2019 Blindspot Pick #8: How Green Was My Valley (1941)

Tags

Classics, Drama

How green was my valley
So many years back!
No paychecks to tally,
No perils to track,
When people seemed good
And the future seemed bright,
Before my childhood
Had receded from sight.

How green was my valley,
How grand the coal mine,
How buoyant my sally
Beneath the sun’s shine!
Now I view the same scene,
As every man does,
Wishing it were as green
As I know it once was.
___________________

MPAA rating:  G

Time again for one of my Blindspots, this time going back to the Best Picture of 1941, which I chose in all honesty because Alex Trebek has said several times on Jeopardy! that it’s his favorite film. Based off a popular book at the time, How Green Was My Valley has never been on my radar for some reason, despite its status as an all-time classic and the fact that it beat Citizen Kane for Best Picture that year. And despite a somewhat excessive length, it’s a moving opus that deserves its accolades.

What How Green Was My Valley most reminded me of was The Waltons, the classic ‘70s show about a Depression-era family in Virginia. Just as The Waltons had periodic narration detailing the poetic remembrances of Earl Hamner, Jr., the narrator of this film (voiced by Irving Pichel) fondly recalls his large family and town life in a 19^th-century Welsh mining village. That narrator is Huw Morgan (played by a very young Roddy McDowall), who as a child watches the changes in his town: the labor strike when the miners rebel against lowered wages, much to the chagrin of his traditional father Gwilym (Donald Crisp); the romantic yearnings of his sister Angharad (Maureen O’Hara) and the new preacher (Walter Pidgeon); the dangers of mining accidents and the unforgiving elements; the religious hymns sung as the miners return home; and the indelible memories and scars all these events leave.

While melodramatic at times and honest about the unsatisfying turns life can take, How Green Was My Valley has an undeniable sweetness to it, both from the familial love among the Morgans and the frequent camaraderie of the townspeople. Individual vignettes stand out, such as a local boxer flippantly defending Huw against a cruel schoolteacher or the village rallying at the recovery of one of their sick members. Of course, there is also small-minded meanness to contend with, suitably denounced by a brilliant speech by Pidgeon’s Mr. Gruffudd, but what remains beyond the heartache are the sweet moments, made bittersweet by the film’s end.

I’m glad to check this film off of my Blindspot list, another classic I probably should have seen long ago. While John Ford’s composition and the cinematography (both Oscar-winning) is stunning, my VC and I agreed that we really wished it had been shot in color (you know, so we could see how green was the valley), especially a scene with a daffodil field, but shooting in black-and-white was a logistical sacrifice since World War II prevented actually shooting in Wales. California works as a colorless substitute, though, and it certainly feels authentic otherwise; oddly enough, the village itself reminded me of the one in Hayao Miyazaki’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky, which isn’t too surprising since the animators based its architecture off of a Welsh mining town. While I think I appreciate Citizen Kane a touch more, How Green Was My Valley deserved its win too.  I’ve heard that, whereas Citizen Kane represented the head, this film represented the cinematic heart of that year. I like that comparison and might have been persuaded to vote the same way back in 1941; classic is classic, after all.

Best line: (Mr. Gruffudd, pre-dating the similar sentiment of Spider-Man’s Uncle Ben) “But remember, with strength goes responsibility, to others and to yourselves. For you cannot conquer injustice with more injustice, only with justice and the help of God.”

 

Rank:  List Runner-Up

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
648 Followers and Counting

 

The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)

Tags

Action, Sci-fi, Thriller

Evil is as evil does,
And such it is and ever was,
But when an evil worse than most
Endangers all on every coast,
Perhaps what once was evil might
Defend the day against the night.
___________________

MPAA rating:  PG-13

I watched Pitch Black for the first time earlier this year, curious about Richard B. Riddick’s reputation as an anti-hero and the cult classic status of the series, and I liked it for the most part. Vin Diesel radiated cool danger as the shiny-eyed criminal, and it echoed Aliens while being just different enough. The Chronicles of Riddick distances itself from the Aliens comparisons, widening its scope perhaps too far but still preserving the coolness that made Riddick memorable.

Whereas Pitch Black was confined to a single alien-infested planet, The Chronicles of Riddick opens up a wealth of previously unknown sci-fi lore: a fanatical force of Necromongers under the supernaturally powered Lord Marshal (Colm Feore), a prophecy about the Lord Marshal’s downfall, a race of Furians thought to have been wiped out. It sometimes comes off as ridiculous and I couldn’t help but wonder what Karl Urban or Dame Judi Dench thought of their careers as they were delivering certain lines, but it’s just as often camp-tinged fun with enough fast-paced action, imaginative set and costume design, and genuinely awesome set pieces to forgive its faults. The effects sometimes belie their low budget, yet that somehow just adds to their appeal.

For some reason, writer-director David Twohy chose to target a PG-13 rating for this sequel, and I was grateful for it. I stand by my conviction that extreme gore and profanity are largely unnecessary, and The Chronicles of Riddick still delivers plenty of sometimes brutal badassery without them. (I mean, Riddick kills a guy with a tea cup, for Pete’s sake!) I’ve been shown to be very forgiving with science fiction movies, but once again I think this film’s mere 29% on Rotten Tomatoes is far too low and personally found it more watchable than Pitch Black, though my VC disagrees.

Of course, I recognize its faults as well, from occasional histrionics, a lackluster script, and meh villains. (The main villain’s past motives are basically the same as the peacock in Kung Fu Panda 2.) Yet I think the film’s worst aspect is its insistence on Riddick alone being the one character worth keeping around. I was disappointed with how Pitch Black ended by killing off the main character worth rooting for, but at least it had thematic significance at the time. The sequel continues that trend by showing that anyone who’s not Riddick is just there to be either an enemy or a sacrifice, which I think hurts the film as part of a series.

Despite this drawback and an admittedly dumb final scene, The Chronicles of Riddick was still great fun for this sci-fi fan, an underrated entry that replaced the first film’s horror with a partially successful stab at space epic. Now two films in, there’s just one left to watch in the series, 2013’s Riddick (which incidentally returned to an R rating), and I’m curious to see how the series ends. Unless Twohy and Diesel decide to keep it going, which I wouldn’t mind at all.

Best line: (Aereon, in the intro monologue) “In normal times, evil would be fought by good. But in times like these, well, it should be fought by another kind of evil.”

 

Rank:  List Runner-Up

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
646 Followers and Counting

 

Version Variations: Goodbye, Mr. Chips (1939, 1969)

Tags

Classics, Drama, Meet 'em and Move on, Musical, Romance, Version Variations

A young boy’s mind is a fallow field
With unknown promise yet to yield,
And every word their minds import
Of criticism or support,
Of firm reproof or merely sport,
Contributes to the man revealed
At last when boyhood is cut short.

To nobly tend this field with care,
Since parents can’t be always there,
Requires a person resolute,
Profuse with passion, temper mute,
With love of learning absolute.
Such people tasting praise is rare,
But they produce the finest fruit.
_____________________

MPAA rating of 1939 version:  Not Rated (should be G)
MPAA rating of 1969 version:  G

Those who’ve seen my Top 365 movie list might know that I love Mr. Holland’s Opus.  I’ve just always been drawn to the story of an unassuming teacher finding worth in the service of his students.  I’ve always vaguely known that 1939’s Goodbye, Mr. Chips, based on a 1934 novella, was the original version of such a story, but I’d never gotten around to seeing it. When I then learned it had been remade as a musical in 1969, I figured it would be a prime chance to compare the two in one of my overdue Version Variation posts.

The first Goodbye, Mr. Chips is known as one of the members of the great movie year of 1939, managing to win Robert Donat the Best Actor Oscar over some stiff competition, including Clark Gable in Gone with the Wind. Having seen the winning performance, I can now see why Donat edged out the rest, letting his range of sometimes inscrutable emotions play out with great subtlety as he ages from a fresh-faced new Latin teacher in 1870 to a celebrated educator in 1933, weighed down with all the joys and sorrows of a lifetime. (My VC enjoyed the film a lot, but as a huge Rhett Butler fan, her loyalties still lie with Gable.) Like Mr. Holland, the respect Mr. Chipping ends up with is hard-won, but much of it stems from his marriage to the lovely Kathy Ellis (Greer Garson), whom he meets on a European holiday. I would have loved for Garson’s role to have been longer, but, even with limited screen time, her warm presence successfully brings the prosaic Chipping out of his shell, improving his reputation at the school.

In many ways, Goodbye, Mr. Chips is exactly the kind of movie I like, a film spanning decades wherein one character meets various people and experiences alongside the ebb and flow of time, fostering a sense of fond nostalgia. I particularly liked his run-ins with successive generations of the Colley family, showing how static his life at school is while his students go on to have lives of their own. Mr. Holland’s Opus had some similarities, but whereas that film allowed time for characters to be eventually remembered, the turnaround in Goodbye, Mr. Chips is sometimes too fast, introducing a character only for us to learn what happened to them years later in a few minutes’ time. Ultimately, Goodbye, Mr. Chips is well-deserving of its classic status, and while there’s no danger of it supplanting my preference for Mr. Holland’s Opus, it was wonderful seeing a forerunner of a story I’ve come to love.

And then there’s the 1969 remake with Peter O’Toole and Petula Clark, which fits into the not-so-modern sentiment that remakes hardly ever match the original. There’s nothing wrong with making it a musical, allowing the songs to mainly serve as interior monologues, but the songs are largely forgettable, except for a couple clever lyrics, and O’Toole just isn’t much of a singer, trying out the Rex Harrison method of talk-singing but less successfully.

The plot has the same basic elements: Chipping is a somewhat unpopular Latin teacher at a boys’ school who meets and marries a girl named Katherine (Clark) and eventually becomes a mainstay of the institution. There are still the lines of boys sounding off their attendance and a very similar ending, but the filmmakers made significant plot changes elsewhere. For one, the time period is moved up, no longer starting in the 1800s but in the 1920s with Chipping already an established teacher; thus, the war he experiences is World War II rather than World War I.

The worst change, though, is that Katherine is no longer a cycling suffragette Chips meets on a mountain but a music hall singer with an unsavory past, and their formerly brief courtship takes up the entire first half of the film, which also features an intermission to pad out its greater length. There’s pushback against their marriage where there was none before, along with Roaring ’20s parties and O’Toole’s wife-at-the-time Siân Phillips as an annoying socialite. I know I said that I wished Chipping’s wife was in the original more, but I was referring to Greer Garson’s version; the writers of the remake essentially rewrote her whole character, and while Petula Clark was great in the role, it was such a weirdly unnecessary change from the original.

Even so, the latter half (or really third) of the film is much more similar to the first film and is better for it. O’Toole and Clark do well with their roles (O’Toole even got an Oscar nomination and won a Golden Globe), although O’Toole’s Chipping is slightly more stiff and crotchety, even in scenes supposed to be romantic. The film overall was solid enough, but, as with so many remakes, it just doesn’t compare with the original.

I guess films about long-suffering teachers who touch the lives of their students just naturally appeal to me, and Goodbye, Mr. Chips, whatever the incarnation, fits that mold. The original is clearly the better of the two, though, and certainly the one I’d recommend first. While the scene wasn’t in the 1939 movie, I couldn’t help but recall Mr. Holland’s Opus when the second film’s Kathy organizes a school musical with the students, which made me wonder how much either version of Goodbye, Mr. Chips really inspired the 1995 film. They’re so different in setting and character, and yet so similar in theme, particularly in their final heartwarming sentiments (see below). I suppose that’s what speaks to me most of all.

Best line (from 1939 film but something similar in both): (Mr. “Chips”) “I thought I heard you saying it was a pity… pity I never had any children. But you’re wrong. I have… thousands of them, thousands of them… and all boys.”

 

Rank of 1939 version:  List Runner-Up

Rank of 1969 version:  Honorable Mention

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
646 Followers and Counting

 

Eighth Grade (2018)

Tags

Drama

That awkward time between the ages,
Not adult and not a child,
One of life’s most stalling stages
Is a source of trauma shared.
Whether normal, shy, or wild,
These are years we all are scared,
Negligent and unprepared,
And yet so fondly reconciled
Once we’ve turned to other pages,
Just a chapter when compiled,
Just a molehill when compared.
_________________

MPAA rating: R (for five F-words and a couple sexual situations)

Every now and then, a movie comes along that totally encapsulates a time and place, a cinematic time capsule for future generations to watch when they ask, “What was it like back then?” The most notable such film would probably be Saturday Night Fever for the ‘70s, but Eighth Grade is a time capsule for Generation Z, an excellent coming-of-age story for awkward high-schoolers everywhere, especially those of the 2010s.

Elsie Fisher plays Kayla Day, a girl whose diffident demeanor has left her largely friendless as she goes from middle school to high school. She films vague but encouraging vlog posts about having the self-confidence she lacks herself, and she pines for a boy in class while ignoring her dad (Josh Hamilton) behind the sullen wall of her phone. In short, she’s painfully real, and although her Instagram addiction and overuse of the work “like” can be as irritating as it is in real life, you can’t help but empathize with her desire to be liked amid a sea of academic and online indifference. Fisher is anything but glamorous in this movie, but her natural sensitivity brings great heart to several scenes; plus, her talent is evident from the fact that she’s supposedly much more outgoing than her character.

As I said, Bo Burnham’s feature debut includes quite a few details that add to the film’s snapshot of present-day culture, nods to the dab, the floss, Adventure Time, Rick and Morty, and drills for school shootings. Yet, there’s also something universal to Kayla’s anxiety and desire for belonging that I feel strikes a chord of poignancy with more than just the current youth generation. Not much actually happens, so I could see some naturalistic version of this film being presented with no incidental music, which would make it unnecessarily boring; luckily, an electronic score pops in at ideal moments, and I loved the use of Enya’s “Orinoco Flow” to elevate a web browsing session.

For being R-rated, the film is largely tame, if only they’d left out a couple F-bombs, but there are some uncomfortable moments related to Kayla’s budding sexuality, which do at least stop short when she realizes she’s not ready for such things. Yet, as I said, reality is the film’s greatest strength, and there’s nothing that doesn’t seem very likely to be happening in any number of towns across America. I wasn’t entirely sold on the story until the last quarter, especially a moving scene between Kayla and her dad that has to be one of the sweetest father-daughter moments in film. By the end, even Kayla’s halting videos carry greater meaning than I expected at the beginning. Eighth Grade may have been spurned by the Oscars (though Fisher did get a Golden Globe nom), but there’s a good reason it made AFI’s Top Ten Films of 2018. It’s ultimately one of the most relatable movies in recent years.

Best line: (Kayla’s dad to her) “And if you could just see yourself the way I see you, which is how you are, how you really are, how you always have been, I swear to God, you wouldn’t be scared either.”

 

Rank: List Runner-Up

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
646 Followers and Counting

 

Spider-Man: Far From Home (2019)

Tags

Action, Comedy, Sci-fi, Superhero, Thriller

Don’t you just hate it
When you’re on vacation
Intent on enjoying some hard relaxation,
And then all at once,
With distinct irritation,
Your work calls, demanding your consideration?

You reach for the phone
With a slight hesitation,
But then you ignore it with smug indignation.
But if the world ends
Due to your recreation,
You just might regret your own preoccupation.
_____________________________________________

MPAA rating: PG-13

How do you follow up a monumental universe-changing achievement like Avengers: Endgame? With a light-hearted high-school romp, of course! Just as Ant-Man and the Wasp lightened the mood following Infinity War last year, Spider-Man: Far From Home brings the scale of mayhem and destruction down a bit while delivering yet another marvelously entertaining entry to the MCU.

Spider-Man: Homecoming was a fun new version of the webslinger, but actors other than Tom Holland hadn’t quite settled into their roles and there was a tad too much “gee whiz, this is awesome” mentality, albeit an understandable one since they’re high school kids. In Far From Home, all the pieces just fit more comfortably, and characters like Zendaya’s MJ and Angourie Rice’s Betty Brant are given more presence than the first film. And, of course, the other big difference is the absence of Robert Downey, Jr.’s, mentoring Iron Man (for reasons everyone should know by now), though his legacy still plays a role.

This time around, after most of Peter’s class was snapped out of existence by Thanos and then returned five years later in what is understatedly called the Blip, things have largely gone back to normal, and Peter and friends are eager to enjoy a school trip to Europe. Enter Nick Fury (Samuel L. Jackson) and the new interdimensional hero Mysterio (Jake Gyllenhaal) to interrupt Peter’s carefree vacation with the threat of elemental monsters wreaking havoc, which is almost as stressful as telling MJ he likes her.

Anyone familiar with the comics should know what to expect in regards to Mysterio, but there’s still plenty of action to enjoy, as well as some hilarious running gags and a few genuinely surprising twists. The subplots are all good fun, from the impromptu romance of Peter’s friend Ned (Jacob Batalon) to a rivalry between Peter and a handsome classmate (Remy Hii) for MJ’s affections. And of course, the visual effects are staggeringly well-executed, including a hallucinatory sequence that would feel right at home in a Doctor Strange movie.

It’s not above complaints, such as an unrealistic scene of the villain monologuing about his plan in detail or the uncertainty of why Peter is somehow expected to fill Iron Man’s shoes. Plus, Holland and Zendaya probably have the least chemistry as far as spider-couples go. Yet Far From Home serves as an enjoyable epilogue to the ambitious gravitas of Endgame, a teen comedy in superhero guise that ends Marvel’s Phase 3 on a high note, as well as a cliffhanger.

Looking forward in Marvel’s timeline, it stings to notice that it looks like there’s no forward motion in the current storyline until late 2020 with The Falcon and the Winter Soldier on Disney+. But maybe that’s best, what with the time jump of Endgame and the threat of people getting “superheroed out.” Not that I’m in danger of that. No, I’m still very much on the Marvel bandwagon and hoping, like so many, that Disney and Sony can come to some agreement on letting Spider-Man continue in the MCU. I don’t expect him to take Iron Man’s place, but he fits so well in this universe that it would be a shame for the powers that be to yank him out of it.

Best line: (Happy Hogan) “You handle the suit. I’ll handle the music.” [‘Back in Black’ by AC/DC plays]
(Peter) “Oh, I love Led Zeppelin!”

 

Rank: List-Worthy (joining Spider-Man: Homecoming)

 

© 2019 S.G. Liput
646 Followers and Counting