Movies: The Official "Movie of the Week" Club Thread IV

[NyQuil]

Two weeks ago my wife gave birth to our first child, and we're still figuring out how this parenting thing works (also hence why I was late with Thief of Bagdad review despite having watched it 3 weeks ago). So my participation might be a bit sporadic moving forward. But I intend on catching up eventually.

There's a period of time at around 3-6 months where you can bring your baby everywhere and they just sleep in their car seat that you bring in with you.

Don't be afraid and use that time wisely. My son was a staple on the table of our booth asleep while we were watching hockey at the local pub.

Eventually they get old enough where they can tolerate about 60 minutes of a restaurant and that's it.

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Until it benefits you to sell mom out and become the cool parent at least

And Congrats Jevo/Mrs Jevo, enjoy it and soak it all in

With a newborn you're 100% in pure survival mode.

I am not sure if there is a such thing as a cool parent tbh (except to other kids; one other kid at my daughter's school cries if she doesn't see my wife at school pickup lol.) Kids know that parents aren't peers, and if you attempt to be a peer they will eat you alive IMO.

 

[Unholy Diver]

With a newborn you're 100% in pure survival mode.

I am not sure if there is a such thing as a cool parent tbh (except to other kids; one other kid at my daughter's school cries if she doesn't see my wife at school pickup lol.) Kids know that parents aren't peers, and if you attempt to be a peer they will eat you alive IMO.

Yeah, you are definitely not the cool one

 

[TheGreenTBer]

Yeah, you are definitely not the cool one

I have never been even the slightest hint of cool at anything in any possible way in my entire life, that should surprise no one.

 

[Unholy Diver]

I have never been even the slightest hint of cool at anything in any possible way in my entire life, that should surprise no one.

I'll give you a freebie to help you on your way...


"Mom says we probably shouldn't get that __________ (slime / trumpet / pony / etc.) but I think it would be ok this one time."

Then you get home and just play dumb

 

[NyQuil]

Yeah, you are definitely not the cool one

I started playing Rush in the car (to make sure he ends up a nerd) but only when Mrs_NyQuil wasn't in the car.

Eventually, we got into the car as a family and he was ready.

"What do you want to listen to, bud?"

"Rush!"

"Rush? Why?"

"Rush is power."

"Honey, I have no clue where he's getting this from. Maybe from his little friends at school?"

 

[Unholy Diver]

I started playing Rush in the car (to make sure he ends up a nerd) but only when Mrs_NyQuil wasn't in the car.

Eventually, we got into the car as a family and he was ready.

"What do you want to listen to, bud?"

"Rush!"

"Rush? Why?"

"Rush is power."

"Honey, I have no clue where he's getting this from. Maybe from his little friends at school?"

That's good stuff, I can see Rush being a tough sell for a lot of today's youth

My daughter is not a big fan of my musical choices, says it is "too loud", though she does like Breakin the Law, so maybe it's not a total lost cause yet

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Two weeks ago my wife gave birth to our first child, and we're still figuring out how this parenting thing works (also hence why I was late with Thief of Bagdad review despite having watched it 3 weeks ago). So my participation might be a bit sporadic moving forward. But I intend on catching up eventually.

Congratulations!

 

[kihei]

Two weeks ago my wife gave birth to our first child, and we're still figuring out how this parenting thing works (also hence why I was late with Thief of Bagdad review despite having watched it 3 weeks ago). So my participation might be a bit sporadic moving forward. But I intend on catching up eventually.

Wonderful news. When my partner was pregnant for the first time, we were crossing Bloor in the Annex section of Toronto and a little old Italian lady all dressed in black was crossing the other way. When she passed us she looked at my partner and said "Get all the sleep now you can, dearie." We didn't know what she was talking about. Once the baby arrived, we found our real quick. If you can, sleep when the baby sleeps, which, I know, is not always easy for both partners. It's a wonderful adventure, though.

 

[kihei]

Two for the Road (1967) Directed by Stanley Donen

Two for the Road has fascinated and perplexed me for decades. I hadn’t revisited it in a very long time, and it was indeed interesting re-experiencing my feelings about if from so long ago when I was essentially a different person, 22 as opposed to (gulp) 80 just. I have always realised that it was far from a perfect movie. The late middle section drags, and screenwriter Frederic Raphael (Darling; Far from the Madding Crowd; Eyes Wide Shut) seems to not care greatly for his minor characters whom he presents as annoying caricatures with no depth whatsoever. Clearly, he is interested in the relationship between Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna (Audrey Hepburn), and that’s what grabbed me, too. To suggest that Two for the Road belongs in the romantic comedy category is to place a rather broody fox among the chickens in the hen house. Touring around Europe together during various periods of the characters' lives provides some strong romantic elements, and funny, even witty, moments are not in short supply, but the movie has a venom that seemed utterly foreign to Hollywood movies about romantic relationships. A lot of the time Mark and Joanna spend talking about how unhappy they are with one another, with Mark being the more constant offender on that score. Theirs is not exactly a love/hate relationship, but it is a relationship that seems continuously in a state of crisis where the scale between contentment and misery has a very delicate balance.

Likely this rather atypical relationship had more impact on me than expected because of the performers. Hepburn plays her character as a slightly older variation of Reggie in Charade: charming, lovely, intoxicating, vulnerable, deeply sympathetic. By the standards of the mid-sixties, she is about ten years too old for the role, but her appeal is such that I never thought of that the first time I saw the movie. Finney, though, my god, he sinks his incisors hard into all of Mark’s rather jarring character flaws. You get the feeling deep down that she loves him, but it is not so certain the other way around. He is like the character in the Eagles’ song who can’t tell you why he stays, but he stays anyway. Finney walks the finest of lines, just charming enough to keep us from seeing him as a brute, just vulnerable enough to semi-overlook his crustiness. But he is the reason the movie has an acerbic tone that is so memorable. I kept comparing some of the wittier dialogue to Charade’s script. There are lines read by Finney that sound like real put-downs of his partner. I couldn’t help but think that Cary Grant would have read many of these same lines with a completely different inflection that would have turned them into inward self-deprecations rather than outward insults. However, Finney plays the edge for all it is worth, and in doing so, literally drags the film into another dimension.

Another thing that makes the movie seem very non-Hollywood (besides all the talk of bad sex) is that Stanley Donen (Singing in the Rain; Indiscreet; Charade) steals the style of his movie so directly from French New Wave director Alain Resnais that he could literally be charged with plagiarism. Like in Resnais’ seminal works, time is a very malleable thing—you can go forward in it or backward in it at any moment—and the fragmentary nature of time does a lot to contribute to the bittersweet mood of Two for the Road. The non-linearity mimics the characters’ memories in a lot of ways with one association bringing on another, creating a mishmash of moods and feelings that get smooshed together as though they exist in some dimension beyond time.

In the end, Two for the Road still left me with a sense of melancholy. This is to Donen’s credit, I think. He uses a beautifully reflective and pensive theme written by Henry Mancini that fits the mood of the film perfectly. I actually could have used a little less of it, to be honest. But whenever I hear the tune (Pat Metheny has an especially lovely version), it immediately puts me back within the feelings that the film visits upon me. Our lives are so incredibly random. The movie doesn’t make a big point of this, but it doesn’t ignore it either. Mark could have easily gone off with Jackie (Jacqueline Bisset) and had a whole other life. As could we all. The penultimate scene of the movie is a quarrel in a Mercedes in which Mark keeps jerking the car to a stop to say something every time Joanna says something. That herky-jerky rhythm, start and stop, start and stop, mirrors their relationship is so many ways that it seems a fitting ending. It’s like neither will ever quite get comfortable with their relationship again, that the status quo still has meaning but it is not strong enough to hold forever. A Paul Simon line provides the perfect epitaph for the film. “Love emerges, and it disappears. I do it for your love.”

Sidenote: If there is a happy version of this movie, it probably is Before Sunrise. Though, of course, the rest of the trilogy leans ever closer to Two for the Road territory.

 

[kihei]

My next pick will be Ivan Passer's Intimate Lighting (1965). It is available to screen for at least another month and a half on Criterion Channel.

 

[KallioWeHardlyKnewYe]

Two for the Road
Donen (1968)
“They don’t look happy.”

A time-hopping look at a relationship between Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna (Audrey Hepburn), bounding between its dissolving in current time back to previous trips they took, from their first meeting to multiple road trips in the ensuing years and the full spectrum of emotions along the way.

There are things I like. Finney and Hepburn are good. Arguably TOO good. The roadtrip with an old flame, William Daniels’ uber-pedantic Howard and their bratty kid is a fun bit of comedy. Several good visual gags (the banana). Director Stanley Donen tries his hand at some Richard Lester-style high-speed zaniness. I even chuckled at the winking “funny face” line. I appreciate the tone which has a sharp edge and keen eye about relationships that wasn't common in that day.

But I keep stumbling back and forth over the ending. We want Mark and Joanna to be together because they’re Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn and they’re beautiful and charming … but should we? I feel like the actual text of the movie is that these two shouldn’t be together and the eventual (and inevitable) happy ending feels false. There is a curtness here between the two that was probably at least a little radical for the time and shakes it a bit from a traditional romance or dramady but even when they’re calling each other “bitch” and “bastard,” it’s with a flirty edge. They sell it because they’re winsome, but you know what, Mark in particular IS a bastard. They cheat on each other so neither is without sin here, Mark is bit of a blowhard so I put a little more blame on him. There is something to be said about knowing and accepting the faults in a partner but if that’s the message here, I’m not sure how well that’s supported.

As I posted a few weeks back, watching this spurred me to spend a weekend watching a mini-marathon of dissolving marriage movies – Scenes from a Marriage (the long one), Possession, Before Midnight and Eyes Wide Shut (funny enough also written by Frederic Raphael, a fact I honestly did not know until I put the movie on). The marathon made for an interesting mostly chronological watch that by sheer coincidence hit the 60s, 70s, 80s, 90s and 2010s.

Two for the Road wasn’t the best of the bunch but in some ways it was the most interesting. It is the only one where I felt it ended in a wrong, if not dishonest, place. My question after this journey was: Is that just a product of the time? If they did it again would they do it the same way? It is the oldest of the five movies I watched and the one most firmly tethered to a more “traditional” time. Scenes and its matter-of-factness is said to have contributed to a rise in divorce in Europe (just as Sideways hurt merlot sales), but it’s a few years later when norms and thinking had begun to change. Do those years make a big difference?

Still without this step, do some of the future films come? The Before series seems particularly indebted to this movie.

 

[kihei]

Two for the Road
Donen (1968)
“They don’t look happy.”

Two for the Road wasn’t the best of the bunch but in some ways it was the most interesting. It is the only one where I felt it ended in a wrong, if not dishonest, place. My question after this journey was: Is that just a product of the time? If they did it again would they do it the same way? It is the oldest of the five movies I watched and the one most firmly tethered to a more “traditional” time. Scenes and its matter-of-factness is said to have contributed to a rise in divorce in Europe (just as Sideways hurt merlot sales), but it’s a few years later when norms and thinking had begun to change. Do those years make a big difference?

Still without this step, do some of the future films come? The Before series seems particularly indebted to this movie.

It is a thing that both Two for the Road and Before Sunrise are/were very good at doing. They each excited debates about their respective endings, both of which are really fair game for interpretation. I thought Mark and Joanna's relationship might survive the first time I saw Two for the Road; now, though, I think they have already reached a point of no return. To reference Paul Bowles: "They know it is over, they just don't know that they know yet." Similarly after Before Sunrise, but before the sequels, there were endless debates about whether Jesse and Celine pick up where they left off the following summer. It was really about 50/50 among people I knew. I was in the "hell, yes, of course they do" camp. But that was never a slam dunk debate.

So I wonder if Linklater does a part four to Jesse and Celine's story, whether they will end up together or not? I hope there is a part four. And this time I have the feeling that they don't, that they go their separate ways. Ours is not an age that makes it easy to believe in the enduring nature of true love.

 

[Pink Mist]

Two for the Road (dir. Stanley Donen, 1967)

Stanley Donen’s Two for the Road wants to be a sophisticated meditation on marriage—the highs, the lows, and the in-betweens. It jumps back and forth in time, stitching together moments from Mark (Albert Finney) and Joanna’s (Audrey Hepburn) relationship, from their meet-cute to their bitter, jaded middle years. The structure is ambitious, and at times, it effectively captures the disorienting way memory works. But as much as this film wants to be profound, it ultimately feels more like an experiment in style over substance, never quite finding the emotional weight it so desperately seeks.

Let’s start with the good: Hepburn is as effortlessly charming as ever, even when the material works against her. Finney, too, has moments of brilliance, though his character is such a condescending, self-absorbed ass that it’s hard to feel much sympathy for him. The cinematography is lovely, making the most of the French countryside, and Henry Mancini’s score adds an air of wistful elegance. The non-linear storytelling is bold for its time and makes for some engaging transitions between past and present.

But then there’s everything else. For a movie about a crumbling marriage, Two for the Road never quite makes us care enough about the relationship at its center. Mark and Joanna’s love story is filled with moments of tenderness, sure, but there’s also an overwhelming sense of detachment. They bicker, they cheat, they go through the motions, and at a certain point, you start to wonder: why are they even together? The script doesn’t dig deep enough into their emotional lives to make their journey feel meaningful—it’s all surface-level wit and stylized melancholy.

The biggest issue is the film’s perspective. It’s clear that Two for the Road is trying to deconstruct the fairy-tale romance, but it ends up feeling oddly one-sided. Mark treats Joanna terribly throughout most of the film—he’s dismissive, arrogant, and frequently cruel—but the movie never really condemns his behavior. Instead, it frames their relationship as a natural evolution of love, as if this kind of emotional neglect is just par for the course. Joanna, despite Hepburn’s best efforts, often feels like a passive participant in her own life. She’s witty and resilient, but she rarely gets a moment of true agency, instead spending much of the film reacting to Mark’s whims.

There’s also the matter of tone. The film wants to be a lighthearted comedy at times, but it also wants to be a somber, reflective drama. These shifts don’t always work, and the moments that should hit the hardest—infidelity, emotional exhaustion, years of resentment—are often undercut by the film’s insistence on keeping things stylish and breezy. It’s a marriage story that never fully commits to its own pain.

Two for the Road is a film that earns points for ambition, but it ultimately rings hollow. It’s well-crafted but emotionally underwhelming, an aesthetic exercise in romantic cynicism that never quite justifies its own existence. Beautiful to look at, frustrating to experience.

 

[Jevo]

Thanks for the kind words everyone. It's much appreciated.

 

[Jevo]

Two For The Road (1967) dir. Stanley Donen

Mark and Joanna leave from England for Saint Tropez, electing to drive. It's a trip they've made several times before in their 10 year relationship. During this trip they reminisce about their previous trips. In the beginning it was all love and adventure. Now it's resentment and jaelousy. On their first trip, they meet by accident, and hitchhike to the south of France together, ending in a proposal from Mark. On their second trip they join Mark's old girlfriend from Chicago, her husband and their daughter. They are the most terrible couple, who have managed to raise the most terrible girl in the world, and Mark and Joanna soon leave them to travel by themselves instead. On their third trip they travel in their old MG, which constantly breaks down. After Joanna announces she is pregnant, the car goes on fire. Perhaps symbolic of the course of their relationship. It causes them to meet Maurice Dalbret, who becomes Mark's client and benefactor, and is a huge part of making them a wealthy couple later on. The next trip Mark does alone, writing to Joanna how much he loves, while having an affair. The next trip they bring their daughter, and while Mark is engrossed in work, Joanna starts an affair with Maurice's brother in law. That leaves us with the current, where they end up agreeing that they love each other, and could never be apart despite their troubles. The question is whether they are being truthful, or if they even know they are not being truthful.

The best part about Two For The Road is Albert Finney and Audrey Hepburn. They have great chemistry together, and are very believable as both young lovers and the "old" married couple. Hepburn in particular is great with her charm and warmth. Joanna is a bit underwritten, but Hepburn brings a lot more out of her than is in the script. In the script there's more meat to Mark, and Finney has a lot of fun indulging in the character. But Finney probably gets to have a bit too much fun though, as there's an unevenness between the two characters, where Mark is a lot more outgoing and fun, and also more mean. Where as Joanna ends up, despite Hepburn's best attempt to avoid it, as being much more docile, and like someone who lets things happen to her instead of being part of them. To be even better, I think the two characters should be more even, both in terms of their actions against and towards each other. I also think there's a disconnect between Finney's physical performance and his vocal performance. His physical performance is great. But his vocal performance is lackluster. I'm pretty sure the dialogue was recorded afterwards and not on set. And Finney seems to speak the exact same way no matter the scene and no matter what is going on. It's particularly grating compared to Hepburn's very finely tuned performance.

It's sometimes a bit hard to make heads or tails about exactly in what timeline each scene takes place. But it's mostly communicated well through clothing, cars and Hepburn's hair. But I love the transitions between the different timelines, with the different cars driving by, or the car driving by the hitchhiking pair etc. It's very clever, gives a clear indication that we are switching to different trip, and it fits well with the general style of the film. It's debateable however if the style of the film is right for the film. The film wants to be both a bit of screwball comedy, but it also wants to be a serious film about marriage. But it's more the former than the latter, and that's a bit of a problem. Because it means the film has a problem letting the serious moments stay serious, instead of letting them be undercut by comedy. There are similarities between this movie and the Before Trilogy, only this movie is doing it in one movie instead of several. But where I think the Before Trilogy really succeeds is the way it balances comedy and drama perfectly. So that they end up being quite profound movies about love and relationships in a way that Two For The Road doesn't quite manage.