|
Not just the cosmic side of high school, cp. Rebel Without a Cause, but full-blown adolescent metaphysics announced with Gone With the Wind titles. "Into the brightness from the darkness of the movie house," Tulsa teens and saturated reveries along the tribal divide, Greasers versus Socs. "What do you wanna do?" "Nothing legal, man." The runt of the orphaned brood (C. Thomas Howell) fancies the posh girl (Diane Lane) and gets dunked by her preppy beau (Leif Garrett), his comrade (Ralph Macchio) stabs to the rescue and joins him in hiding. They grow aware of the world's vastness and evanescence while gazing at burnt-orange sunsets, Frost has the words they seek ("So Eden sank to grief..."). If Scorsese in Alice Doesn't Live Here Anymore boils feminine melodrama into flares of domestic combat, Francis Ford Coppola balloons juvenile pulp into a Technicolor swamp of tears and hugs. The swaggerer (Matt Dillon) goes for James Dean poses in a world of Sal Mineos, the wiseacre (Emilio Estevez) twirls switchblades and watches cartoons, lost boys one and all. (The dreamboat fleet also includes Patrick Swayze in effortless command, a strikingly tender Rob Lowe, and Tom Cruise raw and preening.) Adults are beaming phantoms in the sky, the overworked jukebox runs on hair goop: "He goes to the barbershop for an oil change, not a haircut!" Artifice of nostalgia or nostalgia for artifice, a fever wrapped in a school assignment. The lads stagger away from the climactic melee with codes and bruises, the true trial by fire leaves the charred cherub with dolorous wisdom. "Yeah, that's tough enough, huh?" The Last Picture Show is visible in bookending sequences, Rumble Fish switches to impressionism for a concentrated companion piece. Cinematography by Stephen H. Burum. With Glenn Withrow, Darren Jack Dalton, Michele Meyrink, Gailard Sartain, Tom Waits, and William Smith.
--- Fernando F. Croce |