TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971)

CRITERION TOP TEN

Just for fun.  I included discs from all formats I've collected over the years and have included sentimental choices even though the quality may have been subsequently surpassed.  I wrote these down as they came to me and did not adjust rankings afterward.

08.  TWO LANE BLACKTOP (1971) - Blu-Ray (and DVD)

TWO-LANE BLACKTOP
Directed by Monte Hellman.  Written by Rudy Wurlitzer and Will Cory.
Starring Warren Oates, James Taylor, Dennis Wilson, Laurie Bird
1971, 102 minutes, Color, Rated R, 2.35:1

I saw this on television back in the 80's, or rather, since this is a widescreen film and it was shown panned and scanned, I only saw about half of it.  This is an elliptical movie that I find endlessly fascinating, for reasons I am usually unable to communicate.  Not much happens in the traditional movie sense — it's about a cross-country race between rival drivers, which sounds reasonably exciting.  However, the film ignores the obvious and ultimately drops the race aspect entirely, instead focusing on the characters.  There are four characters in the film, and no one is named.  James Taylor plays the Driver, Dennis Wilson is the Mechanic, Warren Oates is GTO and Laurie Bird is the Girl.  Are they symbols, or is their anonymity an intentional statement by the writers on the universality of their experiences?   The film ostensibly ends like it begins with Taylor doing what he is best at--the only thing he is good at, perhaps.  Except whereas the race at the start opens up the possibilities of the characters and story, the race at the close ends with a freeze frame that then warps and distorts until the image burns away.  Just what in the hell is that supposed to mean?  For a film I love I am distressingly short on theories.

Monte Hellman made this film largely in order, only giving his non-actors a few pages of the script at a time.  He says he did this to try and preserve spontaneity with the largely untrained cast--Taylor, Wilson and Bird had never made a film before.  I haven't seen all of Hellman's films--and there really are not that many of them.  Aside from RIDE THE WHIRLWIND (1966) and THE SHOOTING (1966) I don't think I've seen any of his other films.  Both RIDE and THE SHOOTING are superior works and BLACKTOP feels like a natural progression.  Oates and Hellman worked together a total of 4 times together--this, THE SHOOTING, COCKFIGHTER (1974), and CHINA 9, LIBERTY 37 (1978).

Wilson was in The Beach Boys when he made this film, and Taylor was just about to release the album that would make him a superstar, SWEET BABY JAMES.  Taylor has gone on record saying that he hated Hellman's approach to making the movie and even wrote a song about it.¹  For someone who hated the experience, Taylor ultimately delivers a good performance.  What he may lack in technique he more than makes up for with charisma--he just looks good on screen and has a certain undefinable something that makes him consistently interesting to watch.  Bird was a model before this and subsequently appeared in only two other films.²  She likewise gives a moving and effective performance.   Warren Oates is simply magnificent as GTO.  Truly, his performance is a thing of beauty, alternating between manic machismo and world-wearied self-reflection.  His nuanced, complex performance offers much to study and ponder, just as the film does overall.

I find myself playing the "guess the damage" game with the characters.  They are all reasonably damaged, and none of it is explained, so one is left to their own devices to try and determine motivation and history.  At one point, Oates' character tries to open up to Taylor, but Taylor abruptly cuts him off.  "I don't want to hear about it", he says.  The audience may well be muttering to themselves, "well, I wanted to hear about it."  Oates comes the closest to being someone the audience can fully relate to.  Wilson, Bird, and especially Taylor, not so much.  This isn't to say that there aren't riches to mine in their performances.  Taylor vividly portrays a man not quite in touch with his feelings, desperately trying to express something to Bird's character.  Bird is an enigma--does she care about anyone in the film or was it all simply a way to hitch a ride?

Released on DVD first by Anchor Bay in an edition that featured a 5.1 remix and a commentary by director Monte Hellman and Producer Gary Kurtz.  It also came in a spiffy tin box with an oversized booklet of groovy pictures of an impossibly young and coiffed James Taylor.  That commentary was actually very good.  When Criterion released the film on DVD it featured the same 5.1 remix but dropped the commentary in favor of an all-new commentary by Hellman alone.  I've still never listened to it.  The Criterion DVD release also featured the original shooting script as a DVD-sized book.  (Some of Criterion's more recent releases have also included books like this, namely PICNIC AT HANGING ROCK and RED RIVER.) The Blu-Ray release features a noticeably improved image transfer, lossless sound, and new supplements, including a great hour-long conversation between James Taylor and Hellman.  The screenplay was not included with the Blu-Ray, which is a shame because it is fascinating.  Hellman claims in the intro for it that he shot the entire script and that seems accurate, as everything in the film is there in the script.   There is more detail in the script, but it tells the same story, so it doesn't change the story as much as make it somewhat clearer what is happening..

1. "Riding On a Railroad", Mud Slide Slim and Blue Horizon, 1971, Warner Records.

There's a man up here who claims to have his hands upon the reins.
There are chains upon his hands and he's riding upon a train.
We are riding on a railroad, singing some else's song

EDIT:  It's since been clarified that Taylor had written this song prior to his experience making the film.  Still, the lyrics closely parallel the filmmaking experience.

2. Bird had a reasonably unhappy life.  She died in 1979 while romantically involved with Art Garfunkel, possibly as a suicide, possibly accidentally.

THE FISHER KING

CRITERION TOP TEN

Just for fun.  I included discs from all formats I've collected over the years and have included sentimental choices even though the quality may have been subsequently surpassed.  

10.  THE FISHER KING (1991) - Laserdisc

THE FISHER KING
Directed by Terry Gilliam.  Written by Richard LaGravanese
Starring Jeff Bridges, Robin Williams, Mercedes Ruehl, Amanda Plummer
1993, 137 minutes, Color, Rated R, 1.85:1

Terry Gilliam collaborated with Criterion for a number of special edition laserdisc and DVD releases for many of his films in the 1990's.  He almost made my list three times, which for a top-ten would have been pretty sweet for him.  In the end, however, I decided to limit him to just one film in the top ten.  While the other two films--BRAZIL and THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN--were actually more impressive Criterion special editions, FISHER KING was more meaningful to me as a collector.  Since this is all really about me anyway, I went with this one over those two.  For the record, Criterion also released special editions of THE TIME BANDITS, FEAR AND LOATHING IN LAS VEGAS, as well as special editions of MONTY PYTHON AND THE HOLY GRAIL, and MONTY PYTHON AND THE LIFE OF BRIAN.

THE FISHER KING was one of the few current movies I ever bought from Criterion.   Meaning, it wasn't a critical rescue of a forgotten classic but was a full-blown special edition of a movie that had not long before played first run in a theater.  The Criterion Collection began on laserdisc in 1984 to celebrate "classic" films. Their first two releases were KING KONG and CITIZEN KANE. Subsequent years saw releases like THE 39 STEPS, HIGH NOON, and THE SEVENTH SEAL. Criterion pioneered the concept of special features for home video releases--they were the first to include a commentary which appeared on their KING KONG disc.  So when they started releasing current films and adding special features to them it was news.  Criterion ultimately released a number of current releases--films that were more POPULAR than CLASSIC--and it also almost always engendered the same response from certain folks.  Responses like,   "ARMAGEDDON is a classic? Really?"  Still, they also put out films like SHINE, BOOGIE NIGHTS, THE GAME, CHASING AMY, CRASH, SLING BLADE, THE ENGLISH PATIENT, EVITA, TRAINSPOTTING, DEAD PRESIDENTS, DAMAGE, BRAM STOKER'S DRACULA, THE PLAYER, BOYZ N THE HOOD. While some of these films never interested me, I appreciated the fact that they were out there.

At the start of the movie, Bridges is a DJ in the mode of Howard Stern who makes a living by putting people down and saying outlandish things.  He makes an offhand comment to a caller that yuppies should be killed and the caller takes him seriously.  One of the people he kills is Robin Williams' wife, and seeing her killed in front of him snaps him.  Later when Bridges,  disgraced and drunk, is saved by Williams who now lives on the street drifting in and out of reality, he finds a path to redemption.  He at first tries to help Williams' character as a way of trying to make himself feel better but grows to like him.  A quest for the holy grail figures into the plot, as does a "red knight", both parts of Williams' elaborate alternate reality.  The red Knight is more or less a depiction of the reality of his wife's death, and every time Williams sees it he runs away in terror.  Oh, and did I mention it's also a love story?

THE FISHER KING was, at the time, an anomaly in Gilliam's filmography for two reasons.  First, all of his previous films had originated with him meaning he had co-written everything he had filmed up to that the point this film was made.  After the Sturm und Drang of MUNCHAUSEN--that film had a fascinating and depressing production history that I won't get into here--he was handed a script so good that he couldn't turn it down.  The way Gilliam tells it, he was given two scripts--one was a big surefire hit, the other was THE FISHER KING.  He says he gave up on the first script and started reading KING fully expected to give up on that as well.  Two hours later he knew he had to make the movie. Whether this is really how it happened I don't know, but regardless is sounds good.  Gilliam brings considerable exuberance to the making of this film that makes it a joy to watch.  True, on paper KING sounds like an immense downer, and perhaps in lesser hands it may have turned out that way. In Gilliam's hands, the depressing aspects give the story dramatic weight that helps elevate it rather than weigh it down.

This leads us to the second anomaly that THE FISHER KING represents in the Gilliam filmography:  it is much more emotionally realistic than many if not most of his other films.  True, it has an   exaggeration of style typical of Gilliam films, employing wide angles, cluttered production design, and a childlike sense of wonder in certain scenes.  It also has Robin Williams riffing like only he can while still playing the "serious" moments very well.  We have grief, anguish, cross dressing singers, mythical (imaginary) knights and true love co-mingling very successfully.  In many ways, THE FISHER KING is unlike any other movie I have seen, and I mean that in a good way.

The acting in this film is way above average, a testament perhaps to the way above average script. Jeff Bridges gives a great performance--one of a series of great performances he gave in the early 90's*.Robin Williams gives a deeply rendered performance that is not diminished in any way by his subsequent fate.  It is a performance of gentle playfulness and full-on heart-rending despair. Rounding out the cast is Mercedes Ruehl and Amanda Plummer.  All shine brightly, in part because of the wonderful writing, but also from what they bring to it.

I don't think this was ever re-issued on Criterion DVD and for a while was only available in the U.S. on a bare-bones Blu-Ray.  Criterion has subsequently released the film on Blu-Ray, but I have not seen it.  At the time the laserdisc was released it was still reasonably new and director Terry Gilliam was excited to talk about it so his commentary was quite good.  Also included were some deleted scenes, some costume tests, and some still frame galleries.  Criterion spent some time in the 1990's helping affirm Gilliam's status as a serious filmmaker by producing great editions of his films.  Note, these screen captures are not from the laserdisc.

* AMERICAN HEART, THE VANISHING and FEARLESS if you are wondering.