I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #202 - Chinatown (1974, dir. Roman Polanski)

It is possible that Roman Polanski’s Chinatown is one of the few movies that has absolutely everything. Beginning with a labyrinthine script by Robert Towne, which simultaneously deals with issues of public policy, water rights in California, entitlement among the wealthy, murder and even incest, all within the rich cloak of a stylish noir mystery. For his part, Polanski treats each scene like an individual work of art, utilizing his skill in set, light, movement, music and performance to make each plot twist an indispensable piece of a larger puzzle, which inexorably leads to the emotionally shocking and politically relevant conclusion. The casting and performances are world-class with Jack Nicholson and Faye Dunaway offering the best performances of their careers and veteran John Huston offering one of the most understated studies of evil in the history of film.

Jack Nicholson is J.J. Gittes, a Los Angeles private detective who has made a name for himself as a high profile cheating spouse catcher. His routine is disrupted when he gets hired to investigate the commissioner of water and power in Los Angeles who is suspected of cheating on his wife. A seemingly normal “Sam Spade” type mystery quickly goes off the rails into much more politically treacherous territory as Gittes’ subject, Hollis Mulwray, becomes embroiled in a controversial plan to divert water to Los Angeles county at the same time he is suspected of carrying on an extra-marital affair, and then, suspiciously, ends up dead shortly thereafter. I have seen this movie at least half a dozen times and this time I REALLY paid attention to the details of the plot, and I have to say, it is extremely hard to keep them all straight. This doesn’t take away from the excitement of trying to figure it out. There are so many levels to this mystery that figuring any of it out before the end of the movie is an accomplishment. The water rights issue is relevant to today’s world as much as it was in 1937 (when the movie takes place), as are issues of land usage, real-estate manipulation and county zoning - all seemingly boring topics that Polanski masterfully turns into a breathtaking mystery. You will literally not be able to guess what is going on until the final scenes, but you will be on the edge of your seat getting there. Running parallel courses throughout the film are the complex and disturbing relationships between Mulwray, his supposed girlfriend, his wife (Dunaway), and her ultra-wealthy father (John Huston). An adequate synopsis of this plot would take pages there are so many twists and turns in both the story of stolen water and in the dysfunctional family/marriage/sex/incest sub-plot. Ultimately, the solution is not as important as how we got there.

The title of the movie refers to J.J. Gittes’ past life as a police detective in the Chinatown neighborhood of Los Angeles. As a younger man he experienced a lawless and anarchic subset of society that comes to act as a metaphor for past sins in this movie. Everyone in the movie has their past “Chinatown” that they would rather forget, or at least not admit to. Similarly, many people in real life have done things in order to get what they wanted which they might now regret. Towards the end of the movie John Huston tells Gittes that in the right circumstances people are capable of almost anything. This turns out to be tragically true for the characters in Chinatown as the movie moves speeds like a train headed for a downed bridge. We know this is going to end badly for everybody, but we simply can’t guess the ghastly truths that make up the characters’ secret motivations. When the truth comes out in a series of scenes that are as revelatory as they are disturbing, we come to understand the depths of depravity involved here. Ending with the classic line “Forget it Jake, it’s Chinatown,” the viewer feels sucked down into the moral vortex with Gittes.

Every single thing works in Chinatown. It is a suspenseful and ultimately rewarding story, filmed with a master’s eye toward the traditions of film-noir, and acted by an ensemble cast for the ages. This is a mystery that keeps you guessing and leaves you scratching your head when it’s over. So few films are this intelligent and unpredictable, yet Chinatown succeeds in keeping us guessing and then offering a believable and shocking conclusion.

- Paul Epstein

I’d Love To Turn You On At The Movies #170 - Five Easy Pieces (1970, dir. Bob Rafelson)

Why does this movie have a reflective hold on my mind and soul? It is flawed and dated, and yet, the underlying theme of a confused man’s search for meaning in modern America holds truer than almost any other movie of the era. Released in 1970, Five Easy Pieces is THE movie that sums up the confusing malaise that settled upon the survivors of the 60’s as the far bleaker 1970’s rose on the horizon like the glow of an errant atomic blast. The secret to the movie, however is not the hefty cultural baggage it carries with it, but the career defining performance by Jack Nicholson and, to a lesser degree, Karen Black. Nicholson’s Bobby Eroica Dupea is a Russian nesting doll of psychological complexity, whose tormented path through life slowly reveals itself as the confused details of his past and the uncertain direction of his future come colliding in on him during an unwelcome family reckoning.

The movie opens on a Bobby Dupea who is easily recognizable to most of us: a working stiff with a dead-end job, a loveless relationship and a nonexistent piece of the American dream. He works in the oil fields with his buddy Elton, drinks beer at night and barely tolerates his attractive but dim girlfriend, Rayette Dipesto, a waitress with hopes of being a country singer ala Tammy Wynette (whose songs effectively provide much of the movie’s soundtrack.) Bobby’s life seems to be going nowhere, and when he quits his job we feel like this is just another step on his way down to utter failure. This first part of the movie is shot with a simple beauty that betrays none of the complexity of character that will follow.

We next see Bobby incongruously dressed in a suit and wandering into a recording studio in Hollywood. He is here to see his sister, Partita, an eccentric classical pianist (modeled on Glen Gould) whose presence immediately starts filling in gaps of our understanding of who this man really is. She tells him their father is ill and Bobby should visit. We come to understand that Bobby is from a family of musical prodigies, and that his relationship is fractured and removed from the reality he once lived. Bobby’s journey home to his family compound on a private island signals a change in tone and temperament for Five Easy Pieces as it changes from a study of characters to a character study. Once Bobby is back among the wealth, education, privilege and expectations of his family, his lifestyle choices, as depicted in the first half of the movie, become understandable. The Dupea family, including the mute, stroke-damaged patriarch represent everything the 60’s rebelled against: pompous, over-bred, classist creeps, impotent in their achievement, yet certain they are above it all. Bobby sets his sights on his brother’s girlfriend Catherine (Susan Anspach) and seduces her in an uncomfortable clash of cultures that signals a final break within the family. In the pivotal scene of the movie, Bobby pours his heart out to his unspeaking father. He breaks down and shares his feelings of worthlessness and regret. It is the single greatest moment of Jack Nicholson’s career and one of the most affecting scenes in all of American cinema. It is hard to imagine a person in post-euphoric America who would not be affected by this moment. This masterful scene illustrates the moment in every young person’s life when artifice and swagger turn to actual emotion.

As the movie comes to its conclusion, Bobby introduces Rayette to his family, including Catherine, and the difference between the two women is as stark as the two lives they live.  It is Bobby’s discontent that cuts through both of them with stinging realism - both sides are broadly drawn to the point of being caricatures, with Bobby being the believable “everyman.” Bobby’s experience implies that there was no answer to American life - the tradition of European-style intellectualism was ultimately as hollow as working in the oil fields to Bobby. The schism between 60’s and 70’s intellectuals and the common man was gulfed with expectation and disappointment.

Five Easy Pieces is much more than its plot indicates. In a way it is a turning point for American cinema and national self-reflection. The reality is that American life is simultaneously a rich and beautiful panoply as well as being totally dead at its core. It is Bobby’s internal struggle that has the most relevance to me. The scenes that have the most cultural resonance are disposable (the famous luncheonette scene); rather the heart of the movie rests in Nicholson’s quiet and understated portrayal of a man with depth, and his rejection of that depth for what he considers a “real” existence. It ultimately points to the hollowness of ALL American life. The film ends with Bobby once again running out on his responsibilities and leaving it all behind in an existential turning away from all expectation in modern society - free to be a drifter - yet shackled to his own sense of failure and meaninglessness. With nearly fifty years of American experience since this film was made, its enigmatic message feels more relevant than ever.

-         Paul Epstein

I'd Love to Turn You On At the Movies #137 - The Missouri Breaks (1976, dir. Arthur Penn)

Think about the extraordinary turn Marlon Brando’s career was taking in the 1970’s.  After stalling a bit in the late 60’s he came roaring back in 1972 - jowly, greying at the temple and more potent than ever in The Godfather and Last Tango In Paris. Two braver explorations of middle age could not be imagined, then… silence, until 1976 when he returned – greyer still, jowlier yet, but no less intense and seeming to have tapped into some sort of cosmic awareness that made him a real-life cross between con-man, genius, artist, shaman and fool. It was also impossible to take your eyes off of him in what could be considered his last great role of substance in The Missouri Breaks (I love Apocalypse Now, but it is hard to call what Brando did in it as “substantive.” Memorable yes, substantive maybe less so.).  Director Arthur Penn created a stylish western in the classic mode, which is elevated to something truly memorable by Marlon Brando’s inexplicable performance. From the moment he appears on screen as Robert E. Lee Clayton he is magnetic - both compelling and terrifying at the same time. He is a regulator (a legal assassin) who has been brought from Wyoming to Montana to help rancher David Braxton (John McLiam) and his attractive daughter Jane (Kathleen Lloyd) deal with a band of horse rustlers (Jack Nicholson, Harry Dean Stanton, Randy Quaid and more) who have been causing trouble. Brando enters the action as an exotic swashbuckler; fringed leather jacket, long hair and an Irish accent. He immediately shows himself as a man not to be trifled with, appraising Nicholson as the thief and beginning to exact punishment on the gang. His speed and deadly accuracy prove his reputation as an uncontrollable, but ultimately successful executioner.

With the central conflict established, Penn goes about turning the movie into a philosophical treatise on the difference between being a thief and a killer, and if either of those is morally worse than being a bad person on the right side of the law. David Braxton, it turns out, is a world-class creep who deserves whatever he gets, while Nicholson seems to be a more three-dimensional man than his designation as horse rustler might indicate. He yearns for the honest life - or at least the love of a woman who has lived the honest life - available in the person of Braxton’s daughter. Brando’s character Clayton appears more and more like a scorched earth psychopath, hell-bent on destroying his prey as violently as possible, letting no one - including those who hired him - stand in the way. His inhumanity grows with each scene as Nicholson becomes an increasingly sympathetic protagonist. As Clayton’s killings take on greater cruelty with each victim, Clayton’s personality takes on more complexity. He begins shifting accents from Irish to Southern, to female (complete with unforgettable drag costume) and back to Irish. His performance is always on the edge of hallucinatory, the cutting edge of menace and hilarity. In spite of it being one of his least famous movies, I believe The Missouri Breaks contains one of Brando’s most beguiling performances. By the end of the movie, he is a truly frightening presence - unpredictable, deadly and unstoppable - beyond the control of laws or bullets. The shocking twist at the end remains a great cinematic trick, never failing to surprise.

In the 34 years that have passed since I last saw this movie, I had forgotten almost everything about it. So the panoramic cinematography, realistic take on the Old West setting, excellent music and funny dialogue were all a welcome re-acquaintance. It is Marlon Brando’s terrifying depiction which I had not forgotten, and it was, in fact, even more potent than I remembered. He has had one of the most terminally appraised careers in the history of film, yet his depiction of Robert E. Lee Clayton does much to justify his genius reputation.

-         Paul Epstein