This is it! These are the last two movies on the list, and this is the last post in the project. Not to rush things, but I say we just jump right into these movies. So...
Otherwise known as the greatest entry in the greatest film trilogy of all time. That's right. I said it. Let's just skip over that big, baiting "greatest trilogy" statement (sorry, Star Wars, Lord of the Rings, Before..., and Three Colors—you're great and all, but seriously, Toy Story. End of discussion!) and move on to why I feel like this first entry is the best of the three Toy Stories. I love all three, obviously, but what I really appreciate about this movie in particular (setting aside the unprecedented technical feat that it was in '95) is how discretely it handles its thematic resonance. Toy Story manages a neat trick that most other movies fail to pull off: it explores real, philosophical depth without interrupting its own fun, instead using that very fun as the medium of conveying the depth. For a movie about mortality and existential dread, Toy Story is an astonishingly breezy watch. Don't misunderstand me; I adore the emotional weight of 2 and 3, and the trilogy as a whole is better off for it. But there's just something infinitely wonderful about the way that the first Toy Story gets at those very same emotions without a Sarah McLachlan song or a trash-incinerator-as-mortal-abyss scene. Let's face it: for all their good will and humor, 2 and 3 can feel downright heavy at times. Toy Story, on the other hand, isn't. It also avoids the later films' tendencies to underline their own profundity. Toy Story is a movie built on subtext—subtext not alien to its otherwise family-film format but so organically a part of the movie's plot and execution that it doesn't feel like it's there at all. I bring all this up not to fault Toy Story 2 and 3 (I like sad songs and staring into the abyss) but rather to point out how the first one is the movie that leaves its audiences with the most agency in responding to the film. Are you interested in an entertaining adventure movie with vibrant animation and endearing, hilarious characters? Toy Story will let you enjoy it completely on that level. Do you want to analyze how Toy Story is a complex, affecting study of an individual's worth in society, abandonment, the value of community, the terror of invisibility/non-existence, and the effects of technological innovation on the human spirit? You can do that, too. In fact, please do. I'd love to read that essay.
Here it is, y'all. The last movie on. this. list. And you know, I like it. I know the early posts in this blog series contained a lot of griping by me about Hollywood epics and the associated bloat. And those complaints still stand. In fact, a lot of those complaints still stand in specific regard to Ben-Hur. It's super long and super self-serious, for one, and, in the grand tradition of many of the worst epics (lookin' at you, Cleopatra), it tries to bolster its own significance by annexing stories and/or historical events central to the Western canon. In Ben-Hur's case, it's none other than the New Testament that gets annexed, and given that text's importance to my life, I'm sure there are all sorts of ways I could pick apart its appropriation in this movie and in the novel it's based on[1]. But... I've never really explored those avenues, and for as big and as messy as it is, I've always had a soft spot for Ben-Hur. For one, theology aside, it's a darn good adventure film, with the brisk pace of deterred justice propelling the narrative. The conflict between Judah and Messala is compellingly drawn, and the action scenes play a nice balance between sheer, enthralling spectacle (that ship battle is pretty dang cool) and emotional stakes (the chariot race, y'all--my goodness). For two, taking up theology again, it's always appealed to me that the grand narrative of this movie is one that points toward redemption and reconciliation, which is something that definitely does square with the general thrust of the New Testament and something that feels meaningful when tackled by the movie. That's more than I can say of a lot of film epics.
And... done! That's a wrap, folks. This project is hereby complete. Many, many thanks to everyone who stopped in to read and comment on Facebook, even if only occasionally. You've all been great and encouraging conversation. This has been a blast of a series for me, and I hope it's been the same for y'all.
I've been kicking around the idea of finishing out this project by posting my own 100 favorite American movies as a sort of response to AFI's list. I've actually made the list already, but as it turns out, my tastes are so boring and canonical that I feel like you might as well just be reading the actual AFI list. Still, if anyone out there is interested, let me know, and I can post my list anyway.
If not, this post will close out the project. It's been a great ride, y'all. Now to write on something other than classic movies for a while...
You can read the previous post, #s 97-98, here.
1] Yeah, I know that this film is technically more of a remake of a 1925 silent film than it is an adaptation of the novel, but since I haven't seen the original, I don't really have a whole lot to say on the value of the '59 flick as a remake. Also, now that I've brought up the novel, I want to give Ben-Hur props for being one of those movies that, in my estimation, definitely improves upon its original book. The book's okay, but it's got only a fraction of the narrative propulsion of the movie. Besides, I mean, c'mon, that chariot race was made to be put in a movie. Well, not literally, since the novel predates motion pictures by some years. But you know what I mean.
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