Viewing(ish) Jaws for the AFI Project

From March 10, 2009:

What's the AFI Project, you ask? For more information, or if you just enjoy my bemused ramblings, read here: http://www.spout.com/blogs/pippin06/archive/2008/3/1/25756.aspx

Jaws is on the following AFI lists:

The Original Top 100 (#48)
100 Most Heart-Pounding Movies (#2)
100 Years...100 Heroes and Villains (The Shark is the #18 villain)
100 Movie Quotes (#35 - Chief Martin Brody: "You're gonna need a bigger boat.")
25 Film Scores (#6)
The Revised Top 100 (#56)

Greetings, ladies and gentleman. Apologies for the small hiatus taken over the last two weeks from movie viewing and reviewing (and thanks if you noticed). It's not easy opening a ginormous musical like The Producers at a theater, especially if you also contracted a debilitating virus to make things extra special. Thus, I was sort of horizontal and unable to process thoughts verbally or in writing when I wasn't trying to survive one of these harrowing performances. Do us a favor and stop on by if you're in the area – make it all worthwhile.

I digress, natch. Two weeks or so ago, I enjoyed a Saturday night film – the next film on the AFI Project. Now, I want you to do your best to keep all soft produce tucked safely away in their fridge-fresh compartments. I want you to keep an open mind and attempt to control all shock – last Saturday, my viewing of Jaws represented the first time I had actually seen the movie all the way through, from beginning to end.

Stop fainting. No, seriously, get up. There's no need for hysterics.

You see, Jaws, like "It's a Wonderful Life," is one of those films that have always been in the background in some form or another. When I was a child, my parents steered me away from it, thinking me and my impressionable, overactive imagination would likely be prone to shark nightmares. After all, I had freaked out to less, like gremlins, Ghostbuster dogs, and crazy robot ladies in Superman III, and you actually see the shark in this film. I don't know what prevented me from finally sitting down to watch it later in life, other than the fact that it sees as much cable rotation as anything, and I'd managed to catch it in parts (no pun intended), likely precluding my need to see the whole thing without commercial interruption. Fortunate, then, that I undertook this project because it forced me to finally see the film in all of its sharky goodness, and I must say, like the Jimmy Stewart classic heretofore mentioned, I was pleasantly surprised by just how fabulous the film was, how much I really got into it, and how much I loved it in the end.

Do you know the story? It's a fairly well known chestnut. Teenagers on small town Amity Island enjoy a night of partying and drinking beside a moonlight bonfire, when one of the girls decides to tease one of the boys by jauntily hopping in the ocean for a spontaneous skinny dip. When she disappears, the boy contacts Police Chief Martin Brody (Roy Scheider, RIP) to investigate. Brody transplanted his family from New York City to the small island in the hopes of "making a difference," perhaps in a sunnier, more vacation-like spot. When Brody and the boy find what's left of the girl on the beach, Brody suspects the waters around the hamlet may be shark-infested. He appeals to the mayor (Murray Hamilton) to put up warning signs or even close the beach, but the mayor hears none of it, fearing that to take such measures would steer away money-spending vacationers visiting the island for the upcoming Fourth of July weekend. Brody keeps a watchful eye and invites an ichthyologist named Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) to the proceedings after additional victims are claimed, including one young boy in front of a beach full of sunbathers. Still guided by the almighty profit margin, the mayor encourages local fishermen to search for the culprit, and though they catch a likely candidate, seemingly validating the mayor's wish to keep the beaches open after all, Hooper is convinced that a Great White shark in the shallows has perpetrated the crimes. Thus, Brody appeals to the city council, and a local fisherman and shark expert named Quint (Robert Shaw) is enlisted, at the right price, to search for the terror, along which Brody and Hooper come for the ride aboard Quint's vessel, "The Orca." As they track the wily shark, each man must face his individual fears and obsessions with the hungry beast.

Jaws is really quite a good film and a mixture of movie genres that could appeal to many audiences. It's an action-adventure flick, filled with gore and high seas danger. It's a subtle stab at small town politics as well as social commentary on greed and bureaucratic dogma. Also, it's a horror flick and one of the most effective I've ever seen. Because the film takes on all of these different levels, making it more than just a picture about a giant, man-eating shark, the film not only crops up on several AFI lists but really can simply be categorized as an ingenious little picture.

It was adapted from a novel and directed by Steven Spielberg as one of his first films. It's creation is stuff of movie-making legend: over-budget and overburdened by bad weather and a faulty mechanical shark nicknamed Bruce, Stevie decided to rely on more basic filmmaking techniques to convey sheer terror to the would-be watcher. In fact, the film plays out much like the only film that outranks it on the AFI's thriller list and could almost be a better film if the story in Psycho weren't so complete and spun with Hitchcock's genius and panache. Spielberg's genius and panache, though, were remarkably sophisticated, nothing to sneeze at, and I will forever use this film to highlight just how good the guy is as a director (I will forever be a stalwart supporter, even if it is cliché). The first act relies and toys heavily with what is unseen. The viewer never catches even a glimpse of a dorsal fin or any dislodged teeth: the camera, instead, follows the perspective of the unsuspecting swimmer, alone but for a startling movement or presumed brush by bare skin and then switches to a vast underwater view beneath a solitary pair of scissor-kicking legs. Coupled with John Williams's now iconic (and AFI ranked) score, the soundtrack of which I purchased years ago even without having seen the film, and the famous main theme emphasized by the grinding of lower stringed instruments, this act really elicited some sincere jumps from me. I was surprised by how much I was into it and by the fact that the film could really make my spine tingle and send me twitching out of my seat, especially since the shark's arrival is always heralded by cellos – the viewer simply never knows when those famous chords end, and the shark attacks.

The second act then sets the stage for the seen and the climactic final battle with the shark. Yes, it still looks fake (thanks, Marty McFly), but fortunately, there's enough going on that you're still at the edge of your seat, taken in by every minute. I especially love the acting by the three main men in this film, but I was intrigued by the speech Quint offers about his experience in World War II aboard the Indianapolis. With Shaw's individual spin on this monologue, it rang echoes of Moby Dick, and really, each man in the film is his own Ahab, seeking revenge against the shark for what it represents to each. I also enjoyed how Spielberg still used the "unseen" factor to set the viewer up for the final scares, between floating yellow buoys, harpooned into the shark's skin, to sunken ships and dangerous cages.

Jaws is actually an excellent movie, and I loved it in spite of myself. I'm happy to say it didn't give me nightmares, but I'm probably not going to be too happy to see sharks at an aquarium in the future. I'm also sort of interested now in seeing Jaws 2 (though not the last two sequels, I've heard they're utter rubbish). Because Jaws appeals to an almost primal sense of terror in each of us and effectively scared me despite being so omnipresent in pop culture, I'm inclined to rate the film an 8.5 for being between very good/minor flaws and perfectly entertaining. I would have rated the film a full 9, but there are a couple of scenes in the film that tend to drag, even as their purpose is to serve as a sort of calm before the next storm of shark-related scares. As to the test, the jury is out for me on this one. I could see owning it, but, then again, it is a cable favorite. Maybe if I found it in a bargain bin. In the meantime, if you are one of the other three people that haven't seen Jaws, I highly recommend sitting down and watching it to the end. You'll eat it up!