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I believe the art of living consists not so much in complicating simple things as in simplifying things that are not.

............ François Hertel

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You can't roller skate in a buffalo herd / But you can be happy if you've a mind to

............ Roger Miller

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I don't understand. All my life I've been waiting for someone and when I find her, she's... she's a fish.

............ Allen Bauer

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If you've been reading this weekly column for any kind of a fair while now, it surely must be obvious that I'm not exactly your typical film critic. Partly deliberate and mostly accidental, my regular display of non-technique isn't so much a way of actively trying to set myself apart from the rest of the litter in terms of style and content as it is an example of the oddball way that my brain happens to make connections between normally disparate thoughts.

This can be dangerous. No, not in like I-could-go-to-prison dangerous, but risky in that I might go off on some extended stream of consciousness riff only to find myself (and my readers) stranded at the end of it without benefit of having made any kind of a point. This is one of the reasons I try to inject some levity into the proceedings, so that if no greater philosophical good has ultimately been served, at least the passengers on the Mystery Train had a good laugh or two before they end up in the town of Machine.

See? Dangerous. I just made a joke that depends on your prior understanding that 'Mystery Train' and 'Machine' are both references to Jim Jarmusch films. One of these flicks, Dead Man, was one that I had reviewed last fall. So you might, if your memory is extremely good, recall that the town of 'Machine' was 'the end of the line', and possibly a metaphor for a soul's beginning journey into hell. This involved a train ride, and logically enough, so did Jarmusch's film Mystery Train. (Which I haven't reviewed yet, but if it turns out that you don't like my current pick of the week, it might make a good alternative. Never say I don't have your best interests at heart! ;-).

So far no one has ever come right out and asked me how my mind 'works', but I'm sure that if I peck away at this old keyboard long enough, someone will. And then I will be forced to admit, if I don't wish to be disingenuous, that I haven't a clue.

Take this week's Classic Movie, Ron Howard's wonderful 1984 film Splash, starring a very young Tom Hanks and a very young Daryl Hannah in what many filmgoers looked at as a 'nice little popcorn movie' and so had a generally pleasant time at the theater and then forgot about it.

Yeah, it shows up regularly on various and sundry cable and network channels, but I don't know that anyone ever pays much attention to it, other than when Hannah walks naked along the beach or flashes a wee bit of breast here and there when in her mermaid incarnation. Now, not that I don't enjoy those things, but there is a good deal more going on under the surface (ouch!) in this film than most people typically give it credit for, and that's what I'm here to talk about, and so encourage you to viddy it yet again, and pay just a mite more attention this time around. No, it isn't BtVS-class clever, but it's pretty darn good.

It all started shortly after Flooded aired this last Tuesday on BtVS. When this ep aired last fall, I decided: hummm, flooded basement, therefore plumbers, therefore Super Mario Bros. Critics hated that film, I liked it. Whadda they know? Hah! Furthermore, fungus, hero/heroine's journey, alternate realities, neat special effects. What's not to love? I'll review it!

So, in thinking about pipes and plumbing and philosophy, and how it is easy to forget that we take the simple things in life (like running water) for granted because they are so 'simple' ( recalling the image of Buffy staring Zen-like at the kitchen faucet ), I thought about the fact that it was summertime (heat'll do that, and it's warm here at the mo' in PA) and lo, into my brain came the thought/song...

In the summertime, when all the trees and leaves are green
And the redbird sings, "I'll be blue", 'cause you don't want my love"

...by a guy who entertained me vastly when I was a boy young'n, Roger Miller.

Now, you read over that brief l'il couplet, and if you're like me, you get a l'il heart-chuckle to go along with it. Part of the joy in reading those two lines is the appreciation of the song's simplicity-- green trees, red bird, the blues. It packs a message in very few words, but very successfully communicates the meaning of that message. It is easy to write volumes of words about life, love and loss, but harder to recall that sometimes things are simpler than they appear. You just have to cut through the tangle of branches.

The foliage appears opaque to the one lead character in Splash. As most of you know, since I suspect virtually everyone reading this has already seen this movie at least once, the basic story outline is that one Allen Bauer (Hanks), who runs a fruit and veggie wholesale business in New York runs into a woman who has fallen in love with him (Hannah), and he in turn falls in love with her, and then finds out that she is a mermaid. And while love might make you do the wacky, this is just a tad too wacky for him to handle, and he tries to escape the relationship. The mermaid, who has adopted the name Madison while in human form, is heartbroken, but before the two can resolve their differences (in more ways than the obvious) Madison is abducted by the usual gang of nasty government scientists who pretty much want to dissect her. Hanks and his brother Freddie (John Candy) and a non-evil (just misguided) scientist (Eugene Levy) decide to rescue her, and just barely succeed.

All this sounds pretty much like your conventional Disney-mode filmmaking (it's not a Disney production), but there are a couple of very neat twists here and there, largely hinging around the facts that virtually every main character in this story-- Allen, Freddie, Madison and Kornbluth (the scientist)-- turn out to be not what you expect in some regard. Allen's brother Freddie seems like a total doofus/pervert, but in the crunch is revealed as someone who can cut through the malarky and get to the heart of the matter. The scientist, Kornbluth, is very much like Freddie, except instead of being a failed romantic, his goal is to be taken seriously for his mind. Like Freddie, he surrounds himself with failures to reassure his fragile ego that he is at least better than someone. Allen, who considers himself to be the 'brain' of the family, the 'success story', has to admit to himself that the reasons his prior relationships have failed is that he always enters into them for the wrong reasons; he treated his relationships the same way he runs his business affairs-- all logic and reason and mostly the expectations of some quid pro quo.

Madison, not unsurprisingly, steals the show. I very much appreciated how Howard and the writers set things up so that when we first meet her, we have the 'natural' reaction that she is a naive creature of possibly lower intelligence, and then they proceed to deconstruct that (highly faulty) impression, such as when she learns to speak English in just one day, by watching TV sets in a department store. Later on, hints are dropped that the underwater world she comes from is not only equal to ours in intelligence and accomplishments, but may very well be significantly superior.

But more importantly than issues of intelligence, is the fact that Madison isn't a manipulator-- she really has no sense of guile. If she wants to offer a gift, she offers it without thought of getting something in return. If she loves, she will make almost any personal sacrifice as long as the other person truly loves her in return. By contrast, it seems that every single human around her is well-skilled in the art of deviousness. Amazingly, she doesn't seem to resent this, she simply accepts. She does, however, not see that Allen is capable of betrayal also. Her species apparently considers personal integrity to be something inherent, not a goal to be worked at when convenient, so she tends to expect the same unless otherwise shown that she is mistaken. I remember being in the theater when this film was first released, and watching the scene where Allen first proposes to her and wants her to stay with him. She hesitates, understandably, because it would literally involve giving up her entire home world, family and species, leaving them behind, never to return, ever. She doesn't elaborate on why she can't go back, just that she can't. She expects him to accept that her reason is a good one. He argues passionately, convincing her of the absolute integrity of his love for her. She believes him and so ultimately chooses to make the sacrifice, and become permanently human..

This strength of feeling finally prompts her to reveal her ultimate secret, since she is now certain that Allen is sincere and so will accept anything, no matter how disturbing it might be initially-- for love conquers all.

Except it doesn't, at least not at first. Allen is more than disturbed, he seems genuinely repelled. He not only betrays her with his horrified look, he allows her to remain in captivity with the people who indifferently mean to do her harm, since they don't consider her to be 'human'-- just a curiosity to be studied. What happens next isn't surprising, since we in the audience knew all along that Allen is a good guy at heart, (as is Kornbluth) and he gets over his fears and decides to win her back. They escape, end up at the oceanfront, she has to leave and go back to her world so that she will be safe there, and they can both go on to live out their separate lives, content with the living memories of what they meant to one another.

This is when the truly unexpected happened, and I was both pleasantly shocked and delighted. The situation of before-- Madison being willing to leave her 'Atlantis' and live as a human-- is turned around and presented to Allen. He wants to come with her, but it would mean that he could never return to humanity. Obviously he will have to turn this down-- Madison even understands and accepts his initial refusal. But then he changes his mind-- chooses to live with her, in her world. This was one of the best moments at the movies I have ever had in a 'popcorn' flick since the heroine saved herself (and thus seriously tweaked the 'romance novel' convention) in the endgame of Romancing the Stone. There is a lot of similarity in these two films, it's just a bit less obvious in Splash since the comedy is a good bit more broadly rendered.

The reduction of his complex emotional/intellectual formula to it's simplest, single short equation provides the clarity of the ultimate answer for Allen Bauer-- does he love this other being, or does he not? Once he cuts through the forest of apparent complexities, he understands that it isn't that involved at all-- there are really just these two trees, with two birds singing to one another.

Their 'color' doesn't really matter, and neither one of them is singing the blues.

E. Pluribus Cinema, Unum,

OnM

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Technically Neo-Atlantean:

Splash is available on DVD, according to the Internet Movie Database. The review copy was on laserdisc. The film was released in 1984 and run time is 1 hour and 51 minutes. The original cinematic aspect ratio is 1.85:1 which is likely preserved on the DVD edition.

Writing credits go to Brian Grazer for the story and Bruce Jay Friedman for the screenplay. Cinematography was by Donald Peterman with film editing by Daniel P. Hanley, Mike Hill and Bill Shepard. Production Design was by Jack T. Collis with set decoration by Norman Rockett. Costume design was by Jody Berke, Charles DeMuth and May Routh. Primary makeup work was done by Robert J. Schiffer and Robert Short. Visual Effects were by Mitch Suskin. Original music was by Lee Holdridge. The original theatrical sound mix was in standard Dolby Surround.

Cast overview:

Tom Hanks .... Allen Bauer
Daryl Hannah .... Madison
Eugene Levy .... Walter Kornbluth
John Candy .... Freddie Bauer
Dody Goodman .... Mrs. Stimler
Shecky Greene .... Mr. Buyrite
Richard B. Shull .... Dr. Ross
Bobby Di Cicco .... Jerry
Howard Morris .... Dr. Zidell
Tony DiBenedetto .... Tim, The Doorman
Patrick Cronin .... Michaelson
Charles Walker .... Michaelson's Partner
David Knell .... Claude
Jeff Doucette .... Junior
Royce D. Applegate .... Buchwalter

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The Question of the Week:

Daryl Hannah is considered by some movie fans to be mostly a 'character' actor, in that she tends to be the 'same person' exhibited in different incarnations in the vast majority of her films. If this is true, and 'Madison' was just another variant of the standard DH, most people will still agree that Hannah was perfect for the part, whatever the reason.

Do you accept that some actors are just destined to be this way, and accept their work even though it could be considered 'repetitive', or do you stop watching after a while just because you feel you should insist on professional 'growth' in an actor?

If you accept, who would you class as your personal favorite 'character actor'? Why?

That's all for this week, folks. As usual, please post 'em if you've got 'em, and take care.

See you next time!

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Classic Movie of the Week - June 21st 2002 - Splash