Hollywood, may the farce be with you
TODAY’S MOVIE LINES ARE ALL DUDS
Have you seen “Dunkirk” yet? No? Good. Save your money. If you’re a movie buff drawn to the silver screen by memorable dialogue and riveting portrayals of plausible characters, “Dunkirk” is one more reason to mourn the dumbing-down of an industry that’s replaced substance with style and greatness with glitz.
Take away its special effects and “Dunkirk” leaves you with nothing, other than a reaffirmation of how easy we are to exploit.
We pay for a movie, then sit like docile lambs as we’re bombarded with spots urging us to drink Sprite, buy Fords and pay attention to yet another Al Gore harangue on climate control.
It’s flagrant abuse of a captive audience, namely us.
Here’s an idea: Suppose we all opened our windows and shouted, “I’m mad as hell and I’m not going to take this anymore!”
Sound familiar? It should. More than 40 years after Howard Beale, a fictitious TV news anchor, screamed those words in exasperation, they continue to echo, don’t it? Memorable lines always do. “Love means never having to say you’re sorry.” “You can’t handle the truth!” “You had me at hello.” “There’s no crying in baseball.” “Here’s looking at you, kid.” “I’ll have what she’s having.” “Plastics.” “Yo, Adrian!” “You’re gonna need a bigger boat.”
“I’m gonna make him an offer he can’t refuse.”
We remember them all, don’t we?
But what’s said in “Dunkirk” is forgotten by the time you reach the parking lot.
This is how it is in movie theaters today. We’re fed cotton candy, juiced up with car crashes, graphic violence, jarring vulgarity and totally gratuitous nudity.
Even “Schindler’s List” had a superfluous bedroom scene showing an unnamed naked actress. Please. Give me Blanche DuBois: “I have always depended on the kindness of strangers.”
Give me Forrest Gump: “Mama always said life was like a box of chocolates. You never know what you’re gonna get.”
Give me Dorothy Gale: “Toto, I’ve a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore.”
Give me Andy telling Red in the Shawshank prison yard: “I guess it comes down to a simple choice; get busy living, or get busy dying.”
Why are those lines and characters still so vividly recalled?
What was it about them that grabbed us by our hearts and throats?
Don’t you still get chills hearing Dr. Hannibal Lecter tell FBI trainee Clarice Starling: “A census taker once tried to test me. I ate his liver with some fava beans and a nice Chianti.”
Don’t you still vicariously delight in hearing Detective Harry Callahan, .357 Magnum in hand, seething to a predator: “You’ve got to ask yourself one question; ‘Do I feel lucky?’ Well, do ya, punk?”
Doesn’t it still move you when Katharine Hepburn, fearing Henry Fonda, her octogenarian husband in “On Golden Pond,” had suffered a heart attack, cradles him and whispers: “Listen to me, mister. You’re my knight in shining armor. Don’t you forget it. You’re going to get back on that horse and I’m going to be right behind you, holding on tight, and away we’re gonna go, go, go!”
That’s what Hollywood used to give us.
Now they give us duds like “Dunkirk,” perhaps the biggest disappointment here since “Titanic” was reduced to a cheesy love story.
Give me Rick Blaine: “Of all the gin joints in all the towns in all the world, she walks into mine.”
Give me the vintage Jimmy Cagney hoodlum, Cody Jarret, defying coppers as he stood atop a chemical storage tank just before it exploded, hollering: “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!”
Yes, we still have Meryl Streeps and Morgan Freemans, but they are now the exceptions, not the rule.
So do yourself a favor. Skip “Dunkirk” and find a copy of “Murphy’s Romance” featuring James Garner and Sally Field.
If you think, “Frankly, my dear, I don’t give a damn” was the best closing line ever, wait until you hear Field asking Garner, “How do you like your eggs?”
Enough already. This must end, if only because it hurts to remember how good movies used to be.
Hasta la vista, baby.