Inessentials

Pretty big spoilers for Gone with the Wind

Rewatching Gone with the Wind yesterday at the local art house theater, I was struck by the dream imagery of the film. It begins with the film’s grandiose foreward:

There was a land of Cavaliers and Cotton Fields called the Old South. Here in this pretty world, Gallantry took its last bow. Here was the last ever to be seen of Knights and their Ladies Fair, of Master and of Slave. Look for it only in books, for it is no more than a dream remembered, a Civilization gone with the wind…

“A dream remembered” gives the viewer a pretty fair handle on how to read the film. The film’s heightened emotions, narrow focus on Scarlett O’Hara, and whitewashing of the unpleasant aspects of slavery in the Old South fit the model of the retelling of a dream. Like a person giving a first-person narrative account of a dream, we are told a solipsistic account of a world that a cold-eyed viewer would recount much differently.

More than the narrative structure, there is another way that dreams figure into the story of Gone with the Wind. The first half of the film (the two hours leading up to the intermission) is the story of Scarlett O’Hara’s slow waking up from a dream. Scarlett, particularly in facing the death and stench of the make-shift military hospital in a church, wakes up from the dream life she has been living. In fact, Dr. Meade shakes Scarlett and tells her to “Wake up! Wake up!” And, unfortunately for Scarlett, she does wake up at the end of the first half, when she returns to Tara, her family’s plantation and vows to never be hungry or poor again. She is waking up from a dream and in doing so finds life to be a horror (much like the awakening in Mulholland Dr., come to think of it). And for Scarlett, awakening to the world around her leads her to lie, cheat, steal, and murder her way through life.

Interestingly, this is the same conclusion about life reached by the film’s other protagonist, Rhett Butler. For the first half of the film, he enters and leaves the story at well-spaced intervals. Like a bodhisattva who has awakened from dream-life yet still walks the earth, Rhett Butler is the only character in the first half of the film who is awakened to the dream-like state of the white characters in the Old South. Like the awakened Scarlett O’Hara, he has the very un-Budhhist attitude that the awakened life is one where anything goes – robbery, fornication, anything that benefits him. In his first speaking scene, Rhett even chastises the eager Southern gentlemen for their “dreams of victory” – a clear statement that he can see through the dream they are living in to the world that has already arrived without their knowing. And his decision is not to side with their gentlemanly honor, but to act as a smuggler out to line his pockets.

In an interesting reversal, Rhett attempts in the second half of the film to re-enter the dream life he accurately punctured in the first half. But his attempts to live in a dream are doomed, as his attachment to Scarlett is doomed. He cannot become a gentleman, and Scarlett cannot become a lady. And the one dream from which Scarlett never awoke was her dream of Ashley, which she realizes too late was only a dream. Rhett knew this all along, as he tells her in the films closing scene, “I’m leaving you, my dear. All you need now is a divorce and your dreams of Ashley can come true.” She has realized by now that it really was just a dream, but she has awoken too late to salvage her real marriage.

Like all dreams, the Old South was always illusory. The happy slaves, the code of gentlemanly honor, the concentration of wealth in the few landowners were all unstable at best and delusional at worst. The Old South is a remembered dream, a dream that never was as it is remembered.

Here are my picks for the Top 10 films of the 2000s. These lists are always a little silly (will I still like my No. 1 pick in 10 years? how many times must I rewatch a film to be sure I love it? who cares what I think?), so you might be more interested in my list of 5 essential films of the decade that didn’t make my 1o-best list. Those five all reveal something above movies in the last 10 years. Enjoy.

1. Inglourious Basterds (2009) – Quentin Tarantino films generally leave me a little cold. I love the flair, the humor, the knowledge, but his plots are too often thin vengeance flicks that leave you feeling stupid for not catching all his arcane film references. But here, finally, QT has a plot worth loving, a revenge story that says something fascinating about the nature of revenge (forget what others say, this is not wish fulfillment), and a film that you can watch without feeling frustrated at your lack of movie trivia. Devastating, beautiful, terrifying, hilarious, tense, thoughtful. Bravo.
2. Moulin Rouge! (2001) - It takes a bold storyteller to tell you no less than three times how the film will end yet still have that ending leave you moved. Somehow Baz Luhrmann manages to do it, while reinventing the musical, the movie soundtrack, the star vehicle, and the smash cut. The most exhilarating and shamelessly romantic film of the last 10 years. Spectacular. Spectacular.
3. Zodiac (2007) – This is one of the few great films about research. It is simultaneously an obsessive portrayal of obsession and masterful twist on the tired serial killer genre. Subtle use of CGI, and a stellar cast. Like QT at No. 1, this is a film a head and shoulders above the director’s (David Fincher) other work. This film still haunts me.
4. In the Mood for Love (2000) – Perhaps the most beautiful film of the decade.
5. City of God (2002) – An epic that feels intimate.
6. No Country for Old Men (2007) – The best comedic filmmakers are also the best dramatic filmmakers.
7. I (Heart) Huckabees (2004) – I love comedies. I love films about ideas. This is a comedy about ideas.
8. Elephant (2003) – Devastating to watch.
9. Mulholland Dr. (2001) – What begins as a genre pastiche ends with a suggestion that reality is the true horror.
10. Ratatouille (2007) – Everyone has a favorite Pixar film; mine is an ode to creativity and creators.

5 Essential Films of the 2000s

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (2002, 2003, 2004) – Redefined the blockbuster. The first film feels corny to me now, the second is still thrilling, and the third is still boring. But it brought attention to the possibility of a blockbuster entertainment that is also a smart film, and was one of the first to let fans in to the filmmaking process (and more than a little marketing) by using a thing called the Internet.
2. My Big Fat Greek Wedding (2003) – This film defined the goal of distributors of independent films in the 2000s: through slow release and word of mouth, hope a film finds a huge audience. (Idea: why not buy good films, let them find their modest audience, and make a small profit rather than get into bidding wars for films you hope will make a huge profit?)
3. The 40 Year Old Virgin (2005) – Along with Wedding Crashers, it showed there is an audience for R-rated comedy. It also launched the Judd Apatow phenomenon.
4. The Royal Tenenbaums (2002) – Each time I’ve watched it, I’ve found this film trite, dull, needlessly formal, and on-the-nose. But, like Punch Drunk Love, it has a passionate following among people who watch only a few movies but like to feel like they are very smart movie watchers. It seems like every Sundance picture tries to recapture the alleged magic of this film.
5. Yi Yi (2000) – I have not seen this film. I’ve seen many lists with this as one of the great films of the decade. And since an essential part of film-going (at least for us amateurs who can’t run the festival circuit) is not seeing every great film, I’ll let this stand for all the great films I didn’t see this decade.