Themes Of Joel Schumacher Films

[thecolorsblend]

Top marks, colors. Killer Moth's an appropriately colourful choice of villain, and your storyline offers a good way of introducing Batwoman while circumventing the problem of her non-relation to the Schumacher Batgirl. You also continued the Schumacher trend of ignoring the love interest (Julie) from the preceding movie, while the subplot about Dick and Barbara flying the coop, and Alfred retiring, would continue the family themes from the previous two films.

It's rly the bolded part that stood out to me. This part of SN's post rly got me thinking about Schumacher's body of work.

Now, I've always been inclined to the belief that some filmmakers have certain themes that they find irresistible. And while I'm no expert on Schumacher's filmography, issues of family (real or adopted) seem to be ideas that he was interested in playing with. Specifically, the struggle to build (or rebuild) one's family. In Schumacher's films, the attempt to create/reconcile with family isn't always successful. But it does seem to always be meaningful.

Obviously, those are crucial elements of BF and B&R. But you even see it in some of his other films. For everything else we could say about D-FENS, he was ultimately trying to make it to his daughter's birthday part and, hopefully in the bargain, reconnect and reunite with his wife.

In The Lost Boys, Lucy moved her sons to Santa Carla from Phoenix to live with her father. For his own part, Max wanted brothers and a mother for his own adopted "boys".

In The Client, Mark Sway's relationship with his mother is rly the spine of his character. Mark doesn't make much sense unto himself if you don't understand that there's nothing he won't do for his family in general and his mother in particular. If I'm right about the theme of (re)building family, then that aspect of Grisham's novel probably greatly appealed to Schumacher.

With something like Flatliners, it gets harder because, yeah, Rachel's grief over her father's suicide is a major issue for her but it's not rly THE issue of the film. But it does motivate her to do what she does in the film. So hmm.

But with Tigerland, the family thing comes back up with Roland.

Ditto Phone Booth, where Stu has to be forced literally at gunpoint to confess his two-timing ways to his wife.

Where does this come from? Schumacher lost his father when he was 4 and then lost his mother when he was about 25 or 26, which is relatively young to be fully orphaned. Add to that, I can't find any indication that he had brothers or sisters. On that basis, it's easier to see his point of view. In the same way that a lot of Spielberg's work is characterized by the value of marriage (and the pain of divorce) or Tim Burton's earlier work is characterized by lonely outsiders who struggle with mainstream society, I think I can see where the attempt/failure to (re)build family might hit home for Schumacher.

Maybe everyone else here was well aware of Schumacher's fondness for this theme. But until SN's post, I never gave it much thought. So I figured I'd throw all this out there and see what comes back to me.

[The Dark Knight]

Obviously, those are crucial elements of BF and B&R. But you even see it in some of his other films. For everything else we could say about D-FENS, he was ultimately trying to make it to his daughter's birthday part and, hopefully in the bargain, reconnect and reunite with his wife.

I gave Falling Down another look recently and gave it further thought.

A theme is people wanting to control their own territory. For example:

The manager of the fast food restaurant sticking to his breakfast rules.
The two gang members wanting D-FENS to pay a toll for walking through 'their' land.
The golfer wanting D-FENS to leave the course, essentially being a higher class version of the gangsters.
The road construction attendant wanting D-FENS to divert himself from their worksite.
The Nazi who decides who he wants shopping inside his store.

D-FENS feels like he's not welcome anywhere. When he is made welcome by the Nazi, he's misunderstood.

D-FENS had two bags: a briefcase and the bag of guns. The briefcase represents his old life, and the bag his new life. When he discards the briefcase he makes a decision to wholeheartedly embrace the new life. In my opinion, when D-FENS changes his mind and goes with the lunch menu he makes his outburst pointless. That's because he's still feeling some pressure to conform to polite society. But that erodes. When the gang members open fire erratically he doesn't flinch, which is a small but powerful touch. You can't kill a man who is already dead inside.

[Silver Nemesis]

Those are good observations, TDK. The most tragic example of D-FENS being made unwelcome is within his own family. He spends the entire film trying to get "home", with his journey being a sort of modern day retelling of Homer's Odyssey, only in this version of the tale the protagonist is not welcomed back by his loved ones.

The film concludes with him literally walking out to sea and putting those hostile territories behind him. Bridges are symbols of connectivity spanning two areas of land, but the pier at the end of the film is a bridge to nowhere. D-FENS has no place in the world, figuratively and literally, and because of this he ends up in the water.

Falling Down is in many ways a very funny film, but it's also a very sad one.

[The Dark Knight]

Good points.

Not Economically Viable (NEV) is in the movie for about two minutes but I feel his presence strongly permeates throughout the film. He is dressed identically to D-FENS, which makes him a mirror, but nonetheless different. The characters are both spat out and rejected by society. NEV has a grievance and expresses it via protesting, rather than taking up arms. Yet he is still treated as a criminal and taken into custody by Police.

When NEV is driven away he says "don't forget me." D-FENS doesn't forget him, but everyone else does. D-FENS decides upon death by cop, rather than submitting like NEV did. The world is full of people like D-FENS and NEV. It's really just a question of how people in these circumstances respond. For D-FENS, the pier really was the end of the line.

[Silver Nemesis]

I always watch The Lost Boys around this time of year. I'm not sure when the movie was filmed, but it feels like it's set in either late August or the first half of September. It's clearly summertime, but late summer. Lucy mentions school is about to start, there are dry leaves on the ground, and the sun is setting between seven and eight. It's that time of year when the northern hemisphere is transitioning from summer to autumn. The mood wouldn't have been the same if it'd been set in June at the height of summer, or in October around Halloween. Instead it's set during that transitional period between the two seasons.

This ties in with a broader theme that's prevalent throughout the movie – that of liminality, of the transformative twilight between two states. Michael is neither human nor vampire, but stuck in a transformative limbo between the two. This serves as a metaphor for adolescence being the liminal phase between childhood and adulthood. Characters in The Lost Boys exist on the periphery – the edge of society, the edge of the world between the living and the dead, between night and day. Much of the movie takes place on the boardwalk, which is a manmade world between the land and the sea. The vampires' hideout is in a cave that's right on the edge of the water; neither in the sea nor in the town above, but somewhere between. Schumacher includes several short sequences capturing twilight and dawn, showing the transition from night to day and vice versa.

I'm not sure how common this theme of liminality/transformative state is in Schumacher's other works, but you can identify it in some of his films. An obvious example is Flatliners, which deals with doctors exploring the threshold between life and death. D-Fens spends the entirety of Falling Down walking the edge between law and crime, order and chaos, sanity and madness. Dick Grayson in Batman Forever is wandering through a transformative state between family and orphaned loner, between law-abiding citizen and criminal vigilante. Like Michael in The Lost Boys, Dick is struggling to avoid becoming the very monster he's fighting. Bruce guides him through that metamorphosis and makes sure he emerges on the right side.

Anyway, those were just some random thoughts I felt like sharing. This post is also an excuse to reiterate that The Lost Boys is a really great film. It's Schumacher's best, in my opinion. I love the lighting and cinematography. I especially like how you can see the shadows of the trees outside projected into the family's house, and the reflected water-light effect on the walls of the candlelit cave. It's a beautiful movie. The soundtrack's great, the casting is flawless, and the script (co-penned by Last Crusade writer Jeffrey Boam) strikes a great balance between humour, action, horror and character development.

It's a brilliant film that's aged like fine wine, and it's also one of the few teen movies that I strongly relate to. I felt that way when I first saw it aged around 12 or 13, and I still feel that way now in a nostalgic sense. Beneath the fantasy elements, its depiction of male adolescence has a strong kernel of emotional truth: the peer pressure, the macho competitiveness, the unwillingness to communicate with concerned parents, the bittersweet sibling relationship. All of it rings true for me in a way most teen movies don't. Maybe it's because most teen films either focus on the female experience of adolescence or teen romance, whereas The Lost Boys is a more violent and masculine exploration of male adolescence. Whatever the reason, it still resonates with me.

It's also one of those movies where you can enjoy spotting pop culture references in the background. Like all the Batman, Superman and Star Trek comics in the comic book shop scenes, or the picture of Peter Cushing as Frankenstein in the background of Max's video store.

Well, Max was hardly likely to display a picture of Cushing as Van Helsing, was he?

The other really great modern-day vampire movie, which I'd rank on the same level, is Kathryn Bigelow's Near Dark. It's amazing to think those two films came out in the same year. Along with the original Nosferatu, I rate them as the best vampire movies ever made.