It was an absolute pleasure to meet and get a quick interview with the great Kurt Angle this past summer in Ottawa. First making a name for himself on the amateur wrestling circuit, it all culminated with a gold medal win (with a broken neck, no less) at the 1996 Summer Olympics held in Atlanta, Georgia. The ultimate achievement for most amateur athletes, this was not the end for Angle, but only the beginning. Just a mere two years later, he had signed on to the World Wrestling Federation (now the WWE or World Wresting Entertainment), a leap that would soon find him taking professional wrestling by storm. Making his television debut in November of 1999, he was a natural, not only at the wrestling, but also on the mike.
There is a scene about a quarter of the way into Elia Kazan’s Viva Zapata! where our protagonist, Emiliano Zapata (Marlon Brando), has been arrested for attempting to save the life of a peasant who has been unlawfully arrested. Failing, a number of the impoverished, who witnessed the attempt, plead for Zapata to hide in one of their homes. Moving on, he is soon arrested, and the villagers clap with whatever they have in their reach; working tools, rocks or any other implements, as a way to show their support for the hero as he is ushered away. As the officers transport the man through the wilderness, people pour out of the mountainous forest – soon, droves are leading, following and walking beside the police procession. Eventually overwhelmed by the masses, they free the man, aware that they will never be able to manage the united crowd. It is this scene that perhaps best exemplifies the film. A heartfelt sequence, it shows that solidarity in the face of oppression, that boldly standing up for what is right, is a righteous, albeit difficult stance.
One of the most prolific westerns (and sometimes argued to be the last great western) to come out of Hollywood, George Roy Hill adapts William Goldman’s script that brings to life the real, mythical-type figures of Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid. The background of the script is quite something, with Goldman sending it out to all of the studios – only one was interested (and that was if he made a major change to it). Instead, a few minor adjustments were made, after which Goldman discovered that every studio in town now desperately wanted it. In the end, it was 20th Century Fox President Richard D. Zanuck (son of co-founder Darryl F. Zanuck) who purchased the screenplay for a whopping 400,000 dollars (the biggest sum ever spent on a script up to that point) – and 200,000 higher than he was allowed to spend. Putting his job on the line, it was a wise choice, as it became the highest grossing motion picture of 1969. Goldman ended up winning the Academy Award for Best Original Screenplay. Originally titled ‘The Sundance Kid and Butch Cassidy’, Zanuck didn’t find that the title sounded right when it was reversed to its final iteration – funnily enough, it now feels utterly awkward in its original form.
Based upon a stage play, Denzel Washington utilizes August Wilson’s adaptation of his own drama Fences to tell an engrossing story of an African American family growing up in the 1950s. Both literal and figurative, Troy Maxson (Washington) is building a fence in his backyard, though it is also a symbolic barrier placed up to guard against his own projections of the impending Grim Reaper (fighting off a serious case of pneumonia, aka. Death, at a young age, he is constantly vigilant for his return – though not afraid in the least). He enjoys the chess match that they play over time. It is also a powerful allegory for the walls he builds between himself and different members of his family. On the opposite spectrum, it is also a way for his wife Rose (Viola Davis) to put up something that will protect her family, keeping them safe on the inside, while keeping unwanted dangers at bay.
The saying ‘the eyes are the windows to the soul’ is perhaps no better explored than in the Argentinian Academy Award winning (for Best Foreign Language Film) 2009 motion picture The Secret in Their Eyes. Though the face is often inscrutable, as many put on masks to hide their true feelings from those around them, the eyes truly show the love, hate, lust, passion, pain regret and confusion that lies just below the mysterious facade. Co-written, directed, edited and produced by Juan José Campanella, the story follows retired criminal investigator Benjamín Esposito (Ricardo Darín) as he contemplates the innumerable hours he spent on the Liliana Coloto (Carla Quevedo) murder case (it is his white whale) by way of writing a novel. Struggling with a proper beginning, he visits Judge Irene Menéndez Hastings (Soledad Villamil), who he worked with all those years ago (the murder took place in 1974).
Born out of the horrors of World War II, famed British filmmakers Michael Powell and Emeric Pressburger released A Matter of Life or Death one year after the conclusion of the hostilities. Cleverly evoking the complexities of the era, the writer/director team fuse together multiple themes that, in some way, make sense of love, life, death, Heaven and the wounds that soldiers suffered during the traumatic affair. Beginning on a grand celestial scale, we are brought forth to an intimate, heartbreaking moment when British Royal Air Force Squadron Leader Peter Carter (David Niven), after ordering his crew to bail out (letting them know that he will soon follow), reveals to an American radio operator, June (Kim Hunter), that his plane is crashing and he has no parachute. His smooth vocals, grievous situation and stiff upper lip attitude leave the woman distraught, and the two fall in love by way of the irregular circumstance. Leaving his dead friend Bob (Robert Coote) on the plane, Carter leaps into the pea soup thick fog just off the English coastline.
It is hard to fathom that Frank Capra’s classic feature It’s a Wonderful Life turns 70 this year (on December 20th to be exact). A movie of vital importance to millions of people the world over, it has not only become a Christmas staple, but also a yuletide tradition for many a family, though this was not always the case. Getting off to a more than sluggish start (losing major money at the box office), it was not originally a hit (or believed by most critics that it would ever leave an impactful mark on the spools of film history). In a miracle befitting of the fantasy drama, the tides for the downtrodden film turned around in the 1970s (thanks to a fortunate copyright lapse), finding a more than accepting audience on the television screen. Taking off, it has gained the traction director Capra once had hoped for, for his story – though he never truly expected it to get a second chance. He actually said (to The Wall Street Journal in 1984): "It’s the damnedest thing I’ve ever seen. . .The film has a life of its own now and I can look at it like I had nothing to do with it. I’m like a parent whose kid grows up to be President. I’m proud. . . but it’s the kid who did the work. I didn’t even think of it as a Christmas story when I first ran across it. I just liked the idea."