OTC50 #133

POSTED

AMERICAN CINEMA

CHARACTERS SURVEYED FROM PRINCESS TO CITIZEN ADVOCATE

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

E

very American generation has a larger-than-life sweetheart.

She started out like a lot of kids did then, just out of high school, paying her own way working in a pizza parlor. East Coast kids move to New York City before finding the slower life more enjoyable in California – once they can afford the move from coast to coast, following the direction of Route 66.

Julia Roberts always took her American heritage seriously, despite the signature laugh, ear to ear smile and diamond sparkling eyes flashing brightly in film roles that drew in the crowds as much for her stunning natural star power as her trademark sense of humour.

Mystic, Connecticut was once a bustling port with an important shipyard. That history was augmented with the idea of the next great movie icon getting her start there on set as part of a film cast that made her look even more spectacular than the wonderful girl next door that grew up into a beautiful young woman.

Julia takes the responsibility of that early typecast seriously, as well, where she plays a bridesmaid when the bride faints during a fist attempt at the alter in Mystic Pizza (1988). Those uncomplicated years of sharing friendships and moving forward as an adult are centered on a pizza parlour and three waitresses sharing stories about finding that first true love.

That early success draws Julia Roberts into a series of films involving weddings and relationships and that tenuous balancing of emotions that develops in the initial search for lifelong love and every young person’s dream of a magical fairy tale ending.

In Steel Magnolias (1989) an ensemble cast takes on the characters of a wedding party preparing for the small Georgian community’s greatest celebration in uniting two young community members in a lifelong journey. Roberts, having been promoted from bridesmaid to the bride, joins Sally Fields, as the mother of the bride, Dolly Parton, as the salon owner, Daryl Hannah, as the stylist, and Shirley McLean, as the crankie next door neighbour.

Tom Skerrit plays the beaming father of the bride welcoming the community into his backyard for the wedding reception. The film is all about neighbourly relationships during the happy time of a daughter’s wedding preparations.

From bridesmaid to bride to runaway bride, Julia works the marque as America’s sweetheart preparing for or avoiding one of life’s unforgettable moments, and, in the process, quickly becomes a guaranteed box office draw for producers.

The emotive effect on young adults looking for true love, that will last a lifetime, magically increases exponentially from one film to the next film as theatres automatically fill up with Julia on the marque.

Roberts also provides a negative example, and turns that young love dream into a nightmare with her character having to escape a relationship of abuse, in Sleeping with the Enemy (1991).

The global fame becomes well deserved as the young actor takes on more and more complicated roles to project an emerging talent onto a generation, until Julia plays a silhouette of herself, as a famous young American actress who falls in love with a Londoner during a film shoot in Notting Hill (1999).

The film is all Julia needs to fully surface as an actor, with that awkward sweetheart deal completed, after over a decade on the marque. All that good will is transferred to become an even more powerful icon by playing the real, larger than life biopic character, Erin Brockovich (2000).

Roberts sets records for pay diversity with a salary that doubles and triples in parallel with the box office returns from $100,000 to $2.5 million to $20 million per film. Even Mystic Pizza made money for producers, earning $14 million on a budget of $6 million.

Director Steven Soderbergh cast Roberts as the title character, and gave the real life Brokovich a million dollar consulting fee for her story.

That tried-and-true screen persona transforms into a zeolous advocate for victims of a corporate environmental polluter when carcinogenic chemicals from the nearby factory is found to be poisoning the watertable.

Unsurprisingly, Roberts makes everyone believe in Erin Brokovich as a modern hero much needed in industrial America.

This young woman was always so much more than a one-dimensional love interest for a national psyche, and more of an all-American girl as part of an acting family whose parents did tours of duty with the United States Armed Forces.

When Walter discharged from the US Airforce after a tour of duty in the Korean War, he and, Betty, opened an acting school and theatre company in Atlanta where the family connected that distinct American film heritage with the national fabric.

Dr Martin Luther King Jr.’s family attended acting classes and participated in theatre productions. King’s daughter, Yolander took classes and was cast in plays by Walter. And one report has Mrs. Coretta Scott King paying the hospital bills when Julia was born into a financially struggling military family. One aside mentions Yolander babysitting Julia and her sister, Lisa.

The pursuit of the American Dream was part and parcel of the motivation of a generation tired of enduring the tragedy of war.

Julia joined a generation once again in pursuit of happiness, and/or some form of escape, especially during those early years, with older brother, Eric, already set up in a New York City apartment after appearing in the television soaps. Julia decidedly moved in with her older sister, Lisa, who was enrolled in a New York City theatre school.

The idea of being someone more sophisticated on-screen begins in earnest with a wish, in Hook (1991) where Julia shows the gathering young adult fanbase that young adult life can be simultaneously glorious and horrible. Roberts plays Tinkerbell in a reimagining of the classic children’s tale, Peter Pan.

Director Steven Spielberg captures Peter refusing to leave the innocence of childhood behind. Tinkerbell helps the children avoid the social responsibilities expected of young adults by leading Peter into a fantasy world in which children remain children and take on the villainous adults.

The iconic point within American history is inevitably reached by playing protagonists in a series of victim justice films, such as in The Pelican Brief (1993) in which Roberts plays a young, idealist law student, costarring Denzel Washington, then in Michael Collins (1996) as an Irish democracy advocate costarring with Liam Neeson as the title character, and in Conspiracy Theory (1997) playing an FBI agent showing compassion toward Mel Gibson’s conspiracy theorist.

After Brokovich, Roberts continues to play iconic characters except in fictional settings.

Roberts eventually delivers another iconic biopic performance as Martha Mitchell in the 8 episodes of Gaslit (2022). America is all tied up in the polarization of politics, and Martha personifies the slow grinding day to day life in Washington behind the public image of the people’s representatives.

This binary opposite character to the wedding Primadonna has every right to be jaded and synical as the wife of the leading political advisor to the first United States President, Attorney General John N. Mitchell, as the Watergate scandal unfolds and impeachment looms larger than life.

Again, Roberts honours her roots by portraying a southern bell from Arkansas with authenticity and courage. Martha was considered a political liability for the President Nixon Administration with her frequent public blurbs to the press corps, including disclosing private information that helped incriminate Nixon in the Watergate Scandal.

And now that America needs guidance in a world influenced by artificial intelligence, Roberts takes on the role of a cynical protagonist in an electronic dystopia when she plays Amanda Sandford in Leave the World Behind (2023). Amanda and her family take a break from New York City by staying in a luxurious short-term rental along the ocean.

The owner returns early without prior notice because of a cyber failure affecting everything from Internet access to freeway traffic. The impending social chaos is foreshadowed when an oil tanker loses the GPS guidance and runs aground in front of the Sandfords sunbathing along the ocean, while two airliners inexplicitly crash a bit further away.

Roberts plays the unknowing, although not entirely surprised, protagonists living life a bit disgruntled about her final outcome, within the national dream, after finding out just how much of a struggle even a single day can be. For Amanda, the collapse of civilization seems to be part of a logical conclusion she has developed from an unforgiving skepticism of humanity.

This experienced skeptic character makes Julia suitable as the protagonist in the other social dystopia going on in America about unauthorized sexual interactions.

In After the Hunt (2025) Yale philosophy professor, Alma, finds herself acting as a liaison between a young female student and a professor after the student makes sexual assault  allegations, while the professor makes countervailing allegations of plagiarism against the student.

Roberts creates the character as a neutral party with emotional jeopardy entangled in both sides of the argument, especially after each party approaches Alma in confidence, and neither victim nor villain seem entirely rational to her.

The score chimes away in the background as the inner turmoil drives the plot lines to signify that everyone is travelling at different speeds inside themselves. When Alma’s husband walks away from a dinner party, for example, the music he plays in another room bounces off the walls throughout the house.

The performances throughout Julia’s career, while driven with emotive effect, didactically stir the truth of a situation and provide examples of how to act in a particular context within the American condition.

As a law student, the screen character works with an investigative journalist to uncover  a plot to influence the highest court in the land.

Julia, as the protagonist, emerges as the voice of freedom over and over again, and more often than not underscores the ideals of a nation that continue to exist often in juxtaposition to the practical reality.

This theme of authenticating characters within the American condition appears in various forms in different film roles. Like in America, the search for truth in uncovering the American condition changes from the reality between two love interests to the juxtaposition of competing players caught up in the political maelstrom.

Love in America is no easier than anything else in America. And everyone ought to be prepared for the rollercoaster of emotions, and disappointments, particularly when confronting the many injustices that recur despite the image of a nation with a more idealic future.

The need for individuals and a nation to continually move forward, by taking the best parts from a situation still salvageable, becomes underscored with the failures as much as with the successes through which the characters struggle.

REYNOLDS BRINGS WIT AND CHARM AND MR KENNETH BRANAGH

by PETER THOMAS BUSCH

Ryan Reynolds dresses up his sardonic humor in a pressure suit to play United States Navy pilot Lieutenant Troy Kelly.

Kelly does a flyby of the aircraft carrier’s control tower that would make Maverick blush in jealousy.

And then, as a result, the hot shot pilot gets demoted to copilot of a secret spy plane on a block-op mission for the Central Intelligence Agency.

The pilot of the high-altitude jet is beaming with hubris and ultimately makes a mistake that causes the plane to be downed in Russian territory during the Cold War. Kelly survives by ejecting just in time, after engineering a collision that will take out the MIG chasing them.

The story just gets started after Kelly wakes up in a remote cabin where Nikolai Ustinov has been caring for him and his broken leg. Nikolai, played by Kenneth Branagh, is a former KGB agent who has a passion for Americana, which is most obviously highlighted by a Top Gun movie poster on the wall of the cabin.

Reynolds and Brannagh are cast well together in several comedy sequences, with Nikolai praying the more serious of the two comedians, frequently exchanging sardonic humiliations.

The entire narrative quickly becomes layered in parody and cliché, with those popular music hits from the 1980s driving many of the action scene sequences.

David Morse has a few scenes set back home in a veterans’ hospital as Harold Kelly, the father of the downed pilot.

Of course, Nikolai looks at Troy as his chance to defect.

The relationship between the charcaters develops in fits and starts with various negotiations reflecting the dark alley deals occurring between cold war enemies.

Maria Bakalova plays Nikolai’s estranged daughter, Anna Ustinov, whose real problem is being gay inside the autocratic Soviet regime. The escapees enter into a subplot to invite Anna to defect with her father, but the father-daughter estrangement is too much of a barrier for Anna to make the leap to America.

Apart from these subplots, the main storyline is that of escape as Troy must find his way to the American Embassy in Moscow before he can be returned to the comforts of the homeland states.

Mayday is an Apple Original film currently streaming exclusively on Apple TV+.