Rumble Fish (1983): nowhere to go

It’s not surprising that Rumble Fish was booed at its premiere during the 1983 New York Film Festival, but such a start can serve as a mark of distinction, placing a film in welcome company. Michelangelo Antonioni’s L’Avventura was booed at its premiere at the more influential Cannes Film Festival over twenty years earlier. At the San Sebastian International Film Festival in 1984, Rumble Fish was redeemed by winning the Golden Shell award. By that time, however, the film had died a miserable death at the box office.

The Motorcycle Boy Reigns

For the most part, critics panned Rumble Fish. The primary criticism of the film was that it focused too much on style, leaving the story obfuscated by liberal amounts of smoke and painted shadows. For example, Janet Maslin, writing in the New York Times, said: “…the film is so furiously overloaded, so crammed with extravagant touches, that any hint of a central thread is obscured.”

La Notte (1961): the caged self

The primary notion of nihilism, existential nihilism or the belief that life is meaningless, can be an outcome of an individual’s own crisis of identity, especially if that identity is grounded in an organization, group, or another individual. This is the case with Michelangelo Antonioni’s La Notte, the second film in what is considered his trilogy of solitude, which also includes L’Avventura (1960) and L’Eclisse (1962). La Notte is the only one of those films not released as part of the Criterion Collection, which is unfortunate, considering the current version of the DVD contains no extras or essays within the case art. La Notte is the tightest of the three films and contains the closest to a traditional narrative of all three. The tone of La Notte harbors the same bleakness as the rest of the trilogy as it explores the issues of identity and meaning within an existing relationship.

Lidia outside the hospital

La Notte‘s story centers around Marcello Mastroianni’s character of Giovanni, a successful writer who has recently published a new book. His wife, Lidia (Jeanne Moreau), provides mere window dressing for Giovanni in the beginning of the film. When they visit a dying friend named Tommaso in the hospital, Lidia remains aloof in the hospital room, refusing to sit and join her husband and Tommaso in a celebratory drink of champagne. Lidia’s distance in the hospital room seems to indicate that Giovanni was the closer friend to Tommaso, but when Lidia leaves the room on short notice and is outside the hospital, her feelings overcome her. This shifts the film toward her as the main character.

Naked (1993): no escaping a beating

In Kevin Stoehr’s book Nihilism in Film and Television: A Critical Overview from Citizen Kane to the Sopranos, the opening chapter defines nihilism and details the difference between a passive and an active nihilist. The final paragraph of that chapter summarizes the distinction well.

Through the rise of Christianity, the European Enlightenment, and the nation-state, the modern age became more and more defined by a collectivist slave-morality. As Nietzsche points out, there are indeed only two escape routes for those individuals who will not conform blindly to some abstract “common good” that levels everything that was formerly unique and inspiring to mere averageness. These individuals can either rise above the crowd as creators of their own values (active nihilists) or else sink into the dark and life-negating abyss of passive nihilism.

David Thewlis as Johnny

In Mike Leigh’s Naked (1993), Johnny (David Thewlis) walks the line between the active and the passive nihilist. Johnny is a character so despicably likeable that it becomes too easy to dismiss him, and the rest of the film, with a simple, sweeping negation. Naked certainly unveils a misogyny that runs through modern urban life, but the film itself does not deserve the misogynistic label, which is more apt for those Hollywood rom-coms that portray a female character who must find a man to fulfill her needs or desires. Depiction and intent are not the same thing. The film makes this clear from the opening scene, leaving enough ambiguity about the action taking place without telling the viewer if it is right or wrong.

Fearless (1993): the whisper of nihilism

Survivors of catastrophes often have a dramatically different view of life afterward. This is the case for Max Klein (Jeff Bridges), who walks away from a horrendous plane crash in a corn field in rural California in the film Fearless (1993), directed by Peter Weir. As a survivor, Max straddles a line between life and death, never sure which side he is on. After leaving the crash site, Max checks himself into a motel and drives to see a friend the next day. He never bothers to call his family.

The crash site

While the opening of Fearless hooks the viewer instantly, the rest of the film relies on the performances of its two main characters, played by Jeff Bridges and Rosie Perez. The remainder of the supporting cast, which includes Isabella Rosselini, John Turterro, and Bennicio Del Toro, provide one-dimensional filler for the lead actors. Regardless of its shortcomings, Fearless leaves an impression that is difficult to shake off. Don’t see this film prior to flying.