Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Working Girl

Written as part of the series hosted by the great Nathaniel R. at The Film Experience. Go and read!

It's impossible to oversell how incredible the opening credits sequence of Mike Nichols's Working Girl is. That soaring shot around the Statue of Liberty to the Manhattan skyline to the Staten Island Ferry is just awe-inspiring, and when combined with Carly Simon's music, it's nothing short of perfection, selling you on everything our main character wants before we've even met her.

Tess works as a secretary in one of those nebulous corporate businesses that seem to do everything at once but exist for no real purpose other than making money. She's also been going to night school to get her degree, and so she's smart and a real go-getter. But unfortunately, the fact that she looks like Melanie Griffith means that no one thinks of her in that way. Until she gets placed under Sigourney Weaver's Katherine.

And that's when things get interesting.

As the film goes on, it becomes clear that what we're seeing is a duel between two different kinds of femininity: Katherine's take-no-prisoners ambition, wielding sexuality as a weapon to get what she wants vs. Tess's quiet, growing confidence, moxie, and use of street smarts (AKA "women's intuition"). Who exactly is slyer, and whether she gets the reward or punishment she deserves says more about the viewer than it does about the film itself, mostly because of Mike Nichols's pitch-perfect direction.

See, it would appear as though the film is on Tess's side, but let's not forget that the only reason she finds out about Katherine's stealing of her idea by single white female-ing her while she's recuperating from a skiing injury. And she still lies and manipulates her way into a big deal, a better job, AND a swoon-worthy man - not all that different from what Katherine was doing to her.

The difference between Katherine and Tess is razor-thin, and hinges on one thing and one thing only: Tess's status as underdog. If you love a good underdog, rise-up-by-your-bootstraps story (and let's be honest, who doesn't?), you're on Tess's side, thinking that the ends justify the means. But I can easily see powerful people of both sexes, but particularly women, being on Katherine's side - the woman knows business and was only doing what she had to do to get ahead in a world that sees women as objects, not equal partners. Her only "crime" is trying to pass off someone else's idea as her own, and then trying to save herself when she was found out. Any one of us could have done the exact same thing if the circumstances were right. While the script on the face of it seems to reward the more traditionally feminine, unassuming Tess, and punish the more masculine, aggressive Katherine, Nichols never seems to really want to go there. He seems to get how problematic that construct is, and works against it whenever possible.

As much as the script tries to make Katherine a hateful, heinous bitch (with Weaver alternately playing to that and away from it, brilliantly), Nichols keeps trying to cast some shade on Tess wherever he can. It's not just that the scene where Tess uses Katherine's apartment plays so queasily - there is no trace of wish-fulfillment fantasy here - it's in the way Griffith says "Well, if that's the way you want to go..." when a colleague of Katherine's gives a suggestion on catering a dinner party; it's in the way that Olympia Dukakis's HR rep tells Tess that none of her previous superiors in the company will vouch for her; and it's in the way that Tess slowly but surely moves away from her Staten Island friends throughout the movie.

Sure, Joan Cusack's Cyn is always there ready to lend a hand, but they are practically inseparable when the movie begins, and as the film goes on they are farther and farther apart in many scenes, until at the end they're in two completely separate spaces. At first, Tess's status as a Staten Islander is a defining trait. But she's already trying to eradicate her accent, and then she loses her jewelry, and then her big hair, and then nearly all of her ties to her home, family, and friends. How is the erasing of Tess's uniqueness (in the context of the film's business world) a good thing? Is the message here that you have to change yourself to get ahead?

The film's last shot, a reversal of the opening track in on the ferry, certainly has irony written all over it: For all that she's done, Tess is now just one of many faceless businessmen and women in one of many multi-company skyscrapers in Manhattan. It's both a huge accomplishment and not so much of one.

Best Shot Runner-Up

It's hard for me to say exactly when this reading of the film occurred to me. The seeds were planted in this early shot of Katherine at her dinner party (with dim sum served by Tess, apparently because she only suggested a caterer and not wait staff - is Katherine punishing her or did Tess offer?). She instantly stands out, and the film constantly associates her with the color red from then on. It's clear she's a woman trying to make her way in a man's world, and using everything she has at her disposal - money, smarts, sexuality - to do so.

Then there was that deeply uncomfortable scene with Tess in the absent Katherine's apartment, specifically the moment when she starts putting on Katherine's make-up and perfume, which is just deeply, deeply creepy while still somehow not feeling too out of place in the context of the film. And then came the ending, which Nichols seems to complicate as I've detailed above.

But then there was this shot, seemingly a throwaway gag, but on second look very revealing about Katherine's character:

BEST SHOT

She has made so many friends in the hospital after her accident, and she's having a great time enjoying herself while not being at work. And AT THE SAME TIME, it can just as easily be read as Katherine being a callous woman tossing orders around at Tess while she is having the time of her life, blithely not giving a damn about work or the well-being of others (look how she even got a nurse to give her a pedicure!). It's maybe not the most arresting shot in the film, or the one that provoked the biggest reaction out of me, but it's the only one in the whole film that I actually went back and looked at again and saw a deeper meaning. And in a seemingly bland, of-its-time comedy, that's pretty impressive.

Thursday Movie Picks - Fish Out of Water Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. All you have to do to get in on the action is pick three films that relate to the week's theme and write a little bit about them!

This week on Thursday Movie Picks: Fish Out of Water movies. Which is VERY convenient for me, since I just watched one for another project! So why don't we start with that one...

Witness (Peter Weir, 1985) Harrison Ford received his only Oscar nomination (CAN YOU BELIEVE?!?) for playing Philadelphia cop John Brook, forced to hide out in Amish country after he gets shot trying to protect a young Amish boy who witnessed a murder. Weir and cinematographer John Seale cast quite a spell here, making Amish country feel like a lovely place to live, even if they don't have electricity and believe themselves to be superior to everyone else. The scene where the whole community comes together to raise a barn for a newlywed couple is just magnificent in every way. That the film is so good with the quiet drama that comes in Amish country makes its facility with the thriller elements that dominate the first and last twenty minutes even more impactful. PLUS: early screen appearances from Danny Glover, Viggo Mortensen, and MISS Patti LuPone herself!

...but most good Fish Out of Water tales are comic as opposed to dramatic, so....

My Cousin Vinny (Jonathan Lynn, 1992) MARISA TOMEI FOREVER, BITCHES! Look, My Cousin Vinny isn't some masterpiece of cinema or anything, but it's still funny as all get-out thanks to director Lynn's knack for staging (he also directed the comic masterpiece Clue) and the inspired comic stylings of the Oscar-winning Tomei as Mona Lisa Vito, stealing the film right out from under the nose of Joe Pesci (who is no slouch in the comedy department here). A rogue's gallery of great actors in key supporting roles take the rote city-slickers-in-the-sticks courtroom drama of the script and make it indelible with go-for-broke line readings that just kill. You're probably reciting some of them right now.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan (Larry Charles, 2006) One of the best movie-going experiences of my life was seeing Sacha Baron Cohen's masterpiece mockumentary with my sister in a packed theater two weeks after it opened. Some films are just meant to be seen with the largest, most diverse crowd possible, and Borat is the king of those. That one viewing has colored all subsequent viewings of this for me. If you were somehow living under a rock in 2006, here's the deal: Baron Cohen went undercover in disguise as Borat, a reporter from Kazakhstan purportedly making a documentary about America, on a road trip from coast to coast, meeting with different people, attending various events, and getting an unwitting picture of America and Americans at their best and worst (but mostly worst). To say the film's timing was perfect would be an understatement: we NEEDED to laugh at ourselves in 2006, and boy did Borat ever deliver that in spades. Since most everything in the film was real (all the non-celebrities, and even most of the celebrities, had no idea it was Baron Cohen under that mop and ridiculous mustache and crazy accent), Borat almost is an actual documentary about the state of American social mores in the mid-00s. Baron Cohen's unbelievably committed, completely fearless performance is a hilarious master class in improv, but the film is so much more than that. This is social satire at its most brazen and biting, a ruthless takedown of American imperialism and exceptionalism that will probably never stop being relevant and ahead of its time.

Hit Me With Your Best Shot - Witness

Written as part of the series hosted by Nathaniel R. over at The Film Experience, where I occasionally contribute.

Peter Weir's Witness is one of those films whose reputation precedes it. The movie was a HUGE hit upon its release in 1985, and also received the Oscar seal of approval, with eight nominations including Best Picture, Director, and Actor (for Harrison Ford) and winning two including Best Original Screenplay. Everyone I know who was an adult when it was released LOVES Witness - especially, perhaps, my mother, who has had a crush on Harrison Ford ever since Star Wars. So, you could say I went into this viewing with high expectations.
 

But then, the expectations game is funny. Because Witness is most often described as a thriller, and somehow I got it in my head that Witness is about what happens when Ford's Detective John Book investigates a killing in the Amish community, NOT what happens when a young Amish boy is the sole witness to a murder in a train station and Book must protect him while kind-of undercover in the Amish community. The film is really only a thriller for both its opening and closing 20 minutes. The rest of it, though, is really a quiet drama introducing people to Amish culture in the broadest of subtle strokes. I don't know how much my expectations got in the way of my enjoyment of the film (and to be clear, I did like it), but up until the last act I kept wondering if this was one of those "you really had to be there" hits that spoke to something ineffable in the culture at the time of its release.

Thankfully, Weir was working with the genius John Seale (arguably robbed of an Oscar this past year for his beautiful work on Mad Max: Fury Road), who is just a fucking painter with light. It's here where the film most earns its iconic status, for me. In its best moments, Witness is some straight-up Terence Malick magic hour Days of Heaven shit.

Here's the weird thing. While watching Witness for the first time, I thought there were not a whole lot of images I would choose as my best shot. And then when I went through it again to grab some screenshots, I capped AT LEAST a dozen shots that stood out to me for various reasons, like this one, which I HAD to capture in motion as the light goes down:

FUCKING. GORGEOUS.

And then there's the scene in the garage, my second favorite scene in the movie almost solely because of how stunningly it's lit (and also because it's the most purely charming Harrison Ford has ever been):

Best Shot Runner-Up

My favorite scene, though is the barn raising, which I could just watch on a loop forever and ever until I die and be purely satisfied. It is so good that for those eight minutes, I was ready to give up all of my stuff for the simple life of the Amish.

Look at them all, all over that scaffolding like monkeys on a tree in the jungle, each tirelessly working away, singular yet also part of a whole, separate but connected. It's an extremely pleasing sight to behold. I don't know what the Amish community thinks about Witness (if they even think about it all), but this scene alone is enough to put them in a very positive light, a close, tight-knit community of people who focus on life's simplest pleasures, who live off the land and have no need for modern conveniences - because maybe we really don't need them when we work hard and have each other.

But anyway, to the business at hand: Selecting the film's best shot. The more I thought about this, the more it was really no contest. For all of the beautiful shots in the film, there was one where all of the film's craft elements came together for me in a magical way:

This comes right before that lamp shot up above, just as Kelly McGillis's Rachel learns that John Book is going to leave, to "go back to his world, where he belongs" in the words of her father-in-law, Eli. Eli tells her that they both know it's where he belongs, but this shot puts where Rachel herself belongs into question. She may be boxed in to the hand-built Amish house in which she stands, but her shirt color ties her to the outside world, where John is. The shot is just as beautifully lit as every other shot in the film, but it's just packed with meaning in a way that stood out to me.

Kelly McGillis, by the way, is FUCKING FANTASTIC in this. She does so much with just her face and no dialogue at all, conveying so many conflicting feelings that she could not even put into words if she tried.... Rachel has recently lost her husband, and here is this man from the "outside world" coming in and making her feel things she maybe hasn't ever felt before, and at any rate is not ready for. It's completely to McGillis's credit that it feels like Rachel might actually leave the world she has known her whole life for a man she barely knows. For someone I only knew as "the girl" from Top Gun, this performance was a revelation. And to think this was her first major role! People who were there, tell me: Was there REALLY no room for her in that year's Oscar lineup? Or was it one of those cases where no one could decide if she was Lead or Supporting? Or did she somehow not get good reviews?!?

*               *               *

But now that that's all done, can we please talk about the REAL star of this film? Ladies and gentlemen, MISS PATTI LUPONE:

Rocking a mullet like nobody's business.

Okay, okay, she plays Harrison Ford's sister and is only in two scenes, but still. How many women could pull off this look?

NONE. THAT'S how many.

Thursday Movie Picks - Airplane Movies

Written as part of the weekly blogathon hosted by Wandering Through the Shelves. Join in the fun by picking three movies that fit the week's theme and telling us about them!

This week, on Thursday Movie Picks, it's not a bird, it's not Superman.... it's a PLANE! Well, in this case, three of them. And one flying man.

Airplane! (Jim Abrahams, David and Jerry Zucker, 1980) "Joey, do you like movies about gladiators?" "Roger, Roger. What's our vector, Victor?" "Looks like I picked the wrong week to quit sniffing glue!" "By the way, is there anyone on board who knows how to fly a plane?" "There's a sale at Penney's!!" "I am serious. And don't call me Shirley." And those are just SOME of the one-liners. The brilliance of ZAZ's spoof - which uses much of the script from the 50s disaster film Zero Hour - is out of this world. If you don't laugh your ass off, I just don't think you can be helped.

Air Force One (Wolfgang Petersen, 1997) Look at that trailer. Go on, just look at it. Have you ever seen anything so '90s in your whole life?!? Harrison Ford as the ass-kicking President of the United States. Gary Oldman as a Russian terrorist who hijacks his plane. Glenn Close back in the White House as the Vice President. William H. Macy. I can't believe they didn't put the best part of the movie ("Get the hell off my plane!") in there. Air Force One may be a relic of a certain time and style of moviemaking, but it still one hell of an entertaining ride. Harrison Ford for Movie President in perpetuity.

The Rocketeer (Joe Johnston, 1991) When I was a kid, this was one of my favorite movies. Still is, really - I've never outgrown it. When swoon-worthy pilot Billy Campbell finds a secret rocket-fueled jetpack hidden by the Nazis, he becomes a bit of a superhero. That is, until his gorgeous girlfriend Jennifer Connelly is kidnapped by dashing movie star/Nazi spy Timothy Dalton, in order to get the rocket back. The film is nothing but pure, old-school Hollywood movie magic and fun. I still don't know who in the cast I have the biggest crush on.

BONUS PICK


Nightmare at 20,000 Feet (Richard Donner, 1963) So, technically, this isn't a movie. But each episode of The Twilight Zone was basically a mini-movie, and this is one of the very best episodes of that show. The basic premise: William Shatner is a man who suffered a nervous breakdown six months ago while aboard a plane, and is now on a plane again for the first time since. And mid-flight, he sees.... something... on the wing of the plane. But every time someone else looks, it disappears. The "gremlin" may be one of the worst pieces of 50s B-movie style makeup ever, but the tension of the script and the direction work like gangbusters. It was also re-done as a segment of the Twilight Zone movie with John Lithgow in the Shatner role, but the TV version is better.