http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118010640.html?categoryId=3795&cs=1&cache=false
Ripe dramas unfold amid changing times, mores
By ANTHONY KAUFMAN
Oct. 30, 2009
Do you take advantage of the new freedoms?" purrs sexy next-door
neighbor Mrs. Samsky in the Coen brothers' 1967-set "A Serious Man."
The question looms large over a number of this year's award-season
films, many of them set either on the cusp of that moment of
revolutionary change in the '60s ("An Education," "A Single Man"),
during its heyday ("A Serious Man," "Nine," "Pirate Radio") or as its
gleam began to wear off and turn darker ("The Damned United," "The
Lovely Bones").
While it might be mere coincidence to see a confluence of films set
during that mythical moment in pop-culture history -- beginning
around 1962 with the Beatles, Bob Dylan and the Cuban missile crisis
and ending around 1973 with the end of the draft, the unraveling of
Watergate and the dawning of disco -- the current cinematic wave
suggests there's probably more going on than mere happenstance.
For one thing, the epoch marks a definitive period of coming-of-age
for many of the films' creators. Joel and Ethan Coen, for example, 13
and 10 respectively when their movie takes place, have called the
film "semiautobiographical," drawing their inspiration from the
context and community in which they grew up.
Maury Yeston, the executive producer of "Nine," who also wrote the
music and lyrics for the original stage version, admits the film is
"about my coming-of-age and being gobsmacked by a Fellini film that
changed my life." (Fellini's "8½," on which "Nine" is based, was
released in the U.S. in 1963 when Yeston was 18.)
Likewise, Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh and Phillipa Boyens were all born
around the same time as the protagonist of "The Lovely Bones," which
begins in 1973. "I was exactly (protagonist) Susie's age," Walsh
says. "It was an easy point of reference because we lived through it."
Even "A Single Man's" Tom Ford, who was only a child during the
decade, identifies the era as "the moment when I was forming opinions
about what is beautiful and what is not, and I think that resonates
with a lot of people."
If personal histories influenced the making of these films, there is
also the sense that the '60-'70s period still holds an enduring
allure -- and resonance -- for contemporary filmmakers and audiences.
"There's a certain fascination with that period," says Ford, whose
debut film follows the psychological journey of a gay man grieving
the death of his lover in 1962. When "A Single Man" takes place, Ford
says, "We're on the brink of enormous change, with the civil rights
and women's liberation movements coming, where everything is held
together by appearances."
While "A Single Man" could be set in any era, Ford acknowledges that
his character's isolation is heightened by the fact that he's a
homosexual during a moment when such an identity was still hidden (a
subtheme in the Emmy-winning "Mad Men," also set during the New
Frontier) -- "even though right below the surface, literally, two
years later, there's this explosion of color, form, shape, and
everyone is getting naked and growing their hair long."
Like "A Single Man," Lone Scherfig's "An Education," based on a
memoir by Lynn Barber, is set in the early 1960s, in "that strange
void," says Scherfig, "between the postwar period and when London
became swinging." The story subtly parallels its young protagonist's
sexual and emotional coming out with the country's own cultural shift
from restraint to rebellion. "The most important prop was the
hand-built Bristol car," explains Scherfig, "which takes us to the
West End, where the future is starting to take shape."
If "A Single Man" and "An Education" reflect the beginnings of that
seismic cultural change -- "A Serious Man," though set in 1967, also
suggests the more gradual social transformation in a place like
Minneapolis -- "The Lovely Bones" embodies the era's cynical end.
The film is told from the viewpoint of a teenage girl who is raped
and murdered. Writer-producer Fran Walsh explains: "Susie carries
into the film this tremendous optimism and lightness which is cut
dead by Mr. Harvey. If you look at the end of the 1960s, at what the
Manson family did, along with Vietnam and Watergate, all those things
contaminated and soured the idealistic notion of what could have been
-- and that certainly plays into the story."
This tension between innocence and cynicism, perseverance and
resignation, order and chaos, informs all the films. As Focus
Features exec James Schamus, who wrote and produced Ang Lee's "Taking
Woodstock" and distributed "A Serious Man" and Richard Curtis'
1967-set "Pirate Radio," says, "I do think there is something
speaking to a class of filmmakers about freedom and the anxiety in
that freedom."
For "Nine's" Yeston, it is these decades-old conflicts that are
particularly resonant for our contemporary time. "I think our current
era and our current worldview recapitulates the 1960s," he says.
"There was this clear division between Eisenhower and the '50s going
away and a new sense of values, a new leader, JFK and a new era
dawning. And now, of course, we have a new liberalism and a new
Kennedyesque figure in Obama."
If we are reliving a similar moment in our national history, Schamus
believes it's one that we have yet to fully comprehend.
"I don't think the American culture has honestly absorbed the
potential of what was happening in the 1960s," he says. "Late
capitalism shut it down as a stylistic detour, and there's very
little understanding or acceptance of how deep were the structural
changes -- everything from male-female relations to gay liberation to
what happened last November at the ballot box. These are things we
all owe to the '60s." And as this recent cycle of films suggest, adds
Schamus, "We're still working it out."
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