Top 20: Rio Bravo

You want that gun, pick it up. I wish you would. - John T. Chance

Rio Bravo is a tall glass of lemonade, warming slowly as the ice cubes melt, ignored in favour of watching the sunset with your best friend.

This was a surprise to me when I first saw Rio Bravo. Before I had seen Howard Hawks's 1959 western I was only aware of it as one of the inspirations to John Carpenters 1976 low budget thriller Assault on Precinct 13. Both films have the same rough plot outline: an upstanding law man has to defend their prison and it's occupants against the attack of a local gang while waiting for help to arrive. In execution the films couldn't be more different. Assault on Precinct 13 is a tense action/thriller with a wonderful, dirty 1970's aesthetic. Rio Bravo takes this story of an assault and creates a space for it's characters to relax and explore the nature of friendship.

The best encapsulation of this relaxation is the musical number that happens two thirds of the way through the film. In a typical calm before the storm moment our band of four do-gooders hold up in the prison and sing a song together (the great saddle-sore, cowpoke tune My Rifle, Pony and Me) . With Dean Martin and Ricky Nelson in your film this isn't surprising, in fact it's downright required by movie law that it must happen. But after it's finished Walter Brennan's Stumpy says they should sing something they can all sing along with, so they break out into another full song. This film is one willing to give as much time to it's characters singing together as to its shootouts. In it's lackadaisical tone it's more akin to Dazed and Confused than High Noon.

My knowledge of westerns is limited, mostly confined to spaghetti westerns and the deconstructionist likes of Unforgiven. Even so this plot seems classic to me. Sherif John T. Chance (John Wayne leaning on years of iconography) arrests the brother to the head of a large gang, Nathan Burdette, for murder. Chance has to wait for a few days for the U.S. Marshal's to come and collect the prisoner, and so is also waiting for the Burdette gang to try and rescue their man. With Chance we have Dean Martin's Dude, once a great shot and deputy to Chance, now a drunk trying to sober up. Colorado is a young, talented gunslinger played by Ricky Nelson who comes into town with another of Chance's friends and get's involved. There's Stumpy, an old, crotchety, limping frontiersman who is always complaining about something but is as loyal as a doberman. Feathers, a strong, fast talking love interest for Chance played by Angie Dickinson is a great Hawksian heroine, out pacing everyone around her with her quick wit. And there are a number of other great supporting players adding to the texture of a worn-in, old west town.

The slow, un-deliberate tone is more than just a pleasant way to structure a movie. It is a direct reflection of it's themes of integrity, friendship and hard work in the name of doing good. The opening scene of the film is free of dialogue as we are introduced to Chance, Dude and the Burdette gang. We become witnesses to how far Dude has fallen into shame in his search for a drink, Chance's tough love for him even in his worst moments and the murder that kicks off the plot. The movie is making a claim for our actions being what is important, we might talk all we want but what we do is a large part of what makes us who we are. Chance, Dude, Stumpy and Colorado are willing to stand up to far greater forces to do what they think is right.

But our actions are deep and not always so straight forward, much like a good friendship. In the silent beginning Dude hits Chance over the head after Chance gets in his way for another drink. Later Dude becomes difficult again, lashing out at whoever is closest, which is, of course, his good friends of Chance and Stumpy. The space the movie creates, the slower pacing, allows for these friendships to take on an air of authenticity, showing that friends might not always be friendly but they will always help to fight for what is best.

Even as I praise Rio Bravo there is an unpleasant aftertaste I get. This film, as most westerns seems to, buys wholeheartedly into the myth of redemptive violence To find films that question that you should check out The Searchers and The Unforgiven. Those films take the inherent violence of films like Rio Bravo and ask what such actions might do to a person. Killing in the name of something good is still killing, and as a devoted pacifist it is difficult at times for me to swallow the hypocrisies of a film like Rio Bravo. The plot is put in motion with the killing of an unarmed man for little reason. Yet Chance and Dude are shown killing a number of “bad guys” themselves. They are all armed and trying to kill them, but I do not believe that this cycle of violence will bring about the good Chance and Dude claim to be upholding. This does not stop me from counting the film as one of my favourites, but it is a problem that should not be ignored.

Rio Bravo is a perfect summer movie, especially compared to the likes we are blasted with these days. Rather than watching super beings pummel each other through buildings this film is like the long days that are upon us. It takes its time getting to where its going, preferring to spend that time with good characters who have history together and who enjoy each other. I can imagine the relationships of Rio Bravo existing outside the confines of the story we're told and the film finds its strength there. It is a lazy, hot afternoon of a movie that is best enjoyed with friends.

Top 20: Raiders of the Lost Ark

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“I'm making this up as I go along.”

-Indiana Jones

Here I am, first movie in and already breaking my word. I had previously said that the first film I would tackle would be Rio Bravo, which turns out to not be the case. Elements beyond my control brought Steven Spielberg's and George Lucas' 1981 bag of joy Raiders of the Lost Ark to a theatre here in Winnipeg, and for the first time ever (I'm not really counting the unfortunate Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull) I got to watch Indy battle the forces of Nazidom on the big screen. I, along with three other souls, were transported back to a time when men solved their issues with fists, ruggedness meant carrying a whip and wearing a fedora, women are constantly in need of some rescuing (though thankfully without the incessant screaming of Kate Capshaw as seen in Temple of Doom) and God teaches the lesson of leaving things be by melting peoples faces off.

It is difficult to watch certain elements of Raiders of the Lost Ark at this stage in my life. The gender politics are not stellar, though Marion is one of the stronger female characters in such adventure movies. There isn't so much a myth of redemptive violence as wholesale support that killing the bad people for the right reasons will make everything OK. Indy's constant catchphrase of, “It belongs in a museum,” brings up some disturbing questions of colonization and Eurocentrism. And the fact that all the bad guys have an accent of some sort points to a certain level of xenophobia. Though, in all fairness, one of the best characters, Sallah, is an Arab from Cairo.

With all this in mind I still count Raiders as one of my all time favourite films. We should not ignore these issues, but for today I will be. When creating the list I tried to not ignore my emotional reactions to films, whatever they might be, and Raiders (along with the other films in the series, save Crystal Skull) comes with a profound sense of nostalgia.

I distinctly remember my parents renting the VHS when I was a child, likely far to young to be watching a movie with such a surprising amount of grotesquerie on display. I was convinced that archeology was the absolute coolest job ever, easily trumping scientist and martial artist, my two previous coolest jobs ever.

I remember receiving Temple of Doom for my birthday one year. I was not allowed to watch certain heart extracting scenes so any time I wanted to watch it a parent had to be present, who would tell me to close my eyes and fast forward over the naughty bits.

I remember being fascinated by the thick cloud of mist Allison Doody falls through at the end of the Last Crusade. I wanted desperately to have done that stunt, falling through an unknown space to a crash mat just below.

More than anything I wanted a whip.

These were films I absorbed as a child, becoming part of my psyche and in their way forming some of what I love in a film.

One of Spielberg's and Lucas' great skills is the ability to create iconic images. Indy is the platonic ideal of the adventuring grave robber. The perfect combination of bravado, intelligence and ridiculousness. Indy does not take himself too seriously so we do not hate him for his arrogance, and his plans fail as often as they succeed. More than this though are the sequences that have stayed in the cultural consciousness. Boulders, bad dates, and being dragged behind trucks are all images that people know today, even if they've never seen the film. When I was young I was enraptured by these scenes, pulled into their excitement. Now I am impressed by the skill behind them, how effortlessly they seemed to print the form of Indiana Jones on the minds of popular culture.

The irony is that the film was originally conceived as a homage to the movie serials of the 1930's and 1940's and has completely eclipsed those influences and the adventure movie prototype. I have never seen any of the serials that Indy was based on, and to my 9 year mind, they did not exist. Raiders was not homage, it was a new idea. In all the bitching and moaning about remakes, reboots and prequels many of us forget that some of our favourite films are barely original rifts on existing properties. Art is often self-reflecting, and film as a medium has embraced this wholeheartedly.

However, if Kingdom of the Crystal Skull is any indication this self reflecting has it's limits. Crystial Skull is mostly a homage to previous Indiana Jones movies. It collapses on it's homage to a homage, creating a pretty surface with very little core. What is amazing about Raiders is that it did contain a core, one of pure jubilation. It feels like watching the result of ten year old Spielberg and Lucas telling their families about their favourite scenes from the Saturday matinee they just came back from. It is excitement through and through, as it was created to be.

Raiders fist squarely in the, “10 problems every minute” vein of films common today. Some have pointed to Raiders as helping to usher in this structure as the standard format for modern blockbusters. I do not have the film knowledge to say how prominent this structure was in films before Raiders, but I first really noticed it while re watching Back to the Future last year. Marty McFly did have one grand problem to be overcome, namely getting back to the future, but within that were a hundred little problems. Every time he bested one of these obstacles another would appear, and another and another to what almost felt like infinity. The finale of Doc brown attempting to attach a chord to a clock tower about to be hit by lightening while Marty tries to get his parents to kiss so he won't be erased from existence is worthy of Tati in the absurdity of it's level of catastrophe. Raiders is of a similar ilk, though tends to get the balance better.

Raiders comes by this structure honestly as the homage that it is. I know little of the adventure serials of the 30's and 40's but I do know that they always ended on a cliffhanger. The heroes would always be put in some perilous, seemingly hopeless situation only to escape the next week. Raiders apes this format by structuring it's story as small, 10 minute chunks of film, each with it's own arch that services the larger story. When done well (Raiders, The Avengers, Time Bandits) this results in an exciting, propulsive film. When done poorly (Pirates of the Caribbean sequels, Transformers films, anything by Paul W.S. Anderson) it's exhausting, though often fascinating in it's spectacle.

In the end my choice of this film is the result of the shear amount of hours I spent in my backyard trying to swing from tree branch to trampoline on a piece of rope I desperately wished was a whip.

The Top 20: An Introduction

I have long been known as a lover of movies, and like anyone who has a particular interest in a medium, people have long been asking me what my favourite movies are. Like most who spend a great deal of time engaging with a particular art form I have bristled at locking myself into any one film above another. This question depends on so much. How does one define favourites, are these to be movies I respect the most? Movies I enjoy the most? Movies I am most entertained by? Movies I believe are important? My answers would also depend on my mood, what I've been watching most recently and what other critics I've been engaging with. Mostly these are all evasive techniques to keep myself from actually putting my tastes out there to be judged by others.

In talking with a friend recently, another movie lover, I came around a little on this stance against making a list. Picking a top ten is almost impossible, much like choosing which limb you would like to keep (movie lovers can be a melodramatic bunch). But a top twenty is more doable. Twenty gives room to allow many definitions on what makes a top movie. So I got to work and made a list:

(In no particular order)

1. Rio Bravo (1959)

2. Andrei Rublev (1966)

3. Star Wars (1977)

4. Crumb (1994)

5. Chinatown (1974)

6. Mullholland Dr. (2001)

7. Brazil (1985)

8. Videodrome (1983)

9. Goodfellas (1990)

10. Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie (1972)

11. Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory (1971)

12. The Dark Crystal (1982)

13. Raiders of the Lost Ark (1981)

14. Apocalypse Now (1979)

15. No Country for Old Men (2007)

16. 8 1/2 (1963)

17. Dawn of the Dead (1978)

18. If.... (1968)

19. 2001: A Space Odyssey (1968)

20. Zodiac (2007)

And there we go.

It must be said I am unhappy with this list. I have trouble believing there is no Allen, Bergman, Carpenter, Pekinpah, Hitchcock, Wells, Herzog, Leone, Jodorowsky or a dozen other amazing directors. At the same time I am confident this is a good representation of the many things I look for in film, what for me makes a great movie. There is much about each of these films that brought them to this list but there are two personal responses that carry through all of them, love and admiration. All these films have connected with me on a deep level at some point and each does something that I am slightly astonished by.

Blogging is easiest, and most interesting (hopefully), when there is a task. The (deeply arrogant) task I have given myself is to re-visit each of these films and write about them. Some I have not seen for years, others get a more or less constant rotation in my house. I will not give myself a strict timeline because I know that I will break it, but my goal is to do one a week for 20 weeks.

The critical project is a complicated one, and I will not pretend to fully engage with these texts. Unfortunately the majority of film criticism is concerned only with the visceral and emotional effects of a film. There is not enough effort put into treating films as art, how it interacts and impacts society, or it's relationships with it's own heritage, languages, traditions and cannon. I will attempt some of this but the truth is this list is a personal one and I will be coming to it as something personal. In this spirit I feel this work will be part appreciation, part criticism and all biography.

I will be watching these in the order listed above, which is no order at all but mearly the order I wrote them down. Feel free to play along if you wish. The first film up is Howard Hawks' 1959 western Rio Bravo where John Wayne shuts a man up by just staring him down.

A Pleasant Dream of Mine

I was walking down a road that was turning from prairie town into the country. If I looked ahead all I could see was scrub brush, canola fields and the occasional tree. If I looked back I saw thirty year old houses, a fifty year old school and one three story building. I was trying to find a place I had been only once before, but I wasn't sure how to get there.

A young girl appeared beside me, or at least younger than me. We talked and rested comfortably in our chatter. At one point I slipped in my age, 25, and she slipped in hers, 21. We realized we had walked too far. The road we were on had made a large arc to the right while it looked like a more major street would have gotten us to our destination.

There was a house and a tent, a boy stood between them, perhaps her brother. A strong wind picked up and turned into a storm. Pants with shoes sewn on to the bottom fell from the sky and we ran for cover. I was in the tent and she in the house with her brother. The wind grew stronger and picked up the tent with me inside, sending us into the sky. A rope kept it tethered to the earth and it sailed like a kite.

I closed my eyes then opened them and I was in the house, with the girl, searching for something. There was no trace of the other boy. I found a stash of small, dried Swedish Berries. I ate some and brought a handful to her. She was in a corner, flipping through some papers. I placed a berry on her tongue, then kissed that place. We embraced and remained that way as I woke.

Watering Hole Sideshow

I remember the night being hot, but I can't be sure. Outside the bar a sign red “Deli,” but few were there looking for a link of German sausage. For what seemed like hours seven of us had crowded around a table made for four. We talked of nothing in particular, to the point that I can't now recall what was said. Though perhaps I was distracted by what was to happen.

At one point those inclined to smoke went outside to do so, leaving three of us to our clean lungs. Soon after an old man in an electric wheel chair rolled through the door. He kept on his path steadily, knocking over several chairs and almost upturning a table full of bottles as he went. He muttered apologies but made no move to alter his course. A few tos a fros and he settle himself at a large, empty table. I had risen to move a few chairs out of his path, and soon sat myself back in my place, returning to my companions.

After a time my eye was caught by another person entering the bar. This was a woman, skinnier than most, which was highlighted by the fact she was wearing only her underwear. This was not a particularly nice pair of underwear, and in fact did not match. I thought that if someone was going to wear only their underthings to a bar they might pick out their nicest pair. Later I mentioned this to a friend, who was quick to mention that most women wore only the basics most days. Perhaps her choice of undress was a quick one on her part. Perhaps this was the nicest pair she owned.

She acted as normally as a woman wearing only underwear can, and the rest of us tried to catch glimpses of this fashion rebel without trying to seem too interested. She sat at the same table as the man in the wheel chair. They seemed to know each other and talked quite seriously, creating a bond of those with no heed to the expectations of society. At some point I believe I saw the owner of the establishment talk to the unclothed lady, who soon left the premises as unceremoniously as she entered it.

Our smoking comrades soon returned with a few others. Our bloated numbers forced us to a new table, deeper into the bar, and if it was warm in there, likely hotter. A half our or so passed and a number of unremarkable people sat with the wheel chair man. Then entered an older, bearded man caring a large, stuffed bear. He sat his stitched companion at its own chair and went to get a drink. One of my friends started yelling out the get that bear a drink. The man paid no notice to the bear when he came back, and having to work the next morning I soon left.

A Change of Place

You may have noticed that I haven't written anything here for quite a while. The main reason for this is I have been asked to contribute to the Canadian Mennonite Magazine's blog initiative Young Voices. The majority of my blogging efforts will not be pointed there, so this space will likely go largely untouched. Though there are some ideas and experiences I would like to write about that do not fit in that place, so there will be new content here on occasion. If you are interested in following me at Young Voices here's the link: http://youngvoices.canadianmennonite.org/blog/adamklassen

The idea is to have a group of young Anabaptist's write their thoughts and ideas about faith. There isn't too much more focus than that, which leads to a great variety of content. I would encourage you to check out the other blogs there, which are wonderful.

Haiku Mondays (Slightly Late Version)

A crow coloured field

brought to its full potential

by the farmer's match