OK, I'm feeling down, because the college I attended, where I also worked for 12 years, where my parents met, and my brother currently works, is closing its doors after 168 years. So, instead of doing homework, as I should be, I'm going to do something I really like and write a review of my favorite movie to make myself feel better.

The movie is Lawrence Kasden's Grand Canyon, starring Kevin Klein, Danny Glover, Mary McDonnell, Mary-Louise Parker, Alfre Woodard, and Steve Martin, and with a film score by James Newton Howard. I LOVE THIS FILM. I love what Kasden did in the film, I love what he says in the film, I love what he explores in the film, I love the cast, the performances, the cinematography...When I go to LA, it's one of my treats to find an area used as a scene in the film and know I'm there where it was shot. So what is it that makes me love this so? I know a lot of people may not agree with me, we're all different. And it's not the kind of film I usually love - nothing blows up, there are no zombies. It was made in 1991, so for a lot of people out there, it's an "old" film. But I hang on to it as my favorite. Why?

First of all, there's everything I mentioned: the cast, the performances, the cinematography, the soundtrack, all of them stellar. But I what I love most is what Kasden SAID in the film. The trailer for the film starts off with "In the 80's he gave us The Big Chill..." so you might think from that it was kind of a re-hash of the same theme. Well, yes and no. The Big Chill was written in the 80's and FOR the 80's: it was about a bunch of people who were already friends returning for a funeral and indulging in an orgy of introspection, which was entirely appropriate, it's a funeral, they're looking back at their own lives, and because that's what the 80's were (it was even called the "me" decade). So Kasden did a great job of turning the film in on itself at many levels and thus making it a mirror to reflect society. The score, which became wildly popular, was made up of poplar songs from the lives of the characters. A good film, but, obviously, and, as I commented, appropriately, self-centered. Grand Canyon, in contrast, is about a very disparate group of people brought together by....chance? fate? Well, now, there's the rub, isn't it. Rather than looking inward, as he did in The Big Chill in the 80's, Kasden is now looking outward, at society and, more than that, the world, the universe, the cosmos, at the forces that bring us together and weave the tapestry of our lives. The Greeks knew this tapestry: sometimes people come into our lives like a certain color comes into a pattern, and they stay there for a while to make up that pattern, and sometimes it's a permanent addition, and sometimes it drops out, because that's what's necessary to make up the pattern. And we don't weave this pattern ourselves, the Fates, or the cosmos, or societal forces, or whatever you want to name it, weaves if for us. We no more know what is coming up in the pattern than we know when the Fates will cut the thread and our end will come. It's all very new age - and very ancient - which is, SURPRISE!, another societal/cultural theme of the 90's. "It all seems so close together," Claire says, "the good and the bad, and everything." This is what happens when you explore and get to know your inner psyche (in the 80's), and then take a look around you and realize that your tapestry is just part of a enormous quilt of society, and the world, and the universe. And the "bad things" Claire referred to were "bad things" of the 90's, too. We look at the movie today and much of it seems tame. The bad and the good were indeed "close together," but take a look: it was easy in the movie to tell who was bad and who was good, wasn't it? In contrast to that, take a look at the 2004 Oscar winner for Best Film: Crash. Conceptually a lot like Grand Canyon, lives weaving in and out and touching at unexpected points, the violence is much more brutal, and there ARE no "good" or "bad" characters. A character you think is totally corrupt in one scene turns out to be a hero in the next. No one is all good or all bad. Welcome to waking up in the new millennium.

So all these films did a great job of reflecting their age. What makes me love Grand Canyon so much more than the other two? Its beauty, for one thing, and its hope, for another. And a particular truth that is expressed with great clarity at toward the end of the movie. The character, Mack, played by Kevin Klein, is talking to Davis, Steve Martin's character, who is a filmmaker. The exchange goes like this:
DAVIS: "Mack, you ever seen a movie called Sullivan's Travels?"
MACK: "No."
DAVIS: "It's a story about a man who loses his way. He's a filmmaker, like me, and he forgets for a moment just what he was set on earth to do. Fortunately he finds his way back. That can happen, Mack."

Shakespeare said it this way in Hamlet, Act I, scene III: "This above all: to thine ownself be true,And it must follow, as the night the day, Thou canst not then be false to any man."

And Popeye said it this way: "I yam what I yam." But he got the next part wrong. That's not ALL that I am. I'm part of the universe, too - and it's a part of me.

So what do you think?