The Bigger Picture: "Lone Star" (1996) and "Return to Oz" (1985)

The Bigger Picture is a programming strand they have in the Irish Film Institute, in which they invite someone (usually someone involved in the film industry, broadly defined) to select a film to show and then to introduce a screening of it. Local filmmaker Luke McManus had his turn on the Bigger Picture wheel back in September. He picked Lone Star, John Sayles's 1996 film, in which Chris Cooper plays Sam Deeds, the sheriff of a border county in 1990s Texas. I had not seen it since its original release. but I eagerly took the opportunity to see it again in the cinema, as I remembered it very fondly and regard it as one of the very best films I have ever seen. And it is as good as I remembered.

The basic plot is a murder mystery (Sam's search for the killer of Charlie Wade, the psychopathic old sheriff who disappeared in the late 1950s but whose skeletal remains show up at the start of the film) but it manages to bring in all kinds of other themes, including forbidden love, race and immigration, how historical events are recorded, difficult family dynamics, and even the nature of evil. There's also a gothic tinge to this tale of dark secrets emerging from the past, for all that this is a film set in sunny Texas rather than darkest Transylvania.

Having subsequently seen a few of Sayles's films, including 2008's Honeydripper, I think that his thing is eliciting strong performances from ensemble casts, with this film being no exception to that. There are so many good performances in Lone Star that it feels like I am letting the side down by singling individuals out, but Chris Cooper's understated sheriff, Elizabeth Peña as Pilar, his old flame who was kept away from him by cruel circumstances and disapproving adults, and Kris Kristofferson (in terrifying form in flashback scenes as Wade) are particularly striking.

The other Big Picture film I saw recently was Disney's 1985 film Return to Oz. Directed by Walter Murch, this is based on two of L. Frank Baum's novels. It was introduced by director Aislinn Clarke, who talked about how back in days of yore Walt Disney had always wanted to make a film of The Wonderful Wizard of Oz, but MGM got the rights ahead of him. Eventually Disney acquired rights to some of the other Oz books but it was only after Walt died that his company made this film. And it tanked at the box office, which might explain why Murch never directed anything else (though he remained in demand as an editor and sound designer, winning awards for his work in these areas).

Clarke talked a bit about how the film is quite dark and a bit too edgy for a kiddy film audience (though let's face it, the more famous 1939 film has scenes that are absolutely terrifying to small people). And the beginning scenes are no fun, with a young Dorothy (played by Fairuza Balk, unlike Judy Garland an actual child when she played the role) being sent to some sinister quack psychiatrist by her guardians after she won't stop going on about her previous visit to the imaginary realm of Oz. Then of course she does find herself back in Oz, but everything has somehow gone to shit, with the Emerald City in ruins, its inhabitants mostly turned to stone, her old friends either missing or also turned to stone, and the streets patrolled by the sinister Wheelers. Fortunately she makes a series of new friends (a talking chicken, a wind-up mechanical man, Jack Pumpkinhead and eventually a flying sofa with a moose's head). It all comes good at the end but not without some moments of strange danger.

And it is pretty good, maybe even very good. I think Return to Oz suffers from not being as iconic as the 1939 film, but that's like saying it impresses less because it was less successful. It feels a bit like it is cut from the same cloth as Dark Crystal - a fantasy film for kids who can take something a bit on the scary side, with enough going on that it might actually have a stronger appeal to adults of a more discerning nature.

I am now thinking of what film I will pick when my turn arrives to choose one for the Bigger Picture.

images:

Matthew McConaughey & Kris Kristofferson in Lone Star (IFC Center: "Lone Star")

Kris Kristofferson in Lone Star (Austin Chronicle: "Lone Star")

Chris Cooper and Elizabeth Peña in Lone Star (Warner Bros: "Lone Star")

Dorothy in the asylum (Ranker: "The Eeriest Thing About Return to Oz")

Beware the Wheelers (Ranker: "The Eeriest Thing About Return to Oz")

Fairuza Balk as Dorothy, and friends, in Return to Oz (D23: "Return to Oz (film)")

"Honeydripper"

This is a John Sayles directed film. Like other films he has made it, it has loads of characters and a certain political edge. This one is set down in America's deep south in the early 1950s, in a land untouched by troubling modern notions of racial equality or the importance of inter-ethnic association. For all that, it is part of the same world of ain't-the-South-swell films as Cookie's Fortune or Black Snake Moan. The action focuses on a rural bar-restaurant called The Honeydripper, owned by this African American guy (played by Danny Glover) and frequented by essentially no one, as everyone is busily going to the locality's other bar because it has a jukebox. But then a young fellow with a home-made electric guitar drifts into town – could it be that the blocks will slot into place such that he will be revealed as the solution to The Honeydripper's problems? (answer: yes).

One thing I have noticed with the John Sayles films I have seen is a certain affection for human beings and their foibles. This seems especially pronounced in this one, where even the corrupt racist sheriff does not seem quite as awful by the end of the film as he first appears. I was also struck by the way the guitar playing fellow seemed like a nice young lad, and I kind of suspected that he wouldn't be leaving behind three pregnant teenagers when he eventually skipped town. That said, this is not simply a feel-good chirpy film, as there is an edge to what happens in it. The sheriff is ultimately not quite as bad as initially implied, but he is still running a regime not that dissimilar to slavery, while some of the black men working in the fields are so ground down by whitey that they start turning on each other in a rather distasteful manner. The Honeydripper's proprietor is haunted (literally, as it turns out) by his own past, but the most straightforwardly sinister character is perhaps the preacher who is trying to save the proprietor's wife by taking him from her. Some of the scenes where the preacher does his stuff call to mind nothing so much as 'The Jezebel Spirit' from My Life In The Bush Of Ghosts.

Sayles films are great for the characters, including the more minor ones. Aside from the ones already mentioned, particular favourites included the Danny Glover character's adoptive daughter, the two feuding field hands, and the jazz singer's husband. The best, though, is the sporty lady who seemed to have wondered in from Carry On Brer Rabbit, with dialogue consisting of an endless sequence of double (and single) entendres.

There is a lot of music in the film, a definite part of its appeal. It is set in a time when proto rock 'n' roll is supplanting jazz and the blues as the music of Black America, but a time when whitey had not taken over this music. It is also a time of technological change, with electric guitars and juke boxes being exciting new devices guaranteed to pull in the punters. One big difference with now, though, is how undeveloped the mediation of this musical scene is, with it being as easy as piss for any chancer with a guitar to pass himself of as the Guitar Sam that people have been hearing on the radio. The film nevertheless shuns musical clichés… when the mysterious blind guitarist launches into 'Stagger Lee', the Danny Glover character stops him with a curt "I always hated that tune".

I'm not sure if I am expressing myself that well here, so let me finish by encouraging all readers to see this film without delay.