Rumble Fish (1983)
Universal DVD (region 1, 2, 4)
d. Francis Ford Coppola; pr. Doug Claybourne, Fred Roos; scr. SE Hinton, Francis Ford Coppola; novel. SE Hinton; ph. Stephen H. Burum; m. Stewart Copeland; ed. Barry Malkin; cast. Matt Dillon, Mickey Rourke, Diane Lane, Diana Scarwid, Vincent Spano, Dennis Hopper, Nicolas Cage, William Smith, Tom Waits, Chris Penn, Laurence Fishburne (97 mins)
Following the critical and popular success of Apocalypse Now, one of the first movies to tackle the Vietnam War, director Francis Ford Coppola wholeheartedly relaunched his much beloved pet project, Zoetrope Studios, intending it to become a rallying point for independent talent and a challenge to the dominance of the Hollywood majors.
With a high-profile launch that included such films as One from the Heart, Hammett and The Escape Artist, Zoetrope broke out onto cinema screens across America in 1982-1983. However, the films in this initial launch were all either complete box-office flops or disappointing earners, and One from the Heart in particular all but bankrupted the studio, forcing Coppola towards more commercial projects. The director rebounded with a pair of adaptations of novels by S.E. Hinton, highly regarded works in adolescent literature – The Outsiders and Rumble Fish – both starring Matt Dillon. While the first of these, The Outsiders, found a willing audience and was a truly stylish and almost epic vision of tortured adolescence, it is Rumble Fish that emerged as the more ambitious and even self-consciously art-house movie. Filmed in highly evocative and stylized black and white, Rumble Fish nevertheless failed to win an immediate audience although it perhaps remains a cult feature over and above the more popular release of The Outsiders. Indeed, it is in Rumble Fish that Coppola achieved the balance of aesthetic innovation and human drama he had been seeking with One from the Heart.
Just as he had for The Outsiders, Coppola here gathered together a sterling cast of young actors to play the juvenile leads, with Matt Dillon returning in a lead performance.
Dillon this time plays a young street hoodlum, the son of an alcoholic father (Dennis Hopper) and the brother of the young man known as “The Motorcycle Boy” (Mickey Rourke), something of a legend amongst the local street toughs and youths. The glory days of the street gangs are now over, however, and Dillon longs for their return in part so he can live up to the image of his much idolized brother. He hangs around a local malt shop / pool hall (run by Tom Waits) where he tries to become a true leader. When Rourke returns from a trip to California, Dillon wants them to hang out as they had before but Rourke has returned somewhat disillusioned. A tough policeman (William Smith) is determined to monitor Rourke and may harbour even darker intentions. Meanwhile, Dillon’s personal life is threatened as his girlfriend is aware that he has been cheating on her in an orgiastic party and is starting to date one of his friends (Nicholas Cage). Dillon and Rourke go for a trip to the party district of the city and it is clear that Rourke’s reputation persists. Rourke saves his younger brother from muggers and the two of them go for a motorcycle drive, culminating in a privately meaningful crime that may lead to their demise.
Rumble Fish is about the dawning of an existential crisis in alienated and undisciplined youths who are beginning to look for a greater meaning to their lives.
The stylish Rourke has tentatively found one in the Siamese rumble fish he is drawn to (the only note of colour in a black and white film), warlike fish that will attack other fish as instinct. He seems to figure that if he can set them free, his soul too will be freed. He houses considerable tenderness for his brother (anticipating Rourke’s role in the subsequent Pope of Greenwich Village) and longs for him to see beyond his immediate crumbling circle. Both, however, seem finally trapped by the lifestyle they lead, Dillon unaware of the exact nature of the trap, although Rourke is well aware that his own reputation and image are as much a curse as they are ironically a form of stature in their circumstances. There is a sense of desolation running through the film, and it is in many ways the visual equivalent of Beat literature (hence the presence of Tom Waits in the cast), of the battle against futility. The characters in Rumble Fish are caught at a time when this struggle is taking hold, when the bonds of friendship and loyalty are disintegrating into anarchy and teen angst. As a despairing vision, Rumble Fish is thus a most poignant companion piece to The Outsiders.
Although the film has been dismissed as existentialism for teens by some, young adult crisis seems primarily the point – its leads trying to make sense out of the meaningless urban wasteland around them, a bleaker take on the crisis facing the kids in The Outsiders.
At least they had some family and gang structure, whereas in Rumble Fish, even these structures are disintegrating. Meaning and solace lie elsewhere and what’s left is a hedonistic battle against despair. Dillon is almost unaware of how much he is dependent on his brother’s image and reputation for his own sense of self-definition. He is, however, continually reminded that he is not like Rourke and will never match his reputation. Indeed, Rourke’s glory was of a moment in time now slowly dissipating into urban legend. The underlying search for defining purpose is the most elusive quality in this sombre film, leaving only agonized souls as Dillon does not want to accept that his brother’s moment is over or that his idol is suddenly aware of the fickle nature of his own mortality. Rourke in turn longs for his brother to find his own place in life, to find his own vision, signalled in a brief switch to colour towards the end of the film. If there is any hope in Rumble Fish, it is that Dillon can take in the best of his brother and somehow move on to create his own identity and find his own direction in life: which Rourke ironically struggles with as maybe his own failing.
DVD DETAILS:
Vision
The 16:9 enhanced widescreen transfer perfectly captures this film’s nuanced modern use of black and white photography. Rourke is colour-blind (and partially deaf) and much of the film is designed to reveal his perception of the world as mediated through Dillon. This makes for a complex and engrossing use of point-of-view shots. Coppola uses wide angle lenses, crane shots and camera restlessness for an almost abstracted vision. It is a more intimate character study than the group portrait of The Outsiders. Shadows are deep and precise and editing rhythms are breathtaking (especially in a highly stylized gang fight that recalls the Stanley Kubrick of A Clockwork Orange and the Walter Hill of The Warriors). It maintains an almost hallucinatory feel, repeatedly subjective and expressionistic. Deep focus use permits detailed and sharp backgrounds in conjunction with looming foregrounds accentuated by wide angle lenses. The film is intent to capture the spirit of the “Beat” movement in American literature of the 1950s and 1960s. Street scenes are vibrant and there is a sense of ordered chaos to the group scenes in this smoky, abstracted urban realm, almost a wasteland at times. Effective use is made of an out of body experience. The use of colour for a point of view shot towards the end suggests that Dillon may be seeing the world through his own eyes rather than his approximation of his brother’s perceptions.
Sound
The Dolby Digital 5.1 sound transfer is equally effective, with a remarkably successful score by Stewart Copeland that adds considerably to the movie’s assured sense of texture and tone. Ambient sounds make for a tellingly chaotic atmosphere and the background is always rich in detail. At times, however, the sound segues into expressionistic distortion, matching the hallucinatory intensity of the visuals. Rourke’s character is partially deaf, and there is an effective flattening of sounds to approximate and complete his perception of the world, as it seems Dillon is unaware of just how much he wants to perceive the world as his brother does. Small sounds are often amplified and made additionally important in a film very much about subjective perception. The eerie, atmospheric score also nicely contributes to the sense of emotional uncertainty. There is a fine, repeated use of slightly echoing voices and sounds in different spaces (a dripping tap, voices in shadowy, cramped alleys). Voices are always pronounced and the street scenes are vibrant. Whatever the limits of the transfer, it perfectly captures the deliberation that obviously went into the planning of this sound mix, emerging as one of the most remarkable uses of delicate sound in all of 1980s cinema, as individualistic and intense as is the exceptional visual style. The result is one of Coppola’s boldest and most successful experimental works.
Special Features
Sadly, the only special feature is an original theatrical trailer.
