What are your top ten favorite movies?
Asking for a top ten list of movies is a bit daunting—you see, I write my daily blog entry during my first cup of coffee and I’m not capable of higher order thinking this early. But I will give you my top three.
Incidentally, for a film class, I used to give the students an exercise: aliens are coming to Earth to save some of mankind. You have been chosen, and are asked to bring along only 3 movies to preserve the art, history, and culture of our civilization. What do you pick?
And like current AI, the results were often limited. Some students would pick Independence Day, which really doesn’t paint the human/alien relationship in a positive light. Or they would choose movies with dysfunctional relationships between humans. I was hoping they’d want to preserve better examples of humanity. (Then again, they weren’t that familiar with film history and didn’t have many examples to draw on, hence my teaching the class.)
So here are my choices to preserve our culture.
Singin’ in the Rain may seem an odd choice for those who know me well, because I hate most musicals. (Talk about outdated politics and bad ideas; Grease is about conformity, Annie Get Your Gun is about women being subservient to men—well, you get the idea.) But this film is not only an excellent tale of the history of the development from stage to screen and silents to talkies, but it also depicts a cross section of human behavior, and allows the good guys to win in the end. I would think you would get a lot of replays for this film on the space colony.
Casablanca has been called the best-written film of all time. In a way, the story is simple: the usual triangular love story. But, as a depiction of the foolishness of fascism and the nobility of those fighting against it (yes, Antifa!), it works beautifully. Casablanca is part love story, part melodrama, and all great storytelling.
Apocaplyse Now perhaps doesn’t seem to follow my earlier premise to preserve the best of human culture, as Willard is plunged into the depths of war and brutality. Yet, Coppola’s original theatrical release is a beautiful film. It follows the ideas set forth in Jung’s psychological studies as well as offering a variation on Campbell’s mythic journey of the hero. We see a man on a mission , stripped of his anima, gradually going through situation after situation that is each more primitive than the last. And then, the ritual enactment of Sir James Frazer’s Old King/New King ritual brings the perfect ending to the story. I once wanted to write a book about this film and long ago abandoned the idea, but that would have been a labor or love, to analyze the emotional impact of ANow through these academic ideas.
Two other films I might have to smuggle on board the alien ship just for their entertainment value: Waiting for Guffman, an insane look at community theatre; and This Is Spinal Tap, an insane look at a rock band. Oh, and remember those students who would take Independence Day on the ship? One of them once lamented the travails experienced by the members of the band Spinal Tap; they thought it was a documentary and not a satire. Critical thinking? Not in that case.
MUSOFYR 