Every 70s Movie: ellen burstyn

Showing posts with label ellen burstyn. Show all posts

Saturday, November 12, 2016

1980 Week: Resurrection

Ellen Burstyn’s crowning achievement in movies might be her multidimensional star turn in Martin Scorsese’s Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974), though strong arguments could be made for her fearless work in The Exorcist (1973) and Requiem for a Dream (2000). Obscured by these famous movies is the offbeat gem Resurrection, in which Burstyn not only incarnates the complex facets of a fully rounded individual, but in which she explores realms beyond normal human understanding. As its title suggests, Resurrection is about a woman who dies for a brief time before returning to life, and upon returning from “the other side,” she gains supernatural healing powers. As Burstyn articulated in her autobiography, she’s been on a lifelong spiritual journey, so in some ways, Resurrection might be her ultimate role. It’s a problematic film that some viewers will find too incredible, and even fans of the picture are likely to quibble about plot points. Nonetheless, most of what happens onscreen in Resurrection is memorable and strange and touching.

Burstyn, who received an Oscar nomination as Best Actress for the picture, stars as Edna, an everywoman who experiences a terrible car accident. Her husband dies in the crash, but Edna rouses despite being legally dead for a period of time. Upon discovering her brush with morality has gifted her with special abilities, Edna gradually detaches from her old life and becomes a faith healer. She also falls in love with Cal (Sam Shepard), a deeply religious man whose beliefs allow him to accept the “miracle” of Edna’s supernatural power. Yet a schism grows in their relationship because Edna refuses to acknowledge God as the author of her destiny, which puts Edna on the road to the film’s powerful final act.

Written by the imaginative Lewis John Carlino and directed by the reliable Daniel Petrie, Resurrection has a bit of a TV-movie feel, but the smallness of the presentation is perfect for the subject matter. By eschewing grandeur, Petrie keeps the focus on the turbulence that paranormal phenomena causes in Edna’s life and the lives of those around her. Seeing Edna do incredible things sparks revelatory reactions, with desperate people seeing Edna as the deliverance they crave, small-minded people seeing her as a personification of everything that frightens them, and spiritual people seeing Edna as proof that forces beyond man guide the universe. Through it all, Edna experiences a litany of surprising emotional changes, some of which are more believable than others, but the stark contrast the filmmakers draw between the person Edna was before her transformation and the person she is at the end of the story makes a powerful statement about human potential.

Burstyn commits wholeheartedly to even the most outlandish scenes, thereby grounding the picture in simple emotional truth. The fine supporting cast, which also includes Roberts Blossom, Jeffrey DeMunn, Richard Farnsworth, Eva Le Gallienne (who received on Oscar nomination as Best Supporting Actress), and Lois Smith, helps weave a canvas of rural authenticity, with Shepard’s fire-and-brimstone ire providing a sharp counterpoint to Edna’s embrace of the mysterious. Resurrection is far from perfect, but it’s filled with ambiguities that provide fodder for fascinating conversations.

Resurrection: GROOVY

Friday, October 26, 2012

Thursday’s Game (1974)

The first feature-length narrative written by Mary Tyler Moore Show guy James L. Brooks—who later conquered the big screen with Terms of Endearment (1983) and other films—the TV movie Thursday’s Game is a funny, insightful, and warm study of an everyman in crisis. Gene Wilder, operating at the height of his powers, plays Harry Evers, the producer of a low-rated daytime TV quiz show based in New York. For the past four years, Harry and his pal, clothier Marvin Ellison (Bob Newhart), have been part of a casual weekly poker game with several friends.

One night, despite worries that his job is in danger, Harry agrees to make the game more exciting by playing for big cash, and he wins a major haul—only to have his “friends,” except for Marvin, say they’re unwilling to pay their debts. A fistfight ensues, which is an amusing spectacle because Newhart and Wilder look ridiculous trying to trade punches with fellow working stiffs, but Harry and Marvin bond during the brawl. Thus, they decide to continue meeting every Thursday for boys’ nights. Then, when the inevitable happens and Harry gets fired, he uses the Thursday getaways to escape home pressures once his wife, Lynn (Ellen Burstyn), starts pushing him to find another job or at least sign up for unemployment, which Harry considers humiliating.

What unfolds from this relatable scenario is surprising and touching, because Harry goes nuts watching Marvin follow the opposite trajectory—Marvin achieves business success even as his marriage to Lois (Cloris Leachman) crumbles. Thursday’s Game plays to all of Brooks’ strengths, allowing the writer-producer to gently satirize careerism, male ego, marital politics, and other issues. Brooks clearly defines each character, even those who drift in and out of the story quickly, and his script is filled with great one-liners and memorable bits. In one of the film’s funniest scenes, Harry has an infuriating showdown with his agent (Rob Reiner), who reveals he didn’t actually know he was Harry’s agent during the last several years—even though he collected 10 percent of Harry’s salary the whole time.

Director Robert Moore wisely stays out of Brooks’ way, letting the expert script and marvelous actors dominate. The cast is filled with people who made ’70s TV lively, including Norman Fell, Valerie Harper, and Nancy Walker in addition to those already mentioned, and each performer contributes a new, sardonic flavor to the mix. Wilder is wonderful, reeling back his tendency toward overacting but still providing a few of his signature slow-burn moments; Newhart strikes a droll balance of likeable insecurity and tentative swagger; and Burstyn grounds the film with a potent dramatic performance as a woman torn between devotion and the need for honesty. Particularly given its ignoble release—Thursday’s Game was shot in 1971 but not aired until 1974—this is a rewarding comedy that deserves to be seen by many more people.

Thursday’s Game: GROOVY

Friday, March 23, 2012

Same Time, Next Year (1978)

A tidy romantic dramedy that’s become a staple for regional-theater revivals, Bernard Slade’s play Same Time, Next Year is built around the simple gimmick of checking in with a couple every five years over the course of the two decades in which they meet for annual adulterous trysts. Both are happily married, and we’re meant to like them because they didn’t mean to fall in love with each other during their first chance meeting, so the play gives two actors equally sized roles that are sympathetic and textured. Whether the roles are actually substantial is debatable, and the superficiality of the piece is particularly evident in the film adaptation.

Penned by Slade with few adjustments for cinematic presentation, and directed with characteristic sensitivity by Robert Mulligan, Same Time, Next Year stars Ellen Burstyn, a holdover from the Broadway production, and Alan Alda, a replacement for the stage show’s leading man, Charles Grodin. Seen outside of the confines of a live theater, where the combination of star power and Neil Simon-esque writing probably made the play go down quite smoothly, Same Time, Next Year seems contrived and shallow, even though it’s consistently entertaining.

Since Doris (Burstyn) and George (Alda) meet in the early ’50s and the final scene takes plays in the mid-’70s, Slade uses the characters as prisms for historical milestones: Doris goes through a hippie phase before embracing Women’s Lib, while George transitions from uptight conservatism to mind-expanding liberalism after his family is affected by the Vietnam War. Simply by virtue of how much time they spend onscreen, Doris and George emerge as (somewhat) specific individuals, but they’re also vehicles for Slade’s vanilla speechifying about the Big Issues of the ’50s, ’60s, and ’70s.

This introduction of sociopolitical heft into the story, particularly during the second half, is helpful because the cutesy trope of Doris and George meeting for sex once a year would have lost its romantic fizz otherwise. Echoing a problem found in Simon’s work, however, Same Time, Next Year ends up in narrative limbo, neither deep enough to be meaningful nor sufficiently uproarious to be a comedy classic. It’s merely pleasant, with an endearing core of reflection and sweetness.

That said, the piece is elevated by expert acting: Burstyn infuses the movie with femininity and warmth, illustrating the myriad ways women’s roles in American life changed in the postwar era, and Alda delivers his signature mixture of gently neurotic intellectualism and pitch-perfect comic timing. Thanks to their work and Mulligan’s careful dramaturgy, there’s enough humanity amid the slick professionalism to make this film worthwhile.

Same Time, Next Year: GROOVY

Tuesday, February 7, 2012

Tropic of Cancer (1970)

Tropic of Cancer is a nasty barrage of sex, scheming, and vulgarity, leavened with a strain of ironic literary observation. However, this combination of elements should come as no surprise given the subject material: Tropic of Cancer is the only feature-length adaptation of notorious American writer Henry Miller’s work. The sex-crazed Miller’s adventures as an expat living in France also inspired the 1990 biopic Henry & June—yet while the latter film was a straightforward narrative infused with sophisticated erotica, Tropic of Cancer is a grungy experimental film punctuated by seedy simulated sex. In Tropic of Cancer, nearly every physical encounter has a grim punchline, whether it’s the revelation that one of the partners has VD or a glimpse of one partner stealing money from the other.

Our guide through these vignettes is Henry Miller (Rip Torn), a perpetually impoverished writer who occasionally takes day jobs doing things like editing copy for an English-language newspaper, but mostly subsists on favors from friends. A hobo without a permanent address, he crashes on couches, takes hotel rooms whenever he has money in his pocket, and persuades fellow Americans to feed him even though he offers virtually no consideration in return. In addition to leeching off everyone he knows, Henry spends every waking moment trying to get laid, indiscriminately sleeping with prostitutes, strangers, and the wives of his friends.

Director Joseph Strick presents these events in fragmented little bursts, loosely connected by voiceover featuring Torn reading from Miller’s books. (Unfortunately, most of the voiceover comprises crudely rhapsodic descriptions of female sex organs.) Parisian location photography adds authenticity, although it’s peculiar that Strick shot the picture with modern clothing (circa 1970) instead of matching the 1930s era during which most of Miller’s real-life Gallic exploits took place.

Muddying the waters further is Torn’s casting and characterization. Constantly unkempt, flashing a devil’s smile full of yellow teeth, and relentless about seeking his own pleasures no matter the cost to others, Torn’s version of Miller is an irredeemable cretin, so it’s hard to know what reaction Strick hoped to elicit: Was the idea to document the extremes of a rare man, or to incarnate Miller’s ideas about the “honesty” one finds in embracing animal instincts?

The picture never speaks clearly enough to make a strong statement one way or another, and Strick’s choice to fill the screen with naked women undercuts whatever artistic aspirations might be present—Tropic of Cancer ends up feeling like a pretentious nudie flick. Still, for adventurous viewers, Tropic of Cancer may be worth exploring for hidden virtues. Furthermore, the presence of an uncredited Ellen Burstyn in the movie provides some interest; the future Oscar winner appears briefly, mostly without clothing, as Henry’s quasi-estranged wife.

Tropic of Cancer: FREAKY

Wednesday, May 18, 2011

Harry & Tonto (1974)

A triumph of naturalistic acting, sensitive writing, and unobtrusive direction, Harry & Tonto is one of the best character studies of the ’70s, a kind-hearted but completely unsentimental portrait of an everyman knocked out of his staid routine. Director and co-writer Paul Mazursky employs his acting background to nudge performers toward interesting behavior that’s devoid of actor-ish affectation, and he orchestrates the simple story with easy confidence, gently accentuating key moments.

The story begins when aging New York City widower Harry Coombes (Art Carney) is forced out of his apartment because the building is scheduled for demolition—police officers literally carry him out to the street in his favorite easy chair, which is not only a memorably sad/funny image, but also a tart metaphor representing the movie’s theme of seniors for whom society has little use. Harry is dead weight, and he knows it, so all he wants to do is be left alone so he can enjoy life in the company of his affectionate marmalade cat, Tonto, to whom Harry sings old-time songs and with whom Harry enjoys nostalgic “conversations.”

After the displacement, Harry and Tonto move in with Harry’s adult son, Burt (Philip Burns), but when it becomes apparent that Burt’s house is too crowded with family, Harry embarks on a cross-country adventure, ostensibly to visit his two other grown children but really to search for a new identity. Throughout the picture, Mazursky sketches Harry’s personality by throwing this rich protagonist into contrast with colorful supporting characters. Although seemingly straight-laced and uptight on first glance, Harry is actually an intellectual with a deep curiosity about human nature, allowing him to bond with everyone from his spiritually confused grandson, Norman (Josh Mostel), who has taken a vow of silence and adheres to a strict macrobiotic diet, to a restless young hippie, Ginger (Melanie Mayron), who left her family to join a commune.

It’s immensely pleasurable to watch Mazursky and co-writer Josh Greenfeld subvert expectations in one scene after another, because the further Harry gets from his old environment, the more he embraces surprises—the simple act of discovering a larger world revives him in a way he never anticipated. Offering a broad tonal palette, Harry & Tonto alternates humor, pathos, and satire, often in the same scene. Harry’s combative visit with his daughter, Shirley (Ellen Burstyn), is fascinating because it reveals what a different dynamic he has with each of his children, and his melancholy encounter with a sweetheart from his younger years, Jessie (Geraldine Fitzgerald), is poignant because she’s lost in the ravages of dementia.

Making Harry’s journey feel organic and purposeful is Carney, who won a well-deserved Oscar. Subtly employing the comic timing he displayed back in his Honeymooners days, Carney is brusque, inquisitive, and warm, portraying Harry as a man who learns to embrace change at an age when change is deeply frightening. It’s a beautiful performance, and Mazursky serves the performance well by crafting a brisk film that never lingers too long on any one sequence, instead building a strong head of emotional steam until the wonderfully bittersweet denouement.

Harry & Tonto: RIGHT ON

Saturday, March 5, 2011

Alex in Wonderland (1970)

   The circumstances of this picture are so precious that you know what you’re in for before the film even starts. After scoring a massive hit with his directorial debut, Bob & Carol & Ted & Alice (1969), Paul Mazursky made this picture about a movie director who can’t decide how to follow up his successful debut. Thus, viewers meet Alex (Donald Sutherland), a self-involved hippie auteur simultaneously casting about for ideas and rejecting every idea that crosses his path. Alex wanders around L.A. in a daze, drifting into daydreams about hanging out with European-cinema giants Federico Fellini and Jeanne Moreau (who appear as themselves), suffering the obsequiousness of sycophants, trying the patience of his grounded wife (Ellen Burstyn) and smart children, and wigging out with acid-dropping friends who think they’ve unlocked the secrets of the universe.
   Mazursky, who wrote the picture with Larry Tucker, is at his best during loose scenes of people rapping about heavy things, man, but he ventures way outside his wheelhouse during the picture’s Fellini-esque fantasy scenes. Mazursky pointlessly cops from the Italian master’s playbook, filling the screen with circus folk, dwarves, religious figures, warfare, and other “significant” imagery that’s meant to illustrate the deep thoughts bouncing around Alex’s mind. At the film’s most ridiculous extreme, dozens of naked black people emerge from the ocean and dance around Alex in a tribal ritual because he’s contemplating a movie about the plight of African-Americans.
   Alex’s indecision and pretention make him seem like a spoiled brat, especially because he acts out whenever someone suggests that one of his utterances isn’t brilliant. Worse, the movie doesn’t go anywhere: Alex is just as lost at the end of the picture as he was at the beginning. The point, presumably, is to illustrate that Hollywood isn’t designed to nurture artists, but rather to present crass commercial opportunities. That’s not exactly an earth-shattering insight, which might explain why audiences and critics reacted so indifferently to Alex in Wonderland. The picture isn’t helped by Sutherland’s performance, which fails to add sympathetic colors to an inherently insufferable character, or by Burstyn’s, because she’s sour throughout most of her scenes. As a result, it’s impossible to get invested in the welfare of this unpleasant couple. Only Mazursky himself comes off “well,” because he’s funny and sharp in a featured role as a vapid Hollywood executive courting Alex for a slate of unattractive movie projects. (Available at WarnerArchive.com)

Alex in Wonderland: LAME

Friday, December 17, 2010

The King of Marvin Gardens (1972)

   A film that sounds more interesting than it actually is, The King of Marvin Gardens features a convergence of several of the most important players in ’70s cinema. The cast includes Ellen Burstyn, Bruce Dern, and Jack Nicholson; New Hollywood mainstay Bob Rafelson co-wrote the story and directed; and acclaimed cinematographer László Kovács shot the picture. The narrative also seems like it should hit the sweet spot of early-’70s ennui, with Dern playing Jason Stabler, a small-time Atlantic City schemer who tries to rope his reluctant brother, David (Nicholson), into helping him put together some sort of casino/resort enterprise, much to the chagrin of Jason’s boss, mid-level gangster Luther (Scatman Crothers).
   But right from the beginning of the picture, pretentious opacity rules: The first scene features David performing a grimly nostalgic monologue for his late-night radio show about David and his brother watching their overbearing grandfather die, and the next scene reveals that the grandfather is very much alive. Presumably the idea was to establish a milieu exploring the gap between dreams and reality, but the film never comes into sharper focus than the opening sequence, so it’s a struggle to follow basic threads like what exactly Jason wants to accomplish and why he’s constantly accompanied by an unhinged middle-aged beauty named Sally (Burstyn) and her adult stepdaughter Jessica (Julia Anne Robinson). In lieu of clarity, the movie presents gifted actors generating unusual dynamics, but the performances are inhibited by the film’s murkiness.
   Nicholson is muted to a fault, communicating his character’s lost quality by seeming lost himself, and Burstyn is uncharacteristically screechy, as if she’s flailing for some legitimate character motivation the script can’t provide. Dern comes off best, effectively personifying a huckster of limited ability but unlimited ambition, and it’s a shame that his fine performance appears in such a disappointing film. Kovács’ impeccable photography provides an unvarnished travelogue through the ghost-town streets of early-’70s Atlantic City, and it’s impressive that the film doesn’t have any musical scoring; to Rafelson’s credit, the focus is entirely on acting. The King of Marvin Gardens is very much of its moment, so now that time has deprived the movie of its currency as a counterpoint to the staid cinema of the studio era, it’s simply a clinical exercise in affected New Hollywood style.

The King of Marvin Gardens: FUNKY

Thursday, November 18, 2010

The Exorcist (1973) & Exorcist II: The Heretic (1977)

   Since its spectacularly successful release on December 26, 1973, the public has been divided on The Exorcist, with one audience contingent praising the picture as a powerful drama about faith and another excoriating the movie as sensationalist trash. The beauty of The Exorcist is that both interpretations are justified. While the heart of writer William Peter Blatty’s novel and screenplay is a probing exploration of the notion that definitive evidence of the devil implicitly proves the existence of God, the amped-up grotesquerie of director William Friedkin’s movie is as pandering as the content of any exploitation movie. In fact it’s the very tension between the dark and light impulses of the film that makes it so fascinating and so true to its deepest themes: Like the characters in the story, the film has to battle through the pea soup and spinning heads of manifested evil to reach a hopeful conclusion.
The movie unfolds simply, with distraught mom Chris MacNeill (Ellen Burstyn) seeking first medical and then religious help when her young daughter, Regan (Linda Blair), devolves into a condition that might be demonic possession. The little girl urinates in front of company, flails violently, and spews guttural obscenities, all while her body disintegrates into a horrific mess of pallid skin, scars, and sores. Helping Chris combat the deterioration are an anguished young priest, Karras (Jason Miller), and a world-weary exorcist, Merrin (Max Von Sydow). Providing a sort of comic relief is the caustic police detective (Lee J. Cobb) investigating a murder for which the possessed child might have been responsible.
   Friedkin’s aggressive verité style imbues the provocative story with as much realism as possible, given the focus on special effects and supernatural occurrences, and he’s aided by powerful performances and a technical crew committed to creating vivid atmosphere. Burstyn is spectacular as a mother in an unimaginable situation, making every scene she’s in emotionally credible, and Miller, a genuinely tortured sort offscreen, fills his performance with such intense emotional pain that some of his anguished moments are as hard to watch as the film’s goriest scenes. The movie is filled with classic moments, from the subtle (Burstyn walking down a Washington, D.C., street while Mike Oldfield’s eerie instrumental “Tubular Bells” plays on the soundtrack) to the vulgar (Regan’s obscene use of a crucifix). So while it’s impossible to say for certain whether the movie is inherently exploitive or inherently provocative, it’s also impossible to deny the film’s otherworldly power.
  The same cannot be said for the picture’s first sequel, Exorcist II: The Heretic, an insipid mixture of old ideas that worked better the first time and new ideas that should have been nixed at the development stage. Unwisely working a trippy sci-fi/fantasy groove, director John Boorman leads an impressive but slightly embarrassed and narcotized cast through one profoundly silly scene after another. (Newcomers Richard Burton, Louise Fletcher, and James Earl Jones join returning stars Blair—newly curvy but still chipmunk-cheeked—and Von Sydow.) The initial story hook is intriguing, with the Vatican dispatching a priest to investigate whether Merrin was a godly man or a heretic, given his record of spectacular exorcisms, but things spin quickly spin out of control. Not only does the sequel plot indicate that Regan is still possessed, rendering the previous film moot, but Boorman weaves in a bizarre subplot about a primitive African village and its locust-centric religious beliefs.
Boorman and master cinematographer William A. Fraker shoot nearly everything on soundstages, including scenes in African wheat fields, so the whole movie feels bogus and odd. Seriously, what’s the deal with that high-tech hospital featuring so many transparent walls it resembles a county-fair funhouse? At one point, Jones wears an elaborate bug-shaped helmet, complete with giant eyes. In another scene, 17-year-old Blair lures 51-year-old Burton into bed. And the dialogue! Consider the scene where Regan meets Sandra, a little girl played by future Diff’rent Strokes star Dana Plato. “I’m autistic,” Sandra says. “I can’t talk. What’s the matter with you?” (Never mind that she can talk, or that the filmmakers don’t understand how autism works.) “I was possessed by a demon,” Regan replies. “It’s okay. He’s gone.” Despite being a complete dud as a horror show, Exorcist II: The Heretic is so exuberantly goofy that it’s a sumptuous feast for those who consume movies ironically; bad cinema doesn’t get much better.
Franchise creator Blatty wisely pretended Boorman’s film didn’t exist when he wrote and directed 1990’s The Exorcist III, the first worthy successor to the original film. As fans of this series know, there’s a lot more to the story of subsequent Exorcist flicks, but that’s a topic for another day.

The Exorcist: RIGHT ON
Exorcist II: The Heretic: FREAKY

Thursday, October 14, 2010

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore (1974)

Given that he built his reputation on testosterone-driven drama, it’s interesting to note that two of Martin Scorsese’s most important early pictures were about women. His first feature was a grimy black-and-white indie starring Harvey Keitel, and it took him five years to get a legit directing gig, helming the female-oriented Boxcar Bertha (1972) for Roger Corman. He returned to his NYC comfort zone for Mean Streets (1973), which in a roundabout way became the audition piece that convinced Ellen Burstyn to select him as the director of Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore, the actress’ first major project after earning an Oscar nomination for The Exorcist (1973). Burstyn has repeatedly told the story of how she hired the hungry young filmmaker: She asked him what he knew about women, and he said, “Nothing, but I’d like to learn.” And learn he did, because even though the resulting picture is driven by Burstyn’s powerhouse performance as a single mom making do as a waitress until her singing career takes flight, the movie is infused with Scorsese’s freewheeling camerawork and quasi-improvisational dramatic interplay. The opening bit, a smart-ass homage to The Wizard of Oz (1939), cleverly tells the viewer that this won’t be an ordinary “women’s picture,” and the tough-talking, unsentimental dramedy that follows easily fulfills that promise. The film boasts one vivid scene after another, from the funny/sharp exchanges between Alice (Burstyn) and her precocious son (Alfred Lutter) to the harrowing scenes of Alice’s volatile relationship with a younger man (Keitel). Supporting Burstyn is a terrific (and terrifically diverse) cast including Jodie Foster, Kris Kristofferson, Diane Ladd, and Vic Tayback, who debuts the “Mel” character he reprised on the hit sitcom Alice (1976-1985), which was based on this film. Burstyn won a well-deserved Oscar for her performance, and the film’s success paved the way for Taxi Driver (1976) because Scorsese had finally demonstrated the ability to direct a solid box-office performer.

Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore: RIGHT ON