12 Angry Men

I missed out on a lot of common experiences in high school because my classes tended to have unusual curriculum.  I have never read The Scarlet Letter, Jane Eyre, Beowulf, or Heart of Darkness.  I know, I know, I'm a lucky fella.  I also was not required to see 12 Angry Men when I studied the Constitution or in a speech class (in the "group think" chapter).  Sure, I've heard about the movie from my peers, but I never felt compelled to watch it, even when I noticed that it was in IMDB's top ten rated movies of all time.  Sometimes, I don't know what my problem is.

12 Angry Men is not the follow-up movie adaptation to the Bill Bixby/Lou Ferrigno television show, The Angriest Man.  Instead, it is a courtroom drama that actually doesn't take place in a courtroom at all.  As the movie poster suggests, it takes place in a dynamite factory.  The vast majority of the film (aside from a brief opening scene and a quick epilogue) takes place in the jury room.  The audience has not heard the lawyers speak, but the jury has heard the complete arguments of the prosecutors and the defense, and now it's time to decide whether the defendant is guilty or not guilty.  Of course, you need all twelve jurors to agree on the verdict, or else the jury is hung and the whole shebang is declared a mistrial.  That sounds pretty simple, but this is a capital crime, so a "guilty" verdict will result in the death penalty.  Despite the gravity of the case, the jury initially sits down and assumes that their deliberation will take all of five minutes; the case seems open-and-shut.  The first vote is 11-1, guilty, with only Juror 8 (Henry Fonda) dissenting.  And since the vote has to be unanimous, it is up to the rest of the jurors to convince (by whatever means) Juror 8 to change his vote...or, it is up to him to change everyone else's.

After I first watched this movie, I realized that there were some subtleties that I had missed the first time through; after my second viewing, I can definitely say that director Sidney Lumet did a great job.  Just the camerawork alone is fantastic.  You would think that a film set in one room would be visually dull and probably peppered with close-ups to vary the shots, but not this one.  The final shot of the film, a wide-angle crane shot of the jurors all leaving the courthouse, was what piqued my interest.  That shot felt so refreshing that I had to review the film and figure out why.  Here's what I noticed: the camera angles in the movie gradually shift their angle as the film progresses.  In the beginning, all the camera shots are a looking down slightly, or are at least at eye-level; by the end of the film, every shot is looking up at the actors.  So what?  Well, looking up at the actors (especially when they're arguing and are getting all sweaty) brings the ceiling into the shot, like the room is getting smaller (or the men are slowly swelling, I suppose).  It also felt like the room was getting smaller, too; I'm not sure if that was a camera trick, or maybe a larger table in the room, or maybe the set walls were pushed in a little, but I'm pretty sure that it wasn't just my imagination.  These subtle cinematographic techniques add layers to the film, making it work on a subconscious level as well as the obvious look-at-the-actors-level.

The fancy camera tactics wouldn't have helped if the cast was no good, but this film is stacked with noteworthy actors.  As the conscience of film, Henry Fonda is the main character, and he is as good as he usually is; Henry Fonda was one of the great do-gooders in film, with most of his characters (at least, in his most famous movies) being noble and brave.  You wouldn't think that a film that essentially boils down to fighting peer pressure (vote guilty, everybody's doing it) could have a brave character, but that's what Fonda brings to the table.  Lee J. Cobb, as Juror 3, played Fonda's nemesis, of sorts.  He was perfect as the brutish, bullying jerk, the perfect foil for Fonda's calm rationality.  The rest of the players (Martin Balsam, John "the voice of Piglet" Fiedler, E.G. Marshall, Jack Klugman, Edward Binns, Jack Warden, Joseph Sweeney, Ed Begley, George Voskovec, and Robert Webber) were good, although some were a little one-dimensional.  The standout were Ed Begley's performance as the bitter racist and John Fiedler, in his typical role as the timid guy in the room.

This film was made in 1957 and that age shows itself from time to time.  The fact that an "ethnic" defendant would have twelve middle-aged or older white men for his jury feels a little odd now.  And I realize that racism is still an issue in America, but the scene where everyone turns their back on Begley (while powerful) is a little more dramatic than realistic.  Still, this is a great movie that is still relevant.  The film takes a basic concept --- that of reasonable doubt --- and forms a subtle, intelligent movie around it.  The movie isn't even long, clocking in at just over ninety minutes, and it is packed full of interesting, varied performances.  This film's quality was not a foregone conclusion --- it was made on a shoestring budget and featured a first-time film director --- but it still managed to be nominated for Best Picture, Director, and Adapted Screenplay, all for a picture set in one room, based on a legal issue.

Yeah...this is a good one.

The Exorcist

I didn't watch scary movies as a kid.  I think the first horror movie I ever watched was Scream; I was seventeen or so at the time, watching it at a friend's house, and I remember being very self-conscious about my reactions to the movie.  I didn't want to give myself away by shrieking like a little girl or wetting myself.  For some reason, I imagined horror movies as being genuinely disturbing, the very stuff of nightmares.  Obviously, I got over that presumption.  After a solid month of watching (and reviewing) nothing but (often awful) horror movies this month, I have finally come to the film that was, at one point, the highest grossing --- and some still say, the scariest --- film of all time, The Exorcist.  Will it live up to my childhood expectations for horror?  Let's find out.

Successful actress Chris MacNeil (Ellen Burstyn) has a tween daughter named Regan (Linda Blair).  Shortly after announcing that she has a new (invisible) friend in Mr. Howdy, Regan falls ill.  Not cough cough ill, but things flying around the room ill.  Despite exhibiting surprising strength, an ability to rock her entire bed while she's on it, and speaking in a croaking male voice during these incidents, doctors suspect some sort of brain cancer.  Because cancer makes girls talk like life-long smokers.  When modern medicine turns up nothing, Regan is taken to a psychiatrist.  No help there, but if Regan has thrice weekly visits for the next year, they suspect that perhaps they can improve "no help" to "next to no help."  However, around this time, Chris' director (Jack MacGowran) is found murdered outside the MacNeil home; when Chris checked on Regan, she was asleep, but her window was open to the bitter cold evening air.  Hmm...I wonder...?  When medicine for the body and brain both fail, Chris turns to the church.  Her Catholic priest, like the girl at your party that keeps doing the Mary Katherine Gallagher impression, is obviously flattered at being a third choice and is eager to help.  Unfortunately, this priest, Father Damien Karras (Jason Miller), is one of them new-fangled ones that has a psychology degree and might even be losing his own faith.  Father Damien doesn't believe that the Catholic church will allow him to perform an exorcism, and he is even less certain that it will do any good (except from a psychological perspective).  But he asks his bosses anyway, and is surprised that they agree to proceed, but a rookie like Damien cannot do it alone.  The church decides to team him up with one of their heavy hitters, Father Merrin (Max von Sydow).  The two approach Regan's exorcism just as (pea green) spit is about to hit the fan.  What does this film have in store for these do-gooders?  Projectile vomit of pea soup?  Of course.   Impossible physical feats?  Fo' sho'.  Creative vulgar insults?  Absolutely.  And smoking, every character smoking!

Director William Friedkin has built his career on the back-to-back successes that were The French Connection and The Exorcist, and deservedly so.  Friedkin's direction is apparent throughout the film.  He does a very good job composing visually attractive frames, particularly with the shot of Max von Sydow preparing to enter the MacNeil home, which would eventually become the movie poster.  The special effects are handled well (even better than in Poltergeist, released nine years later) and Linda Blair's make-up is fantastic.The acting is all very good, with Max von Sydow (who has looked 70 years old for the last 40 years) and Jason Miller managing to portray depth and poise from two characters that could easily have been ciphers.  Ellen Burstyn looks positively haggard as the film goes on, which is appropriate, but I felt that her character was a little too over-dramatic in the beginning of the film; yes, she's playing an actress, but even drama queens aren't as moody as she was portrayed.  Linda Blair does a pretty decent job, for a child actor, but I personally believe her character was too immature to be a twelve-year old.  Seriously, a twelve year-old with imaginary friends would get sent to the psychiatrist even without the supernatural powers.  Most of the other actors --- aside from the always reliable Lee J. Cobb --- were okay, but not particularly impressive.  Still, Bursyn, Blair, and Miller were all nominated for acting Oscars, and Friedkin was nominated for direction; all in all, the film was nominated for ten Oscars and took home Best Sound and Adapted Screenplay.  Not too shabby for a genre film.

Obviously, the film was well-made.  Did I like it?  Well...it was okay.  I appreciated the way it was made more than I actually enjoyed the movie, though.  Does that indicate that the film has lost its edge over the years, or am I just jaded after seeing so many gory horror movies?  While it's true that a lot of time has passed since this film came out, and it is a film that suggests more than it shows, I think it still packs as much of a punch as ever.  There are some seriously disturbing scenes, particularly the violent masturbation scene and the first possession scene.  However, I was unimpressed with the classic pea soup vomit and Blair's head turning like it was on a lazy susan; they looked technically fine, but I thought they were the least frightening aspects of the possession.  So, I would argue that the film has aged pretty well and that the more explicit scenes were my least favorites.

The key to a film like this is that, since it is not aiming for brainless gore, it has to build the suspense.  Maybe I have just absorbed the basic plot elements through popular culture, but I was never curious as to what would happen next.  Despite the quality of the film-making, I was never frightened or uneasy (well, the needles and blood spurting at the hospital made me uncomfortable).  The story spends a lot of time getting to the exorcism because it's not a normal Catholic practice; because I knew basically how the story went, the build up to legitimize the act of exorcism felt unnecessary to me. Would this movie had been more effective if I was completely unaware of the storyline?  Probably.  Would it be more frightening if I were a Catholic, like the characters in the movie?  Again, probably; this movie didn't attack my beliefs as much as it did any chance of me eating pea soup. Is any of this the film's fault?  Well, that's debatable.  I think I will give the movie another try next Fall and see if it grows on me.  As it is, I can't argue quality work, even if I didn't particularly care for it.