Like last week this is a “double double feature” — not that I’m making a habit of them, it’s just a coincidence. First two films Leonard Maltin recommended in 151 Best Movies You’ve Never Seen —
DARK DAYS (2000) is Marc Singer’s (a British filmmaker, not the star of V) documentary on the outcasts living in New York’s abandoned Amtrak tunnes, making homes from abandoned plywood, scavenging for food, hustling by selling discarded paperbacks or DVDs, variously driven underground by personal trauma or drug addiction. Very low key but it works better for that reason “What some people throw away, other people can use.”
KONTROLL (2003) is a Hungarian film set in the Budapest subways where the ticket takers feud, fall in love, hunt the infamous free rider “Bootsie,” and discover several recent suicides are actually a mystery figure shoving people onto the tracks. Like the homeless of Dark Days, the central character lives underground, sleeping in empty stations rather than return to his life up top — can a woman wandering around in a bear costume change his life? Strange, but absolutely fascinating. “I started to worry what would happen if I wasn’t the best.”
Next, two musicals about the Birth of America:
Lin-Manuel Miranda is Alexander HAMILTON (2020) in his celebrated Broadway show, which I caught streaming on Disney. This presents Hamilton as an ambitious visionary in contrast to opportunistic frenemy Aaron Burr, who’s baffled how Hamilton does so well (“Why must you say what you believe?”), then happy when it appears Thomas Jefferson’s rising tide will lift Burr’s boat too (Jefferson is written singing jazz rather than hip-hop to emphasize his years in France have set him apart from the other founders). Lives up to its press clippings. “I’m laughing in the face of casualties and sorrow/For the first time I’m thinking past tomorrow.”
1776 (1972) is my semi-regular July 4 viewing (though watching right after the Supreme Court restored the monarchy is jarring), as William Daniels’ John Adams keeps getting told he’s obnoxious and disliked (“Yes, I’ve heard.”), Howard DaSilva’s Ben Franklin tosses off aphorisms, and Ken Howard’s Jefferson tries to balance writing the Declaration of Independence with the need to relieve his sexual tension with wife Blythe Danner. Always a pleasure, though I’m conscious this viewing that despite John Cullum’s “Molasses to Rum to Slaves” this avoids that topic as much as possible (soft peddling Jefferson’s own slaveholding, for instance). Thinking about that got me wondering if anyone’s ever done a What If where the American Revolution doesn’t happen but America (or parts of it) rebels when Britain ends slavery. “That can’t possibly be true — I have an aunt in New Brunswick.”
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I too — along with friends — watch 1776. Still love it. One of the friends is named John 🙂 The friends’ kids prefer Hamilton, of course. I met John Cullum once and rather than mentioning Northern Exposure (on at that time) I enthused over ‘Molasses to Rum to Slaves’ and he was so pleased.
Dark Days inevitably makes me think of the 80s Beauty and the Beast.
I didn’t recognize him from the film when I was watching Northern Exposure.
I can recognize his voice on the cast album for On A Clear Day You Can See Forever, though.