Glengarry Glen Ross (James Foley, 1992)

My feelings towards films that rely too much on their dialogue is somewhat ambiguous. I love films that can create meaning and story through their visuals, and don’t rely on dialogue to hammer in to the audience what it is about. Glengarry Glen Ross was based on a play written by David Mamet, and he himself wrote the film adaptation. It does come across that the film has its roots in theatre. There are only two major locations throughout most of the film, its dialogue heavy, and has a particular kind of dialogue. Still, the film works pretty well, and stands out as a somewhat underrated classic.

The premise is simple: A questionable real estate office isn’t doing as well as they would like to, and so the boss comes up with a contest to motivate his four salesmen. Earn the most, and you get a new car. Finish second and you get a neat bonus. Finish third and fourth and you get fired. The film takes place over just one night and one morning, so the tension is laid thick. There is a genuine sense of desperation and hopelessness which captures the spirit of the 90s. But what really makes this film stand out is the casting. Al Pacino, Jack Lemmon, Kevin Spacey, Alan Arkin, Ed Harris and Alec Baldwin. It’s a great cast, and everyone does their outmost to make their characters vivid. The stand out performance is Jack Lemmon. His character is pathetic, but has genuine concerns, still living on the memory of better days, and in his worst moment fooling himself into believing that he made a good sale. His character screams of both desperation and poignancy. Alec Baldwin has only one scene, but remains in the back of the audiences heads as he is the one that describes the contest, in a very intimidating scene. Spacey is also great, as the coldhearted manager who has little sympathy for his crew, but he also has some underlying issues of his own. Al Pacino steals every scene he is in with his mesmerizing intensity. It’s not just about the casting though, the script is excellent, and every character has several layers. The film slowly peels away at the characters and in the end everyone is left naked and exposed.

One of the reasons I don’t like “talky” films is that they have a tendency to spell out what the characters are thinking and what’s going on. Glengarry Glen Ross elegantly avoids this; every character has something to hide. The film is smart in quickly telling us what’s at stake, so that the characters and their underlying issues and concerns can be revealed effortlessly. The film also keeps the audience guessing until the end. Most of the film is shown in real time, but there is a clever jump between night and day. During these hours where we, the audience, have not been present there have been some significant story developments, but we were not able to see them. This creates a great moment where we can guess and speculate what happened and who did what, where everything is not what it seems. Although there is a lot of dialogue in the film, everything that the characters say is significant and the film doesn’t seem bloated with dialogue. Indeed, the director managed to create some significance through the visuals, and the cinematography is beautiful, expertly using colors and angles to create meaning. So while the film has a lot of dialogue, it doesn’t always rely on it to tell the story, and thus becomes more interesting. I think this is one of the more successful transitions from theatre to cinema.

I wasn’t quite sure what to expect from Glengarry Glen Ross, but I was captivated throughout the film, with the interesting characters and the fascinating setting. The film builds up well and towards the end is intense, although it is still low-key. Many will talk about the excellent cast, but it’s all about the brilliant script, which they really do justice to. It’s quite incredible how the script gets so much out of so little, and stands as a fine example of intricate screenwriting and filmmaking.

It (Tommy Lee Wallace, 1990)

I don’t usually review films that I’ve already seen a while ago, but I recently re-watched It, and I want to talk about it. It’s actually not a film, but a TV mini-series running for about 3 hours, but I’ve always seen it as one whole, and it often runs on TV, so I always considered it a film proper. The film was one of my favorites as a kid/teenager, but I hadn’t seen it in about six-seven years. I always found the film fascinating then, and on repeat, I still found it fascinating, so I felt like writing about it.

The thing about It is that, it’s actually a really bad film. The thing is, even back then I knew it was a bad film, but I still loved it. On re-watching the film, I still greatly enjoyed it, despite the fact that it is really poor. What was fascinating was that the film wasn’t any worse than I remembered, so unlike a lot of the films I loved when I was younger, I pretty much feel the same about this film as I always did. As I said, the film is bad, but somehow it manages to overcome that. And it’s not one of those films where you say “it’s so bad it’s good”. When re-watching the film, I think I managed to figure out why it is so enjoyable and entertaining, despite its “badness”. The thing about It is that it contains a lot of different elements, indeed, if you cut out a trailer from it you could make the film seem like a film about nostalgia and childhood. It is indeed about that, but you could easily present the film as if that’s all to it. The film is based on the book with the same title, written by Stephen King, and the story goes as such: A crazy being dressed as a clown terrorizes a small American town by killing innocent children, until seven friends can’t take it anymore and goes on a quest to destroy him. Thirty years on and they’ve all got on with their lives, but It returns, and they have to go back and finish him once and for all. The thing that makes It interesting is that it has so many different elements. At times it seems like a coming-of-age story like Stand by Me, another moment reminded me of kids on an adventure, like the Goonies. Yet the film is a horror, mixing body horror “in-your-face” special effects, and psychological horror. But we also see the kids as grown-ups, and the film deals with mature anxieties, women abuse, suicide and fear of commitment. Wow. So there is a lot to this film, which explains the epic 3 hour length. So why does this mish-mash of a fuckup movie work?

Let’s talk about the horror aspect. At times, it’s not scary, it’s just hilarious. Some scenes are just hammy and bring more laughter than frights. Tim Curry, who plays the evil clown is a good example of this, some of his scenes are comedy gold. Now if you haven’t seen the film you’ve probably heard about how terrifying the clown is. So you’re wondering, why am I calling him hilarious? Well, that’s the thing; he has his terrifying moments, like the opening of the film. There are also genuinely terrifying moments, like when the girl character goes back to her old house. The film goes between the lines of being one of the most frightening films ever, to being like a hilarious b-film. It’s fascinating how the film manages to both succeed and fail. So for all the cheesiness of Tim Curry’s performance, there’s also some underlying terror beneath. The film also manages to delve into some of our most primal fears, so it succeeds on that level too, although that can probably be attributed to the original source material. The coming-of-age material probably also helped this film, as it can be really relatable to young kids, but also adults who can look back on nostalgia. For all the horror in this film, there are also scenes that seem right out of Stand by Me (which of course was also written by King). These moments have no horror in them, and seem perfectly innocent. I think the way the film balances between these moments and the scary stuff really makes the film somewhat unpredictable and variable, and thus quite entertaining. The thing is, unlike Stand by Me, the kids aren’t really great actors, and some scenes where they attempt to emote are just hilarious, particularly the “evil” kid with a slick hairdo who actually genuinely wants to murder the kids, although he is in their class. The adults are only slightly better, but again, the performances are far from good. But I think the emotions sometimes are so strong that they even manage to work, even though the execution is not great.

I haven’t read the book, but my impression is that much of what is actually is good in the film comes from the book, and that despite the cast and crew doing and under-par job with the adaptation, the original source material was so good that it still managed to seep through in the final production. This has of course happened many times before, and usually the product is just a mediocre and boring film. But It avoids that, through its eclectic nature and how epic it can feel. The film defies its own bad qualities through this, and is a truly enjoyable film that I can watch many times and never get bored.