Wednesday Movie - Rebel Without a Cause

My first observation is that there’s a lot of Brad Pitt in James Dean, or I guess a lot of James Dean in Brad Pitt: the looks, the mannerisms, even that nutso laugh Pitt had in Fight Club. I’m thinking that something is going on with the Hollywood gene pool—not that it’s all the same pond, just that the tides overflow once in a while.

My second observation is that James Dean as Jim Stark is a lot like Brando’s character in On the Waterfront. They’re both tough but sensitive, they have similar idiosyncratic mannerisms, and there’s something just a little feminine about them. And I don’t mean that in any kind of mocking way.

Observation three is that I have a bit of a man-crush on James Dean—which is probably a poorly timed statement coming fresh off that feminine bit. But it’s a man crush, people, not a crush-crush. It’s a non-sexual attraction: the kind where I want to be his sidekick or a wingman (were he alive). Do you follow? I get man crushes on people like Clooney, as opposed to the crush-crushes I have on people like, I don’t know, the youngest member of Hansen I guess.

The movie, on the whole, didn’t really knock me out. First half is great; second half is just kind of there. Everything famous about the movie, every bit that has been quoted and borrowed and redone to the point of cliché comes from that first half. Jim is a troubled kid that, despite the film’s title, does have a cause. He’s driven to mischief and feats of bravado as a result of having to witness the daily henpecking his father endures, and he needs to prove to himself that he’s stronger than that—that he’s not chicken. At a new school, he falls in with a crowd of similarly wayward and angst-filled kids, each with their own parent issues. Jim discovers that acceptance comes only after hazing, so knife fights and games of chicken follow, scenes that have been sincerely copied and flat-out parodied a thousand times since.

What makes it more than a Teens Gone Bad film is that there’s a lot of convincing emotion and complex psychology to it. Jim is actually brought to tears because of the love and shame he feels for his father. His girlfriend-to-be Judy turns bad seed because of her equally strong (yet weirder and more uncomfortable) daddy issues: “Why don’t you kiss me anymore, Daddy?” Jim’s friend Plato, who’s wayward behavior is of the more pathological variety, has abandonment issues and is also quite likely a closeted homosexual.

Around the halfway point (in case I haven’t hammered this home yet) the movie gets weak. The turning point comes after Jim has a “chicky-race” with Buzz, the leader of the local gang. Before he can jump from the car, Buzz’s sleeve gets caught in the door handle and so he goes out in a big fireball at the bottom of a cliff. His girlfriend, Judy, runs to cliff’s edge, stares down with a bit of shock registering, then she falls into Jim’s arms. Twenty minutes later (maybe four hours in movie time), they’re a couple. We go from a father’s emasculation bringing a teen to tears, to “my boyfriend died in horrible and senseless way. Holy buzz kill. Hey—Jimmy Dean Pork Sausage!”

All in all, the movie’s not known for its story, it’s known for James Dean’s performance, which alone is worth it. He’s totally method, intense and believable, and supercool to boot. I don’t want to say it’s a blessing that he died so young, but there was the very real danger of his going late-life Brando: packing on the beef, wearing muumuus, making out with Larry King. (Maybe I imaged that one. Back a brother up, will you?)