Took a lot to get all my thoughts and other elements organized - plus I forgot my charger at work for a few days - but now we're back on.
As mentioned, 61 films were watched during this Retro tribute to 1983. And many of them had elements worth reading - so many, in fact, that a good half of those films screened are nominees here.
I had hoped to do this in three parts, but due to time running out...all 18 categories will be announced within this single post. Beginning with two that were not in play at that year's Oscars, Best Ensemble and Best Makeup.
Best Ensemble
The Big Chill
Wallis "Wally" Nicita, casting director
2. Fanny and Alexander; 3. Flashdance; 4. A Christmas Story; 5. Streamers
The cast of The Big Chill really feels like a solid group of friends with 20 years of history together. Likewise, Fanny and Alexander feels like a genuine family unit, Flashdance feels like a makeshift family, A Christmas Story feels like a family in a small town, and Streamers...Streamers is just great, man.
2. The Hunger 3. The Evil Dead 4. Fanny and Alexander 5. Krull
Krull boasts a wizened seer, dirty vagabonds, and an actual cyclops. Fanny and Alexander is my hat-tip to those difficult hairstyles of the early 20th-century, and the pale sweat of mortal illness. The remaining honorees are of the horror genre: the gallons of blood and rotting Deadites of The Evil Dead, the mummified corpses, sickly Susan Sarandon, and glamour queen beauty of Catherine Deneuve in The Hunger. But above all the rest? City of the Living Dead, with its decayed corpses, disembowelments, guts spewed out the mouth, brains ripped from skulls. Great fun.
Tender Mercies is unusual, even considering the number of unassuming, reflective movies that came out in the 1980s. It's quieter than most, there's no obvious climax, most things are left unsaid. There's only one "big" moment, and it belongs to Betty Buckley, in one of her three scenes. There are plenty of big moments that don't involve caterwauling or screaming, but they happen within. The characters may be in or around show business, but they don't make a business of showing, at all.
In many ways, it's a beautiful film, and not because of the Texas landscape. Good God, decidedly not! The beauty lies in its little moments: a flyer posted for a fan's band, a game of catch, a couple gardening together, a lullaby sung privately, away from us. And best of all, it introduces a recovering alcoholic, without having to show them falling off the wagon. I've always felt that twist, while believable, is often used as a crutch. Horton Foote needs no such crutch to keep his story in motion.
Could such a film be made today? If so, what would it look like? Allow me to speculate.
Our month-long celebration of the year 1983 nears its end. Beginning Wednesday, I'll begin naming my honorees in 18 categories for the Retro Hollmann Awards. But before I do - let's end the actual Oscar coverage the way all Oscars end, with Best Picture of the Year.
And what do all five nominees have in common? They are about people who need each other. Friends, lovers, business partners, researchers, family. These are stories of people who cannot survive without one another, for a whom a life without their community is a hollow existence. It's a sentiment at the core of The Big Chill - Glenn Close's Sarah believes she was at her best when she was with this formerly tight-knit group of college friends, and when one member of their group objects to the idea, Kevin Kline's wittily and sincerely observes, "How much love, sex, fun and friendship can a person take?" (It also became the movie's tagline)
Similarly is The Right Stuff about a family created out of circumstance. Only seven men are chosen to be the first Americans in space - they are each other's navigators, engineers, safety officers, communications liaisons. They depend on each other to make it back home, and they aren't home, their wives are keeping each other company.
The Dresser also has co-workers who depend on each other, in this case a little too much. Sir, the noted Shakespearean actor, not only depends on Norman to get him dressed and ready for each performance, he also depends on him to help maintain his sanity. Norman, himself dependent on the bottle, needs Sir just as much - he needs someone who needs him, he's dependent on dependency.
Just as wrapped around each other are Aurora and Emma, the mother-daughter duo at the heart of Terms of Endearment. Even though Aurora pursues her own romance, even though Emma moves out of state twice-over, even though they don't seem to get along for a good half of the movie -- they need each other. They constantly talk on the phone, they know everything about each other (even sex things!), one is the anchor for the other.
And then we come to the couple that saves each other. Mac Sledge is a former country-western star, a drunk. Rosa Lee is a widow, a single mother, making it on her own in a ramshackle motel/gas station. But when they meet, she gets him sober, he builds a life for her and her son, and they take care of the surrounding land to allow for a farm. And Rosa Lee thanks God for these Tender Mercies.
It's a strong lineup. Terms of Endearment came out on top, but maybe I have a thing or two to say about that. Maybe I'll say it after the jump.
I found the Best Actress nominees of 1983 difficult to write about, and I'm not sure why. Perhaps it's because what they all have in common is that they all did so well, so subtly well, so realistically. No matter the genre, no matter the circumstances of the character or the plot, all five performances were of people who exist in the real world: your mother, your sister, your neighbor, your co-worker. That's the story of 1983. Stories about people.
Three of those people are mothers - indeed, none of them seem to have a career outside of it! Jane Alexander is a mom struggling to survive in the aftermath of a nuclear war. Shirley MacLaine is a mother who cannot fathom her daughter's decisions, and isn't shy about saying so. Debra Winger is her daughter, but also a mother of three making the best of things in a marriage that has more than its share of ups and downs.
The other two are young women you underestimate at your own peril. Meryl Streep may seem like a mess - she's consistently tardy, she flashes co-workers, she chews gum on the job -- but she's the lone voice speaking out against what could be corporate corruption. And Julie Walters is under-educated, with a coarse manner of speaking, but when she sets out to better herself, she reveals an unpolished wisdom.
Shirley MacLaine won the Oscar -- which only seems fair. After all, she had been nominated in this category four previous times, with a fifth nod in Best Documentary for The Other Half of the Sky: A China Memoir. Meryl Streep was just coming off her second win for Sophie's Choice the year before, where she had defeated An Officer and a Gentleman's Debra Winger. Jane Alexander had been nominated thrice previously - she, too, had lost to Streep, when both were up for Kramer vs. Kramer. And Julie Walters was making her film debut.
I'm so glad we finally made it to Best Original Song, because the 80s was the decade for this category. The confusing rule changes, terrible winners, and "huh?" nominations of recent years have called into question the legitimacy, the necessity of Original Song. But without it, we wouldn't have the power ballads and pop hits that have defined the last 30 years of karaoke.
Here's just a sampling of nominees, not even winners: "9 to 5", "On the Road Again", "Endless Love", "Eye of the Tiger", "The Power of Love", "Footloose", "Let's Hear It For the Boy", "Somewhere Out There", "Nothing's Gonna Stop Us Now", "Kiss the Girl". Songs that, when played amongst friends, cause the whole party to stop for a group sing-along. And I haven't even touched the actual champions like "Say You, Say Me", "Up Where We Belong", "Take My Breath Away", "I Just Called to Say I Love You", and so on, and so forth.
1983 gave us three bona fide classics, songs that have stood the test of time, tunes that everyone - old, young, straights, gays, men, women - knows most of the words to. Two of them come from Flashdance, the third highest-grossing film of the year, whose soundtrack took the top spot of the Billboard Top 200 two weeks in a row. The other one comes from Yentl, Barbra Streisand's surprisingly great directorial debut.
Oh, and the other nominees were another tune from Yentl and one from Tender Mercies. Shall we have a listen?
