Exactly what it sounds like, the pick of the week column is written up by the Cinapse team on rotation, focusing on films that are past the marketing cycle of either their theatrical release or their home video release. So maybe the pick of the week will be only a couple of years old. Or maybe it’ll be a silent film, cult classic, or forgotten gem. The only guarantee is that the writer loves the chosen film and can’t wait to share it with you. Cinapse is all about thoughtfully advocating film, new and old, and celebrating what we love no matter how marketable that may be. So join us as we share about what we’re discovering, and hopefully you’ll find some new films for your watch list, or some new validation that others out there love what you love too! Engage with us in the comments or on Twitter or Facebook! And now, our Cinapse Pick Of The Week…
I know what you’re thinking — “is this high handed son of a bitch seriously recommending a movie that’s nearly impossible to see?”
You’re damn right I am.
Why?
Don’t ask questions you already know the answer to.
I’m a loner, Dottie. A rebel.
Look, this ‘Pick Of The Week’ presents in its conception a bit of a problem for me. To my mind, whatever movie I choose is inevitably going to reveal something about myself, some basic aspect that would remain otherwise hidden in a flurry of five dollar words and jokes about Renee Zellweger’s squish face. And so, being thusly aware of such an inevitability, the question then becomes: what do I want to reveal of myself to you people? What is it I want you to see?
Do I try to impress you with my art house street cred by citing my love of Amacord, or that whenever possible I make the trip to the AFI in Silver Spring every time they do their 70 MM screening of Jacques Tati’s Playtime? Maybe I talk about spending nine hours in a theater, watching the entirety of Matthew Barney’s Cremaster Cycle?
(No, don’t bring that up; it makes you sound like a pathetic douche…)
Another tack, then: Perhaps I go with the Thin Man, the movie that ruined romantic relationships forever for me, because I’m no longer willing to settle for anything less than my own personal Nora Charles? Do I spend a thousand words defending my unironic love of Con Air, and how I steadfastly refuse to commit to a relationship with any woman who doesn’t feel the same way?
Do I reference some third movie that unwittingly reveals a lot about the inherently flawed way I approach romantic relationships?
In point of fact, I do none of these. To satisfy my assigned disclosure, I return to a concept that forms the lynchpin of everything I love about movies.
I sometimes refer to movies as “magic”, but that’s the wrong word for it. I think a better word is “alchemy”, which many producers seem to define as “the philosophy behind transmuting a leaden script into box office gold”.
(NOTE FOR READERS: Author does not apologize for strained wordplay.)
But a less cynical observer would hopefully define it as a group of artists unifying to create a singular work of art. A thing greater than themselves, that will live on after them.
It’s not a thing governed by the rules of logic. With so many elements involved, it only takes one thing being slightly off to ruin the entire endeavor.
There is no formula.
(Well, technically there IS a formula, but it’s for form, not function. And let’s not go distracting ourselves with technicalities…)
I’m not alone in thinking Raiders Of The Lost Ark is one of the greatest films ever made. We probably know most of the stories here, too. Tom Selleck’s CBS contract, dysentery, improvising the plane fight… any number of things could have happened to make this less than it was.
So when a group of writers, actors, producers, stunt people, set designers, etc, etc get together and somehow manage to create something as classic and endlessly entertaining as Raiders, yes; I consider that a form of alchemy.
But when a bunch of kids with almost no money make the same exact movie, and it’s just as good if not better, now THAT is magic.
If you don’t know the story of the Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation, here is your Wiki-based primer. I first found out about it from reading an article from the 2004 ‘Vanity Fair’ Hollywood issue, which I bought due to my undying love of meaningless quotes from actors bracketed by 60 pages of perfume ads.
It sounded like an incredible accomplishment, but given the way copyright laws work, I just filed it away as ‘another awesome thing that I’ll never get to see’
But the desire never really went away. Every few months I’d go back and re-read the Vanity Fair article, and dream of an impossibility: I was never going to see this thing, and that was that.
But then, after all those years: miracle of miracles! A free screening at the Smithsonian (an appropriate enough venue)!
And so, literally racing to the train after work, I stood in line for a couple of hours to get into that tiny theater, which only seated about 100 people. And as I waited for the lights to go down, I started to worry that maybe I was getting excited over nothing. I mean, I’ve already seen this movie, a bunch. Why am I so hyped to see it with poor sound quality, on low quality VHS with a bunch of kids trying to approximate the charisma of 1980s Harrison Ford?
(Jesus Christ, even actual Harrison Ford can’t pull that shit off anymore… )
The lights go down. The movie begins.
And I am mesmerized.
When I go down an ontological wormhole, as I am wont to do from time to time, I often experience sadness at the basic idea that you can only see a movie you love for the first time once. That sense of discovery is gone. When something incredible happens, you are no longer being surprised; now, you’re recalling.
Rewatching a beloved movie is trying to chase a high that you’ll never attain again.
And yet, here I was, sitting in a theater, watching a movie that is in every way technically inferior to its source, which it adapts with stunning fidelity: sound quality, picture quality, acting-wise… obviously, a home movie isn’t going to match up with a big studio production.
And yet, I stared at the screen, transfixed.
There’s a couple of levels to this, so let’s start at the basic one: Raiders Of The Lost Ark has a fantastic script. In terms of structure, dialogue, pacing… it’s pretty peerless.
Next, there’s the direction by Steven Spielberg. And that dude… well, he’s got a little game, I suppose.
But that’s the surface stuff. If you peel it back, there’s something that, as good as Raiders is, that they simply can’t touch: joy.
When you get right down to it, the adaptation of Raiders Of The Lost Ark is a product of sheer, unadulterated joy, and it’s palpable onscreen, and positively infectious to watch. Whatever interpersonal drama, however complicated the actual production got in terms of logistics. Whenever that camera is rolling, there isn’t a single second where the people onscreen don’t radiate the pure joy of someone living out their wildest fantasies. This isn’t work; this is play, in it’s purest form.
Look, I don’t think I’m alone when I say I was an aspiring filmmaker growing up. Hell, anybody with a video camera (or knew someone that had one) was back then. And I had a ton of poorly written scripts that were nothing but ripoffs of whatever movie I was obsessed with at the time. Batman figured heavily, of course; but also The Goonies, Friday The 13th, and in a choice that is… extremely troubling for a 12-year old… Basic Instinct.
(That last one is not a joke, by the way. Only through the grace of God am I not on some kind of watchlist right now…)
Now this, in many ways, is the instinct of young, unformed artists: to take a thing you’re into, change it just enough to pass (or was it just me and my peers that were exceedingly wary of copyright laws?), and put out your own version of it.
In the arts, we call this ‘homage’.
The creators of the Raiders of the Lost Ark adaptation aren’t artists; they’re fans, in the purest sense.
It’s three insanely precocious kids who decided, at a time when there was no Youtube, no internet, no reason to expect that anyone would watch it or care, and with no greater creative ambitions, to pay homage to a movie they loved in the only way they knew how: by recreating piece by seemingly impossible piece.
And they fucking did it!
Are you not impressed? What do you have to show for your childhood that’s so great? A vague memory of seeing a whale at the beach and some shitty ashtrays you made in art class and gave away as Christmas gifts? Your dad didn’t even smoke, what were you doing?
Your youth was pointless, is what I’m saying…
But I digress. This dedication, this level of commitment, this insane amount of imagination and ingenuity is what makes the adaptation an arguably superior specimen: as exceptional and incredible as it is, for everyone involved, Raiders Of The Lost Ark was a job. And besides that, while it was inspired by Lucas and Spielbergs’ love of pulp, and serves in those traditions, it’s miles away from its B-movie progenitors, which were more often than not put together with duct tape and clothespins. It was a big budget product designed because a studio thought they could turn a profit. The fact that it turned out amazing was pretty much icing on the cake.
And from a place of pure love, these kids took this “product”, and with no money and no real resources (at least to start) created a genuine, no-bullshit piece of art.
And that’s what I was watching when I sat down to watch this: I’m not only seeing a classic movie; I’m also seeing an actual document of the power of childhood imagination to transcend all limitations. Every moment I’ve already seen ten times or more, and yet, I don’t know what’s going to happen next. “How are they going to recreate this scene?” “How are they going to pull that off?”
And they do it every time, because no one told them it wasn’t possible.
It’s a one of a kind experience, and I was blessed to have it.
I’ll close this one out with an inversion of a quote from the comedian Dave Attell, who was watching a big summer blockbuster full of crazy CGI and stunts and could only think ‘Look how much effort it takes to bore me’.
Whenever I think back on that experience (and it comes to me fairly frequently whenever a new Transformers movie comes out; go figure that), I am reminded of just the opposite. “Forget all these big name stars and all these elaborate special effects: look how little it takes to make me fall in love with movies all over again.”
Just a little bit of magic…
