"There's ways of killing yourself without killing yourself.": Pablo Larraín's Tony Manero (2008)

Raúl Peralta has next to nothing going for him as he is nearing the end of his fifty-second year on the planet. It's 1978 and Raúl, like everyone else living in Santiago de Chile, is in a constant state of fear and paranoia due to General Augusto Pinochets' oppressive control of his homeland. With barely enough change in his pocket for food, and with the military and police on every corner, Raúl only finds solace when he visits his local theater on an almost daily basis to watch John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever. After becoming obsessed with that film's main character, Raúl sets in motion his dream of being selected as the best 'Tony Manero' on a local talent show. To help achieve this dream, Raúl leads a small group of local dancers at a bar paying tribute to the film and Travolta's character. Staring into his mirror at every chance he gets, Raúl sees himself as a Chilean matinee idol, a big dreamer in a world where dreams are crushed on a daily basis...Raúl Peralta: dreamer, dancer, sociopath, serial killer.

Released theatrically in 2008, Pablo Larraín's Tony Manero is one of the most disturbing and effective films I have seen in quite a long time. A ferocious and unflinching character study that follows a very dangerous and deranged man on a foolish journey that is destined to end in tragedy, Tony Manero is a remarkably intense and ugly work that is as compulsively watchable as it is hard to take. In the several days since I have seen it for the first time, there are images and moments that keep rushing back to me, like a particularly twisted dream I can't shake.

Sandwiched between Fuga (2006) and Post Mortem (2010), Tony Manero is the second of, so-far, three features from talented Chilean writer and director Pablo Larraín. Displaying a real sense of visual audacity and thematic fearlessness, Larraín is one of the most interesting young voices in all of modern world cinema. Born in Chile in 1976 (coincidentally the year that the basis for Saturday Night Fever, Nik Cohn's "Tribal Rites of the New Saturday Night", was published) Larraín has had a life-long interest in film which led him to study directing in his twenties before finally founding his own company, Fabula, before his thirtieth birthday. Each of his three films have been greeted with a mixture of unabashed acclaim and sharp criticism, with Tony Manero drawing the most heated discussions. Like many of his filmmaking idols from the seventies, Larraín isn't afraid to focus his camera on man's darkest desires and instincts and his particular voice is very needed in our now often sanitized cinematic landscape.

Driven by the disquieting and devastating performance of Larraín's go-to actor Alfredo Castro, who is as good here as De Niro was in Scorsese's equally caustic if less deadly The King of Comedy (1983), Tony Manero is the kind of penetrating character study that sadly we are seeing less and less of these days. Larraín's camera rarely lets Castro out of his frame and we follow his every move from very human moments like attempting to dye his greying hair black, to monstrous actions like beating an elderly woman to death just so he can steal her TV to help pay for a new dance floor. Castro plays every moment to perfection with a sharp and expertly realized performance that never panders for sympathy or tips over-the-line into just mere psychotic caricature. This is a beautifully controlled performance that is among the best of the last decade.



Shot in a deliberately harsh and gritty grey tone by cinematographer Sergio Armstrong (who also shot both of Larraín's other features), Tony Manero oozes an ominous and nightmarish ennui that thematically fits in perfectly well with paranoid filled boredom that surely haunted so many lives effected living under such an oppressive dictatorship. The characters here wait for nothing but a dreaded knock on the door. They walk fearing what is around every corner, they have sex without passion and they dream of lives they fear they will never have. Saturday Night Fever might seem an odd choice for a character like Raúl Peralta to fixate on in a film as harsh as Tony Manero, but one has to remember how truly troubled and, at times, despicable John Travolta's character was in Saturday Night Fever, which was in reality one of the darkest 'blockbusters' America ever produced. While he copies Travolta's famous dance moves, Raúl can ultimately only relate to that darkness, a fact that is really brought to light in a terrifying sequence where he savagely murders a theater worker for showing that much brighter Travolta seventies blockbuster, Grease (1978).

Tony Manero has been described as a black comedy and if that is the case then the comedy escaped me completely. There is nothing in the film, whether it be the scenes where Raúl attempts to make his aging body do Travolta's difficult dance moves to the film's brutal and cold murder sequences, that I found remotely funny. The scenes of graphic violence are particularly shocking as they come without warning in the film, almost as if Raúl's intentions are buried so far in his subconscious that not even he is truly aware of them. Even the film's occasional sex scenes are filled with such an intense dread that they are perhaps among the most un-erotic I have ever seen. If Tony Manero was meant as some sort of dark comedy, ala The King of Comedy or Jimmy Hollywood, then that aspect is a failure to me, but I still see this is a major and masterful work from a filmmaker with a lot of guts and vision.

Tony Manero premiered in Chile in the summer of 2008 and it spent the next year playing at various festivals (including Cannes) before Chile submitted it as their entry at the 2009 Academy Awards. The film, Larraín and Castro all won several awards along the way but by the time it hit America for a brief run it was greeted with a mostly muted reception. My friend James Hanson over at Out 1 even went so far as to say that Tony Manero was the only film that he 'really hated' at the 2008 New York Film Festival, which I think shows that this is a polarizing work that probably won't leave too many viewers in any sort of middle-ground mood.

While import DVDs of Tony Manero contained some interviews and behind the scenes material, the Region 1 DVD from Kino has no extras. Still, at least the film is readily available for American audiences and it can currently be seen on HBO's schedule for those who can't track down the DVD.



Much more disturbing and frightening than most modern horror films, Tony Manero won't be a work for everyone but I highly recommend it for anyone who hasn't seen it. While it will be awhile before I revisit it again, I doubt I will be shaking the memory of the film or the look in Alfredo Castro's eyes in the closing shot anytime soon.

Travolta In The Seventies: From Barbarino to Blow-Out

Next week will see the long awaited release of the first season of WELCOME BACK KOTTER, a series fondly remembered by many people my age and the series that made John Travolta one of the biggest stars of the seventies.
Travolta had been doing television work since the early seventies and had a small part in the intriguing Robert Fuest film THE DEVIL'S RAIN before his role as the lovably dumb Vinnie Barbarino would catapult him into a major television star. Barbarino is one of the great characters of seventies sitcoms and Travolta's strutting and stuttering performance as the punk everybody loves landed him a role in Brian De Palma's CARRIE as well as a record deal.

Travolta's record deal would produce two albums of typically harmless seventies pop. LET HER IN actually hit the top ten and Travolta did some tv appearances promoting the song but thankfully it was his film career that would take off instead of his music.
Travolta's role as Billy Nolan, who connives with Nancy Allen's Chris to ruin Carrie White's shining moment, was small but brought an undeniable force to CARRIE and he's impossible to take your eyes off of. Whatever that mysterious thing is that makes a star a star, Travolta has it multiplied by ten.
Also released, along with CARRIE, in 1976 is the much loved television movie THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE. For all of the tv-movie trappings it falls into, THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE actually contains one of Travolta's finest performances. Here, for the first time, we can see all of the vulnerability and little boy frustration that Travolta can project so well. THE BOY IN THE PLASTIC BUBBLE is a sweet and well made little film that is majorly important in the evolution of John Travolta as an actor.

WELCOME BACK KOTTER might have made John Travolta a star but nobody, least of all Travolta himself, could have been prepared for the worldwide fame his next role would bring. It is often forgotten just how serious and rough the film SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is. The film, and its astonishing Bee-Gees soundtrack, has saturated so completely into popular culture that actually sitting down and watching the film can prove a jolting experience. The original hard R version of the film, before it was cut down to a PG version that many people grew up with, is an angry, profane and tough film featuring a lead character that at times is despicable in his actions.
Tony Manero in any one else's hands would have just come across as a racist and overwhelmingly sexist punk but with John Travolta playing him the audience not only comes to understand but finally love him. Travolta is incredible in the role, bringing levels of humanity and hurt to Tony that few actors would have even thought to attempt. The tragic loss of Travolta's real life girlfriend, Diana Hyland, to cancer during the films shooting probably led Travolta into much darker places than he would have otherwise travelled in the role.

Travolta would receive a well deserved Oscar nomination for his role as Tony and the character and film would go onto to influence an entire generation of actors and filmmakers. One of my favorite tributes is Paul Thomas Anderson's shot of Dirk Diggler's bedroom in BOOGIE NIGHTS, a direct reference to SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER and just how much impact the film had in the seventies.
SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER should have launched John Travolta's career as a serious actor but the one thread that runs throughout his career to this day is one of not taking risks. Travolta has always played it too safe, it is his biggest downfall. It is no coincidence that his best roles, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER, BLOW-OUT, PULP FICTION, are all risk taking roles. A perfect example of Travolta's mistake of not pushing himself into darker terrains is his quitting AMERICAN GIGOLO in 1979. The role, which made Richard Gere a major star, would have changed the tragic direction that Travolta's career went to in the eighties.

So instead of following SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER with another hard hitting role Travolta delivered GREASE and MOMENT BY MOMENT. GREASE remains an incredibly alive and fun film, and one of the best musicals of the seventies. Most of the films strength comes from the blazing hot chemistry between Travolta and his costar, the lovely and talented OLivia Newton-John. GREASE would make Travolta even a bigger star and was one of the biggest hits of 1978.
MOMENT BY MOMENT was Travolta's first real slip up and an omen for some of the terrible decisions he would make in the next decade. Jane Wagner's painfully sappy and cringe inducing film stars Travolta along with Lily Tomlin. Take all the chemistry that Travolta had with Newton-John and put a negative sign in front of it and you've got him and Tomlin. MOMENT BY MOMENT was a huge bomb and it hurt Travolta's career. He wouldn't make another film for two years.
Travolta returned to the screen with URBAN COWBOY in 1980. It is a fun little film made better than it is because of a smouldering young Debra Winger and an undeniably great soundtrack. Travolta is good in it but he seems to be holding back. The film would make a lot of money but it seemed a long way from Tony Manero.
I often forget that BLOW-OUT is a film from the eighties. It seems so steeped as one of the greatest paranoid thrillers of the seventies that I often think of it, even more than RAGING BULL, as the decade's last scream of greatness before the ugly Reagan dominated eighties kicked into full gear.
Travolta's performance as sound man Jack in De Palma's film is his greatest and most complex role. Travolta goes for broke here and it is a haunting and mesmerizing turn that still resonates. Again working with the great Nancy Allen, Travolta delivers a turn that should have re-established him as a one of America's great actors and yet for some reason in the summer of 1981 very few people liked or even saw BLOW-OUT.
As many times as Pauline Kael's reviews would irritate and anger me, sometimes she would knock one out of the park and her writing on BLOW-OUT is dead on. She seemed to be the one critic who understood this was a major film and a great American masterpiece. It is one of her finest reviews and is well worth searching out. BLOW-OUT remains one of the most undervalued films of the eighties and contains the best work that John Travolta ever did.
The failure of BLOW-OUT sent Travolta's career into a major downward spiral and it would take him almost 15 years to recover. Starting with the regrettably bad SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER follow up STAYING ALIVE in 1983 Travolta's career would become a sad cartoon of bad films and poor choices. The period of 1983 to 1993 is one of the worst runs for a major actor and star in Hollywood history.
Quentin Tarantino was 18 when BLOW-OUT came out and I have always pictured him alone in a theater watching it and thinking, "that's the guy." Much has been written about Travolta as Vincent Vega in PULP FICTION and I don't have much to offer to the discussion. It is an incredible performance and it started a really incredible comeback for John even if he would inevitably start to play it safe again as soon as he wrapped Tarantino's film.
Ironically John Travolta is in yet another slump. His films are making money but looking at his resume from the past few years and his upcoming projects is truly depressing.
John Travolta is one of my favorite actors, even if it is mostly for work that he did in a very short period of time 30 years ago. I hope the guy pushes himself at least once more before everyone, including himself, forgets just how powerful he can be.