Patrick Swayze – Movie Musings

Romance and the afterlife come together in a very earnest, but rather endearing, mega-hit

Director: Jerry Zucker

Cast: Patrick Swayze (Sam Wheat), Demi Moore (Molly Jensen), Whoopi Goldberg (Oda Mae Brown), Tony Goldwyn (Carl Bruner), Rick Aviles (Willie Lopez), Vincent Schiavelli (Subway ghost)

The biggest smash hit of 1990, Ghost turned Demi Moore into one of Hollywood’s biggest star, transformed ‘Unchained Melody’ into one of the most popular songs of all time and turned pottery into a hobby everyone thought they should try at least once. You wouldn’t have predicted any of this when you were pitched Ghost, helping to explain why nearly everyone in Hollywood turned it down. After all who wants a romantic film where the hero is six feet under and ectoplasmic by the end of the first act? Throw in that the film was directed by Jerry Zucker, best known for a parade of spoofs, comedies and farces and the smart money was on a bomb waiting to happen. Guess again.

Sam (Patrick Swayze) and Molly (Demi Moore) are a loving couple, living in New York: she’s a sculptor, he’s a banker (the sort of contrasting professions only Hollywood romantic couples have). They have big plans for the future; plans cut short when Sam is killed by a mugger. But Sam doesn’t move on with the bright heavenly light. Instead, he sticks around on Earth, wanting to be near Molly and desperate to find out who killed him. Something that’s hard to do when he can’t touch or move anything and no one can see or hear him except other ghosts. Two things change his (after)life – discovering his murder was only the tip of a pile of shady dealings at his bank that puts Molly in danger and fake-psychic Oda Mae Brown (Whoopi Goldberg) who isn’t quite as fake as she thought.

Ghost is extremely earnest and surprisingly endearing. Despite what the doubters said, from Romeo and Juliet to Titanic nothing gets people invested in a romance more than a tragic end. Ghost merely reshuffles the deck by placing this death at the start, then explores the on-going grief of two deeply bonded people, wrenched apart. It mixes that with familiar romance tropes: it doesn’t let Sam’s demise get in the way of the old “he just can’t say I love you too” chestnut (a Han Solo-ish ‘Ditto’ is his preferred response), inevitably finding a way to flip this in a later plot point.

Sure, it’s easy to giggle at the soft-focus obviousness of the lovey-dovey material between Swayze and Moore, but you can’t doubt their commitment or their natural chemistry. The film’s ace-in-the-hole of ‘Unchained Melody’-sound-tracked pottery turning into earth-rocking rumpy-pumpy is parody-bait, but kind-of-works in its soapy earnestness in showing how much they hunger for each other’s touch. (You could say it can’t be that good since they seem to fly through foreplay to climax in the time it takes a not-that-long song to play). Both actors are quite under-rated: Moore is perfectly tender and fragile (she was partly chosen for her ability to cry on a six-pence) but also tough and determined when the situation calls for it, while Swayze charmingly develops his character from cocky junior-master-of-the-universe to a deeper, more rounded man after he ceases to be alive.

Having stressed so much their tactile love in the film’s first act, it makes the afterlife hit harder. In this film haunting has the potential for a being a dull chore (the rules of haunting here were wonderfully parodied in BBC’s Ghosts sitcom): ghosts are stuck in whatever clothes they died in (without all the blood), can’t touch anything in the real world and end up sitting around waiting for they’re-not-sure-what. Dead Sam carries on one-sided conversations, tags behind Molly when she drives places and watches time go by so slowly. Ghost captures rather well the weakness of this situation: Sam sees all sorts of danger unfolding for Molly, but there is literally nothing he can do about it (a desperate Swayze thrashing his hand through things trying to stop them, plays rather well).

Ghost gets some brief meta-physical fun out of the lack of logic in ghosts being able to walk through walls and pass their hands through objects but can sit in chairs perfectly fine and never sink through floors (basically, don’t ask, as also parodied in Ghosts). It even chucks in some mildly-disturbing POV shots of what it looks like to Sam as he walks through someone else (icky basically). You can’t keep a high-flyer down though and Sam masters ‘ghost skills’ after what seems like a few hours training from an unbalanced poltergeist (a wonderfully twitchy Vincent Schiavelli), allowing him to interact with objects in the real world (he basically becomes an invincible superhero – and the ease he masters this makes me wonder why every single ghost can’t put aside an afternoon to learn how to do it. They’ve got the time after all!).

Of course, you couldn’t make a film about a man who can’t talk to anyone. Ghost has a trump-card in the Oscar-winning Whoopi Goldberg, having a whale of a time in a terrific comic performance as a hustling fraudster who unknowingly turns out to be a real psychic, eventually pushed into helping Sam. Goldberg provides nearly all of the film’s laughs – and her mad-cap energy makes an excellent contrast with the earnest leads – with her fast-talking frustration at the constant stream of interjections she hears from Sam (making conversations with other people rather challenging). It’s a role with several comic set-pieces, not least a crowded séance full of ghosts desperate to be heard, but also with heart as Oda Mae becomes a better person despite herself.

She does this of course by helping Sam root out exactly why he was murdered. The reveal of Sam’s secret nemesis will be a shock only to someone who has never seen a film before. Of course, his even cockier colleague and best friend (played with a sleazy desperation by a marvellously weasily Tony Goldwyn) is behind the shady financial dealings Sam was uncovering. Just to hammer home how much we loath Goldwyn’s Carl, he’s also a whiner, a guy who loves flashing his cash and makes some none-to-subtle topless moves on our grieving Molly. How dare he!

Ghost builds itself to a neat final confrontation that proves surprisingly affecting in its honesty (dead means dead) and its optimistic view of the afterlife as a place where love still lives on. Sure, it’s a bit corny and its weakness for teary, soft-focus romance is easy to poke fun at. But you can’t argue that it doesn’t work: it’s romantic, sweetly played, funny when it means to be (Goldberg is excellent) and surprisingly optimistic and feel-good.

Welcome to the weirdness: Donnie Darko ultimate 00’s cult hit

Director: Richard Kelly

Cast: Jake Gyllenhaal (Donnie Darko), Jena Malone (Gretchen Ross), Mary McDonnell (Rose Darko), Holmes Osborne (Eddie Darko), Katherine Ross (Dr Lilian Thurman), Maggie Gyllenhaal (Elizabeth Darko), Daveigh Chase (Samantha Darko), James Duval (Frank), Drew Barrymore (Karen Pomeroy), Patrick Swayze (Jim Cunnningham), Noah Wyle (Dr Kenneth Monnitoff), Beth Grant (Kitty Farmer)

Donnie Darko was a surprise cult hit. In fact, it was such a cult hit that Kelly made a “director’s cut” version of the film five years later. Funnily enough, the Director’s Cut was largely rejected by the very people who loved the first film. Why? Well probably because the film was loved because it was so weird. It was so esoteric, so hard to understand, so much of its logic unclearly defined, that much of that love was based on trying to work out what the hell is going on in it – and the director’s cut supplies lots of answers, ruining the game!

In 1988, troubled teenager Donnie Darko (Jaky Gyllenhaal) sleepwalks out of his house onto a local golf course and meets with a mysterious figure in a gruesome rabbit costume – “Frank”. Frank tells Donnie the world will end in 28 days, 6 hours, 42 minutes and 12 seconds. Donnie sleeps on the golf course overnight – and returns home to find a jet engine has crashed through his bedroom. Plagued by strange visions and hallucinations, and visitations from Frank, is Donnie suffering from schizophrenia or is he genuinely in a position to save the world? And is there a danger from the way Frank is starting to influence Donnie’s actions?

Richard Kelly’s film is a bizarre, inventive, dreamy, creepy oddball flick that deliberately never really explains what the hell is going on. Never mind the mystery of Donnie’s mental state – the film’s confusing structure, its unexplained elements of time-travel, mind-control and predestination, all of this is just left hanging out there. It’s actually a testament to how much restriction can sometimes be the mother of invention. Kelly was told that the film could not be longer than a couple of hours, meaning a lot of the more traditional explanation (reintroduced for the director’s cut) was removed to keep the run-time down. But the great thing is, this actually leaves it very open for the viewer to create their own idea of what the film is about and what is going on. It really works.

This is particularly because Kelly manages to marry the clever-clever weirdness with a real emotional investment in the characters. Not just in Donnie either: his family are all extremely well-drawn, who we grow to care for over the course of the film, from his cheery father to his loving but frustrated mother, brilliantly played by Mary McDonnell. Equally strong is Maggie Gyllenhaal as Donnie’s sister. These characters, along with dozens of other characters quickly established, but all feeling very real, are what keep you interested in the film. If it was just oddness and alienating weirdness, it would be hard to care. But this is a story that mixes science fiction oddness with genuine family drama heart.

There is a lot of oddness in there though. Frank is a character practically designed to be iconic, a twisted giant rabbit like a demonic Harvey. Combined with this are a series of curiously unsettling images and storylines. So we get Donnie with visions of streams of transparent liquid streaming out of people’s chests – possibly their future paths leading them forward. We get Donnie facing strange barriers, that seem to repel and reflect his world. Donnie is plagued with strange visions and increasingly unsettling instructions from Frank. He carries out a series of impossible feats under Frank’s direction. There are elliptical conversations about time travel and physics and while the film drops hints it never explains a damn thing. So when you finally get to the end – well lord alone knows what happens, but you’ll certainly have a hell of a lot of fun trying to work it out.

Around this, the film cuts rather a neat parody of teenage life in the 1980s and the 1980s Brat Pack films. Actors like Drew Barrymore and Noah Wyle have a lot of fun as closeted liberal teachers struggling in a school is run by an oppressive, fiercely religious set of governors. But not as much fun as Beth Grant as a PE cum civics teacher, both blinkered in her love of traditional education (and “safeguarding our youth” from the dangers of literature) while in love with Patrick Swayze’s smug self-help guru (whose bullshit “conquer your fear” videos and mantra are a superb spoof). The film has a nice eye for the politics of school classes, and placing this end-of-world fear into the all-consuming self-importance of teenage life works very well.

Throughout Kelly shoots with a confidence that belies his “first-time film director” status. Yes there is the occasional overly clever camera shot that you get from someone enjoying the toy set for the first time, but there is lots of terrific stuff. His assembly of events is brilliant, he works with actors very well indeed.

But the other factor that really makes the film work is Jake Gyllenhaal’s superb performance in the lead role. Gyllenhaal gets the balance between Darko’s vulnerability and his (possible) darkness absolutely spot-on. He manages to turn himself perfectly into a gangly, awkward, nervous kid – totally believable as the sort of young man unsure of where he stands in the world and angry. It feeds perfectly into the mystery of the film. Is Donnie a dangerous schizophrenic? Or is he right in thinking he might be important? Gyllenhaal captures all this, but also really makes us care for Donnie, turning him into someone truly sensitive and confused (helped as well by a very good Jena Malone as his awkward love interest). It’s a brilliantly distinctive performance that captures a true idea of teenage difficulties.

Any maybe that’s also why Donnie Darko works so well. Because it’s as much about teenage awkwardness and not knowing what you are doing here and why, as it is all the bizarre and unexplainable pseudo-science, time travel and predestination paradoxes that the film allows to play around the edges. It places at the centre of a brilliant science fiction drama, a real human and emotional story that feels very real and grounded and like something we have all experienced at one time in our lives. It’s a puzzle and mystery that also has a heart. It’s a difficult trick to pull off – so difficult Kelly has failed to pull it off again since.