The Cider House Rules

In St. Cloud, Maine, Dr. Wilbur Larch (Michael Caine) runs an orphanage.  It’s also the remote destination where unwed mothers come for safe (but still illegal) abortions or give birth to their unwanted children.  The children are left, named by Larch, and grow among the other children, all wishing to be adopted.  After two unsuccessful adoptions as a baby, Homer Welles (Toby Maguire) has been raised in the orphanage and medically trained by Larch, who hopes that Homer will one day run the facility.  When Homer meets a young couple seeking an abortion, he leaves with them to see the world outside of the orphanage.

Once Homer sets off, the film quickly becomes a charming coming-of-age odyssey.  In his early talks with Dr. Larch, we understand that Homer is still very naive and expects too much from people.  This spills over into his refusal to perform abortions.  On his own, Homer encounters numerous pitfalls, that he expects people to avoid, himself.  Love and sex aren’t so easy to avoid, and Homer learns that they can create other complications besides children.

While The Cider House Rules brings forward the touchy abortion issue, the film does not preach.  The whole feel of the film is so mellow, calm and naturally beautiful, everything would have been ruined if anyone so much as raised their voice.  While it feels that only Homer strongly opposes the issue, he is far too compassionate to judge or deny the procedure when it is needed most.

Caine’s performance as Dr. Larch earned him the Oscar for best supporting actor.  He portrays Larch to be both a man of medicine and a father figure for the orphans, choosing Homer as his  protégé and son.  In a medical sense, Larch is against ignorance and thinks of the safety of his patients first.  As a care taker to the children, Larch is very warm, open and always tries to make them happy.  With Homer and another older boy, he teaches them to help him and confide more responsibilities.  With sick children, like the heart-wrenching little Fuzzy, it’s all about warm care and special attention.  Yet, Larch is not perfect.  He hides an addiction to ether, and when Homer leaves, he acts disappointed and distant.  He’s simply a proud parent who does not want to see the future he planned for Homer go to waste.

The Cider House rules was simply enjoyable.  The characters are vivid, complex and inviting while the plot is simple, slow paced, yet compelling.  What I love most was the beautiful photography of New England in the autumn.  It helps give the whole film a starry-eyed storybook feel.  As Homer left home, the world looks so far and wide with splashes of brilliant color in the crisp air.  A magenta twilight had burst through the pine trees. The apple trees in the orchard were so thick and full of fruit, you could hide and nap in them.

“Goodnight, you princes of Maine.  You kings of New England.”

The Graduate

When you graduate college, it can feel people are expecting you to have the rest of your life figured out.  For Ben Braddock (Dustin Hoffman), he’s dismayed and worried that he has no idea what to do with his life.  He comes from a well-to-do family, who throw him a big graduation party with all their swanky friends who have watched Ben grow up.  This just puts the pressure on Ben, everyone fusses over him and asks what he’s going to do over and over.  He just wants to get away, but Mrs. Robinson  (Anne Bancroft) interrupts his alone time and asks Ben to drive her home.

Ben is too nice of a young man to deny Mrs. Robinson this simple request.  But she manipulates the ride into requesting Ben to come inside and keep her occupied, alone in the house.  Ben politely, and nervously, lets this go on with a drink and music, until he can’t deny what this looks like, “Mrs. Robinson, you’re trying to seduce me.”  With those fatal words, the cards are on the table, there is not going back and Mrs. Robinson continues to lure Ben into her trap.  The lengths and boundaries Mrs. Robinson pushes as she tries to seduce Ben are shocking.  Ben narrowly escapes at first, but with a long summer of nothing ahead of him, it isn’t long until he takes Mrs. Robinson up on her generous offer.

Ben does not see or think of them at first, but there are huge consequences to his affair with Mrs. Robinson.  Later, when he plays with the idea of dating her daughter, Elaine (Katharine Ross), she forbids it.  A young man, just starting out in the world adulthood isn’t going to listen to an aging woman who only wants to casually him for sex, so he takes Elaine out to spite her.  What Ben doesn’t plan on is genuinely liking Elaine and even falling in love with her.  But Mrs. Robinson won’t let Ben have her daughter and threatens to tell everyone about their affair.

This film shows pressures and pitfalls that many young people experience to this day.  When we hit a new level and come of age in some way, there are new expectations brought on and things we are expected to have knowledge of.  Ben is worried about where his life is heading and Mrs. Robinson expects Ben to be more knowledgeable about sex.  When an idle summer is thrown in, Ben grows complacent, bored and seeks out the one thing he knows he can attain at the moment: sex with Mrs. Robinson.

There are countless things I love about The Graduate.  The camera work and editing is wonderfully inventive.  The party scene stays close to Ben’s face, giving us that feeling that he can’t get away.  There’s the scuba gear scene that even goes underwater.  And during Mrs. Robinson’s first attempt at seducing Ben, there’s quick flashes of nudity edited in, bringing us into what Ben sees, in a sort of nightmarish way.  The soundtrack is one of the best ever, featuring unforgettable songs that define the era by Simon and Garfunkle, including my favorite, the obviously titled song, Mrs. Robinson.  Unless there was some technical reason that Mrs. Robinson could not be nominated for best original song, this is one unforgivable blunder by the Academy.

The Graduate is a wonderful, inventive, funny and honest film about coming of age and the complications of physical relationships that can still be admired for generations to come.  This is one of those films that everyone should see at some point.  And everyone gets a kick out of the nervous word play in the hotel lobby.

“Are you here for an affair, sir?”

The Last Picture Show

To describe this film in one sentence, I’d tell you to imagine a black and white American Graffiti in a dusty, run down little town, where the kids are jaded, romance is substituted for unsatisfying sex and if you don’t leave town young, you’ll live a miserably long life there.  Don’t expect any warm fuzzy feelings, and if you’re not up for a very frank discussion, this film and review might not be for you.

High school seniors Sonny (Timothy Bottoms) and Duane (Jeff Bridges) are best friends who try to keep busy in their little town.  They hangout at the pool hall, the diner and the movie theater run by Sam the Lion (Ben Johnson); there’s not much else still open in town.  Sonny, who seems distant from his own father, bonds with Sam and his mentally challenged son Billy(Sam Bottoms).  It seems everywhere the boys go, people complain about how terrible their football team is, one man just gives the boys a disappointed look and walks away.

They have girlfriends.  Sonny and Charlene (Sharon Ullrick) breakup early on (I love how she brings up his horrible football team while she’s dumping him), but when the high school coach asks Sonny to take his wife to the doctor he starts a dangerous physical relationship with his wife, Ruth (Cloris Leachman).  Meanwhile, Duane and Jacy (Cybill Shepherd), the prettiest girl in school, make their first attempts at sex together just before graduation.  With Jacy realizing she can get any boy she wants and her miserable, alcoholic mother pressuring her to find a rich boy at college, Jacy tries to attach herself to any boy in town before her parents make her leave for college.

A good portion of this film is watching the high school seniors, Sonny, Dunane and Jacy, come of age in their sexuality.  Sonny’s first time with Ruth is very awkward, he’s clearly following her lead.  But most intriguing is Jacy who shows one of the most honest portrayals of a modern teenage girl I’ve ever seen.  She knows her mother is miserable and having an affair, despite her success at marrying a rich man, so naturally Jacy wants to do the opposite.  In the beginning, she innocently believes she’ll marry Duane and that sex before marriage is a sin.  He mother encourages her to try it to see that “there ain’t nothin’ magic about it.”  Duane doesn’t seem to pressure her about furthering their relationship, so when she gets the chance to go to a naked pool party with Lester (Randy Quaid), she takes it.  This a stepping stone for to further her desire to be a sexual person and to make Duane jealous.  To escape the horrors of graduating high school still a virgin, she and Duane rent a motel room during the senior picnic.

Huge SPOILER ALERT:  The motel room scene is the greatest “can’t do it” scene ever.  Jacy just lays herself out like a platter and tells Duane to hurry.  For some reason, Duane can’t do it.  He remains calm and collected about, but Jacy is furious.  She paces around the room, tells him, “Now I’ll never not be a virgin!  You’re the meanest boy I ever saw.”  Very mature.  When she realizes that the whole senior class knows what they’re doing she says spitefully, “You just tell them it was wonderful!”  The class of 1952 obviously had inadequate sex-ed.

In American Graffiti, this topic doesn’t get any more serious or bleak than when Steve and Laurie make out and he brings up how she saw her brother doing it.  That’s only a moment, the sting is just a pin prick and is easily forgotten and forgiven by the end.  But in The Last Picture Show all these actions and hurtful words have consequences.  Nothing is glossed over, the gritty photography isn’t afraid to show all.  By the end of the film, everyone has some open wounds, and if they don’t leave town all that dust flying around is just going to get in there and agitate them further.

I would not recommend this film for anyone who feels uncomfortable with very gritty and unromantic ideas on sex.  I don’t think there’s not a drop of love in this film, but some very ugly and revealing truths that many young people will have to find out the hard way.  If you can handle all that and are a Jeff Bridges fan, put this on your must see list.  He got his first Oscar nomination here.

“Oh, quit prissing. I don’t think you done it right, anyway.”