Two disasters in one week.
One of them not too far from my home. (West, Texas is only a couple of hours up I-35 from Austin. Best kolaches in the States, I’ll wager. Everyone stops there on their way to Dallas. Everyone.)
How do we move on?
How to we see things like West and the Boston Marathon bombing happen and not want to just give up?
Sure, one was accidental…but it was still man-made. (And that plant had been cited in the past for substandard conditions.) We caused these things to happen. An event that should have been a testament to human endurance ends up being about people being killed and maimed because two boys want to make a statement. A small town gets basically wiped off the map because a rich man doesn’t want to spend the money to keep his fertilizer plant up to code.
We rally together. We find the bad guys. We pick up the pieces. We find a way to get on with our lives.
For me, entertainment is the best way to not get over, but move on from disasters like this. I think that’s true of a lot of people. Certainly of filmmakers.
I chose disaster movies as my theme this week not to exploit these tragedies, but to actually show my support for the victims. To show that they won’t be forgotten and that, most of the time, there is a happy ending…even if it’s not right away. (At least one of these doesn’t end particularly well, but that’s life. In reality, it took many years for some of these disasters to be moved on from and society is stronger for them.)
These are all serious disaster movies. You’ll find no Volcano. No “rally ’round the flag” movies. Definitely no Towering Infernos.
These movies are about the disaster and the characters, not the spectacle. (Well, one is pretty spectacle-heavy, but I still think it’s serious.)
TITANIC (1997)
Written and directed by James Cameron
It’s pretty unfashionable to like this movie these days, but I don’t care. It may have some clunky writing at times (Billy Zane’s antagonist is pretty much completely unneeded and is too evil to have ever really existed), but the core relationship of Rose and Jack (Kate Winslet and Leonardo DiCaprio) is what’s truly important for the first half of the movie. These are kids who accidentally meet and fall in love.
It may not be totally realistic, but whatever. It works about as well as any Romeo & Juliet story. It doesn’t hurt that Kate and Leo are great actors or that they are surrounded by an amazing supporting cast, lead by the always great Kathy Bates, perfectly cast as Molly Brown.
The second half belongs to the actual disaster. Characters that we have grown to love are washed away. Children and elderly alike are taken from the dry world. (Especially poignant is the old couple in the bed. It’s the image that sticks with everyone.) The ship goes down in spectacular fashion. Seeing it in the theatre gave it extra gravitas if only because it positively surrounded you. This isn’t a movie like Pearl Harbor that made you cheer when you saw people die. This was made by an actual filmmaker who wanted to do something besides excite you. He wanted to pull you in to a real story and then show you what it was like to be there.
Yes, it’s PG-13 and that shows. But that’s fine. Much more graphic and it might have been too much. It might have ended up being Saving Private Ryan on a boat. And…actually that would have been amazing, too. But in a completely different way.
Basically, it’s a serious disaster film that even young girls could love. And I love it, too. I’m not proud.
GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (1988)
Written and directed by Isao Takahata
Based on a book by Akiyuki Nosaka
From a popcorn disaster movie to one that will make you cry in your popcorn. Grave Of The Fireflies is one of the greatest anime films of all time. It’s also one of the saddest films of all time, no matter the format. The film centers around Seita and Setsuko, a young boy and his little sister, as they wander around war-torn Japan towards the end of World War II. Their mother is killed in a bombing and their father is somewhere fighting in the war. The days get longer and the hunger gets stronger. People are unable or unwilling to help the children and things just keep getting worse. Seita does his best to shield Setsuko from the horrors of the war, but he’s not always successful.
Grave Of The Fireflies is a harrowing experience that everyone should see at least once. If the right people saw it, I think there would be less war, to be perfectly honest. How could you possibly allow this sort of thing to happen after seeing this film?
Watch it. Fall in love with these two amazing children. And be ready to feel feelings that you never thought that you had.
Apparently, there’s a remake in the works. Live-action/British. I’m afraid. It really may not work if it’s not Japanese. Even though it’s a universal story, the WWII setting is pretty important.
FEARLESS (1993)
Directed by Peter Weir
Written by Rafael Yglesias
Based on a book by Rafael Yglesias
If you’ve ever wondered how PTSD affects some people, this is the movie for you.
Max Klein (Jeff Bridges in a typically amazing performance) is a survivor of a horrible plane crash. He and other survivors meet to talk about how they’re getting along after their experience. Some of them are ok, some of them break down, none of them are unchanged. Max is a different man. He suddenly has no fear. Why should he? He didn’t die. He’s also, apparently, no longer allergic to strawberries.
Fearless is a lost film of the 90s. It came and went in the theatre. It did ok on video, but not spectacularly. Bridges is a bigger star now than he was even then, but people never talk about this movie. It’s too bad because it’s great. Peter Weir has made a career out of making films about outsiders and Max Klein is one of the most outside of his outsider characters. He’s basically outside of himself since the crash. He can’t relate to anyone anymore except the other survivors. Even them he doesn’t truly understand. He just doesn’t get why they’re so sad and afraid of everything.
The supporting cast is up to the task of keeping up with Bridges here. John Turturro, Benicio del Toro, John de Lancie, Tom Hulce, Isabella Rossellini and Rosie Perez in probably her best performance. All of them make this movie worth a look if you’ve never heard of it.
CONTAGION (2011)
Directed by Steven Soderbergh
Written by Scott Z Burns
While Contagion isn’t the most entertaining movie, it is probably the most interesting and informative of the films on this list. It’s about a fictional outbreak of a deadly flu-type virus that basically kills everything it touches. Gwyneth Paltrow gets it worst of all when she brings it over on a flight from Hong Kong. It’s up to the doctors of the CDC and the WHO to find out where the virus came from and how to stop it before it kills everyone on the planet.
This is a star-studded affair (Kate Winslet, Marion Cotillard, Matt Damon, Laurence Fishburne, Jude Law, Bryan Cranston, Elliott Gould…..), but that’s certainly not the point. Anyone could have played these parts and the story still would have been interesting. We saw how these organizations do their very best to get people to a) stay alive and b) believe that they truly are working FOR them and not against them.
With people truly believing that vaccinations have tiny microbes in them either used to spy on them or slowly kill them, they have their work cut out for them. Seeing the step-by-step process that they follow to solve the mystery and save lives as quickly as possible is intriguing and, against all odds, edge-of-your-seat thrilling. Maybe not as fun as most films, but certainly one that will leave you smarter than when you went in.
BEASTS OF THE SOUTHERN WILD (2012)
Directed by Benh Zeitlin
Written by Benh Zeitlin/Lucy Alibar
Based on a play by Lucy Alibar
Hushpuppy (Quvenzhane Wallis) is a young girl who lives in The Bathtub, a bit of swampland in southern Louisiana that is so susceptible to flooding that the folks there have just made it a way of life. When a hurricane hits, little Hushpuppy has to learn to get by and survive the virtual destruction of her home. It doesn’t help that her dad (Dwight Henry), as strong as he is, is slightly abusive and very sick.
I leave you with a movie that is full of hope. The entire movie is told from Hushpuppy’s point of view. Even the camera angles are taken from her eyeline. That means that, even when we know that the worst is going to happen, her upbeat and optimistic narration pulls us through the dark and into the light that maybe only she can see. The Bathtub is basically leveled, but her childlike view of the world tells us that everything will be ok. She’s resilient, just like The Bathtub that she has grown up in.
While I had some issues with the way the movie says that it’s perfectly ok to live in a possibly dysentery infested area, I loved it otherwise. Quvenzhane deserved the Oscar that she was nominated for, bringing the ray of hope that such a downbeat story truly needs.
A true original. Beasts Of The Southern Wild is the little indie that could last year.
Watch this film and try not to realize that, really, everything will be ok.
