And so at last my little tour through the early films of Albert Brooks  concludes.  (Feel free to check out my reviews of Real Life (1979), Modern Romance (1981), and Lost in America (1985).)  Defending Your Life is probably the Albert Brooks movie that I’ve seen the most — but still, it had been many years since my last viewing, so it was great fun to take another look at the film.

In a brisk opening (a model of efficient story-telling), we’re introduced to Daniel Miller, a mid-level executive who, although he seems to be doing well enough at work that he’s able to buy himself an expensive car to celebrate his birthday, seems to live a fairly lonely life.  While taking his new car out for a spin, Daniel gets distracted and winds up driving directly into a bus.  When he next opens his eyes, he’s in Judgment City, and the movie is off.

Judgment City isn’t heaven or hell, as it’s explained to Daniel — it’s a way-station in which the recently dead are judged to see if they’re ready to move on to the next stage of their existence, or if their souls need to be sent back down to Earth for another go.  Everyone has an opportunity to defend their life in a courtroom-like setting (though Daniel is repeatedly told that it’s not really a trial) before the final decision is made.

The tag-line of Defending Your Life is “the first true story of what happens after you die.”  One of my friends is fond of saying that he fervently hopes that that is true.  There is something appealing, I must agree, to the notion that we’ll all have an opportunity to defend our lives — the actions we took, the choices we made — in the afterlife.  Though he and I aren’t quite sure we agree with Mr. Brooks’ depiction, in this film, that whether one has overcome one’s fear is really the most important question on which one’s life should be judged.  It’s an interesting perspective, and it certainly provides for some fine drama in this film, but I tend to think that there are other, better ways in which one’s merit could be evaluated.  I’m sure there are some quite fearless people out there who are also complete jerks!

It’s a credit to Mr. Brooks’ ambitions that he has created a comedic film that can also prompt such serious questions and thought.  Defending Your Life is certainly a comedic film, though as always Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to  let several minutes pass without any big punchlines.

The best source of laughs in the film is probably Rip Torn, wonderfully cast as Daniel’s defender, Bob Diamond.  Diamond is tasked with helping Daniel prove that he is ready to move on, and Mr. Torn is tough, gruff, and quite endearing in the role.  Lee Grant doesn’t get to have nearly enough fun, but she’s still solid as the Mr. Diamond’s foil, the prosecutor Lena Foster.  There are some fun cameos in the film (Shirley MacLaine plays herself, and Buck Henry kills as the nearly-silent Dick Stanley), and then there is Meryl Streep as Julia, the woman Daniel meets in Judgment city.  I don’t think I’ve ever enjoyed Ms. Streep more in a film than here — she is luminous as the kind, free-spirited woman with whom Daniel feels an immediate intimacy when they meet.  The thumbs up she gives Daniel after taking her sweet time eating a loooooong piece of pasta is possibly my favorite moment in the film.

Defending Your Life may be the most heartwarming film Albert Brooks ever made.  It’s funny, but never bitingly so.  The humor is gentle, and Mr. Brooks has the confidence and the patience to allow the jokes to come at their own pace, when appropriate for the story.  (I’ve commented several times now that this isn’t a joke-a-minute film, but Mr. Brooks does know when to bring with the funny.  The montage of Daniel’s mistakes and misjudgments, when it comes, is a hysterical bit of business.)  The ending is more unambiguously happy, I think, than any of Mr. Brooks’ other films.  But it doesn’t feel like a cop-out — the film is strong enough that the happy ending feels earned.

I’m not sure I agree with the NPR quotation on the DVD case that Defending Your Life is “the best American comedy in years,” but it is a terrific, warm-hearted film.  I enjoyed revisiting it!

Back in May, after watching Albert Brooks’ 1985 film Lost in America, I wrote that I planned on re-watching his 1991 film Defending Your Life the next week.  Well, time got away from me, and I do still hope to find the time to re-watch that great film soon.  But a few weeks ago, when the mood struck me to again sample an Albert Brooks film, I decided instead to hunt down the last remaining film by Mr. Books that I hadn’t yet seen: Real Life, from 1979.

After having written, directed, and starred in several short films for Saturday Night Live during its early years, Mr. Brooks moved to the big screen with his debut film, Real Life.  He plays film director Albert Brooks (not for the last time), who, in the film, has seized upon an amazing idea: the subject of his next movie will be real life.  Rather than filming a movie with fake characters portrayed by actors and actresses acting out a fake story, he will choose one average American family and film their lives for a year.  Out of that footage he’ll be able to craft a movie more exciting and dramatic than any other motion picture, and it will have something that none of them do: it will be REAL.

Needless to say, Brooks’ “perfect” American family soon turns out to be anything but, and the family’s struggles to maintain their normal lives in the face of constant monitoring by film cameras — not to mention Mr. Brooks’ difficulties at avoiding any interference in their lives — lead to things quickly dissolving into chaos.

I always thought that Albert Brooks was a little bit ahead of his time, but this 1979 film is remarkably prescient in predicting today’s American fascination with “reality TV.”  In Real Life, Mr. Brooks was able to portray both the seduction of being constantly on display before others, as well as the inherent horror of such a situation.  He was also able to predict, with pinpoint accuracy, the way the act of filming someone’s actions will, without fail, cause subtle (or gross) alterations in that individual’s behavior.  (Call it the Heisenberg Uncertainty Principle of Reality Television.)

Amongst the cast, the standout is Charles Grodin.  Mr. Grodin is at the top of his game as Warren Yeager, the beleaguered patriarch of Mr. Brooks’ perfect family.  Grodin is able to be sympathetic and rather pitiable all at the same time.

As with most Albert Brooks films, Real Life is a riot.  The sequence in which veterinarian Warren Yeager attempts to save an injured horse is a knock-out.  But, also as with most Albert Brooks films, there’s also an element of American tragedy in the story.  At the end of the film, after all of the ordeals that they go through, the Yeager family take a survey on their experiences.  When asked if they would ever again be willing to participate in a similar filmed-reality experience again, the family indicates that sure they would!  The moment brings a laugh, but it’s also rather sad.  And somehow, deeply true to the American condition.

The old DVD of Real Life that I found (released in 2000) has only two special features: a brief, skippable interview with Albert Brooks (which frustratingly keeps cutting away from the interview to play long clips of the movie which I had just watched), and the theatrical trailer for the film.  The trailer is hysterical.  It doesn’t consist of any footage from the film — instead, it’s a brief mini-movie made by Mr. Brooks about the film.  And if I thought Real Life itself was ahead of its time, I nearly fell off my sofa when watching the trailer, which mercilessly mocks another trend that has become huge in the last twelve months — 3D!  That a thirty-year-old trailer could be so perfect for today’s movie-going reality is quite astounding.  If you ever rent Real Life on DVD, be sure not to miss this trailer, it’s dynamite.

Even without the trailer, Real Life represents a phenomenal debut film for a powerhouse voice in American comedy.  If you’ve never seen it, check it out.

After re-watching Albert Brooks’ film Modern Romance a few weeks ago (read my review here), I decided the time had come to revisit some of his other films.  I started by tracking down Lost in America, his 1985 film that, somehow, I had never seen.

Mr. Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film, with Monica Johnson) stars as David Howard.  After failing to get a promotion at work — one that he’d been working towards for years — he tells off his boss in spectacular fashion (the explosion is just as much fun as you might think) and gets fired.  So he convinces his wife Linda, played by Julie Hagerty (Elaine Dickinson from Airplane!) to quit her boring job as well.  They sell their house, liquidate their stocks, buy a Winnebago and set out to roam America and find themselves.  Unfortunately, their first stop is in Las Vegas and, after only one night, they’ve lost all their money.  Left with only $800 to their name, David and Linda have to try to find jobs in the small, midwestern town in which they find themselves.

In my humble opinion, Albert Brooks wrote and directed far too few films.  So it was a great delight to get to discover, for the first time, an Albert Brooks film that I’d never seen.  Lost in America certainly isn’t my favorite Brooks film (that would be Modern Romance), but there’s a lot to appreciate here.  There’s a lot of comedy today that wrings laughs from awkward, painful moments (the original British The Office comes to mind), but Mr. Brooks was pushing those boundaries thirty years ago.  For a “comedy,” there’s a lot of real, human moments to be found in Lost in America (and in all his films, really!).

It’s clear from the film’s opening scene — a slow, slow pan through David & Linda’s home, while a Larry King interview with film critic Rex Reed plays on an out-of-sight radio — that we’re in the hands of a filmmaker with great skill.  It’s a very meta choice to start one’s film with a lengthy monologue from Rex Reed talking about films, and it indicates that Mr. Brooks was after more than just a few yuks.  Lost in America tells the story two people who both find themselves trapped in their lives — trapped by their go-nowhere jobs, by the expectations that they put upon themselves about what they “should” be doing, about the house they “should” be living in, and so forth.  It’s a situation in which, one presumes, many middle-class folk find themselves in at one point or another in their lives.  There’s a strong aspect of “wish-fulfillment” in the plan that David and Linda hatch to take all their money and “drop out” of society.  It’s an intriguing premise upon which to hang a film.

Mr. Brooks, as always, is a riot.  The man plays “neurotic” like nobody else.  His first scene in the film — in which he lies awake at night consumed by worries — is a classic.  But Brooks’ character in this film also shows a little more backbone than some of his other roles.  When he’s denied his promotion, David Howard doesn’t just meekly take it — his built-up frustrations explode in a movie-stealing scene.  Brooks has a terrific connection with Julie Hagerty, a gifted comedic actress who, I feel, has been sadly under-utilized in the three decades since Airplane!. The success of the film rests on our attachment to these two “normal” working Americans, and they make a great screen couple.

What prevents me from loving Lost in America is the ending.  For a movie that seems based in a “wish-fulfillment” premise, I found the film’s denouement to be surprisingly downbeat.  (Interestingly enough, I made a similar comment about the ending of Modern Romance.)  According to the film, it seems there is not, in fact, any way out of our worker-drone lives, and that’s a surprising conclusion for a comedy to come to.  I applaud Mr. Brooks for not bowing to standard movie conventions.  But at the same time, it means that aspects of Lost in America aren’t really that much fun to watch!

Still, I do love a movie that blazes its own path.  Albert Brooks has always had a singular voice.  I wish he’d made more films, but I am thankful for the ones we have.  Next week, I think I’ll take another look at his 1991 film, Defending Your Life…

See you soon!

Drew McWeeny (who has a terrific blog over at Hitfix.com) has a series called “The Basics,” in which he writes about a film that he considers one of the “essentials” — a film that anyone who takes film seriously should see — and then another, younger writer, William Goss, writes a response.  To read more about this series, click here and then here.  Recently he and Mr. Goss invited other writers to get involved in their film conversations.  Since the last film under discussion was Woody Allen’s Manhattan (1979), I was really excited to chime in.  (Here’s Mr. McWeeny’s piece about Manhattan.  Here’s what Mr. Goss wrote, and here’s what I had to say.)

Now Mr. McWeeny is writing about Albert Brooks’ 1981 film Modern Romance. What a terrific choice!  It had been a few years since I had last seen the film, so I was happy to have an excuse to pull it off my DVD shelf and give it a viewing.

The great Albert Brooks (who also directed and co-wrote the film) plays Robert Cole, one one the most neurotically messed-up characters I’ve ever seen captured on film.  As the movie opens, Robert breaks up with his girlfriend Mary (Kathryn Harrold, who I always think of as Francine from The Larry Sanders Show).  From her reaction it is clear that this has happened before, and I don’t think I’m spoiling anything by saying that this opening-scene break-up doesn’t exactly break that cycle.

Modern Romance is very leisurely paced, with long scenes that aren’t in a rush to get to the punchline.  But don’t let that lead you to think that the film isn’t funny.  Quite the contrary, it is hysterical.  This is one of the most quotable comedies that I know.  It might be my favorite Albert Brooks movie, and that’s mostly because of the script’s tremendous wit.

In his review, Mr. McWeeny comments that he loves the way that Mr. Brooks isn’t afraid to digress in the film.  That pretty well sums up one of the strongest aspects, in my opinion, of Modern Romance.  My very favorite moments in the film are the ones that have nothing at all to do with Robert’s on-again off-again cycle with Mary.  I’m talking about the glimpses at Robert’s job as a film editor, working on a lousy-looking science-fiction picture.  That the film takes ten minutes to present us with a scene that’s all about how editing works (as Robert makes an edit to the sci-fi film that he feels strengthens the suspense of a scene) is just wonderful to me.  It helps, of course, that the greatly-missed Bruno Kirby (When Harry Met Sally, The Godfather Part II) and James L. Brooks (the director of films like Broadcast News, here playing the crappy sci-fi movie’s director) appear in these segments of the film.  These are the scenes that I most look forward to every time I re-watch Modern Romance.

The only place where I disagree with Mr. McWeeny is in his description of the film’s ending as perfect.  I must admit that I always find myself deeply unsettled when the ending arrives.  I’ll tread carefully here, to avoid ruining the film’s conclusion for any newbies.  Let me just say that my sympathy for Mary, who I have come to adore over the course of the movie, overwhelms the humor a little bit for me as the final text pieces arrive.  Perhaps that’s the point, but for me the film — which to that point had perfectly balanced comedy with some frank, awkward moments — looses its balance a teensy bit.  (It’s hard to find a place to end a film that is all about two characters’ never-ending love/hate cycle.)  But any quibbles that I have about the ending do nothing to dilute my overall love for this very funny ride.

It would be overly simplistic for me to assert that they don’t make comedies like this anymore.  Surely there are still great, complex comedies being made that also have real dramatic heft.  (One might site Judd Apatow’s recent film Funny People as an example.)  But Modern Romance does, to me, feel like a type of film that is hard to find these days.  I’ll admit that there’s is a nostalgia factor that might be coloring my opinion somewhat.  As I re-watch it, I can clearly remember being in college and discovering this film (along with Lost in America, as well as so many other great comedies, such as Woody Allen’s previously-mentioned Manhattan, as well as Annie Hall, Zelig, I could go on forever…) and feeling like I had stumbled upon a whole new world of incredible films.  But even separate from those emotions, it’s hard for me to imagine anyone denying that Modern Romance is a comedy classic.  (Though I do know some people who find this film boring.  My heart weeps for them.)

If you only know Albert Brooks from Finding Nemo (which is a great movie, don’t get me wrong), you need to track down this film immediately.