sothisislife

While Milestones is ostensibly about the years following a historical movement, and the film does very much take place in the ashes of the 60s, it is a film of tragic specificity and genuine intimacy that reveals more to the viewer than political or social agenda. The film is remarkably successful because it tunnels through the superficial, and it achieves feelings of both documentary and fiction (it has to be both documentary and fiction, because there is a major moment towards the end of the film that could only have been partially staged), spreading out across human experience, examining stories of betrayal, redemption, bonding, sacrifice, disappointment, and hope. It has stories of beginnings and ends, family stories, stories between friends, lovers - I don't think there is any other film with such an amazing diversity of characters and situations with such meaningful focus on each character.

This large ensemble narrative, then, which possesses a narrative that is both indifferent and engaging, is special for having a structure emblematic of its major social intention. While a film may be about caring, it seems that this film is about caring and does care.

Describing the actual film would be a matter of detailing the myriad of characters' paths, and I won't do that for you because the mystery of the journey is part of the fun of the film, but I will say that some of the characters are: a three person hippie family unit searching for a place of true meaning out across the roads of America, a commune that feels similar to Moodysson's much later film Together, a father trying to find a relationship with his son he left behind years ago, an elderly woman who has worked her entire life, a pregnant woman, a man wanted for murder in a way similar to Days of Heaven, a blind potter, a gentle, sincere radical recently released from prison, and a musician trying to make living money. They come to mean so much more though, than that I can describe.

If you do not have the time or money to travel back to 1953 to spend a French holiday, you might as well just watch M. Hulot's Holiday. Honestly holidays are stressful and barely ever as good as you want them to be anyway, while this movie was much more than I expected it to be.

The humor in the film is warm, never condescending or patronizing to the characters. There is always the sense of fun. The movie really sells itself to me by not making Mr. Hulot a buffoon alone in the crowd. Circumstance and happening reveals everyone to be capable of situational humor, the accidents of the movie are shared with a laugh.

It is an observational movie, and the majority of the humor is not forced, neither upon us nor upon the movie itself. It merely shows how people can get involved in each others' lives, how funny the average day can be. It is like attending a family reunion, really. The camera does not stick itself to Mr. Hulot, but goes anywhere for a laugh. If a small boy is doing something funny, the camera will be there to capture it all, and then leave the boy. This would make another film feel large, but because there is no story to the film, because there is no main character to feel especially attached to, it always feels personal, it always feel like you are seeing something nobody else is.

Perhaps the best part is that the film sticks with you for days afterward, and soon Mr. Hulot's Holiday shows its real genius, as you start noticing similar things happening around you.

It is my humble opinion that Bring Me the Head of Alfredo Garcia comes as close to capturing the maddening drive of man as any movie. That is to say that it sits at the same table as the greats, perhaps across the way from Citizen Kane or Raging Bull. If you contest this it is perhaps only because the film is not as beautiful, not as magnificent, as the rest of its ballpark. I would argue that that is partially the point.

Bennie's quest is stripped to its core so that the brutality of the film is expressive of Bernie himself. There is not a violent film with more validity for its actions than this one, it is the maddening human mind which causes deaths here. Peckinpah shows us everything that is important in this man's life and then shows us what a man is capable of doing once all that is taken away. The difference between this film and other similar films is perhaps that the movie has such humble beginnings. We build ourselves inside of Bennie. When we first meet him he is casually and happily playing the piano, quietly dreaming of settling into a different kind of love. We share a quiet picnic with him, witness his wedding proposal.

Perhaps also there has never been a chaotic killing spree that has seemed this environmental. While usually the hero goes on a rampage in a way that is appropriately heroic itself, Bennie is no hero. He is a man forced into a situation by the world around him, as it seems he is always forced into situations. Since he is never the man he wants to be it seems natural that he would become the kind of man that is the amalgamation of love and hate.

All the emotion a movie in this genre could handle.