Being a film critic alters your brain in a really weird way. You start seeing films in an analytical way, involuntarily dissecting performances, lighting, shooting, musical cues, and all the little aspects that we get paid a whole lot of not any money to explore.
This awareness is good when your aim is to articulate how and why a film does or doesn’t work. It is significantly less helpful when you’re just trying to sit back and simply enjoy a film for a couple of hours.
There are very few directors who, at this point in my filmgoing life, are able to suck me in and make me forget all of those things I usually can’t help but notice.
One of them is John Carpenter.
It’s a fact that I was reminded of this past week, where Halloween was upon us, meaning delving into the world of horror. Which, you know, that dude is kind of well-versed in.
Rewatching the original Halloween, as well as Prince of Darkness, for our recent Two Cents column reminded me of just how masterful Carpenter is, and how he’s one of the few directors whose skill is so great that I’m actually able to watch the movie without my brain going into ‘Critic Mode’. I decided for my own Pick Of The Week to pay tribute to the man who has directed four movies that I would consider to be in my Top 20 Favorites Ever (feel free speculate away in the comments).
Naturally, I went with Starman.
(Motherfuckers be forgettin’ about that Starman, son…)
I haven’t watched Starman since I was probably eight or nine. When I was growing up, we watched pretty much every science fiction movie that came out, which was way easier to do back in those days. It is, in fact, one of the very few John Carpenter movies I’ve only seen once. In fact, I’m pretty sure most people forget he even made it. But for my money, it’s the closest he ever got to his goal of being the modern day Howard Hawks.
The story is simplicity itself: an alien takes the form of Jeff Bridges in order to coerce Karen Allen into driving him to Arizona where he can meet up with his people and go home. This is of course complicated by the fact that Karen Allen’s character Jenny recently lost her husband, who looks exactly like…you guessed it, Beau Bridges.
I mean Jeff Bridges. It was Jeff Bridges.
They are, of course, chased by authority types who may or may not have the best of intentions, and of course Jenny and the Starman grow closer during their travels.
Let’s be real here: on paper, this isn’t much more than ‘Sexy E.T.’
(Which… don’t google that, I beg you. Some things can’t be unseen.)
But the way all this is handled is what makes it special.
I think the thing that gets me about John Carpenter is how un-showy he is. What he learned from Hawks is a sense of classical framing and classical editing. His style doesn’t call attention to itself, unlike so many modern filmmakers.
And here I’m not even talking about stylzied directors like Michael Bay or Paul Greengrass; the modern film school style of directing is very much based in the idea of cinematic language and using technique to create imagery designed to layer pre-conceived impressionistic values over the narrative; in effect, using the visuals to “comment” on the story . Classical technique, then, is using streamlined, non-dynamic framing and editing to “present” the story, leaving the viewer to interpret the images with their own interpretation.
Which is probably a lot of dry bullshit that doesn’t interest you, so here’s a picture of shirtless Jeff Bridges:
Lookin’ good, Flynn. Lookin’ real good…
My point is, Carpenter is always in the moment. And that works wonders to invest a simple premise like ‘Girl Meets Alien’ with life.
It starts from the very introduction of the Starman, an amazing practical effect by Stan Winston and Rick Baker than I’m SHOCKED isn’t listed as an all-time classic. It’s both breathtaking and terrifying, and the perfect way to meet our hero.
And Bridges gives a fantastic performance! He never once seems like a human being, even as he slowly becomes more understanding of humanity and therefore more “human.” And at the same time, he never seems so alien that it becomes implausible for him to be around strangers without giving himself away.
Karen Allen matches him step for step as a deeply sad, deeply wary woman. It makes sense when she lowers her guard and lets him in, and she makes the inevitable moment where they fall in love seem less inevitable than it otherwise would have been, and that’s just plain good drama.
(And by the way, DAMN we fucked up when we didn’t make Karen Allen a huge star. I was like, four; I’m not sure what your excuse is…)
Watching Bridges and Allen interact is just one of those things that movies don’t seem to take the time to do anymore. Movies don’t have the patience to watch people fall in love in real time, which tends to deprive us of all those little moments that really sell a romance onscreen.
Charles Martin Smith is the SETI guy tasked with investigating the Starman, always a step or two behind. His performance is great (it is, after all, Charles Martin Smith), but all of this is rather perfunctory, and thankfully treated as such. The story is the romance, and that’s where the real drama is.
So, yeah: John Carpenter made a love story. With space men, and car chases, and Jeff Bridges in a trucker cap.
And it’s really good, and you probably haven’t seen it.
Fix that, won’t you?