#10: I'm Making Spoon Bread!

(Invasion of the Body Snatchers, Don Siegel, 1956)

My absolute favorite part of Invasion of the Body Snatchers has literally nothing to do with any body snatching. In fact, it has very little to do with the plot of the film at all. Early in the story, our hero (played by Kevin McCarthy) is meeting up with an old flame at her house, and her mother offers him to stay for dinner. And what does she say she's making? "Spoon bread." I had no idea what spoon bread was (it's some kind of savory pudding) but the enthusiasm with which the actress delivered the line made me laugh out loud. So there you go.

Aside from spoon bread, Invasion of the Body Snatchers still has a lot to offer. If you've ever been paranoid about anything in your entire life, this might be the best film you can watch. Unlike a lot of other films, the supposed "crazies" here are 100% right the whole way through. The reason your dad is acting so weird? He's not your dad, he's an alien drone whose only mission in life is to conquer our planet. So run. Run now!

One of the best things Invasion of the Body Snatchers has going for it is the concept that anyone could be a pod person, and it would be near impossible to tell. The film creates an atmosphere of extreme tension in all the scenes where characters we'd seen just previously are acting completely normal, but with a few small quirks. You get whipped up in a frenzy, much like the rest of the characters, until you feel the same panic McCarthy feels when he shouts "They're already here! You're next! You're next!"

Despite their efforts, Hollywood is never going to produce a better version of Invasion of the Body Snatchers (but the '70s version still has Leonard Nimoy!). Communism is no longer the perceivable threat it was in the 1950s, and no studio would let the subtle moments of this film slide by without filling them with a shaky-cam chase scene or gory mutilation. It's a nice little sci-fi/horror film, made at exactly the right time.

---

I have to admit, I've kind of had enough of Invasion of the Body Snatchers. I watched it for a Politics and Film class I'm taking and ended up writing a film analysis on it, so I really wish I could just skip this post because I don't need to talk about this movie any more. I would just post my film analysis, but it's kind of long and not very good, so I'll spare all of you good people the agony. But I'm kind of mentally done with this film.

In case you didn't already know, Invasion of the Body Snatchers is about the terrifying, ever-present fear of COMMUNISM! That's right, the first incarnation of this film was made during the McCarthy era and the Red Scare, and those scary, soulless aliens that are taking over the bodies of the main character's loved ones are actually communists in disguise. As aliens. Or maybe they actually are just aliens. I'm still not clear on that.

Okay, I'm kidding. I'm pretty clear on it. They are actually aliens. But the aliens are a metaphor for communists. At least that's one theory. The other theory is that the filmmakers made a film about aliens that grow in weird space pods and take over the bodies of innocent citizens, and American society just assumed it was about communism. Because there's this theory out there that when a society is going through a problem they will project that problem onto things in popular culture such as television and film. I like to believe that the filmmakers are intelligent people and the metaphor was intentional, but I also used to dream of being a screenwriter so I might be biased. Either way, this film has kind of gone down in history as being a big red communist metaphor, so that's pretty much all it will be remembered for. That, and the multiple remakes.

To be completely honest, this film is kind of enjoyable in the same way that any 1950's horror film is enjoyable. By today's standards of horror it's completely cheesy and not scary at all, but that's kind of why it's fun. So I guess I don't hate the film, I just hope that I never have to write about it ever again.

#9: Once, When I Was Little, I Fell into a River.

(Spirited Away, Hayao Miyazaki, 2001)

My love for Spirited Away is something that I find hard to define. I'm not one of those people who worships the ground that Hayao Miyazaki walks on, and as such I don't automatically love every film he's ever made simply because he made it. My feelings about Howl's Moving Castle were decidedly lukewarm, and, in all honesty, I've never actually seen My Neighbor Totoro in its entirety. I just never have gotten around to it. But I really adore Spirited Away.

Part of it could be because the first time I saw it I was in high school and I had been taking Japanese. Though I didn't see the film in Japanese, I did feel like I was taking a step in learning more about Japanese culture and, I'll admit, it felt good. Or it could be that my mom and I saw it at the Bijou (for you non-Eugenians, that's our independent theater) and there weren't many other people there. For some reason it made it seem all the more personal. I also love that, even after seeing this film 10+ times, I'm still not entirely sure what any of it means. Probably because I'm not Japanese. There are aspects of it that I'm sure resonate really well with people who have lived their entire lives in Japan. I'm certain that there are symbols in this film that just don't translate to an American audience. And I think that element of the mysterious and exotic appeals to me.

For me, Spirited Away ends up being a beautifully illustrated and whimsically told story about a young girl who wants to get her parents back. She meets interesting "people" (I use that term extremely loosely), does interesting things, and has a great adventure. And there's a dragon. I'm a sucker for dragons. I don't feel like I need to understand exactly what's happening and what the symbols mean to appreciate the sweeping, colorful beauty of Miyazaki's art. Because, ultimately, that's what Spirited Away is. Wonderful, colorful, whimsical moving art.

---

Let me start by saying that by no means do I think Spirited Away is a bad film. It's a weird film, to be sure, but it is definitely not bad. I like when animated movies, especially animated movies aimed at children, push the envelope, creating detailed story lines and complex characters, trusting kids to understand what they can and accept what they don't. And Spirited Away definitely does that.

Perhaps the biggest issue I had with Spirited Away was the hype. Just about every person I have spoken to about the film raved about how much they loved it, and how they found it so moving, and how it had changed the way they look at film. And I appreciate that everybody seems to like it. Heck, John Lasseter himself does the intro to the American version of the film on DVD. In short, there was no way this movie could live up to the hype unless it was a documentary showing the second coming of Christ, but it played like an episode of Doctor Who (By the way, who wouldn't want to see Jesus as the 12th Doctor? It would make for an interesting season, to say the least).

Alas, Spirited Away is not the greatest film I'd ever seen. Hayao Miyazaki clearly knows his way around a complex story, but despite the immense attention to detail, I found myself getting lost or confused several times. I found the way the story flowed to be a little off-putting, as it covered so much ground in so little time. Spirited Away is a very fast moving film, but I felt like it was jerking me around rather than allowing the story to flow cohesively.

Above all else in the film, and the one thing I took away from it, was the extremely awesome characters Miyazaki came up with. We have a talking frog, a weird ghost/man named No Face, a cross between a spider and an old guy, a Stink Spirit/River Spirit, a gigantic baby, humans who turn into pigs, and twins with awkwardly proportioned heads and bodies. Watching all of these characters (supplied with their American voices by an amazing cast including Suzanne Pleshette and David Ogden Stiers) interact with one another is absolutely fascinating, even if it doesn't make sense at times.

So what did I think of Spirited Away? I'd have to say I like the film, but not nearly as much as everyone seemed to think I would. That's okay, but it was still kind of a letdown. I wanted to fall into the story, but I couldn't quite get into it.