While I love
the zen simplicity of The Winter Soldier and the pure mayhem of Fight Club, the
film I most enjoy watching is The Blues Brothers. How does the worst era of
American cars produce, in my opinion one of the best movie to date? Through
destruction, of course.
For one of the
most memorable comedy films of the late 20th century, The Blues Brothers starts
grimly enough, with an arresting aerial shot of industrial Chicago, as the
smoke from dark satanic chimneys smear the sunset. It's as if director John
Landis is tipping us off that what follows, a film of madcap fun and action
rampage, is comic escapism from the bleak modern American life.
The Blues
Brothers, made in 1980, is recognised now as more than a cult classic. By 2013,
it had taken more than £70million in box office and DVD receipts and stands as
one of Landis's finest films (along with Trading Places and An American
Werewolf in London)..
Expanding on
their Saturday Night Live characters, John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd star as Jake
and Elwood Blues, two white boys with black soul. Sporting cool shades and
look-alike suits, Jake and Elwood are dispatched on a "mission from
God" by their former teacher, Sister Mary Stigmata (Kathleen Freeman).
Said mission is to raise $5000 to save an orphanage. In the course of their zany
adventures, the Blues Brothers run afoul of neo-Nazi Henry Gibson, perform the
theme from Rawhide before the most unruly bar crowd in written history, and lay
waste to hundreds of cars on the streets and freeways of Chicago. In case you
aren't swept up in the infectuous nuttiness of the brothers Blue, you might
have fun spotting film's legion of guest stars, including James Brown, Cab
Calloway, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles, John Candy, Carrie Fisher, Steve
Lawrence, Twiggy, Paul Reubens (aka Pee-Wee Herman), Frank Oz, and Steven
Spielberg.
The movie's
plot is a simple one, to put it mildly. The brothers visit their old orphanage,
learn that its future is in jeopardy because of five thousand dollars due in
back taxes, and determine to raise the money by getting their old band together
and putting on a show. Their odyssey takes them to several sleazy Chicago
locations, including a Van Buren flophouse, Maxwell Street, and lower Wacker
Drive. They find their old friends in unlikely places, like a restaurant run by
Aretha Franklin, a music shop run by Ray Charles, and a gospel church run by
James Brown.
Their
adventures include run-ins with suburban cops, good ol' boys, and Nazis who are
trying to stage a demonstration. One of the intriguing things about this movie
is the way it borrows so freely and literally from news events. The plot
develops into a sort of musical Mad Mad Mad Mad World, with the Blues Brothers
being pursued at the same time by avenging cops, Nazis, and an enraged country
and western band led by Charles Napier, that character actor with the smile
like Jaws. The chase is interrupted from time to time for musical numbers,
which are mostly very good and filled with high-powered energy.
Aretha Franklin
occupies one of the movie's best scenes, in her South Side soul food
restaurant. Cab Calloway, as a sort of road manager for the Blues Brothers,
struts through a wonderful old-style production of Minnie the Moocher. The
Brothers themselves star in several improbable numbers; the funniest has the
band playing in a country and western bar where wire mesh has been installed to
protect the band from beer bottles thrown by the customers.
I was saying
the musical numbers interrupt the chases. The fact is, the whole movie is a
chase, with Jake and Elwood piloting a used police car that seems, as it
hurdles across suspension bridges from one side to the other, to have a life of
its own. There can rarely have been a movie that made so free with its
locations as this one. There are incredible, sensational chase sequences under
the elevated train tracks, on overpasses, in subway tunnels under the Loop, and
literally through Daley Center. One crash in particular, a pileup involving
maybe a dozen police cars, has to be seen to be believed: I've never seen stunt
coordination like this before.
What's a little
startling about this movie is that all of this works. The Blues Brothers cost
untold millions of dollars and kept threatening to grow completely out of
control. But director John Landis (of “Animal House”) has somehow pulled it
together, with a good deal of help from the strongly defined personalities of
the title characters. Belushi and Aykroyd come over as hard-boiled city guys,
total cynics with a world-view of sublime simplicity, and that all fits
perfectly with the movie's other parts. There's even room, in the midst of the
carnage and mayhem, for a surprising amount of grace, humor, and whimsy.
Say what you
will about the comedic talents of Will Ferrell, Adam Sandler or Mike Myers but
they share something in common in terms of making their name on comedy sketch
show Saturday Night Live. These names are just three of the shows recent
successful comedians but having, personally, been born in the late 90's and
grew up throughout the 20000's, most of the comedies I was exposed to were
filled with the familiar faces that actually had a hand in the origins of this
show - Chevy Chase, Bill Murray, Steve Martin, Eddie Murphy and, of course,
John Belushi and Dan Aykroyd. In fact, The Blues Brothers is an adaptation of a
short sketch that first aired on Saturday Night Live and is one of only two
successful film adaptations from the show - the other being Wayne's World.
But not just
the plot and actors, but also the vehicles. The '70s was largely a terrible
time in this grand old country for cars, politics, fashion, the environment,
industry, the economy, sex, drugs, television, and pretty much every thing
else. The '70s was just a screwed up time.
What we get out
of the John Landis-directed, Dan Aykroyd-penned musical action road trip comedy
is a farewell to all of it. A giant flaming middle finger to the gilded
decadence of a decade not worth remembering, backed by Carrie Fisher with an
actual flamethrower. The film's anti-heroes can scarcely see the point in
continuing a normal, humdrum existence when they could just put together a band
to make real music as opposed to the shitty disco and faux tropicana crap
rotting the brains of too many polyester-clad fakers. They may be singing
American rhythm-and-blues music, but "Joliet" Jake and Elwood Blues
are punk.
If the movie
wasn't already great for the comedy, the music, and the countless historic
cameos (John Lee Hooker, Aretha Franklin, Ray Charles… the entire band!) it
would be worth it for the ceaseless assault on mediocre American cars.
While a Bentley
does show up and, of course, Twiggy drives a Jaguar XK-E, there are really only
two cars in the film: the Bluesmobile and every other piece of Detroit-built
shit.
The Bluesmobile
is, in theory, a single retired 1974 Dodge Monaco Mount Prospect, Illinois
patrol car (in reality they say they used a dozen cars). A simple, workingman's
vehicle that's the last model made before the OPEC oil crisis ruined American
muscle cars. Just listen to, arguably, one of the most famous speech of the
film
“It's got a cop
motor, a 440 cubic inch plant, it's got cop tires, cop suspensions, cop shocks.
It's a model made before catalytic converters so it'll run good on regular gas”.
Pre-catalytic
converts. PRE! Get it?
It's this
nostalgia that fuels the Bluesmobile and allows it to beat back all the Malaise
Era-restricted cars that attempt to thwart it. Whether it's an Illinois Nazi (I
hate them) in a Ford Pinto Station Wagon or hundreds of later model Dodge
Polaras and Ford LTDs, nothing can stop this humble American iron on its
Mission From God.
There are so
many throw-away car references in the film, including when Elwood crashes the
Bluesmobile into a car dealership exclaiming "the new Oldsmobiles are in
early this year!" because who really gives a shit?
Perhaps this is
why the second film is so unsatisfying. The original held the world record for
most cars destroyed in a film, only to be usurped by the unfortunate Blues
Brothers 2000. America was on the upswing and those Panther police cars are
enormously better than an old Royal Monaco. In any other this kind of
destruction would be gratuitous, but in 1979 this is doing God's bidding. When
the world around you is terrible the best you can do is to venerate it with a
rocket-propelled grenade and a 50-car pileup.
Something
simple goes a long way, and in the case of this film, it proves exactly right.
The Blues Brothers in terms of story is nothing elaborate, but where it stands
out, are the performances by its leads. The chemistry between the two lead
actors is what elevates the simple plot to greatness and it's a fun;
entertaining picture that in the long run is a memorable piece of comedy. The
Blues Brothers is the best movie I’ve ever seen and a must see film, a terrific
performance by Dan Aykroyd and John Belushi , of which Belushi delivers a
highly memorable performance, one that defined his sadly too short career.
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