Films I Watched This Week — Sep 30 – Oct 6, 2024
Peyton Place (1957)
Watching Peyton Place (1957). Amazing!! This film is ahead of its time as it explores the days in the lives of several inhabitants in a small Americana town called Peyton Place. From the outside, you think it is full of pure wholesome good old American values, but brewing deep under the surface are sinister dark secrets that are only hinted at through gossip and malice rumors. Things like this were ignored or swept under the rug in Peyton Place for fear of scandal or the ruining of their reputation. Secrets like marriage infidelity, teenage sex, suicide, illegitimate children, abortion, alcoholism, rape, incest, murder and many other shocking themes involving racy sexual innuendos. All this was controversial to explore in movies at the time. This movie broke that taboo and not only explored them but discussed them explicitly. Using the words "sex," "rape" and "abortion" was quite shocking to hear in a 1950s movie. This movie and its colorful cast of characters that inhabited the town of Peyton Place influenced David Lynch when making his television series Twin Peaks. Peyton Place was nominated for 9 Academy Awards, and Lana Turner earned a nomination for Best Actress. This movie is so good.
Perfect Days (2023)
Perfect Days is a tender moving film by Wim Wenders. Actor Koji Yakusho plays a public toilet cleaner in Tokyo named Hirayama and his understated and powerful performance received universal acclaim winning the Cannes Film Festival Award For Best Actor. Hirayama is a man who holds a simple job living a simplistic life. Happily having the same routine every day and yet, and while most people would find that unbearable or unfufilling, this man finds the beginning of every new day beautiful and joyful. He embraces the simple things in life, like having his break time and taking his lunch to the park to snap pictures of the trees and the birds with his handheld camera. Or when he drives to and from work and puts on vintage cassette tapes of classic American song artists like Ottis Redding and Velvet Underground. Similar to Ozu, this movie is like a quiet, humanistic poem. Very meditative, full of beautiful images, and silent still moments. Hirayama shows that happiness is not money, fame, or how many followers you have on social media. Happiness is purely a state of mind.
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