Despite being imaginary, the world of cinema is no less real than the living world around us, and for people constituted like me, it can perhaps be even more real than real. I can't say for certain what draws my dad to movies, but judging by his strangely expansive collection, something about them speaks to him more deeply than most other areas of life. He must know the excitement and awe I feel when watching a movie I don't yet know I'll love. Maybe that's an experience he hoped to facilitate by sharing his favorites with me, many of which are established film classics? Well, who can say. We're not the most communicative of people. A sense of shared appreciation is our language, something ironed out over long years of adaptive cohabitation. And as much as I'm beginning to loathe the spans of silence I've learned to accept in my personal life, there's a narcotizing comfort in sitting down for a movie with my dad, he as eager as I am for a new awakening through cinema. In the absence of an ability to speak meaningfully of what goes on inside us, we live through art, even if only in the most circumscribed and stereotypic ways (hello, hundredth THE THING rewatch). It's in our DNA.
Like many young American men, I was impressed by the Martin Scorsese films my dad had experienced firsthand in his youth. To this day, images and memories from GOODFELLAS, RAGING BULL, and THE DEPARTED float around spectrally in my cinematic imagination. CAPE FEAR and THE WOLF OF WALL STREET are recent favorites, both possessing a furious energy I find thrilling. Then there's the endearing HUGO, technically masterful and tenderly emotional. I still would like to see such oddities as THE AGE OF INNOCENCE and KUNDUN, and I'd like to rewatch TAXI DRIVER and THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST now that I feel more equipped to appreciate them. Overall, though, the Martin Scorsese days are mostly over. And of course I'll still make the trek to see SILENCE and whichever new films of his catch my eye. I just hope I'm not blowing any minds to propose that Scorsese has grown old, and that he's said just about all he has to say. He knew his world well, but his world isn't mine. He's not going anywhere, so I can see him whenever I want. But he won't be coming with me. It's time for me to take what I've learned from him and move on.
ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE opens with a subversion so sincere. The stylized Technicolor prologue, reminiscent of THE WIZARD OF OZ, belies the ugliness in its young protagonist's life. She'll escape this congealed studio lot fantasy, but its beauty and squalor will stay with her all through adulthood. Looking back, she remembers the loves of her youth and seeks the path to return her to that intensity of feeling. It's a fondness we all experience in one way or another, though for Alice and Scorsese, it found its highest expression in classical Hollywood cinema. Sometimes I wonder where the fondness for those old films went, as we hardly see it anymore in modern movies of any kind, musicals or otherwise. Then I remember it's none other than Scorsese who made NEW YORK, NEW YORK, passionately defending the form well past its decline. Grandiosity suits him well, and not just in his stories of male megalomania. It's mad love that Scorsese seeks to portray in all his films, whatever the object of that love may be (a few notable ones: self, woman, brotherhood, spirituality, times gone by, color, city, music, film itself). The ugly jump cuts and apathetic handheld camerawork of TV comedy is about the farthest thing from Scorsese's evocative widescreen wonderlands. While ALICE borders on the mundane more than most of Scorsese's filmography, its drab scenery only serves to strike a greater contrast with Alice's rich interior world.
And just who is Alice, anyhow? Other than Ellen Burstyn, that is, giving a virtuosic performance. There are heavy hints that she's a survivor of childhood and domestic abuse, a caged bird who gets a second lease on life when her husband dies in an accident. He is the quintessentially Scorsesean man, brooding and angry but not without moments of tenderness. Shortly after his passing, Alice leaves with her young son to follow a long-forgotten dream of becoming a singer. She sings and plays piano well, so why not? Unfortunately, for a single mother in the 1970s, the world is not so welcoming. She finds herself frequently unemployed, working for less than she deserves, and entangled in a destructive affair with a young Harvey Keitel. When Kris Kristofferson finally comes along offering old-fashioned masculine strength, it clashes with the newfound freedom Alice has grown to enjoy, even as she secretly yearns for such paternalism. Compared to the toxic but numbing sameness of her married life, self-determination comes with some nasty thorns. All the while, her son Tommy (oddball Alfred Lutter) aches for stability and acceptance. His mother's new life is a draining change the two of them aren't sure they can endure forever.
According to my dad, this is a chick flick. Strip away the element of derogatory judgment that implies, and I'd have to agree. This is very much a movie for women. It was developed by Ellen Burstyn at the height of second wave feminism and released during that tumultuous time in American gender relations. I almost wonder if my mom saw it all those years ago, or what she'd think of it now. There's an empathy for women in this film that's borderline extinct in American movies, despite a brief 70s resurgence. To watch it is to almost reimagine from scratch what an American movie can be. My dad, for his part, remarked that this is the kind of movie he wouldn't have watched at a younger age. He noted the familiar Scorsese kineticism, but he was surprised to see it in the story of a housewife's emancipation. I understand, because it is surprising to see Scorsese so passionately and skillfully depicting the life of a woman, and it is the kind of movie that gender policing keeps young men away from. This is as much a gap in our ongoing Scorsese retrospective as it is a gap in our own lives spent away from women. But where my dad has mostly kept up his phallocentric ways, I watch this movie having spent the last decade surrounded by women and their lives, emotions, beliefs. So we come at this movie from opposite angles, and from different lives. This is our nexus, a revered male auteur's detour into the wider world of women.
If it seems ironic that I'm mentioning my dad so much in relation to a film so wonderfully gynocentric, it's because that's the strange history I bring with me to any film we watch together. With my dad in the room, I'm made to ponder my own gender identity in relation to the film, to him, and to the child I was when he was more fully my parent. An adult relationship to a parent is weird in many ways, even in the reverie of movie watching. He was surprisingly talkative when we watched ALICE, and that's because it set off a series of flashbacks he wasn't expecting. The late-film turn towards Alice's diner job revealed to him that this movie is the basis for the TV sitcom "Alice." He was stunned, having enjoyed that show for the many years it was on TV (and it seems, incidentally, that the more feminized medium of cable TV plays on different expectations in him than auteurist masculinism). My dad excitedly informed me that Vic Tayback was the same Mel from TV, but that everyone else was played by someone different. He remembered the characters, though, and I'm amused to imagine how that affected his experience of the latter half of the film. He was also insistent that the character of Audrey was played by a brother of Jodie Foster, which I thought too. We were cartoonishly dumbfounded to discover it was, in fact, Jodie Foster herself (the DVD skipped, so we may have missed any contextualizing gender information).
It was fun to talk our way through a movie experience together. I pointed out at one point that Ellen Burstyn looked a lot like my middle sister's piano teacher, which my dad was eager to share with the rest of the family. He was more animated than I'm used to, and I think I can see that as him trying to be more open than he's been for most of his life. It's a good development, and I hope it keeps up, but I won't be around to watch it continue. Because I've just told my dad I'll be moving in with my girlfriend soon, and he's given it his blessing. And I just told my little brother, who sighed and lied about being "a little sad," but told the truth when he said he was happy for me, and for my girlfriend. And soon I'll tell my middle sister, whose best friend will soon be living in this house with her. And then I'll tell my littlest sister, who will live in my room once I've left. My room of twenty years or more, my home for most of my life. It's too small for me now, and we only just replaced the bunk bed I've had for all that time. But it will always be my room in my heart, and I'll remember it as it was. It's right next door to the room my oldest sister always lived in, one she's unlikely to return to either. She's moved on now, and soon I will be too, and then only the second generation of our family will be left in this house, with my dad at the center of it all once again. And as my oldest sister and I converge, diverge, and converge again over the spans of our lives, we'll live in this house in our minds, the house we knew best, and we'll walk through it together in ways our parents have long ceased to with each other. We'll remember where we spent our youngest years, and we'll remind each other of who we were, and how nothing seems to have turned out the way we expected. We'll grow old alongside each other the way our parents won't, and we'll make the trips back to see our parents wherever they end up in their last few decades. And I'll see my dad and remember all the sad times, the bad times, the long and hard times of never knowing what to do or say.
But I'll also remember the good times, when words fell away and we let down our guards long enough to make this house a home. I'll remember the games and the toys, the puzzles and the stuffed animals, the spaghetti and the baked potatoes. And I'll remember the movies, the ones that eased us into sharing a space together, however briefly. I'll look back on ALICE and others, filtering them through what I know about my dad and myself. So even as I remember the man who didn't know what came next after the kids grew up, I'll remember the days when I thought he knew, when it seemed like only a few more movies stood between me and adulthood. Because it's here, adulthood, now more than ever. And I've certainly watched a few more movies. And I'll certainly watch a few more still. But for now, ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. Alice has somewhere else to live. Somewhere else to be. Something else to find.
(photo credit: en.wikipedia.org)
ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE opens with a subversion so sincere. The stylized Technicolor prologue, reminiscent of THE WIZARD OF OZ, belies the ugliness in its young protagonist's life. She'll escape this congealed studio lot fantasy, but its beauty and squalor will stay with her all through adulthood. Looking back, she remembers the loves of her youth and seeks the path to return her to that intensity of feeling. It's a fondness we all experience in one way or another, though for Alice and Scorsese, it found its highest expression in classical Hollywood cinema. Sometimes I wonder where the fondness for those old films went, as we hardly see it anymore in modern movies of any kind, musicals or otherwise. Then I remember it's none other than Scorsese who made NEW YORK, NEW YORK, passionately defending the form well past its decline. Grandiosity suits him well, and not just in his stories of male megalomania. It's mad love that Scorsese seeks to portray in all his films, whatever the object of that love may be (a few notable ones: self, woman, brotherhood, spirituality, times gone by, color, city, music, film itself). The ugly jump cuts and apathetic handheld camerawork of TV comedy is about the farthest thing from Scorsese's evocative widescreen wonderlands. While ALICE borders on the mundane more than most of Scorsese's filmography, its drab scenery only serves to strike a greater contrast with Alice's rich interior world.
And just who is Alice, anyhow? Other than Ellen Burstyn, that is, giving a virtuosic performance. There are heavy hints that she's a survivor of childhood and domestic abuse, a caged bird who gets a second lease on life when her husband dies in an accident. He is the quintessentially Scorsesean man, brooding and angry but not without moments of tenderness. Shortly after his passing, Alice leaves with her young son to follow a long-forgotten dream of becoming a singer. She sings and plays piano well, so why not? Unfortunately, for a single mother in the 1970s, the world is not so welcoming. She finds herself frequently unemployed, working for less than she deserves, and entangled in a destructive affair with a young Harvey Keitel. When Kris Kristofferson finally comes along offering old-fashioned masculine strength, it clashes with the newfound freedom Alice has grown to enjoy, even as she secretly yearns for such paternalism. Compared to the toxic but numbing sameness of her married life, self-determination comes with some nasty thorns. All the while, her son Tommy (oddball Alfred Lutter) aches for stability and acceptance. His mother's new life is a draining change the two of them aren't sure they can endure forever.According to my dad, this is a chick flick. Strip away the element of derogatory judgment that implies, and I'd have to agree. This is very much a movie for women. It was developed by Ellen Burstyn at the height of second wave feminism and released during that tumultuous time in American gender relations. I almost wonder if my mom saw it all those years ago, or what she'd think of it now. There's an empathy for women in this film that's borderline extinct in American movies, despite a brief 70s resurgence. To watch it is to almost reimagine from scratch what an American movie can be. My dad, for his part, remarked that this is the kind of movie he wouldn't have watched at a younger age. He noted the familiar Scorsese kineticism, but he was surprised to see it in the story of a housewife's emancipation. I understand, because it is surprising to see Scorsese so passionately and skillfully depicting the life of a woman, and it is the kind of movie that gender policing keeps young men away from. This is as much a gap in our ongoing Scorsese retrospective as it is a gap in our own lives spent away from women. But where my dad has mostly kept up his phallocentric ways, I watch this movie having spent the last decade surrounded by women and their lives, emotions, beliefs. So we come at this movie from opposite angles, and from different lives. This is our nexus, a revered male auteur's detour into the wider world of women.
If it seems ironic that I'm mentioning my dad so much in relation to a film so wonderfully gynocentric, it's because that's the strange history I bring with me to any film we watch together. With my dad in the room, I'm made to ponder my own gender identity in relation to the film, to him, and to the child I was when he was more fully my parent. An adult relationship to a parent is weird in many ways, even in the reverie of movie watching. He was surprisingly talkative when we watched ALICE, and that's because it set off a series of flashbacks he wasn't expecting. The late-film turn towards Alice's diner job revealed to him that this movie is the basis for the TV sitcom "Alice." He was stunned, having enjoyed that show for the many years it was on TV (and it seems, incidentally, that the more feminized medium of cable TV plays on different expectations in him than auteurist masculinism). My dad excitedly informed me that Vic Tayback was the same Mel from TV, but that everyone else was played by someone different. He remembered the characters, though, and I'm amused to imagine how that affected his experience of the latter half of the film. He was also insistent that the character of Audrey was played by a brother of Jodie Foster, which I thought too. We were cartoonishly dumbfounded to discover it was, in fact, Jodie Foster herself (the DVD skipped, so we may have missed any contextualizing gender information).
It was fun to talk our way through a movie experience together. I pointed out at one point that Ellen Burstyn looked a lot like my middle sister's piano teacher, which my dad was eager to share with the rest of the family. He was more animated than I'm used to, and I think I can see that as him trying to be more open than he's been for most of his life. It's a good development, and I hope it keeps up, but I won't be around to watch it continue. Because I've just told my dad I'll be moving in with my girlfriend soon, and he's given it his blessing. And I just told my little brother, who sighed and lied about being "a little sad," but told the truth when he said he was happy for me, and for my girlfriend. And soon I'll tell my middle sister, whose best friend will soon be living in this house with her. And then I'll tell my littlest sister, who will live in my room once I've left. My room of twenty years or more, my home for most of my life. It's too small for me now, and we only just replaced the bunk bed I've had for all that time. But it will always be my room in my heart, and I'll remember it as it was. It's right next door to the room my oldest sister always lived in, one she's unlikely to return to either. She's moved on now, and soon I will be too, and then only the second generation of our family will be left in this house, with my dad at the center of it all once again. And as my oldest sister and I converge, diverge, and converge again over the spans of our lives, we'll live in this house in our minds, the house we knew best, and we'll walk through it together in ways our parents have long ceased to with each other. We'll remember where we spent our youngest years, and we'll remind each other of who we were, and how nothing seems to have turned out the way we expected. We'll grow old alongside each other the way our parents won't, and we'll make the trips back to see our parents wherever they end up in their last few decades. And I'll see my dad and remember all the sad times, the bad times, the long and hard times of never knowing what to do or say.
But I'll also remember the good times, when words fell away and we let down our guards long enough to make this house a home. I'll remember the games and the toys, the puzzles and the stuffed animals, the spaghetti and the baked potatoes. And I'll remember the movies, the ones that eased us into sharing a space together, however briefly. I'll look back on ALICE and others, filtering them through what I know about my dad and myself. So even as I remember the man who didn't know what came next after the kids grew up, I'll remember the days when I thought he knew, when it seemed like only a few more movies stood between me and adulthood. Because it's here, adulthood, now more than ever. And I've certainly watched a few more movies. And I'll certainly watch a few more still. But for now, ALICE DOESN'T LIVE HERE ANYMORE. Alice has somewhere else to live. Somewhere else to be. Something else to find.
(photo credit: en.wikipedia.org)
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