Notes on a couple of movies I’ve seen recently.
Islands in the Stream
I saw this movie when it was released in 1976 or 1977 and liked it a great deal. I’ve thought about it occasionally over the years and wanted to see it again. Now I have, and I found it at least as good, maybe better, than I remembered. In fact I’m tempted to call it great. After watching it a week or so ago I looked around on the net for other opinions, and I found several people describing it as a forgotten and/or underrated classic. Not entirely forgotten, obviously, since it’s available on DVD. But offhand I don’t remember ever hearing it mentioned by anyone, critic or friend, since I saw it that first time.
It’s based on Hemingway’s posthumously published novel of the same name, which I hadn’t read in 1977 and still haven’t. I don’t think the critics had (or have) a very high opinion of the novel, and obviously I can’t speak to the relative merits of book and film, or the degree of resemblance between them. But if indeed it’s a mediocre novel, it’s one of those cases of a so-so book inspiring a very fine film.
The story is centered on an aging artist living in a sort of exile in the Bahamas, reasonably content but isolated. You might say it tracks his re-engagement with the people he loves, and the enlargement of that circle in a pretty dramatic way. He has three sons by two marriages who come to visit him for the summer, and a big part of the story involves the establishment or re-establishment of his relationship with them. Later the first of his ex-wives reappears. I really don’t want to say much more than that for fear of spoiling the story, which for me at any rate was very powerful when I was twenty-nine and is just as powerful now that I’m sixty-three. I remember on my first viewing thinking that it was a perceptive and accurate picture of the way men love, and I still think so.
George C. Scott’s performance as the protagonist, in many ways a typical Hemingway character, strikes me as simply perfect. And not the least of the film’s pleasures, by the way, is the Caribbean setting, beautifully photographed. It also has a score that seems to me at least considerably better than average.
I’d be interested in knowing whether anyone else has as high an opinion of it as I do.
We Jam Econo: The Story of the Minutemen
One night six or eight weeks ago I was browsing around on Netflix and saw this available for online viewing. Out of curiosity I watched the first ten minutes or so of it. A few days later I found myself thinking about it, and went back for another ten minutes, and so watched the whole thing in ten or twenty-minute pieces.
The Minutemen, if you don’t already know it, were a punk band of the early 1980s, and theirs is one of the names that are always mentioned in any history of punk. I had paid almost no attention to punk at the time it was happening, and a few years ago decided to educate myself a bit on the subject. The Minutemen were one of the bands I had to hear, and I listened to the album which is generally considered their best, Double Nickels on the Dime (that is, 55 miles per hour on Interstate 10). I wasn’t greatly taken with their music, although I found it interesting. (You can read my review of it here.)
Yet I found this documentary fascinating. If punk is a musical style, I don’t care much for it. If it’s the expression of anger, or the simple desire to shock and offend, I don’t like it at all. But if it’s about the rejection of the entertainment industry, about people making their own music rather than passively accepting what the industry sells, and about artistic and personal integrity, I find a lot to like.
I’ve always had a love-hate relationship with rock-and-roll. A few minutes of watching the typical posturing of the typical commercially successful rock group are enough to make me never want to hear another note of it. The Minutemen, as they come across in this film, are refreshing, determinedly down to earth. There’s nothing of the usual sex-and-drugs-let’s-party rock-and-roll mentality about them. Watch the trailer below, especially that first bit, where the three members of the band are being interviewed. You might think at first that you’re hearing three kids who are just starting a band, but in fact that interview was made after they had become pretty successful—very successful, in the context of the “alternative” scene. They don’t seem to be trying to impress anybody; they’re still just being themselves, three guys who started a band. And look at and listen to Mike Watt, the bass player, the guy in the jeans and blue shirt whose reminiscences and reflections make up a big part of the movie: you’d never guess he’s a rock star. And of course he isn’t, in the sense that, say, Bono, is. He’s an impressive bassist and has been moderately successful since The Minutemen, but he doesn’t have anything like the stagey mannerisms and egotism (and, not infrequently, the apparent stupidity) that are too often the mark of rock musicians.
Punk rock—well, rock in general—usually brings along with it some degree of left-wing politics, and that seems to have been part of The Minutemen’s conception of integrity. To the extent that that’s expressed directly, it seems to be the usual rather simple-minded stuff—hating Ronald Reagan, and so forth. But it isn’t overpowering, and insofar as it’s rooted in a dislike of the commercialization and mechanization of every aspect of American life, those roots are healthy.
The film as a whole is made more affecting by the fact that D. Boon, the brilliant guitarist and not-so-brilliant singer, was killed in an auto accident in 1985 at the age of twenty-seven and at the height of the band’s achievement. Mike Watt’s grief is still (the movie was made in 2005) real and evident. I guess what I’m trying to say is that this is an engaging picture of a very likeable group of musicians. I don’t know that it made me like their music any more, but it made me like and respect them. I think anyone with much interest in pop music would enjoy it.
Here’s that trailer:
And, by the way, the explanation of the title, from the movie’s Wikipedia entry:
The title is a lyric from their song “The Politics of Time.” It’s also referred to in a comment made near the end of the film by Mike Watt, in a 1985 interview, when the band is asked if they have anything else to say. He answers for them: “We jam econo.” Econo was local slang for economic and described the band’s dedication to low-cost record production and touring. It also describes the band’s (and burgeoning underground independent music scene’s) do-it-yourself attitude and philosophy.
Light On Dark Water 
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