Left Field Cinema

WARNING: Contains Spoilers throughout.

There is arguably no single component of film that is lacking in importance, from the art design to the cinematography, from the performance to the direction - every individual element of film informs the whole. The majority of the time the films we consider classics or masterpieces of cinema are the ones that succeed in every area. But more important then any of the aforementioned components is the script, if a film were a human body then the script would undoubtedly be the skeleton - everything else is meat on the bones. To carry this metaphor further, if the script is the skeleton then story is the spine, without a strong spine the human body collapses and either doesn’t function properly or doesn’t function at all – the same is true of film.

Story is vital, that’s why Hollywood producers are famed for meddling with scripts and in some cases completely ignoring the writer’s intentions; they know script is important that’s why they feel the need to make such alterations (even if ironically they’re harming the film in the process, you can bet your bottom dollar that their intention was to improve it). You’ll find endless books on script-writing and story structure, most of which propagate a very similar set of narrative rules, a film script must have a clear through line, a clear protagonist with an emotional need and a life goal (which shouldn’t be the same thing and he or she must only attain one or the other), work within a three-act structure etc. Within every area of film there is so much that can potentially go catastrophically wrong. When you boil down a film into its constituent parts it’s a wonder that any film achieves greatness at all; the performances might be great but the story is under developed; the cinematography might be stunning but the direction is pedestrian; every element is brilliant but the musical score undermines the film. The same is true of story, if one vertebra is out of alignment or missing from the films spine then potentially the entire story collapses. The need for a strong opening scene is well known, it’s the hook that drags you into the film. Scriptwriters often start their films with the final scene and then play the rest of the narrative out in a semi-flashback, this sort of framing device is very common place in cinema, if we look at the Best Picture nominees of 2009 for example: David Fincher’s The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Ron Howard’s Frost/Nixon, Gus Van Sant’s Milk, Stephen Daldry’s The Reader and Danny Boyle’s Slumdog Millionaire. All five of these films used a framing devise, starting later in the narrative then moving back to an earlier stage, I’d argue that only Slumdog Millionaire’s framing device has any justification within the narrative. The reasons why this device is overused are two-fold, firstly such classics as Billy Wilder’s Sunset Blvd (1950) or Orson Welle’s Citizen Kane (1941) succeeded using framing devices and as such it’s seen as a legitimate and commonplace method of starting a story, secondly and rather more importantly, scripts only get commissioned if someone reads it in its entirety and writers are often advised to put as much action as they can in the first ten pages of their screenplays to hook the reader immediately, this is why so many films have strong openings but then flounder as the film goes on. Another area of film story which gets less attention is the climax, especially in world cinema circles, the climax is increasingly viewed as less important with anti or oblique climaxes becoming more and more fashionable. But within Hollywood cinema the climax is still viewed as very important, it is what your audience leaves the cinema with, mediocre films can gain back some credit with an impressive conclusion, it is often where the films meaning comes into focus and if there is a point to the film this is where it should be at its clearest. But the climax can also undermine a film, it can change the meaning with a single stroke and damage everything that has come before – such is the case with Joe Dante’s The ‘burbs (1989) which effectively obliterates what was noble of the preceding one-hundred minutes with it’s final five. The ‘burbs is an excellent mix of comedy and horror, an overlooked suburban nightmare; where David Lynch’s Blue Velvet (1986) dug under the surface of suburbia to show the darkness that lurks beneath, The ‘burbs remains very much above ground and depicts (relatively) ordinary men and women (with an acceptable comedic veneer) being overtaken by their own rampant paranoid delusions and instinctive mistrust of anything or anyone who doesn’t fit neatly into their middle-class bubble.

The story of a sleepy suburban neighbourhood where a group of householders squabble over such petty issues as where a small dog does its business and other neighbours watch these arguments as a form of entertainment. Life is dull for Ray Peterson (Tom Hanks) who has taken his vacation days from work but intends to spend them lounging around the house rather than going away for the week – effectively taking a holiday in his own neighbourhood. He is disturbed when a new family moves into the house next door, the mysterious Klopek’s, who stay in their house during the day, dig holes in the garden at night and have an incredibly loud machine in their cellar which blasts unnerving light through the adjacent windows. Their reclusive nature and mysterious behaviour attracts the attention of the neighbourhood, including socially irresponsible Art (Rick Ducommun) and ex-military man Mark (Bruce Dern). Their attention is amplified significantly when old man Walter (Gale Gordon) goes missing from his house leaving his dog unattended. Ray’s suspicions continue to grow and a visit to the Klopek’s house only seems to confirm Ray’s fears that the Klopek’s have murdered Walter. ‘The ‘burbs’ rarely takes itself too seriously but as a comedy it is tempered by a darker context, the films writer Dana Olsen is quoted as saying “where there is fear there is comedy” a very astute observation and one which is reflected in the cinematic make-up of The ‘burbs. As the film goes on Ray and his cronies become increasingly paranoid, despite the perfectly reasonable attempts of his wife to get him to drop the matter. In the last act of the film they decide to take the law into their own hands by breaking into the Klopek’s house and digging up their cellar in search of dead bodies. Ray accidentally hits a gas line and the entire house is destroyed by the explosion, it is then revealed that Walter is actually alive, his mysterious disappearance was due to him being suddenly taken ill; thus the motives for Ray’s mission collapse. Ray becomes frustrated when he sees the error of his ways as the Klopek’s stare at their destroyed house; Ray gives a heart felt speech in the street as the house burns behind him: "We're the ones who are vaulting over the fences, and peeking in through people's windows. We're the ones who are throwing garbage in the street, and lighting fires! We're the ones who are acting suspicious and paranoid, we're the lunatics! Us! It's not them! It's us." This in itself is a momentous conclusion to the story, Ray and the others have become victims of their own narrow mindedness, their illegal search of the Klopek’s house was motivated purely by circumstantial evidence and their own xenophobic fears of foreigners (their nationality is never mentioned, we just know they’re not Slavic). This vigilante incursion onto private property and unwillingness to respect the rule of law has its price and Ray will probably go to prison for his part and rightfully so as he’s effectively persecuted a family of three innocent men just because he doesn’t like the cut of their jibs, at this point the film is a searing indictment of suburban intolerance towards anything outside of the norm, white American paranoia and the lack of trust between middle-class families. It is the darkest of conclusions, the writer has successfully pulled the rug out from under us and revealed that the protagonist is actually the antagonist, the cause was not just and the ends most definitely did not justify the means. Even more impressive is that by framing Ray as the hero and by filling the narrative with circumstantial evidence, we the audience also believe the Klopek’s to be guilty and it is at this point that we realise we are just as bad as the rest of them, we’re guilty of the same narrow-mindedness. As we’re guilty of the same crime we are forced to redress the way we view our own neighbours, the way we make snap judgments on individuals who do not fit into our tidy little notions of normality. But of course even as a black comedy this would have been far too dark a conclusion for a family-centred Tom Hanks vehicle and thus it must be reversed. But in doing so Olson in one unforgivable move twists the films final vertebra out of place and the spine of the film collapses and so too does everything good that had come before – Olson effectively breaks the films neck. Ray is being taken away in an ambulance and head of the Klopek family, Werner (Henry Gibson) decides to murder Ray; before he does he reveals that he and other members of the Klopek clan actually murdered the family who lived in the house before them when they refused to sell the property and that the bones of their victims were laid to rest inside the cellar furnace. Ray manages to overpower Dr. Klopek, makes a citizen’s arrest and reveals to the police what Klopek just confessed. The Klopek’s are arrested and Ray is exonerated, Art even makes a speech to the TV News crews: “I think the message to, uh, psychos, fanatics, murderers, nutcases all over the world is, uh, ‘do not mess with suburbanites’. Because, uh, frankly we're just not gonna take it any more”. The lack of irony and the triumphalism of this final twist means that if Olson we’re concealing a subtler attack on suburbia then it is completely lost within Dante’s direction. The twist that the Klopek’s are actually guilty of murder (even if it’s not the one Ray and company initially suspected them of) means that the ends do in fact justify the means, forget constitutional rights, forget the fact that in a court of law the Klopek’s would probably get off scot-free based on a myriad of technicalities including unlawful search procedures and the destruction of the crime scene - in fact under the rule of law Ray would still be charged with breaking and entering. This is the sort of naive simplification of morality which we expect from the very weakest of Hollywood productions. The ‘burbs becomes a celebration of witch-hunting, an unashamedly sympathetic view of moral panic, mass hysteria and the fear-induced searching of perceived wrong-doers property. Ray threw the accused witches in the water and they floated, but they could have just as easily sunk to the bottom, innocent but lost forever – there is a reason we think of Witch-hunting as anarchic, idiotic and barbaric. They sought and persecuted a perceived enemy using extreme measures with no regard for actual guilt or innocence, they were not sanctioned to do so and their actions were based almost completely on the “court of suburban opinion”. I’m sorry to say – there is nothing funny about this gross distortion of the criminal justice process and there certainly is nothing to celebrate when a mainstream Hollywood movie advocates persecution and a “guilty until proven innocent” mentality. The ‘burb’s moral balance sheet does not show a net gain. At the risk of sounding preachy (if I’ve not already tipped over in that area) I will say this; the real tragedy of The ‘burbs is not that it celebrates prejudice and paranoia, but that it was so very close to being the single greatest indictment of such behaviour. They had within their grasp the most audacious and deliciously dark climax of a Hollywood comedy ever conceived, but instead Dante and Olson bottled it at the last moment and squandered their films potential. The ‘burbs is a clear demonstration of how one misstep can scupper an entire production; the film serves as a reminder to audiences everywhere of how delicate and precarious the process of filmmaking actually is.

M.Dawson