Hidden Flick: The Floating Inevitable
Mickey Rourke’s return to film glory in the title role of the The Wrestler comes at the same time as Laurence Fishburne’s new role on CSI, the long-running television hit. Both actors appeared under the tutelage of Francis Ford Coppola during a time in the early 1980s when the director was attempting to reinvigorate his mojo by filming S.E. Hinton’s teenaged rebel with a purpose novels. And Coppola was true to his cause as he experimented with style and tone poetry at a time when those virtues were being smothered by slasher flick and Reagan-era teen angst motifs.
“Loyalty is his only vice,” is one of my favorite film lines and it crops up about midway through this week’s Hidden Flick as we head into the second season of films that are off the beaten cinematic path with a look at the minor gem, Rumble Fish.
Filmed in black & white, Rumble Fish also stars Matt Dillon, Diane Lane, Diana Scarwid and Nicolas Cage, Coppola’s nephew in one of his earliest roles. However, it is the weird and twisted appearances of Rourke, Fishburne, Dennis Hopper, and Tom Waits that add nuance and texture to what could have been a forgettable cheesy endeavor. Hopper is the alcoholic father who spouts historical references and odd sound bites to his beleaguered son, played by Dillon, and Fishburne, is sort of a guardian angel to the hapless lad, as well. Waits sinks his teeth into his role as an eccentric billiards hall owner, foreshadowing his 1992 bent romp as Renfield in Coppola’s Dracula.
READ ON for more on this week’s Hidden Flick – Rumble Fish…
As Dillon struggles to find his character, supplementing his tough guy looks with an odd assortment of ADD antics and confused looks, Hopper slips in and out of drunkenness, Fishburne lingers close by, waiting to pounce on the meaning of it all, Cage calmly settles into his thinking man’s rebel character, it is Rourke who enters scenes with great presence rooted in charismatic stature. He plays the Motorcycle Boy, a fallen prince, or “Royalty in Exile,” as one character describes him, a young man who once led the toughest gang in town, a poverty-stricken Oklahoma town with suburb pretenses, which will not, can not offer any sort of reasonable opportunity to a teen stuck in a rebel groove. The gangs have all broken up due to drug traffic, presumably by organized adult factions, and the Motorcycle Boy, like his younger brother, are not part of this seamy drug world, which has somehow broken up their own misguided yet beloved gang culture.
And that appears just fine to Rourke’s character, as he has quietly grown tired of his ex-gang leader, Pied Piper legendary status, while everyone idolizes what he was, and still appears to be, but he only rides past their graffiti—“The Motorcycle Boy Reigns”—while occasionally pausing to spout wisdom to his younger brother, Rusty James, played by Dillon as sort of the flip side of a coin that needs to be tossed away, neither seeking assimilation, or accumulating knowledge to break out of his claustrophobic world. But Rourke—he’s all knowledge, all wisdom, all brutal animal strength—and he shrinks from what that might mean, while others, especially his kid brother, want to shine just like him, be close to him, hear his words and fight alongside him in his battles, but he is no longer willing to fill that role, no longer willing to give shape and form to the formless.
The Motorcycle Boy is aloof, partially deaf, color blind (hence, one of Coppola’s reasons for filming in mysterious black & white), and just a tad bit crazy after wolfing down a lifetime’s worth of experiences in only two decades, and feeling more than a bit spent. He stands outside of history, wallowing in some era that he is no longer a part of while others notice his direct link to current events. Coppola used the Police drummer Stewart Copeland to score the film, and the percussionist does a great job of underpinning the tension and eccentricity of the environment, while also offering music that appears from some other era, neither embracing nor ignoring the sobering truth of the film.
On the other hand, the Motorcycle Boy drifts into scenes, exits, enters, leaves a lyrical touchstone filled with wisdom, but he has fully embraced that truth, the thread from S.E. Hinton’s great cult classic novel that continues on into Coppola’s film, as the foreboding nature of the floating inevitable conclusion of who the ex-gang leader, brother, prophet, street messiah is, what he has done, and what his life will mean to others, and how that will impact the future of not only this semi-rich and deeply-poor town, a town searching for a future while ensconced in the troubles of its past, but, perhaps most importantly, how his legacy will eventually be assimilated by his fawning younger brother.
The title references Siamese fighting fish (Betta splendens) that—according to the Motorcycle Boy—if taken from their separate, confining bowls in the local pet store, and dumped in the nearby river, en route to the Pacific Ocean, somewhere along the California coast, where the two sons’ estranged mother now lives in alleged grandeur, then they will be free, free to swim, free to drift, free to float amongst their own existential inevitability. It is a concept that is also true about the careers of both Mickey Rourke and Laurence Fishburne as they have often excelled when not constrained by the dull demands of others. Let us hope that their new projects give them opportunities with their respective muses in the wide open space of that great artistic ocean.
- Previously on Hidden Flick: Season One
- Rumble Fish: Amazon
/ NetFlix
