The Heartbreak Kid (1972) or Fuck Benjamin Braddock

Admittedly, whenever I was at my lowest, often I would resort to feeling like John Heard in Chilly Scenes of Winter (1979), albeit a me-generation chauvinist.  Perhaps I was nice to myself, but now I realize that the heart-eating jerk deep inside me is more like Charles Grodin in Elaine May's The Heartbreak Kid (1972).  OK, so Neil Simon wrote it, but it certainly sheds the trappings of situational comedy into being a complex look at adult relationships.  It's up there with Reds (1981).  May shares quite a few qualities with her old comic cohort Mike Nichols, but where Nichols' characters are essentially hollowed out automatons, May always imbues hers with nuanced humanity.  Yeah, that sounds like the same bullshit that you hear whenever anyone talks about light-comedy directors, but "tragic-comedies" of the oughts that beg for sympathy are cynical, the characters aren't real.  In the end, motivations and actions, through several coats of irony, always seem to be crude and unnatural beyond serving a whimsical setup --for effect only.  This is on display in the first film of its kind, The Graduate (1968), which can be seen as the predecessor to The Heartbreak Kid.  One could make the point that, Mike Nichols romanticizes sleazy creep Benjamin Braddock to the point of excess, as evident as ever in the film's ending.  May takes what is a Graduate-esque script by Simon, and lets the actors improvise outside of the television writing, thus elevating the film above the average rom-com.  It's better than anything Simon did, even The Goodbye Girl (1976)... which doesn't hold up as well back when you watched it with your mom.

King cuck.

The film begins with sporting goods salesman Lenny Cantrow (Charles Grodin) making is rounds in New York City, set to the sounds of Burt Bacharach, as if your in for a breezy after-school special in the vein of Love Story (1970).  Why not?  It's Beethoven's owner, and he's looking extra wholesome and likable in his tender young age (in fact it's his first film).  Check out those mutton-chops.  Maybe I am a noob when it comes to Charles Grodin, maybe it's my vivid memories of the Beethoven series, but I've always pictured him as a WASP-ish New Englander.  I guess I was wrong, and his New Yorker accent, which I assume is real, has now left me to conclude that everybody sounded like that in the seventies.  In most reviews, he's always referred to as being nebbish.  He is, but not in the overblown treatment that many copied off of Woody Allen to the point of caricature, which was already caricature.  Charles Grodin's performance is nebbish-light.  In an early scene, we see that underneath his squeaky-clean exterior, Lenny is really a wannabe shaker-and-a-mover.  He's ready to make it with Lila Kolodny (played by the versatile Jeannine Berlin), who is from an Orthodox Jewish family, and wants to save it until they're married.  No bueno for Lenny.

After the wedding ceremony, the newlyweds are on the road in Lenny's convertible singing corny songs, but somehow it's not annoying.  Everything is light and fun, heck, they even sing I Would Like to Buy the World a Coke --indicating the pervasiveness of capitalism.  But it also makes you harp on the simple premise of the film so far, it's very old-fashioned and out of step, or rather their relationship is.  Perhaps this is when traditions were struggling to reestablish after the sixties.  A young couple meet each other, they get married and everything is peachy-keene.  In the car Lenny jokingly snares Lila, "you have the lousiest voice".  After an ambiguous look, she remarks that he better get used to it for the next fifty years, momentarily pausing their jovial ride before indulging in another tune.  Other moments like this pop up and can be taken idly for laughs, without being too tentative, but leaves you slightly uncertain for what lies ahead.  The Graduate's arc is certainly by now mythic, you know some high drama will occur because the characters and situation are designed for it.  However, May carefully balances her film where it feels every reaction is conflicted.  Subtle transgressions could be just that and nothing more, but who knows?  If anything, you're guessing that Lila will discover that Lenny is actually a fucking dullard.  By the way, Jeannine Berlin is my heartthrob, the funniest moments are whatever she does that annoys Lenny the most, especially when she's eating.  Actually, their dynamic is identical to Elaine May and Walter Matthau in her debut A New Leaf (1971), another one of my cherished favorites that also includes a sloppy eating female --no fucks given.

Audrey Hepburn and Albert Finney being a cuck.

Their decision to spend the honeymoon on Miami Beach is a pretty troll move, and I give them credit for that.  Akin to Hunter S. Thompson or even a Vice reporter-bro, Lenny's reason to go is to "check out the jerks".  The film could indulge itself in making plenty of the locale, like Jersey City in The King of Marvin Gardens (1973), but that would just be romantic deindustrialization claptrap.

Though it is worth noting that this is a bit of a road film.  Although little attention is paid to Lenny's surrounds, the transition from Miami to frigid Minnesota is done effectively.  Being a midwesterner who moved further north myself, I can identify with the Lenny's confusion clash with the strange culture that exist in the tundra.  Eddie Albert's depiction of a tyrannical midwestern dad is very true indeed.

Beating out Gordon Willis, Owen Roizman is THE american cinematographer of the seventies.  His heavy grain and natural lighting always makes that ugly wood paneling pop.  It's democratic in a way, everyone looks equally wind-blown and unflattering in his films.  They just don't make 'em like they used to.