12. Back to the Future (1985), dir. Robert Zemeckis

[strange_complex]

I saw this about a month ago with big_daz, nigelmouse and his chum called Andy (I think), and hugely enjoyed rediscovering what a classic it is. It isn't just that it has all the standard elements of a good film (plotting, direction, acting, character, dialogue, setting and that little bit of magic which makes them all work together). It has an energy and freshness

Comments

[parrot_knight]

I hope and expect that the BFI will do something for the thirtieth anniversary of Back to the Future - 1955 then and now, and 2015's impression of the 1980s, for example.

[strange_complex]

Yep, there is a lot of good scope in it. Though personally I'm more about hoping that the National Media Museum will do something for it instead (or in addition), so that us poor benighted northern types can attend.

[parrot_knight]

Of course! The more, the merrier..!

[parrot_knight]

I wonder how the vision of the 1950s shown can be related to Tea Party politics, too?

[whatifoundthere]

I loved this post. From time to time I think about how little time-settings meant to me when I was young, and how I scarcely noticed period details (whether they were real because the show was genuinely old, or artificially created for flashbacks or past settings). I watched and loved Back to the Future when it came out, but the 50s setting-within-a-setting scarcely hit my radar, and in fact I'm pretty sure that anything short of powdered wigs or dinosaurs would probably have felt to me like some equally distant past. I remember being surprised as an adult that Happy Days was a 1970s show supposedly set in the 1950s -- somehow NEITHER the seventies-ness NOR the fake-fifties-ness of it made any impression on me when I watched it in the 80s! The show was just a bunch of people doing silly things, and to me, it differed from no other sitcom that I watched in that regard. When I was very young I watched a lot of old reruns, stuff like Mister Ed (cancelled well before I was born) alongside "contemporary" sitcoms like Three's Company (

[strange_complex]

Thanks! :-) I very much recognise what you say about not noticing period details as a child, and have mused on why that is myself. The same goes for cultural details, too, so that I have only realised in retrospect that some of the books I enjoyed as a child were actually quite clearly and explicitly set in America (for example).

I guess a lot of the stories we experience in our early childhood take place in very non-realistic settings anyway (fairy-land castles with princesses, farms full of talking animals etc), so that it takes us a long time to develop an expectation that the world of a story should have any kind of relationship at all to the real world we know. As you suggest with the idea of 'TV time', I think kids are very accepting of the idea that any kind of story world will just be strange and alien anyway, so that what adults would read as historical period markers just get chalked up by kids as more generic markers of the particular world of that story.

I'm afraid I haven't seen Super 8, but I've just read the Wikipedia

[strange_complex]

Oh yes, of course, sorry - you're right about the band. But indeed - we just get yet another White Man's Burden scene with them as well, don't we. *facepalm*

[howlin_wolf_66]

Interesting point about Goldie being directed by a white guy's agency... I'd never looked at it that way, before.

The other point... Well, if the film doesn't imply something, then it's easy to think up other reasons... and if you can think the best of something, then why wouldn't you? (Not directed at you personally - just rhetorical!)

Also, I like the point about the potential wish fulfilment of going back in time to 'fix' your mistakes... You just uncovered different layers that make me love one of my favourite films, even more. :-)