Tag Archives: 1960s

It Came from the Reader-Suggested Queue, List Candidates

APOCRYPHA CANDIDATE: THE MAGUS (1968)

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DIRECTED BY: Guy Green

FEATURING: Michael Caine, Anthony Quinn, Candice Bergen, Anna Karina

PLOT: Commitment-phobic English teacher Nicholas Urfe escapes his girlfriend by traveling to Greece to take a job vacated by his predecessor’s suicide and meets a wealthy eccentric whose activities seem to center around Nico himself.

WHY IT MIGHT MAKE THE APOCRYPHA: When babe-in-the-woods Anne tells her wayward boyfriend, “Oh, Nico, this is life, not an existentialist novel,” it’s not a self-own. She’s having a go at all of us for trying to apply the tenets of reality to a tale that’s really half-philosophical treatise, half-rejection of conventional storytelling. It’s gleefully existentialist, leveraging a traditional leading man and spectacular Mediterranean vistas in service of a full-throated mockery of expectations. The Magus is aggressively weird—even hostile—to anyone who would try to make sense of it.

Still from The Magus (1968)

COMMENTS: “You have entered the Meta-Theater!” declares Anthony Quinn. How utterly baffling that must have been to mainstream audiences in 1968, long before the idea of a metaverse was common parlance and entertainment made a regular habit of sledgehammering the fourth wall into oblivion. Here they are, expecting to see a film about Michael Caine playing fast and loose with the affections of beautiful young women, and this intervening plotline keeps showing up in which Quinn alternately casts Caine in the role of confidant, spy, and test subject. If viewers were confused, that was apparently echoed by the actors themselves: Bergen complained that she never knew what she was supposed to play, while Caine reportedly has named The Magus as one of the worst movies he has ever made (a fantastic claim, especially to any of us who have seen Jaws: The Revenge). If the people making the movie don’t know what’s going on, that’s not going to make it easy on the rest of us.

Toying with structure seems to have been author John Fowles’ whole thing, utilizing tools like split narratives and multiple endings to heighten the uncertainty of existence. Given that Fowles insisted on adapting his own novel (having been unhappy with the previous adaptation of his work, The Collector), we can assume that everything is playing out exactly as he intends. So when protagonist Nico takes a walk through the Greek countryside that just happens to end up at the palatial estate of Conchis (Quinn, styled after Picasso, right down to the bald head and striped shirt), that’s all part of Fowles’ plan. There’s something amusing about the way Conchis changes his story, including his name and profession, every time we meet him. What boring people we must be to try and tie him down to a single identity.

Caine initially seems ideally cast as Nico. After all, it would take someone with his reputation for playing distinctly chilly characters like the brutal spy Harry Palmer or the caddish Alfie to be so cruelly dismissive of the beautiful and adoring flight attendant Anne (a fetching Karina). From that perspective, he seems ideal to portray a man so disdainful of commitment that when his girlfriend asks him to take a later flight to spend more time with her, he promptly books an earlier one. But as he becomes more enmeshed with Conchis’ machinations, which seem to revolve around the hapless beauty Lily (an airless, seemingly dubbed Bergen) but are really more of an indictment of Nico himself, Caine’s aloofness becomes a poor fit. Even when he’s tied up and confronted by the entire populace of the town (and a goofy computer), Caine feels far too confident, too safe to be genuinely threatened by the existential crisis that’s landed upon him.

Ironically, it’s the most straightforward, unadorned scene that retroactively justifies all the metaphysical tricks we’ve seen at play. Conchis’ flashback to his days as the puppet administrator during the Nazi occupation, when he was asked to make a Trolley Problem decision about the fate of the townspeople in the wake of a Resistance action, is a perfectly pitched as a tense, straightforward piece of drama, and its exposure of the cruelty of man. We know enough about both Nico and Conchis to understand how they’ve reached this point, and it makes sense that Quinn would reject the absurd limitations of logic. He’s got the more compelling case, so the ensuing lunacy he perpetrates seems only right.

Unfortunately for Fowles, he cannot quash the natural impulse of film to present even the most ridiculous situations in the stark light of reality. As Nico is left to reflect on his experience, we’re asked to judge what we’ve seen. Was it all just a dream? Has Nico been punished for his infractions? Is this an elaborate revenge on Anne’s part? Philosophy thrives in the uncertainty, but film demands an answer. That’s the paradox of The Magus: after two hours rejecting the tedium and pointlessness of reason, it just can’t quite give it up.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“The Magus is one of the weirdest films of the late 60’s… those anticipating the standard fare will no doubt be left scratching their head in disquieted belief – their expectations tossed down a well.” – Gary W. Tooze, DVD Beaver

(This movie was nominated for review by Steve Mobia. Suggest a weird movie of your own here.)         

Capsules

CAPSULE: ACROSS THE UNIVERSE (2007)

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DIRECTED BY:

FEATURING: Jim Sturgess, Evan Rachel Wood

PLOT: More than thirty Beatles songs illustrate a romance between a working-class Liverpudlian and a New England WASP during the tumultuous 1960s.

Still from Across the Universe (2007)

WHY IT WON’T MAKE THE LIST: Set in a sentimentalized Sixties, it’s inevitable that Across the Universe heaves to that decades psychedelic squalls. Spectacular director Julie Taymor relishes slathering lysergic pigment on her CGI canvas for five or six of the thirty plus songs, but the ultimately the story is more about how all you need is love than it is about girls with kaleidoscope eyes.

COMMENTS: In a career of a mere eight years, the Beatles probably cranked out more memorable melodies than Mozart. It was a minor stroke of genius to adapt that songbook into a musical.  he script of Across the Universe, which tells the story of a pair of young lovers and their friends with the Vietnam War protests and the Summer of Love as a backdrop, can be viewed in two ways. It could be seen a complete failure, built out of equal parts of romantic cliché and self-congratulatory Baby Boomer nostalgia. Or, it could be looked at as a masterpiece of craftsmanship, considering the fact that the scriptwriters had to weave a coherent epic tale from a relatively small catalog of three-minute song-stories containing no recurring characters.

Like most musicals, however, the story is almost beside the point; it only needs to be good enough to set up the next production number. Fortunately for weirdophiles, the numbers Universe‘s story sets up are frequently cosmic, though you will have to wade through an hour of character setup before it starts coming on. This being an archetypal 1960’s tale, there’s a nod to acid culture: more than a nod, it’s a magical mystery tour through an extended three song medley. It starts with the principals sipping LSD-spiked drinks at a party while a Ken Kesey type (played by Bono) lectures on mind expansion using “I Am the Walrus” as the holy text; whirling cameras and and tie-dye colored solarization gives their trip to the countryside via magic bus the requisite grooviness. This sequence segues into “For the Benefit of Mr. Kite,” where another acid-guru (Eddie Izzard) takes the crew inside his magic tent for a twisted computer-generated carnival complete with a roller skating pony, a dancing team of Blue Meanies, and contortionists in spooky wooden tribal masks. The scene’s an impressive visual spectacle whose impact fizzles thanks to Izzard massacring the lyrics through an off-the-beat, spoken-word delivery with some unfortunate improvisations. The dreamy comedown features the flower children staring up at the sky, imagining themselves tastefully nude and making love underwater.

Psychedelia intrudes into other numbers, as well: the carefully layered images of “Strawberry Fields Forever” feature bleeding strawberries that morph into fruit bombs splattering on the jungles of Vietnam. “Happiness Is a Warm Gun” includes a cameo by Salma Hayek as five sexy dancing nurses, and a bliss-giving syringe filled with a nude dancing girl. The best and weirdest segment may be “I Want You/She’s So Heavy,” which addresses the draft board and stars a talking poster of Uncle Sam, dancing sergeants with square plastic chins, and a platoon of soldiers lugging the Statue of Liberty. Standout non-weird numbers include a gospel version of “Let It Be” set during the Detroit riots and a funky “Come Together” performed by Joe Cocker, who sings as three different characters, including a natty pimp backed by a chorus of hookers. Hardcore Beatles fans will rate Universe a must see (and they’ve probably already seen it); unless you’re some sicko who absolutely can’t stand Lennon-McCartney compositions, you’ll want to check it out just for the visuals. It can get pretty far out.

Despite its weird parts, Across the Universe was able to secure a mainstream release. Audiences were willing to accept the unreal scenes because they were presented in the lone format where the average person expects and accepts surrealism—the music video. Unfortunately, however, even the Beatles fan base couldn’t make Taymor’s experiment profitable at the box office.

WHAT THE CRITICS SAY:

“A cameo by Bono as a sort of godfather among hippies (delivering a forceful cover of ‘I Am the Walrus’) shifts the movie into a hallucinatory realm, with a tie-dye color scheme that suggests scenes were shot during an acid trip with Baz Luhrmann. Viewers who like movies to reflect their out-of-body experiences will gladly inhale, but for others, the excess may seem off-putting.”–Justin Chang, Variety (contemporaneous)