Listing All-American Movies

In the wake of this historic (and very unusual) 4^th of July holiday weekend, news outlets have been vying with one another to publish articles that are relevant to the story of the United States. This past Sunday, film critics at the Los Angeles Times joined together to produce a feature titled “10 Must-Watch Movies That Capture America in Times of Profound Change.” Here are their topic choices: (In every category there are also a few alternate suggestions.)

(1)   THE GREAT DEPRESSION: The Grapes of Wrath (1940)

(    (2)   POSTWAR OPTIMISM: The Best Years of Our Lives (1946)

(    (3)   CAPITALISM, UNCHECKED: There Will Be Blood (2007)

((  (4)   POST-VIETNAM/WATERGATE CYNICISM: Nashville (1975)

((   (5)  MEDIA DOMINATION: Network (1976)

(6  (6)  GENTRIFICATION AND RACIAL TENSIIONS: Do the Right Thing (1989)

(7  (7) RISE OF THE YUPPIES: They Live (1988)

( ) (8) ‘80s WOMEN IN THE WORKPLACE: Working Girl (1988)

(9 (9)  DIGITAL ALIENATION: The Social Network (2010)

(1 (10) POST-9/11 ANXIETIES: Team America: World Police (2004)

 To me this is, for the most part, an excellent list. I would certainly put The Grapes of Wrath, The Best Years of Our Lives, Network, and Do The Right Thing on any best-film list I was compiling. By the same token, I wonder about the criteria at work here. Why is the 19^th century (especially the Civil War) so completely ignored? Why does this list contain not a single work made in the turbulent 1960s? I am particularly passionate about a seminal film year, 1967, which captured for a mass audience the tensions both between races and between generations. (Here are four of the five Oscar Best Picture Nominees for that year in film: Bonnie and Clyde, Guess Who’s Coming to  Dinner, In the Heat of the Night, The Graduate). Every one of these very distinctive films, screened in a turbulent year, has something vitally important to say about the differences that keep Americans apart.

 I also don’t see on the critics’ list any representation of films shot in the 1990s. That was a period  that balanced social optimism with the belated acknowledgment of the scourge of HIV, especially as it applied to the nation’s gay community. Remarkably, it was America’s favorite Everyman, Tom Hanks, who starred in a mainstream Hollywood movie that  finally looked with compassion on the plight of a gay man dying of AIDS. Hanks’ willingness to take on this role, especially after other leading men had turned it down, marked a new era for audiences and for the motion picture community, which honored Hanks with his first Oscar for this acting challenge. (Just one year later, he won again, for the very different Forrest Gump, which contained—in many people’s eyes—its own much more subtle AIDS reference.)

 Another film I think should be noted was also made in the Nineties, and also starred Tom Hanks, who seems to have a special talent for representing what’s on the minds of his fellow Americans. The 1995 film Apollo 13 (perhaps the seminal achievement of director Ron Howard) is a celebration both of American technological excellence and of the brave astronauts who are vaulting us into the world of the future. Apollo 13 was made, with the full cooperation of NASA, to showcase the story of a near outer-space disaster that, happily, turned into a human triumph. It’s surprising indeed to me that the L.A. Times critics seem to have nothing to say about American technological mastery. Social media (as shown in such listed films as The Social Network) has certainly changed all of our lives, but our relationship to our planet has also certainly evolved, right?