1988--The Year in Review

Krzysztof Kieslowski's ten-film series Dekalog is often cited as among the finest film achievements of 1988, but I have to confess, I still haven't seen all of it, so I conspicuously left it out of the running (though I have to say, the three installments I have seen are impeccable). In its stead, I've awarded Best Picture to another Eastern European-flavored tale of morality, Philip Kaufman's heartrending adaptation of Milan Kundera's classic novel The Unbearable Lightness of Being, with Juliette Binoche and Lena Olin each excelling as two radically different muses to Daniel Day Lewis' philandering brain surgeon, all against the backdrop of the 1968 Prague Spring revolution in Czechlosovakia (the only way the movie could have been any better is if one of the many great Czech filmmakers who actually lived through the event had directed it). Still, with Sven Nykvist's superb photography, Walter Murch's inventive editing, and Kaufman's terrific script (penned with the legendary Jean-Claude Carriere), it nonetheless hits the requisite heights. But for Best Director, I had to go another way: given how effectively its low budget was used, and how highly wrought the needless controversy was surrounding The Last Temptation of Christ (especially given its ultimate spiritual power), I just had to find for Martin Scorsese once again (his third win in the category thus far). It was a great year for world cinema--maybe the best of the 1980s--with Giuseppe Tornatore's Cinema Paradiso walking away with the prize (and it was a superb period for Japanese animation with three of the genre's finest offerings ever). I was going to go with Philippe Noiret for Supporting Actor for his moving work in Cinema Paradiso, but at the last minute, I came to the realization that Alan Rickman's slithery villain in Die Hard was the supporting performance that really captured the audience's fascination. As for the Academy's choices, they largely fell on the side of Barry Levinson's Rain Man, an entertaining movie to which I rarely return (I still think Tom Cruise is better in the film than Dustin Hoffman, even if Hoffman won the Best Actor Oscar that year). Hoffman doesn't even come into play in my final Best Actor race, which is commanded by Jeremy Irons' creepily devastating twin-lead performance in David Cronenberg's Dead Ringers. With the impressive documentary category, Errol Morris easily triumphs with his true breakthrough effort The Thin Blue Line (which ended up freeing its downtrodden subject, Randall Adams, from prison). In the short film category, the UK's emerging auteur Mike Leigh wins for one of his excellent short films made for the BBC, while Canadian animator Richard Condie comes out on top with his adaptation of a traditional folk tune about a pesky cat. All in all, a strange but rewarding year of cinema. NOTE: These are MY choices for each category, and are only occasionally reflective of the selections made by the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences (aka The Oscars). When available, the nominee that actually won the Oscar will be highlighted in bold.
 
PICTURE: THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (US, Philip Kaufman)
(2nd: The Last Temptation of Christ (US, Martin Scorsese)
followed by: Cinema Paradiso (Italy, Giuseppe Tornatore)
The Thin Blue Line (US, Errol Morris)
Distant Voices, Still Lives (UK, Terence Davies)
Tucker: The Man and His Dream (US, Francis Ford Coppola)
Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (France, Marcel Ophuls)
The Vanishing (Netherlands/France, George Sluizer)
Die Hard (US, John McTiernan)
The Adventures of Baron Munchausen (US/UK, Terry Gilliam)
Who Framed Roger Rabbit? (US, Robert Zemeckis)
Dead Ringers (Canada, David Cronenberg)
High Hopes (UK, Mike Leigh)
Hairspray (US, John Waters)
Dangerous Liaisons (US, Stephen Frears)
They Live (US, John Carpenter)
A Fish Called Wanda (UK, Charles Crichton)
Things Change (US, David Mamet)
Clean and Sober (US, Glenn Gordon Caron)
Rain Man (US, Barry Levinson)
Let’s Get Lost (US, Bruce Weber)
Salaam Bombay! (India, Mira Nair)
Drowning by Numbers (UK, Peter Greenaway)
Another Woman (US, Woody Allen)
A World Apart (UK, Chris Menges)
Story of Women (France, Claude Chabrol)
Grave of the Fireflies (Japan, Isao Takahata)
Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain, Pedro Almodóvar)
Bird (US, Clint Eastwood)
Alice (UK/Czechoslovakia, Jan Svankmajer)
Akira (Japan, Katsuhiro Otomo)
Bull Durham (US, Ron Shelton)
Beetlejuice (US, Tim Burton)
Paperhouse (UK, Bernard Rose)
My Neighbour Totoro (Japan, Hayao Miyazaki)
Little Dorrit (UK, Christine Edzard)
Landscape in the Mist (Greece, Theo Angelopoulos)
Frantic (US, Roman Polanski)
The Navigator (New Zealand, Vincent Ward)
The Beast (US, Kevin Reynolds)
Miracle Mile (US, Steve De Jarrnatt)
Running on Empty (US, Sidney Lumet)
In the Line of Duty: The FBI Murders (US, Dick Lowry)
Candy Mountain (US, Robert Frank and Rudy Wurlitzer)
The Accidental Tourist (US, Lawrence Kasdan)
The Accused (US, Jonathan Kaplan)
Crossing Delancey (US, Joan Micklin Silver)
The Bear (France/US, Jean-Jacques Annaud)
Midnight Run (US, Martin Brest)
School Daze (US, Spike Lee)
Tales of the Gimli Hospital (Canada, Guy Maddin)
Camille Claudel (France, Bruno Nuytten)
Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Finland, Aki Kaurismaki)
Dominick and Eugene (US, Robert M. Young)
Eight Men Out (US, John Sayles)
Vampire’s Kiss (US, Robert Bierman)
Talk Radio (US, Oliver Stone)
Mystic Pizza (US, Donald Petrie)
Working Girl (US, Mike Nichols)
Stand and Deliver (US, Ramon Menendez)
The Chocolate War (US, Keith Gordon)
Little Vera (USSR, Vasili Pichul)
Lady in White (US, Frank LaLoggia)
Colors (US, Dennis Hopper)
The Good Mother (US, Leonard Nimoy)
The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II (US, Penelope Spheeris)
The Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica)
Coming to America (US, John Landis)
Married to the Mob (US, Jonathan Demme)
Mississippi Burning (US, Alan Parker)
Big (US, Penny Marshall)
Biloxi Blues (US, Mike Nichols)
A Cry in the Dark (Australia, Fred Schepisi)
The Milagro Beanfield War (US, Robert Redford)
The Naked Gun: From the Files of Police Squad (US, David Zucker)
The Moderns (US, Alan Rudolph)
The Passion of Beatrice (France, Bertrand Tavernier))



ACTOR: Jeremy Irons, DEAD RINGERS (2nd: Michael Keaton, Clean and Sober, followed by: Forrest Whitaker, Bird; Tom Hanks, Big; Tom Hulce, Dominick and Eugene; Don Ameche, Things Change; Bob Hoskins, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; Edward James Olmos, Stand and Deliver)

ACTRESS: Juliette Binoche, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (2nd: Glenn Close, Dangerous Liasons, followed by: Jodie Foster, The Accused; Carmen Maura, Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown; Isabelle Adjani, Camille Claudel; Gena Rowlands, Another Woman; Ruth Sheen, High Hopes; Meryl Streep, A Cry in the Dark)

SUPPORTING ACTOR: Alan Rickman, DIE HARD (2nd: Philippe Noiret, Cinema Paradiso, followed by: Martin Landau, Tucker: The Man and His Dream; Michael Keaton, Beetlejuice; River Phoenix, Running on Empty; Kevin Kline, A Fish Called Wanda; Charles Grodin, Midnight Run; Dean Stockwell, Married to the Mob)

SUPPORTING ACTRESS: Lena Olin, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (2nd: Johanna Ter Steege, The Vanishing, followed by: Diane Venora, Bird; Edna Dore, High Hopes; Kathy Baker, Clean and Sober; Michelle Pfieffer, Dangerous Liasons; Leslie Manville, High Hopes; Geena Davis, The Accidental Tourist)



DIRECTOR: Martin Scorsese, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (2nd: Philip Kaufman, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, followed by: Giuseppe Tornatore, Cinema Paradiso; Errol Morris, The Thin Blue Line; Terrence Davies, Distant Voices, Still Lives; Francis Ford Coppola, Tucker: The Man and His Dream; John McTiernan, Die Hard; George Sluzier, The Vanishing)



NON-ENGLISH LANGUAGE FILM: CINEMA PARADISO (Italy, Giuseppe Tornatore) (won in 1989) (2nd:  Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (France, Marcel Ophuls), followed by: The Vanishing (Netherlands/France, George Sluizer); Salaam Bombay! (India, Mira Nair); Story of Women (France, Claude Chabrol); Grave of the Fireflies (Japan, Isao Takahata); Women on the Verge of a Nervous Breakdown (Spain, Pedro Almodóvar); Alice (UK/Czechoslovakia, Jan Svankmajer); Akira (Japan, Katsuhiro Otomo); My Neighbour Totoro (Japan, Hayao Miyazaki); Landscape in the Mist (Greece, Theo Angelopoulos); Camille Claudel (France, Bruno Nuytten); Leningrad Cowboys Go America (Finland, Aki Kaurismaki); Little Vera (USSR, Vasili Pichul); The Time of the Gypsies (Yugoslavia, Emir Kusturica))



DOCUMENTARY FEATURE: THE THIN BLUE LINE (US, Errol Morris) (2nd: Hotel Terminus: The Life and Times of Klaus Barbie (France, Marcel Ophuls), followed by: Let’s Get Lost (US, Bruce Weber); The Decline of Western Civilization, Part II (US, Penelope Spheeris))



ANIMATED FEATURE: GRAVE OF THE FIREFLIES (Japan, Isao Takahata) (2nd: Akira (Japan, Katsuhiro Otoma), followed by: My Neighbor Totoro (Japan, Hayao Miyazaki); Alice (UK/Czechosovakia, Jan Svenkmeyer))



ANIMATED SHORT: THE CAT CAME BACK (Canada, Cordell Barker) (2nd: Feelings of Mountains and Waters (China, Wei Te); Family Portrait: The Simpsons (US, Matt Groening); The Public Voice (Denmark, Lejf Marcussen); Another Kind of Love (Czechoslovakia, Jan Svankmajer))



LIVE ACTION SHORT: THE SHORT AND CURLIES (UK, Mike Leigh) (2nd: The Appointments of Dennis Jennings (US, Dean Parisot and Steven Wright, US), followed by: The Last Theft (Czechoslovakia, Jiri Barta); Gullah Tales (US, Gary Moss and George De Golian); I…Dreaming (US, Stan Brakhage))

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY: Giuseppe Tornatore, CINEMA PARADISO (2nd: John Cleese and Charles Crichton, A Fish Called Wanda, followed by: Mike Leigh, High Hopes; Ron Shelton, Bull Durham; Terrence Davies, Distant Voices, Still Lives)

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY: Philip Kaufman and Jean-Claude Carriere, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (2nd: Christopher Hampton, Dangerous Liasons, followed by: George Sluzier and Tim Crabbe, The Vanishing; Paul Schrader, The Last Temptation of Christ; John Carpenter, They Live)

CINEMATOGRAPHY: Sven Nykvist, THE UNBEARABLE LIGHTNESS OF BEING (2nd: Vittorio Storaro; Tucker: The Man and His Dream, followed by: Giuseppe Rotunno, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen; Jan De Bont, Die Hard; Phillippe Rousselot, The Bear)

ART DIRECTION: THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, Tucker: The Man and His Dream, Dangerous Liasons, Beetlejuice, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

COSTUME DESIGN: THE ADVENTURES OF BARON MUNCHAUSEN, Dangerous Liasons, The Last Temptation of Christ, Coming to America, Beetlejuice



FILM EDITING: DIE HARD, The Unbearable Lightness of Being, The Last Temptation of Christ; The Thin Blue Line, Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 

SOUND: DIE HARD, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Bird, Beetlejuice, The Bear

SOUND EFFECTS: DIE HARD, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, The Bear  



ORIGINAL SCORE: Peter Gabriel, THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST (2nd: Ennio Morricone, Cinema Paradiso, followed by: Alan Silvestri, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?; Philip Glass, The Thin Blue Line; Dave Grusin, The Milagro Beanfield War)



ADAPTATION SCORE/SCORING OF A MUSICAL: Lennie Niehaus, BIRD (2nd: Bill Lee, School Daze)



ORIGINAL SONG: “Hairspray“ from HAIRSPRAY (Music and lyrics by Rachel Sweet, Willa Bassen and Anthony Battaglia) (2nd: “Let The Rivers Run” from Working Girl (Music and lyrics by Carly Simon), followed by: “Da Butt” from School Daze (Music and lyrics by Marcus Miller and Mark Stevens); “Colors” from Colors (Music and lyrics by Ice-T and Afrika Islam); “Straight and Nappy“ from School Daze (Music and lyrics by Bill Lee); "Two Hearts" from Buster (Music by Lamont Dozier, lyrics by Phil Collins))

VISUAL EFFECTS: WHO FRAMED ROGER RABBIT?, Die Hard, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Dead Ringers, Beetlejuice

MAKEUP: BEETLEJUICE, The Adventures of Baron Munchausen, Dangerous Liasons, Coming to America, They Live

Film #143: Dead Ringers

There was a time, in the '70s and very early '80s, in which David Cronenberg was one of cinema's lurid if talented filmmakers. It wasn't that his films were poor; they were often elegant to look at and were always memorable. But the images I took from them left some with a sour taste: Marilyn Chambers frothing at the mouth in Rabid, the slimy slugs from They Came From Within; the famed exploding heads in Scanners; the guts-packed TVs in Videodrome, and, most horribly, Samantha Eggar biting into her external birth sac and licking her embryo of rage clean in The Brood. a lot of this stuff made Cronenberg famous, but delayed his entry into "respectability."

But, starting with 1983's The Dead Zone, Cronenberg decided to go a little lighter on us. This didn't diminish his films' power one bit; they just made it easier to eat our dinner after the movie. Yes, he still gave us The Fly in 1986, which had more than its share of gross-outs, and the buggy assholed typewriter in 1991's Naked Lunch. But movies like M. Butterfly, Crash, Spider, eXistenZ, Eastern Promises, and A History of Violence belong to a section of Cronenberg ouvre that's still interested in the biopsy of body and mind, but which is less (but not un-) interested in seeing how queasy it can make its audience feel. His 1988 film Dead Ringers is perhaps my favorite of this bunch.

The film was based on the sad exploits of Stewart and Cyril Marcus, twin brothers who ran a gynecology clinic in '60s/'70s New York City. I first read about the Marcus twins in Linda Wolfe's excellent 1986 true crime anthology The Professor and the Prostitute. In the Marcus-oriented chapter of her book, she detailed the standoffish, snooty twins' rise through the ranks of the gynecological field after the publishing of their landmark textbook on the subject. However, their shared belief that they held some sort of supernatural twin powers resulted in an inability to connect to a world of singletons, and it led them down a dark path that ended in disaster. Having developed a strong addiction to uppers and downers, the twins began to abuse their colleagues and, most shockingly, their female patients, for whom they could not hide their sexual contempt (they often demeaned their pregnant patients for getting themselves "in trouble", and even damaged one woman physically in an examination). This led to their resolute dismissal from their hospital residency and directly into an extended period of isolation and intense drug use. When they were both found dead in their Upper East side apartment in 1975, the place was littered with trash, rotted food, empty prescription bottles, and feces (including an armchair used as a toilet when they were too incapacitated by drugs to reach the commode). Theirs was a sobering, mysterious fall from the heights of industry acclaim to the depths of deformity.

So when Dead Ringers came out two years after I read Wolfe's book, I was pumped up for it. The story of the Marcus twins was perhaps the most notable yarn in a book filled with bat-shit shocking tales of madness. And, even though the film diverted crazily from their story, the basics were certainly there. In Dead Ringers, Jeremy Irons played both Mantle twins, introverted Beverly and man-of-the-world Elliott. The two share everything: their education, achievements, medical discoveries, bylines, medical practice, meals, fancy apartment, and even their women (often synonymous with "their patients").

As attached as the two are ("Whatever goes through my bloodstream," the domineering Elliott says, "goes through his, too"), there's dissention afoot when famed actress Claire Niveau (Geneviève Bujold) intervenes. Visiting the twins' OB/GYN practice while on a movie location, Claire falls in love with the aggressive Elliott without ever realizing that he's routinely switching himself off with the shaky, nervous Beverly, whom Elliott prods into participating in the deadly pranks which he thinks will HELP his brother connect more with the outside world. Claire continues on with the affair, thinking she's in love with a he. But really she's in love with a them. She begins to suspect that her new lover is a schizophrenic, and when she decides to terminate the relationship, the first great schism between the Mantle twins manifests itself in terrible ways. A devastated Beverly (with his obviously more feminine name) decides he's in love for the first time in his life, and decides on a trial separation from his brother. But neither can function well without their second half. What happens should not be repeated, but rest assured, it ain't the picture postcard of the month.

Dead Ringers is the medically-minded Cronenberg's only film with actual doctors as lead characters (that is, until his newest movie, A Dangerous Method, arrives later this year, with Viggo Mortensen as Sigmund Freud and Michael Fassbender as his professional and romantic rival, Carl Jung). As such, the 1988 movie finally took the director's fascination with body horror--infection, disease, surgery, parasites and genetic mutation--and reconciled it with a peculiar type of mainstream cinema (there IS a dream sequence in Dead Ringers that revisits vividly Cronenberg's more dismally visceral concerns). With Dead Ringers and its core subject matter regarding the womb and what happens in it, and what it can produce, Cronenberg gets deeper into his obsession with mapping the contents of the human body. He has his Mantle twins exploring it, poking at it (sexually and surgically) and, ultimately, desiring to once again seek a long-abandoned refuge in it once again. There's a superb prologue in the film, where we see the twins as kids. It contains this marvelous, chilling bit of dialogue, which I've never forgotten for its logic and creepiness; it's written by Cronenberg and his co-scripter Norman Snider:

Elliot, Age 9: You've heard about sex...

Beverly, Age 9: Sure I have.

Elliot, Age 9: Well I've discovered why sex is.

Beverly, Age 9: You have? Fantastic!

Elliott, Age 9: It's because humans don't live under water.

Beverly, Age 9: I don't get it.

Elliot, Age 9: Well, fish don't need sex because they just lay the eggs and fertilize them in the water. Humans can't do that because they don't live in the water. They have to...internalize the water. Therefore we have sex.

Beverly, Age 9: So you mean humans wouldn't have sex if they lived in the water?

Elliot, Age 9: Well, they'd have a kind of sex. The kind where you wouldn't have to touch each other.

Beverly, Age 9: I like that idea. Have you heard of scuba diving? It's just new.

Elliot, Age 9: Self Contained Underwater Breathing Apparatus.

Beverly, Age 9: Exactly.

Elliot, Age 9 [noticing a girl on a porch, Raffaella]: Are you thinking what I'm thinking?

Beverly, Age 9: Yeah. You ask her. [they approach Raffaella]

Elliot, Age 9: Raffaella, will you have sex with us in our bathtub? It's an experiment.

Raffaella: Are you kidding? Fuck off, you freaks. I'm telling my father you talk dirty. Besides, I know for a fact you don't even know what fuck is. [she retreats into her house]

Elliot, Age 9 [to Beverly, walking away]: They're so different from us. And all because we don't live under water.

Of course, in the previous scene, the more shy Beverly has his more forward brother ask the girl for sex; in a world where we only needed water to procrate, the game and dance wouldn't be necessary, and thus the risk would be minimal--unless EMOTIONS came into play. This lesson is one of the things I truly adore about Dead Ringers; the film can often seem like a class on sociobiology. Adorned with Carol Spier's cold production design--with lots of glass, halogen light, and steely blue surfaces (which are perfect to illustrate underwater doings)--the Canadian Cronenberg absolutely reveals his DNA. Dead Ringers is clearly a Canadian production; it screams "Toronto!" In that way, it diverges from the story of New York City's Marcus twins considerably (and suitably; Toronto seems to me to be a much haughtier town). And the melodrama with Bujold, who's extraordinary here in one of her best roles, is really only a way to illustrate how these two boys, fearful of where they came from, ultimately find women to be inscrutable, over-emotional mutants. Given this, I wonder if telling the real story of the Marcus twins was something Cronenberg thought he couldn't slave his audience to; even HE had his limits, and the studio execs wouldn't brook that kind of story. It just wouldn't make money.

With all the chilly blues in Dead Ringers, one sequence is really supposed to stand out: the surgery scene, with doctors donned in blood red robes, trying out the twin's newest inventions: a terrifying array of Cronenbergian appliances (the director makes a masked cameo in the scene). The appliances are designed for the application against "female mutants" (crafted after the twins discover that Bujold's character, ironically, sports twin vaginas). This sequence stands as the film's centerpiece, in horror and in color. Its tension is amped up further by Peter Suschitsky's extra-sharp cinematography and Howard Shore's ominous score--one of many that he's composed for Cronenberg, and also for the likes of David Fincher's Seven and Tarsem Singh's The Cell. Lastly, the instruments themselves are pure Cronenberg, through and through.

But, finally, it is Jeremy Irons who is the film's MVP. Often times, it's more difficult to tell Irons apart from the Mantle twins than it is the tell the Mantle twins apart from each other. He handles what could have been a tired and cliched pair of roles with breathtaking aplomb. Though the makeup, costuming, hairstyling, subtle special effects (seamless and groundbreaking even for this heavily digital age), and cinematography help his characterizations to the tee, it's Irons' grappling with the marrows of each brother that makes the film succeed. Perhaps my favorite scene in the movie has the sickened Beverly being administered to by the still vital Elliott, who's still not willing to let his brother go his own way. Notice how Irons has Beverly deliver his lines here in a loopy, singsong voice that underlines both his greater humanity and his utter disconnect from reality. I also love, in this scene, how Cronenberg has his characters fittingly struggle over the separation of the famed "Siamese" twins Chang and Eng Bunker; it perfectly illustrates the illusion that the Marcus twins had with their perceived superiority over the majority of us who are not "connected," and how they couldn't envision living apart from one another:

Irons won the Academy Award for Best Actor--but not in 1988. He had to wait one year later to win for his portrayal of another insane doctor, Claus Von Bulow, in Barbet Schroeder's respectable but much-less-compelling 1989 film Reversal of Fortune. When he was up on the stage receiving his Oscar, Irons rightfully gave a shout-out to David Cronenberg, whom he probably believed was the REAL reason he'd won (he was probably right; the Academy didn't even nominate Irons in 1988, even though his lead performance was surely the top among the five best of that year). Often, Cronenberg's strongest films seem to be acute collaborations with his lead actors: Eggar in The Brood, Jeff Goldblum in The Fly, Viggo Mortensen in Eastern Promises and A History of Violence, Peter Weller in Naked Lunch, Ralph Fiennes in Spider, and most especially Christopher Walken in The Dead Zone. I still think his work with Irons remains the film collaboration closest to each other artist's hearts. Without either the writer/director's acute, exacting words and visuals, or Irons' hearty twin performances, Dead Ringers might have had all the effectiveness of the average episode of The Patty Duke Show. Instead, it still remains an gripping wince of a thriller, laced with downbeat biopic undertones.