Post by klep on Mar 31, 2021 6:56:08 GMT -6
MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 3/29: One From the Heart
DREAM PROJECTS WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor
Let me start with an anecdote on how I first watched One from the Heart: a friend of mine in college had a habit of constantly making bets with each other regarding the NBA, boxing, movie award season, or film festival awards, where the stakes were making us do embarrassing things or watch bad movies rather money-based (because we were in college so we had less than no money). And one such bet I lost (it was something involving the Lakers but I forgot what) involved me having to spend a week watching our college library’s copy of One from the Heart every night, based on its reputation as a massive misfire on the once-great director’s part.
Some fucking punishment. I ended up returning to it throughout the rest of the year until I got sick and exhausted of my own adoration towards the movie.
If the argument can be made that Francis Ford Coppola’s most perfect movies in the classical sense were made in the 1970s (an argument I’d absolutely make, not to go against conventional opinion), I still find it undeniable that his most interesting movies were made in the period after Apocalypse Now nearly destroyed his production company Zoetrope Studios, a studio he intended as a haven for director’s uncompromised visions. Probably high off of landing that insane balancing act of an apprehensive production and release with a Palme d’Or (or high off something else…), Coppola made the ballsy move of buying the rights to a production MGM offered originally to just hire him to direct, changed the tone of the story severely, inflated the budget from 2 million to over 20 million (in the process overworking the crew and alienating the investors), and ended up with a box office and critical reception so grievous that a movie that was originally intended to give Zoetrope a financial diuretic in the wake of Apocalypse Now actually delivered all the fiscal doom to it that the previous movie was expected to bring.
Frankly, it’s not deserved. One from the Heart is absolutely a mess, but it is a mess that has a fascinating atmosphere to it and an idiosyncratic heart that could only come from the conviction and wrong-headedness of its approach. You don’t hear often about a colorful soundstage musical romance that is unpleasant to watch and you hear even less about that being a compliment but One from the Heart wields both of these things astoundingly well. We get no chaser to the fact that we’re witnessing a relationship in free fall, meeting the couple Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Teri Garr) less when they are in the act of falling out of love and more when they are falling in toxic contempt for one another and watching them split into further directions through the hot neon of Las Vegas. Or at least a nightmare ideal of Vegas, as one of the most obvious areas where the movie’s ambition stretched its budget thin was the recreation of the suburbs in the shadows of the overwhelming downtown Paradise and Winchester and the aggressive vibrant Fremont Street beneath the glittering lights on every possible piece of space in Zoetrope’s soundstages with a constantly floating camera through gentle dissolves. As we explore this unreal dreamy version of a concrete place as the backdrop against a harshly neorealist domestic drama, Hank and Frannie encounter their own idealized lovers, the acrobatic Leila (Nastassja Kinski) and the suave if not glamorous Ray (Raul Julia). Having spent a significant amount of the last five years living and working on the Strip, this rewatch felt like watching a place I’d gotten deeply familiarized with melt away into a dizzying slurry of lights and lines.
The thing about One from the Heart is that while anybody could see Leila or Ray as more romantic combinations to our duotagonists than Hank or Frannie are to each other, the darkness of this tale doesn’t lighten in the slightest by their influence. For you see, One from the Heart is about lonely souls trying very hard to not be lonely and it’s clear that Leila and Ray are - if not necessarily as disillusioned as the characters they are seducing - are just a means to an end, a distraction from the broken dreams beneath our guides. And the incompatibility of its desires to present familiar movie-based Technicolor artifice and uncomforting realities about the human relationships at the center of it makes for a strong accentuation of everything bitter within this tale, on top of being a movie which chooses as its musical voices the clash between Tom Waits’ rough growl and Crystal Gayle’s smooth cool to further remind us how its components just shouldn’t mix all that well.
And it does mix well in an idiosyncratic way. The emotions and moods it pulls come out loud and clear, every frame of it is gorgeous, every setting overwhelming, and its having its realist cake and eating it too via surreal indulgences. And I feel like I’m talking around in fucking circles pointing out how it is intellectually wrong but feels so right to me, but that’s what makes it land as a work of Francis Ford Coppola’s that I’d sooner rewatch than a lot of movie that toe the line. Coppola’s fearlessness with One from the Heart cost his career big-time but it pays off on the envelope-pushing visual storytelling we’ve always known him to dream of: sad and beautiful with just the right hint of hope near the end. And here’s hoping that he has one more movie like this or Rumble Fish in his system before he’s gone.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/5: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
EXPLORATION WEEK!
For Exploration Week we're joining Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany on an adventure on the high seas with Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, a film about a naturalist hoping to explore the Galapagos Islands while his Royal Navy Captain friend is hunting a French privateer. Join us next week for one of the finest examples of seafaring moviemaking! Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is available for rent in the usual places.
DREAM PROJECTS WEEK!
Note: This week's essay is graciously provided by a guest contributor
Let me start with an anecdote on how I first watched One from the Heart: a friend of mine in college had a habit of constantly making bets with each other regarding the NBA, boxing, movie award season, or film festival awards, where the stakes were making us do embarrassing things or watch bad movies rather money-based (because we were in college so we had less than no money). And one such bet I lost (it was something involving the Lakers but I forgot what) involved me having to spend a week watching our college library’s copy of One from the Heart every night, based on its reputation as a massive misfire on the once-great director’s part.
Some fucking punishment. I ended up returning to it throughout the rest of the year until I got sick and exhausted of my own adoration towards the movie.
If the argument can be made that Francis Ford Coppola’s most perfect movies in the classical sense were made in the 1970s (an argument I’d absolutely make, not to go against conventional opinion), I still find it undeniable that his most interesting movies were made in the period after Apocalypse Now nearly destroyed his production company Zoetrope Studios, a studio he intended as a haven for director’s uncompromised visions. Probably high off of landing that insane balancing act of an apprehensive production and release with a Palme d’Or (or high off something else…), Coppola made the ballsy move of buying the rights to a production MGM offered originally to just hire him to direct, changed the tone of the story severely, inflated the budget from 2 million to over 20 million (in the process overworking the crew and alienating the investors), and ended up with a box office and critical reception so grievous that a movie that was originally intended to give Zoetrope a financial diuretic in the wake of Apocalypse Now actually delivered all the fiscal doom to it that the previous movie was expected to bring.
Frankly, it’s not deserved. One from the Heart is absolutely a mess, but it is a mess that has a fascinating atmosphere to it and an idiosyncratic heart that could only come from the conviction and wrong-headedness of its approach. You don’t hear often about a colorful soundstage musical romance that is unpleasant to watch and you hear even less about that being a compliment but One from the Heart wields both of these things astoundingly well. We get no chaser to the fact that we’re witnessing a relationship in free fall, meeting the couple Hank (Frederic Forrest) and Frannie (Teri Garr) less when they are in the act of falling out of love and more when they are falling in toxic contempt for one another and watching them split into further directions through the hot neon of Las Vegas. Or at least a nightmare ideal of Vegas, as one of the most obvious areas where the movie’s ambition stretched its budget thin was the recreation of the suburbs in the shadows of the overwhelming downtown Paradise and Winchester and the aggressive vibrant Fremont Street beneath the glittering lights on every possible piece of space in Zoetrope’s soundstages with a constantly floating camera through gentle dissolves. As we explore this unreal dreamy version of a concrete place as the backdrop against a harshly neorealist domestic drama, Hank and Frannie encounter their own idealized lovers, the acrobatic Leila (Nastassja Kinski) and the suave if not glamorous Ray (Raul Julia). Having spent a significant amount of the last five years living and working on the Strip, this rewatch felt like watching a place I’d gotten deeply familiarized with melt away into a dizzying slurry of lights and lines.
The thing about One from the Heart is that while anybody could see Leila or Ray as more romantic combinations to our duotagonists than Hank or Frannie are to each other, the darkness of this tale doesn’t lighten in the slightest by their influence. For you see, One from the Heart is about lonely souls trying very hard to not be lonely and it’s clear that Leila and Ray are - if not necessarily as disillusioned as the characters they are seducing - are just a means to an end, a distraction from the broken dreams beneath our guides. And the incompatibility of its desires to present familiar movie-based Technicolor artifice and uncomforting realities about the human relationships at the center of it makes for a strong accentuation of everything bitter within this tale, on top of being a movie which chooses as its musical voices the clash between Tom Waits’ rough growl and Crystal Gayle’s smooth cool to further remind us how its components just shouldn’t mix all that well.
And it does mix well in an idiosyncratic way. The emotions and moods it pulls come out loud and clear, every frame of it is gorgeous, every setting overwhelming, and its having its realist cake and eating it too via surreal indulgences. And I feel like I’m talking around in fucking circles pointing out how it is intellectually wrong but feels so right to me, but that’s what makes it land as a work of Francis Ford Coppola’s that I’d sooner rewatch than a lot of movie that toe the line. Coppola’s fearlessness with One from the Heart cost his career big-time but it pays off on the envelope-pushing visual storytelling we’ve always known him to dream of: sad and beautiful with just the right hint of hope near the end. And here’s hoping that he has one more movie like this or Rumble Fish in his system before he’s gone.
OUR NEXT MOVIE OF THE WEEK for 4/5: Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World
EXPLORATION WEEK!
For Exploration Week we're joining Russell Crowe and Paul Bettany on an adventure on the high seas with Peter Weir's Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World, a film about a naturalist hoping to explore the Galapagos Islands while his Royal Navy Captain friend is hunting a French privateer. Join us next week for one of the finest examples of seafaring moviemaking! Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World is available for rent in the usual places.