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FILM: The Breakfast Club (1985)


SteveMc

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The Breakfast Club (1985)

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John Hughes was both an adman and an auteur.    This is a movie built upon apparent cliches.  The characters, the situation, the themes of angst and rebellion, and the ending can seem, at first glance, to be just your standard regular teen movie material, designed to draw a teen audience in and have them leave happy.  But Hughes probes beneath the surface of these things.  This is a film about teens being isolated from their elders, isolated from each other, and isolated from themselves.  Hughes answers why he thinks this happens, but does so with nuance and vitality.  

He doesn't preach, he makes you pay attention for the answers.  Watching for the first time a couple weeks back, I was struck by this serious undercurrent.

Technically, the film has its strengths and weaknesses.  Of course, the script is brilliant.  The editing is crisp.  The staging and sets have that iconic factor to them.  There are continuity errors and a couple of rather questionable scenes, but overall Hughes proved himself to be quite competent as a director, especially as a director of actors.  The performances, all around, are absolutely stellar.  Much nuance.

 

There have been criticisms of the movie.  The ending has been called artificially upbeat. It does seem rather sudden for them all to just hook up like that.  But, on reflection, it is very reasonable.  The characters fear they will drift apart on Monday.  How can they really stop this from happening?  What is the one thing really missing from each of their lives?  Love.  It is no surprise they grasp on to love or whatever might look like it.

 

Then, there is the Claire-Bender situation.  Hughes had a bit of a crass side, and that is evident here .  To a modern audience, perhaps, when he touches Claire under the table, he is well nigh unredeemable.(the whole sequence is also unnecessary for moving the story along)   So, it would seem that he gets away with this and gets the girl anyway, and ends the movie with his fist in the air in triumph because of this.  But for Hughes, the real crucial moment for him is when he does not hit Vernon there in the closet, when he does not become what his father evidently is, what he is expected to become.  Rather, he is scared.  His bravado and his harassment of Claire stem from his perceived weakness, not his perceived strength.  He rails against that which he does not think he can ever have, nor deserve.  He has some pride in himself, though, in being worse off than others.  This erodes when Brian admits to considering suicide.  We see him humbled.  When Claire initiates their relationship (after undergoing a humbling herself), Bender is surprised.  Claire giving him the earring has parallels with a medieval lady giving her knight a token to remember her by.  Bender now has something to live for, to live up to.  He is empowered now.  Hence the fist of triumph.

 

Now, for Allison's makeover.  A great deal can be said about Allison.  She is a striking character, yet also the most vague.  People complain that Hughes sacrificed her unique sense of style and personality for the cliched ending where she gets dolled up so she can end up with the jock (Estevez is fantastic and subtle as Andrew, btw).  But that interpretation is thrown out when we realize that she was wearing that pink blouse under her dark ensemble the whole time.  She wants love and admiration, but these are foreign concepts for her, so she hides from the world in a very visible way behind her quirks and her clothes.  I believe that evidently her parents are wealthy, but spend all of their time and money on drugs quite likely.  At any rate, she has been deeply hurt by them.  Let's note something, though.  It is Andrew who draws her out, who connects with her, before she gets her makeover.  And she draws him out as well.  So they connect before the new hairdo and pretty bow and makeup and such. (which seem the realistic way that Claire would express how she cared about Allison now.)  Note also how they come together now, open to each other, and we see this visibly: they have both taken off layers and are each wearing clothing that shows their bear arms.  

 

Little details like this, they leave an impression once you see them.    And the scene where the group opens up to each other in the back of the library is pure gold.  Fantastic film.

4/4

 

Just thought of something:  the title does not merely speak of morning detention.  The teens are embarking on a new day for themselves.  Brilliant.

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