Rushmore – Love, Expulsion, Revolution!

This is a story about the supremely confident, 15-yr old Max Fischer (Jason Schwartzman) who reigns over anything that is remotely “extra-curricular” at the Rushmore Academy. Despite failing in his classes, his busy life in Rushmore, right from being in the beekeeping society to writing and producing plays, becomes the reason for his existence.

His life begins to change when he stumbles across the pretty, soft-spoken and recently -widowed elementary school teacher, Miss Rosemary Cross(Olivia Williams). He manages to impress Miss Cross and even gets expelled from Rushmore in the process, but is rejected by Miss Cross.

Around the same time, he is befriended by Herman Blume (Bill Murray), the wealthy industrialist and father to the muscular and incredibly dim-witted twins studying at Rushmore. Herman is impressed by the brilliant and determined Max and the friendship between them offers respite to the depressed Herman, who is suffering from a rocky marriage.

Herman treats Max as his equal and helps him in his efforts to woo Miss Cross but trouble starts brewing when Herman himself begins to fall for her. What ensues is vengeance, retaliation and a full blown war between Max and Herman, who simultaneously, try in vain to win the affections of an unattainable Miss Cross.

How this odd love triangle is resolved, forms the end of the movie. Max’s gesture of patching up the frayed friendship with Herman is both funny and queerly touching. This is a movie that never gets too serious. The one-upmanship battles between Herman and Max remind one of Tom and Jerry. What makes this movie thoroughly enjoyable and a good bet for the weekend, is the vein of comedy that runs throughout the length of the movie, as both, a middle-aged man and a teenager learn valuable lessons about friendship, love, betrayal and life and coping with it all.

This thoroughly enjoyable movie came out in 1998, directed by Wes Anderson and written jointly by Wes and Owen Wilson. What made this movie special for Wes and Wilson, was that it takes from their life. Like Max Fischer, Owen was expelled from his prep school, St. Mark’s School of Texas, in the tenth grade, while Wes shared Max’s ambition, lack of academic ability, and had a crush on an older woman. They knew that they wanted to make a film set in an elite prep school, much like St. John’s School in Houston, Texas which Wes had attended.
Something that must not be missed is the soundtrack, “Ooh La La” that is played over the film’s final shot and closing credits. It was also used as the theme song for the BBC sitcom Grass.

Poor old granddad
I laughed at all his words
I thought he was a bitter man
He spoke of womens ways

Theyll trap you, then they use you
Before you even know
For love is blind and youre far too kind
Dont ever let it show

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.

The can cans such a pretty show
Theyll steal your heart away
But backstage, back on earth again
The dressing rooms are grey

They come on strong and it aint too long
Before they make you feel a man
But love is blind and you soon will find
Youre just a boy again

When you want her lips, you get a cheek
Makes you wonder where you are
If you want some more and shes fast asleep
Then shes twinkling with the stars.

Poor young grandson, theres nothing I can say
Youll have to learn, just like me
And thats the hardest way
Ooh la la

I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was younger.
I wish that I knew what I know now
When I was stronger.

Here is a look at some of the memorable quotes from the movie:

Max Fischer: Maybe I’m spending too much of my time starting up clubs and putting on plays. I should probably be trying harder to score chicks.
———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Max Fischer: The truth is, neither one of us has the slightest idea where this relationship is going. We can’t predict the future.
Rosemary Cross: We don’t have a relationship.
Max Fischer: But we’re friends.
Rosemary Cross: Yes, and that’s all we’re *going* to be. Well, yes…
Max Fischer: That’s all I meant by “relationship.” You want me to grab a dictionary?
———————————————————————————————————————————————

[Max has just petitioned to make Latin a required subject]
Magnus Buchan: Why dincha just piss off, Fischer? Ya dotty wee skid mark!
Max Fischer: Is that Latin?

Rosemary Cross: I’ll show you the door.
Max Fischer: I’ll just go back out the window.
———————————————————————————————————————————————

Dr. Peter Flynn: I didn’t know we were going to dinner.
Max Fischer: Well, that’s because you weren’t invited.

———————————————————————————————————————————————–

Max Fischer: What was your major?
Rosemary Cross: I didn’t have a major, but my thesis was on Latin American economic policy.
Max Fischer: Oh, that’s interesting. Did you hear that they’re not going to teach Latin anymore?
Rosemary Cross: This was more like Central America.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Rosemary Cross: [to Max] You know, you and Herman deserve each other. You’re both little children.

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Herman Blume: Never in my wildest imagination did I ever dream I would have sons like these.

——————————————————————————————————————————————–

Concierge: How long would you be staying here, Sir?
Herman Blume: Indefinitely. I’m being sued for divorce.
Concierge: Very good sir.

Rushmore

The biggest risk in life is not taking one

Released in 2005, Proof is a compelling drama about grief, insanity and emotional isolation based around the world of mathematics. Made in the same vein as A Beautiful Mind and Good Will Hunting ( though I personally found it to be far better than Good Will Hunting), this is a movie made spectacular by the equally stellar performances of Anthony Hopkins, Gwyneth Paltrow, Jake Gyllenhaal, and Hope Davis. The oscar nominated John Madden (Shakespeare in Love, Captain Corelli’s Mandolin ) has elegantly adapted this movie from David Auburn’s Pulitzer Prize-winning play of the same name. Rebecca Miller has provided the screenplay while Mick Audsley has edited this tight-scripted movie.

Proof dazzles the audience on several levels like a perfected equation. Hopkins plays Robert, a now-deceased mathematical genius, who falls victim to dementia in his twilight years. Paltrow plays  the trobled 25 year-old Catherine, the youngest of his two daughters, who drops out of college at Northwestern to take care of her deranged dad. Gyllenhaal  plays Harold “Hal Dobbs, Robort’s mentee, who has long been infatuated with Catherine as well as his mentor’s genius. Catherine fears she may have inherited her father’s legacy of lunacy along with his genius and her elder sister Claire (Hope Davis), who arrives from New York for the funeral, with smothering concern and a selfish but well-meaning agenda, soon expresses concern for Catherine’s mental state. 

In his last years, Robert furiously scribbles in several notebooks. On Robert’s demise, Hal is keen on searching each and every one of the notebooks, in the hope of finding the lasting proof of Robert’s genius who revolutionized the mathetical world in his prime. Inspite of Catherine’s repeated claims that his late father’s scribblings are mere gibberish, Hal remains persistent in his search. On the morning after which Hal professes his love for Catherine, Catherine gives him the key to a locked drawer of a table in her father’s room, containing one of her father’s notebooks. Catherine claims to have written the path-breaking theorems that this notebook contains. The plotline of the movie largely revolves around who the real author of the notebooks is.

Steeped in the authentic atmosphere of advanced academia, revelations of love, fear and regret, the film also has a lot to say about the potential tragedy of assuming mental illness where none exists, while leaving just enough doubt to keep you wondering.

 This movie is scintillating proof of how good performances, skilled direction and a brilliant script can fuse to create a winner that grips, thrills and moves the audience.

Everyone pretending to be normal is invited…. Welcome to Hell

Recipe: Little Miss Sunshine (2006)

Ingredients:

• One sweet little rotund 7 yr old angel, with a few missing front teeth, compensated by a cherubic mile.
• One adorable, irritating grandfather filled to the brim with a devil-may-care attitude and fond of snorting heroin in the bathroom.
• One forceful, determined, im-always-right, and not to mention, blinkered, dad who is a complete flop as a motivational speaker.
• One eccentric Nietzsche lover for a brother, in the throes of the idiosyncrasies of the teenage years.
• An unemployed gay uncle having suicidal tendencies and a fondness for quoting Proust .
• And the family gluestick- a mother (who appear to be a relatively normal human being, albeit with her own flaws, one of them being chain-moking) holding the famliy together.

The Chef and his team:

Misdirectors: Jonathan Dayton and Valerie Faris ( of “The Cutting Edge” fame on MTV)

Scribbler: Michael Arndt (currently scribbling “Toy story 3”)

Pretenders:
Greg Kinear, Toni Collette, Alan Arkin, Abigail Breslin, Paul Dano and Steve Carrell

CAUTION: Not to be sampled by children and all finicky adults who are offended by swearing

Method of preparation

The movie begins with Olive Hoover (Abigail Breslin) who happen to win the local beauty contest and thereby enters the finals of a beauty-pagaent, “Miss Sunshine”, by fluke. Seeing the confidence and excitement aroused in Olive at the prospect of contesting in the finals, her father Richard (Greg Kinnear), whose favourite statement, ( in his own words), is, “There are 2 kinds of people in this world- there are winners and there are losers”, is keen to see his daughter sieze this oppurtunity.

Olive’s mother, Sheryl (Toni Collette) invites her brother Frank (Steve Carrell) into her family. Frank, a renowned Proust scholar, has attempted suicide following an unsuccessful romance with a male graduate student. He can’t stay at the hospital due to their insurance.
Sheryl’s teenage son from her previous marriage, Dwayne, has taken a vow of silence as a follower of Nietzsche and aims to be a jet pilot in the Navy. It’s been 9 months since he’s talked and he finds his family tormenting.

Dwayne’s grandfather Edwin was sent away from the institution for elders, “Sunset Manor” and is addicted to heroin. He has the reputation of being a no-gooder enjoying little respect from anyone in the family except Olive.

The beauty contest is to held in Redondo Beach, California and is due in a couple of days (the Hoovers stay in Albuquerque, New Mexico). The Hoovers (and Frank) can’t fly because they’re tight for cash, Richard doesn’t want to go because he has an important business proposition that could be his big break, Dwayne doesn’t want to go at all, Frank can’t stay by himself or stay behind with Dwayne, Grandpa definitely wants to go, and Sheryl can’t take her car because it won’t fit everyone. .It’s finally settled that they will drive to California in their old run-down VW bus- a Volkswagen Type 2 (Kombi).

Thus, circumstances conspire to put this motley lot together on a cross-country road trip with the goal of getting Olive to the Little Miss Sunshine contest in far off California. The first in a long run of disasters is the bus breaking down, causing them all to push it to get the trip started. There are MANY more things, however, which hinder Olive’s Little Miss Sunshine career, including a death in the family, discovery of colour blindness in another family member, a tiff with law and a life-long ban.

Taste Analysis

The Hoover family is the dictionary meaning of the word “dysfunctional”. Olive is an innocent little girl with a dream: winning the Little Miss Sunshine contest. Stirred by her pure excitement and joy, her family wants her dream to come true, but they are so burdened with their own quirks, neuroses, and problems that they can barely make it through a day without some disaster befalling them.

Richard is highly motivated but unsuccessfully trying to sell his self-help and self-improvement technique “Using nine steps to reach success”. He is constantly reminding himself and his family that he hates losers and but he is actually a complete loser himelf.

Frank is homosexual and an expert in Proust. He is driven to humiliation and depression when he is rejected by his boyfriend, loses his job and his great competitor becomes renowned and recognized as number one in the field of Proust. One gets a taste of the dark comedy in the movie when Sheryl picks up Frank at the hospital and the and the doctor tells Sheryl to watch him closely, while also informing her of hiding medication and sharp objects.

The vow of silence taken by Dwayne, allows him to escape somewhat from the family whose very presence torments him. In the early part of the movie, he writes down a note to Frank – “I hate everyone”. Frank asks if that includes his family, and Dwayne underlines “everyone”.

And Olive’s grandfather is a ne’er-do-well with a drug habit, but at least he enthusiastically coaches Olive in her contest talent routine. In fact, it is thanks to Grandpa that the movie reaches its hilarious end.

The cast is marvellous as the dyfunctional and bankrupted family. The death scene, hinted at above, is written and directed ( or rather, scribbled and misdirected) beautifully with a right balance of emotion and practicality. These emotional scenes also transform seamlessly into some of the funniest scenes in the movie.

The tender relationhip between a brother and sister is displayed beautifully in the scene in which Olive reaches out to Dwayne to comfort him, when all others fail. Few scenes are as effective as this without a single word being spoken throughout.

The final part of the movie, which deals with the actual pageant, is by far the funniest and the strongest part of the film. It illustrates, with great hilarity, the frighteningly shallow people who are involved in child pageants today. You can’t help rooting for Olive, who is refreshingly normal amongst the other contestants who are frighteningly plastic. The hilarity of the climax is the all the more pronounced due to the twist in the tale.

The movie is totally a must-see for the way in which the various family members, who could not be more different from each other, come together to ensure that Olive not only contests in the beauty pageant but also gives a booming (in more ways than one!) performance, that she so hardly practiced for. By far, the best comedy and a very good movie that I have seen in a long-long time.

Kudos to the misdirectors, scribbler and the pretenders and the rest of the chef’s crew!

A few spoilers, that are my favourites:

.. announces to her that they’re going to California. That night, Dwayne writes to Frank “please don’t kill yourself tonight” before they go to bed, and Dwayne also writes “welcome to hell”.

… Grandpa mentions that he still has Nazi bullets in his ass when Olive takes off her headphones and asks them what they’re talking about. Grandpa just says politics and she puts her headphones on again.

…

Gattaca

I have disliked the science fiction genre ever since I read science fiction books way back in my childhood. The future of man in such stories has always been portrayed as anything but hopeful. The already pitiful condition of mankind is projected as bleak, insensitive and with very little presence or totally devoid of human bonds and relationships inspite of the mind-numbing leaps in science and technology.

 

Perhaps the most disappointing element I have found is the helplessness of man brought about by his total dependency on scientific advancements, which leaves little or no hope for a more humane society in a world no longer ruled by the laws of nature but one that is ruled by the unyielding man-made laws of science.

 

Recently, I saw the movie “Gattaca”, starring Ethan Hawke, Jude Law and Uma Thurman,  which not only shocked me by ( beyond anything that I have ever read or seen on the silver screen relating to science fiction) but also showed how the will of one man defeats an authoritarian and discriminatory society to follow a dream. It is the awesome story of how one man’s self-belief and determination  to reach for the stars, not only survives inspite of years of  negative social conditioning, but succeeds in the face of all odds.

 

Sometime in the future, discrimination is no longer based on  the colour of your skin, your nationality, religion or socio-economic status. The quest for excellence and the required perfection has driven man to perfect “discrimination” itself, by categorizing all humans into “perfect” and “imperfect” (or “invalids” as they are called in Gattaca), based on their very fundamentals of existence- their DNA.

 

The movie is autobiographical in form and is narrated by the protagonist, Damien* (played by the outstanding Ethan Hawke). The first sentence uttered by Damien – “ The exact time of my death was determined even before I was born”, pretty much sets the mood of the next one and a half hours of the narrative.

 

Damien’s future is destined to be doomed when he is conceived in a moment of love and passion- natural conception being more of an exception that the norm in an age where doctors design babies having “perfect” DNA,  “to give them a better chance in the world”. At the time of his birth, he is declared to be a myopic, with a frail body and a weaker heart, having a very high probability of sudden, fatal  heart-attack before he turns 22. His disheartened parents, realizing their folly, opt for a genetically designed second son. Right from his early years, the bespectacled, buck-toothed, puny, “invalid” Damien is sidelined by society as well as his parents who give wings to the wishes and dreams of  the taller, handsome, stronger, perfect Wiliam* – his younger brother.

 

The celestial bodies of the solar system attract the young Damien’s fascination and become his refuge from the unkind world. Despite the constant discouragement from his parents that he will never be accepted as an astronaut, given his genetic and physical impediments, Damien feeds this fascination which grows into the sole purpose of his existence- the one and only goal to study and explore the stars and planets of this universe.

Unable to bear the constant prejudice and the lack of support from his family, he leaves home and ekes out a living as janitor ( one of the tasks that “invalids” are considered suitable for) for several years, all the time with his sights set firmly on making  it to Gattaca – the elitist society, where only the best and the brightest of the “perfect” lot are accepted to be the front-runners of science and space exploration programs.

 

Once he arrives at Gattaca, albeit as a janitor, he realizes that nothing he might ever accomplish academically will qualify him to be a part of  Gattaca, whose doors are shut for an “invalid”. To achieve his dream, Damien takes on the identity of  Robby* ( played by the brilliant Jude Law), who is famed to be one of the most perfect individuals of the times.

 

How Damien becomes an imposter in Gattaca, where he meets and falls in love with the character played by unnerving Uma Thurman, how he  succeeds in getting selected for one of the most prestigious space explorations programs ever, and how his true identity of being an “invalid”, is almost revealed, not once but several times, by William (who grows up to become a detective), and how Damien succeeds in reaching for the stars, where he believes he truly belongs, forms the crux of this incredible story.

 

This is possibly one of the best movies of Ethan Hawke. The pain, the grit, the desperation and the lingering fear of getting exposed as an imposter  are brought out beautifully yet subtly by Ethan Hawke. Both Uma Thurman and Jude Law have given stellar performances. Jude Law has done full justice to the complex character which is the perfect anti-thesis of Damien. Jude’s portrayal of  proud and drunk Robby* who is suffering from an illness of his own- the “obsession for perfection” , couldn’t have been bettered by any other actor.

 

 

Although the movie is a sci-fi flick, the sepia-tinted frames and the absence of colour take you right back to the black and white era. There are no sci-fi gadgets showcased, but just the bare, almost sterile environment, perhaps to ensure that nothing distracts from the human element. A word of caution, this is by no means an entertaining movie. Certainly not the ideal stuff  for a Saturday evening with cold beer and friends. It will shock you, enthrall you, disturb you and force you to dwell on things. Having said that, I  recommend it as an absolute must-watch. This is a movie best seen alone, to let it sink into your mind.

 

 

 

 * The names are not accurate as I don’t remember the names anymore!