joint is pretty damn close.  However, Pizza Joint was a little disjointed, a little more unevenly distributed.  Portland Pie Company just makes more sense as a pizza, bringing its total up to 8.4 and currently leading as frontrunner in the search for Portland’s Best Pizza.  This has been Nancy Nevada Talking About Pizza, signing off to fall asleep watching Star Trek on mute and listening to the rain.  G’night, team fatties.

Breaker Morant: Legal Drama #5

Wow.  I was not expected to be as blown away with Breaker Morant as I was.  I had never heard of it before, there was barely any explanation of it in the books I read…it just kept popping up, again and again, without any explanation.  I thought it would be a boring courtroom drama with an easy ending.  Instead, it was a gritty, sad and realistic movie which spent less time engaging in legal fisticuffs than it did questioning the very grounds of justice itself.  Sort of the polar opposite of A Few Good Men.

Breaker Morant is a film about an Englishman, Harry “Breaker” Morant, and two Australians stationed in South Africa during the Boer War.  These gentlemen were court-marshaled for their execution of Boer prisoners and one German prisoner.  Lord Kitchener ordered the court marshal in an attempt to quickly and peacefully wrap up with Boer War, and show Britain’s seriousness through its willingness to put its own men on trial.

What I love about this movie is that there is no question about whether or not Morant and his men did it.  They did.  The film skips between the courtroom and them on the field, and watches their story evolve.  You see the rage, confusion and frustration that come through on the battlefield, you sense the dejection and disconnect that these men feel from their cause.  You really feel that there is no explicit evil in these men, but that there are (as the attorney puts it) normal men acting under abnormal circumstances.  The grittiness, the barrenness and the all-and-all boringness of war are felt explicitly (because, ya know, Nancy knows all about what war feels like).  

 

The conflict in this film lay in the contradiction Britain is enacting.  Lord Kitchener is trying to use his own men as political pawns.  But all of this is completely his doing.  He ordered the executions.  He court-marshaled them to prove a point.  The orders bore his signature, and yet so did the notices for their executions.  This film is not unlike A Few Good Men at its heart, because it is about dutiful soldiers fulfilling their orders and then being reprimanded, and the hypocrisy present in any society that condemns its own men for acting under orders, or even for acting in a way that seemed reasonable to them given the pressures, confusions and degradations of battle.

But it’s way, way better than A Few Good Men.  For one, the men being represented aren’t bland automatons automatically responding with their admiration for their duty and lot in the Army.  Rather, they are complex, fleshy and full characters, who are full of confused duty and have genuine mistrust and questions for the country they are fighting for.  

For two, the focus isn’t on the “crafty lawyer” getting them out of this.  It’s about them.  It’s about people being taken advantage by our justice system and their reactions and questions for that.  

And most importantly, it really, densely explores the “You Can’t Handle The Truth” aspect that A Few Good Men only lightly touches on, and even mocks.  It really delves deeply into the complexity of the confused nature of justice in wartime, and what we can and cannot hold men accountable for.   Furthermore, it hints that we do need that duality of justice; that we need a separate code of laws to do our dirty work for us so we can keep living in our luxury, but we need a different code in that luxury.

The acting is fucking amazing- natural and realistic while still delivering powerful punches.  This movie is full of long shots, beautiful close-ups and landscapes and smashcuts.  It gives it a dry but powerful resonance, with such attention to subtlety that the emotional powerhouse moments are ten times as loaded.  Drinking rotgut whiskey and climbing on tables reciting Lord Byron precedes serious discussions about the density of their sentence.  Serious, long discussions in the courtroom are realistically undercut with sharp sarcastic and cynical jabs by the defendants.  Overall, this movie felt real.

My only complaint is how quickly the story moves.  Possibly because it is such an integral part of Australian history, and this is an Australian film, it is taken for granted that most Australians would know the details.  For example, when Hunt’s crew approaches Devil’s Gorge for the quintessential skirmish that cost Hunt his life and Morant his sanity…I didn’t know that was going to happen.  I didn’t even know Hunt’s character was that big of a deal at that point.  But I presume that if I was Australian, I would.  What I am saying is, this film took quite a bit of rewinding and a bit of outside research to fully comprehend.

I am mad.  I am all full of wine and Australian protest songs I found on the internet.  It’s 1AM and raining outside, and I am feeling more angry and disillusioned at the legal process than I did at the end of To Kill A Mockingbird.  Because the death of Tom Robinson was an icon of racism, a literary construction to illustrate the dangers of racism and the folly of logical justice in the face of human inadequacy.  This film does that too, but it’s not a fucking construction or icon.  Breaker Morant was a real dude, flawed and complex, who acted as a pawn for our system of justice, was extremely taken advantage, and it cost him his life (ack!  spoiler alert) (oh, whatever.  Did you guys know the Titanic sank?).  And there was nothing his attorney could have done in those closed door sessions of military law.  Morant was going to be a political figure for the British, because the iconography these warring nations needed in order to settle their debts was larger and more powerful than any sense of individual justice, and more meaningful than an individual man’s life.

Nancy Is A Lawyer?

Ahhhhhhhhhhhhhh.  
 

The cold hard reality of what actually happens in the real world contrasts my idealizations of Atticus Finch.  Sure, with the correct lighting and intense music and all, I can become empowered by a dutiful failure.  Fought as hard as you can but there’s still racism?  Whelp, dust yourself off and begin again tomorrow.  But in the real world, people get angry and riled-up.  Knowing myself, I wonder if I could selflessly and stoically accept a lost cause.  In this film, our lawyer did not embody the cold determination and reluctant acceptance of human folly that I have come to associate with the Lawyer Cliché.  He was a fucked-up human, just like all the men he was representing.  And he lost.  And he has to deal with losing for the rest of his life.  Not only must he reckon with that in his own personal conscience, but has to deal with living in this world for the rest of his life when he has faced its injustices so explicitly.  

I know, this is a silly thing to realize.  But it really serves as a reminder that if I practice law, I will still be myself.  I will sometimes be a riled-up person faced with grave injustice, and there may very well be nothing that I can do about it.  That might just be the way the world works.  And honestly, I’d like to think I can raise my head like Atticus Finch and carry on with my life.  But at the end of the day, I’d probably be a Major Thomas; I’d probably fight so hard I’d never want to fight again.

Maybe this means I just shouldn’t go into military law?  But any law I could go into, the “good” and the “bad” won’t be explicitly defined.  It’s not as if I can just go into law and represent unions and know that big corporations are the “bad guys” and I’m representing the “workers”.  Life is not as simple as that.  I will always be grappling within a system that is full of grave injustices, and I am not sure if my skin is tough enough to roll with those punches.  I can be spat on, I can be threatened, I can be told that I am scum, sure.  I’m a tough chick.  But that’s all surface; am I tough enough in my very core to recognize how deeply fucked the world is and keep fighting anyway?  That, I am not sure.  A part of me hears that and just wants to get drunk and watch cartoons.

Furthermore (I feel so grown-up when I say furthermore), this film puts into question the very nature of justice.  I touched on this with Liberty Vallance and Mockingbird, but it really cuts to the core here.  Justice doesn’t make any fucking sense.  Human beings are not smart enough to create a pristine and consistent system that isn’t ripe with hypocrisy.  That fact is made even more evident when empires engage in mass genocide in a different context yet penalize a murder done singularly in the parameters of normal society.

I understand contextualizing morality, whatever.  In a very abstract way, it’s a sort of floppy conversation.  But this film really brings the futility of our justice system into full light in a very hard and stern manner.  How can we have two prevailing systems of justice, one in the context of war and another in the context of civilian life?  I mean, I understand that we have to; I’m not disputing that fact at all.  But doesn’t the very existence of these two simultaneous forms of justice just prove that we are all just making this all this shit up as we go along?

Breaker Morant is the first film to make me genuinely nervous about whether or not aspiring for law is a good call.

Monsters, Inc./Paper Moon

Paper Moon has been on my list for quite some time.  It’s about a father and daughter tromping around Depression-era America and pulling scams, which is very much my style of storyline.  Furthermore, it has Academy Award lore, for Tatum O’Neil was the youngest academy award winner in history.  But what really got me to see it was a book that Bill has, where certain directors discuss the film that changed their life.  Peter Doctor, the director of Monsters Inc., cited this as his inspiration.  Kevin is a Pixar nerd and has been trying to get me to watch Monsters Inc. for about a million years, so I decided to watch each of these movies with their respective friends and note the similarities.

First, I want to address my initial reactions after watching Paper Moon.  I had high expectations, and while I was not blown out of the water, they were appropriately met.  I mean, look at that cover?  How could this movie be anything else but the greatest movie ever?  Paper Moon is one of the forerunner and is considered one of the classics in antagonism growing into dependence and love between two characters.  This dynamic is one of my favorites.  I love seeing love grow out of animosity, especially in father-daughter relationships (blatant peek into my personal life) (hi dad!!!).  I also love how they approach the nature of their heist.  What they are doing is never seen as evil, and Mo is never seen as a bad guy for what he does.  Rather, he is played as more of a bumbling fool, and his predominant character flaw is his lack of class and poise, as opposed to his trade.  The dynamic and how they need each other, especially because their actions and role – lone crooks – predicts a sense of solitude that they both try to embrace, is charming because it is so diametrically opposed to what they need (that’s each other, folks) (whoops, spoiler alert).

My only complaint about Paper Moon is that the characters are too often archetypes, and that makes the moments of genuine sincerity weaker.  This movie is aesthetically stunning, funny and sharp, and the soundtrack is absolutely perfect, but I expected to whirl with glee at the relationship of Mo and Addie.  I feel like the relationship was a bit too complex for the simplicity of the characters, that they were a little too one-dimensional to really evoke strong emotion from me.

Monsters Inc., however, is charming in its simplicity.  I suppose that is not really a complement for a kids movie, given that that medium certainly lends itself to that simplicity.  But at the same time, Monsters Inc. is *not* overly simplistic.  It’s sharp, the relationship dynamics are complex, and the little bits of social commentary are brilliant.

I can already sense a theme developing in my opinions of movies, where I appreciate when movies are simple and straight-forward and magical.  That is not to say that I don’t love it when a movie slaps me across the face with realism.  But nine times out of ten, I feel like those kinds of movies are over-reaching.  You are making a *movie*.  This is fantasy and escapism.  You can certainly address social ills and be subversive in the way you create a story, but you still have to create a very strong and emotionally resonating story, no matter what kind of movie you are making.

(I would advise, if you don't want anything ruined for you about Monsters, Inc., that you heed this spoiler alert)

 

I bring this up because Monsters Inc. is one of the few movies that have made me all misty-eyed, in the final scene, where Sulley hears Boo’s voice and smiles.  The emotional core of the movie was nothing more complicated than Sulley cares about Boo.  The extraneous stuff – the subversive jokes, the social commentary, the complex array of characters – was engaging enough that you weren’t overly focused on the emotional core.  So when it paid off, it really paid off.  

Ya know, I won’t write off Monsters Inc.’s brilliance just because it’s a kid movie and that makes it easier.  I think that there have been plenty of movies that do not have that emotional core that is so powerful.  Even other Pixar movies – I also watched A Bug’s Life on the same day, and it certainly didn’t hit me as hard.  Monsters Inc. cut deeply and simply into some universal feelings – surprised caring, paternal feelings, confused love.

Paper Moon did not hit me as hard as Monsters Inc.  Monsters Inc. embraced all of its weird absurdities – monsters, little kids, sushi restaurants, trash compacting machines – to tell a unique story, but its core was a very simple story.  I think films that embrace particulars, little oddities that are unique to certain relationships, are effective at communicating an overall message about love and life, because they remind people them of their own little oddities and particulars in their own existence.  Paper Moon was certainly a unique story, but the father/daughter dynamic was certainly in the forefront.   Monsters Inc. was just a wee bit quirkier, a wee bit more unique, and a wee bit more distracting with all of its details.  With all of that at the forefront, the emotional core was subtler and, in my opinion, more powerful.

But the similarities in the relationship and how it is approached are abundant.  For example, Paper Moon set the stage for what Monsters Inc. did – told a ridiculous, complicated, silly story to distract you while a relationship grew.  I think that is paramount to an interesting story.  There are exceptions to this, of course.   This structure does not focus on iconic moments, but small details.  And I think that is incredibly more effective.

Another thing I love about Monsters Inc. is its internal consistency.  It creates a whole world, premises are established, and it never violates them or lets those concepts down.  For example, Randall occasionally camouflages himself.  In lesser movies (eek I felt just like Ebert when I said that!), this would be used as an occasional gag, or maybe as a movie-saving iconic moment.  In Monsters Inc., it’s just accepted.  He does it pretty regularly.  Not all the time, but regularly.  

Sigh. Paper Moon and Monsters Inc. are both great.  I like Monsters Inc. better.  It’s more subtle in its development, simpler in its relationships, and wackier in its storyline.  But Paper Moon is really pretty, too.  Done and done.  Why do I talk so much?

Raging Bull

Raging Bull is considered an American classic, and I can sorta see why.  This is for three main reasons.  One is that it is a classic parable and archetype, a sad story starring a sex-and-rage-fueled Alpha Male protagonist.  Secondly is the beauty of the cinematography and how the crisp black and white evokes emphasis…it’s just a damn pretty movie.  And third is the directing.  Scorcese really brings it home, bringing an eloquence to his usually gritty character dramas.  You really see this stand out in those fight scenes, with those eerie uncomfortable close-ups and that sense of artistry that you never see in a boxing film. 

And that’s all well and good, but the resonance is found more in the visually stunning nature of the shots and the idea of what this film is.  And maybe that is why the movie is unsatisfying to me.  Because Jake LaMotta is a *just* a jerk, and there is little that I can grasp onto with his character.  I will say upfront that this is a great American classic that should be watched by everyone, but there are little Nancy-ish reasons this movie doesn’t completely shake me to my core.  I think it boils down to two things (I am all about the counting in this review, aren’t I?).  1) I love a solid character drama, but when the character is unredeemable and lacking in complexity, I find little to grasp onto.  2) I love, love, love sports movies, and find their dramatic and gritty subversion to be not only pointless but sort of aesthetically counter-intuitive to the very idea of sports.

 

So, the first part.  I love assholes in movies.  Unlikable and tortured antiheroes are a staple in my book.  But there has to be something engaging about them.  Ray seemed like some asshole I’d meet on the street, his only engaging character quality worthy of film to be the fact that he did defeat Sugar Ray and then he did write a memoir.  Other than that, he is just a normal Alpha Male character, dealing with sex and violence and egoism.  But at the end of the day, Raging Bull doesn’t say much more than “Yup, he definitely is dealing with sex and violence and egoism”.  What I am trying to say is that I didn’t learn anything more about Ray LaMotta from watching Raging Bull than I would have if I had just read his autobiography and bumped into him at a deli.

There are two possible defenses for this: 1) This was a biopic, and it had to say true to the source material, and I’ll leave that one be (although, for the record, Joe Pesci wasn’t *actually* Ray LaMotta’s brother, folks) and 2) movies like this offer no hero, just bare-bones, slice of life reality, and for that reason make you feel uneasy after watching them.  Using that excuse, Raging Bull is the “KIDS” of the classic movie world.  But I don’t agree with either excuse (and for the record, I hate “KIDS”).  To address number two, there is always something engaging, something unique and cinematic about life.  There is something about the human experience, despite how much gritty realism you try to pull out of it, that is can be formed into a climatic appreciation of the human condition. I understand it’s a sort of Scorcese perspective to just present the dirty and the grungy, but he has done it better and with more heart before.  Taxi Driver is the quintessential exploration of the dirty and the grungy, but it had the confused sweetness of Travis Bickle giving it a heart.  Raging Bull has no real heart; you do not believe in Vickie and Jake’s love, and Jake and Joey’s brotherhood is just cliché Italian, snapping at each other than kissing each other than punching each other than saying “you’re my brother, ah?” and saying fuck a lot.  You don’t really sense what these characters are feeling or thinking. The film is simply watching this train wreck of a personality unfold.   

 

As for the subversion of sports films, this is something I’ve given a lot of thought to.  Bill said he loved this movie, and we have talked a lot about his “problems with sport movies” and their clichés.  This movie avoids every sports movie clichés, and perhaps that is why it is so beloved in the genre and thought of as one of the quintessential sports movies.  But my problem is…if I want an intense character drama, I’ll just watch Citizen Kane or Trees Lounge.  Leave my sports movies alone.  I love sports movies.  I love their clichés.  I think it’s because sports itself is a falsity, a pile of clichés, a big hubbabaloo constructed so we can have these artificial rivalries, these false senses of pride and community and these extreme moments of meaningless exaltation and victory.  Don’t get me wrong, I love it.  But the whole industry is just an emotional illusion.  Sports are like cinema, a stage for a completely artificial act to elicit some of the basest and strongest human emotions from us.  And it’s awesome.  And so, I like it when sports movies generally follow suit.  They are formulaic, but that’s the whole point.  The whole point is the plainest dichotomy between victory and failure.  And believe me, I certainly *get* that athletes see them as so much more, as their lives and essence of being, and I understand that the connection there can be sickeningly strong, and that there is a profoundly gritty underbelly to the sports world.  But the whole charade of artificial competition seems so goddamn silly to me that I can only appreciate it/not roll my eyes at if it’s embracing its silliness, if the underdog hits the homerun, if we win the big game, if the stadium lights burst in the end.

Again, there were certainly things I really loved about Raging Bull.  Cathy Moriarity did an awesome job of playing a smoky young woman seduced by an obsessive young boxer.  Both of them had very little going for their personalities, short of her intense beauty and his arrogant and demanding attitude.  But I loved the way she was able to be strong and curt with him, and when she screamed, and her voice went all high-pitched and cat-like, it was in a realistic way.  It was not in the comical way that movies often try to portray screaming, crazed housewives (I.E. the way Jake’s first wife was portrayed).  The movie hinted that she was a unique lady, and I appreciated the depth they gave to her character.  Unfortunately, it just made Ray look like a more boring character.

 

In other news, I also will watch anything Joe Pesci does.  Dude can do no wrong in my book.  And there were definitely parts that evoked emotion out of me. I was genuinely disturbed by the reality of Jake’s (albeit brief) prison scene, where his degrading and drunken fat brain is put on full display.  It was eerie because there was no question on what we were watching at this point; the only light in that dark scene was on Jake embarrassingly sobbing and pounding his hands against the prison walls.  I was *embarrassed* to watch it; I felt like I was watching something that I should not see.  So that, I suppose, really is the mark of a realistic movie.  It is certainly something to create such an unnerving and realistic story, that the viewer actually feels uncomfortable peeking in on someone’s life.  So, that’s good.

It *is* interesting, in that respect, to see how Ray connects those plainest senses of victory and failure to his own life.  Meaning, it’s neat to see such a bare-boned equation between the rises and falls in one personal life put into the context of sports.  I mean, I’m willing to admit that it’s a good movie.  It’s solid.  And again, the cinematography is to die for.  But there are these little Nancyistic problems that stop it from becoming an American classic in my book (called Movies That Nancy Deems Acceptable As American Classic: A Book No One Will Ever Read by Nancy Nevada Boucher).