Lightning Round - #92-90

# 92 - Goodfellas (1990) - Martin Scorsese

“As far back as I remember, I always wanted to be a gangster,” Ray Liotta’s Henry Hill tells us in a voiceover at the beginning of Goodfellas. This comes a few seconds after we watch him and his fellow gangsters finish off a brutal murder, and in that context he’s hard to believe – who grows up hoping to do something like that? But in this case Henry doesn’t actually do any of the stabbing or shooting himself, he’s just the driver. And the look on his face is one, not so much of disgust or surprise, but of slight uneasiness and subtle discomfort, like he’s seen such things before but doesn’t enjoy it or revel in it like his associates seem to. That subtlety is the heart of the movie, as it follows Hill’s rise through the ranks of the “family” of gangsters while exploring the hallow grandiosity of their lifestyle and world.

The voiceover leads to the early years of Hill’s life when he was dreaming of the gangster life. And from his teenage perspective it’s easy to see why. It’s all money and power and freedom. As Hill ages and moves up the organization, he is no less awestruck by the money and power and freedom he wields himself. This freedom and power leads to plenty of unpunished violence and crime, with the cool looks of the wiseguys always assuring themselves that everything is under control. Hill enacts most of his “business” at the side of Tommy DeVito (Joe Pesci) and James Conway (Robert De Niro). Both are loose cannons – Conway more menacingly so, and DeVito more obviously as he murders in petty fits of rage.

Eventually, the gangsters arrogantly try to control the uncontrollable and things start to fall apart. And it is the look on Hill’s face at the beginning that is most telling. He’s as wrapped up in the violence and crime as anyone else, but he seems to recognize the truth of it all. He knows DeVito is a lunatic and that Conway is ultimately incapable and that plans are going to fall apart and that they’re not immune from law and punishment. But he won’t admit it, as he desperately and pathetically tries to keep the dream alive long after it is dead, as he can’t stand being an “average nobody.”

Goodfellas is an excellent, honest, and realistic portrait of the fast, but ultimately hollow and short, lives of gangsters, and is well-deserving of its place in the pantheon of gangster movies.  

#91 - Sophie’s Choice (1982) - Alan J. Pakula

Sophie’s Choice follows an aspiring writer named Stingo (Peter MacNicol) to New York, where he rents a room in the same building as Polish refugee Sophie (Meryl Streep). He quickly becomes friends with her and her abusive and erratic boyfriend Nathan (Kevin Kline). They gallivant around and dress and act like characters from The Great Gatsby while poor Stingo is the third wheel but wishes he was the second. Nathan acts stranger and stranger and Sophie seems to have something to get off her chest. Meryl Streep is amazing as Sophie and she plays her desperate longing and private torment with a powerful subtlety, and does it in multiple languages. I think it’s so well-established that Streep is the world’s best actress that we get tired of it and look for someone else. But no one else could do what she does in Sophie’s Choice.

The movie is two and a half hours long, and it’s a long two and a half hours. At its heart Sophie’s Choice is a Holocaust movie, but it only spends a fraction of its time on the holocaust. The rest is spent on the three friends, their weird dynamic, and Nathan’s psychosis. And that might be an interesting movie in itself. But the Holocaust sections are so good and so powerful that the trio of friends get tiresome and almost irrelevant.

The choice in Sophie’s Choice is gut-wrenching and awful. It’s horrible to watch, but also important. The scene manages to distill the terror and sickening evil of the Holocaust down to one individual parent’s unimaginable nightmare. It brings the sometimes unfathomable scale of the Holocaust down to a single relatable horror, making it possible to begin to appreciate the awfulness of the whole thing. In doing so it achieves what all entertainment dealing with the Holocaust should achieve and does it without being exploitative.

#90 - Swing Time (1936) - George Stevens

Swing Time is a romantic comedy musical, but it’s mostly a dance movie. Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers dance their way through the rom-com conventions their 1930s movies helped establish – the zany coincidences, misunderstandings, and mistaken identities – and do it with such skill and chemistry that is fun to watch. Movies like Swing Time are what make this project worthwhile. It’s not a movie I would have chosen to watch otherwise – I don’t usually watch musicals, romantic comedies, or dance movies. But I really enjoyed it.

And I don’t know much about dance, but I can tell when someone is really good at something. And Fred Astaire and Ginger Rogers are great dancers, and they seem to know it and to dance as though celebrating how great they are and how well they do it together. But it’s confidence and not arrogance and their enjoyment is contagious. The two also have amazing chemistry that comes from working together on many different films. They bring a classiness and charm that transcends all the cheesiness and leaves them just plain likeable.

The plot is as goofy as most in the genre. Astaire forgets to go to his wedding and has to go to New York to prove to his jilted fiancée that he can make $25,000 in order to deserve a second chance. But while in New York he accidentally becomes half of a famous dance partnership with Rogers. Sparks fly and it’s obvious where things are headed. But it’s all good fun. All the actors seem to know it’s ridiculous but have a great time anyway.