art & design
Movies to Remove that Stick from Your Rear
Let us celebrate one our favorite movie archetypes: the repressed hero. We’re not talking about the shy guys (like Rocky Balboa) or the modest marys (like Sandy in Grease), but the unsatisfied stiffs who just need that special someone to remove the stick up their rear. Here are some of our favorites:
The Anal-Retentive Guy Meets Wild Child Gal
In The Accidental Tourist (on Ovation this month!), the first-rate adaptation of the acclaimed Anne Tyler novel, William Hurt is Macon Leary, a travel writer with no sense of adventure. After a quirky dog trainer (Geena Davis, in Oscar-winning form) helps him unleash a little, his estranged wife, Kathleen Turner, decides she may want him back after all. This relationship comedy-drama is more grounded than most, but it’s still the classic anal boy meets wild girl story. (Other examples: Something Wild, After Hours, What’s Up Doc?, Ball of Fire)
… And Vice Versa
Naturally, women can be a little nebbish too. The classic movie paradigm for the female in need of a bit of stick-removal is the travel adventure. In Woody Allen’s Vicky Cristina Barcelona, Rebecca Hall’s got her soccer mom future all laid out when she meets smarmy painter, Javier Bardem. No gracias, cheeseball! But then they spend a balmy night listening to Spanish guitar…and stick gone. Well, for a little while. (For more, check out: Summertime, How Stella Got her Groove Back, Romancing the Stone, Australia, Under the Tuscan Sun, Eat Pray Love)
The Chronically Repressed
Across the pond, actors have been knighted for careers built on playing repressed characters (in The English Patient, you just know what the English part means). In Remains of the Day, Anthony Hopkins is heartbreaking as Mr. Stevens, a butler forced to a life of emotional constraint at a time when marriage and children were antithetical to a servant’s duty. When Emma Thompson, his lost love, reenters his life, he faces a painful choice. (See also…well just about anything with Hugh Grant, Colin Firth or Ralph Fiennes in it.)
The Sexually Frustrated
Often, the hero’s struggle is sexual identity. In John Huston’s Reflections in a Golden Eye, Brando is Maj. Weldon Pendelton, a closeted homosexual married to Elizabeth Taylor, a nymphomaniac. Yup, incompatible. But that’s just for starters in this outrageous southern gothic tale that some find deeply complex and others completely demented. One thing’s for certain though: Brando and Taylor are fearless actors. Worth a look. (See also Brokeback Mountain, Priest, J. Edgar, Apartment Zero)
Tune in to Ovation to watch Geena Davis’ Oscar-winning performance as the free spirit who loosens up a tightly wound travel writer in The Accidental Tourist, airing February 21st at 8 and 10:30pm, and again on February 23rd and 26th at 2:30 and 5:15pm.
Brett Barth is a freelance writer living in the constant state of Venice, CA.
Image: The Accidental Tourist
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