I posted what follows on Facebook on 24 February, 2024. It was only my third Film of the Week "sermon" and so I was still kind of figuring out how to do it. (You'll notice it's a bit shorter than some of my other selections.) I learned of the death this week of film director Henry Jaglom who directed the movie that I featured that week. A year and a half later, this film still moves me in frustratingly inexplicable ways. I think I've only watched it once since I wrote that "sermon" and I need to sit down and watch it again. Whether or not I will remains to be seen...
I've always liked movies that don't have the traditional, neat, Hollywood/"happy" ending. In fact, I've noticed over the last few years that I've been drawn to films that play with my head—ones with ambiguous endings that leave some viewers pondering it for some time to come and leave others (probably most) thinking, "Well, that sucked!"
I call these films "mindfucks" (pardon my French). Probably the classic example is Stanley Kubrick's 1968 epic 2001: A Space Odyssey. It's been more than five and a half decades and film scholars are still discussing the ending! Other films like Albert Brooks's underappreciated Defending Your Life (1991) have neat, happy endings, but still make you ponder what's out there beyond our own existence.
I feel that this week's film is underrated, underappreciated, and as big a mindfuck as 2001 or even last year's Best Picture Oscar winner, Everything Everywhere All At Once. I actually touched on it a couple of years ago in one of my "Album of the Week" sermons as that album was tangentially related to it.
I first saw this film about five years ago (I won't go into the circumstances as to why I saw it). It affected me—moved me—in such an indescribable way that it was two years before I was able to watch it again. I love the film, but I've only been able to watch it a couple of times since. I have my own interpretation of the ending—or at least, I know how I hope the film ended. Like this week's album choice [1994's Longing in Their Hearts by Bonnie Raitt], I kind of want to check it out again, but, at the moment, I just can't bring myself to do it for one reason or another. Maybe soon...
Released in 1971, this week's film was written and directed by Henry Jaglom (based on his play) and starred Tuesday Weld (who also acted in the original play), Jack Nicholson (who appeared as a favour to Jaglom, shot all of his scenes in one day, and only demanded a colour television set as payment), Phil Proctor of the comedy troupe The Firesign Theatre, and the legendary Orson Welles as a vaguely eastern European magician. If you enjoy having your brain played with, I cannot recommend A Safe Place highly enough.
Until next week, stay safe, be good to your neighbours, and please remember that if at first you don't succeed, then skydiving definitely isn't for you.
Yours in peace, love, and rock and roll!
The Reverend Will the Thrill
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