13 Nights of Shocktober: JAWS

by A.J.

Night 9: Monster Movie Night

“It’s as if God created the devil and gave him… jaws.”

JAWS

Very few movies come close to being perfect. JAWS is one of them. It is an important film for many reasons. It was the first blockbuster, the first movie to make over $100 million, beginning the tradition of studios releasing big budget movies in the summer in hopes of big profits. It did not launch the career of Steven Spielberg–he had already directed TV shows and two films–but it did catapult him to becoming the most successful director of all time. JAWS has become part of pop culture; you don’t need to have seen the movie to recognize references and parodies, quote dialogue, or instantly recognize the famous score by the legendary composer John Williams. JAWS usually places near the top, if not at the very top, of lists of scariest movies ever made. Most people might not consider JAWS a horror movie, but that is the perfect description for a movie about a monster terrorizing a town.  

Roy Scheider plays Amity Police Chief Brody, who is new to the island community and hates being in the water. He is pressured by Mayor Vaughn (Murray Hamilton) to change the cause of death on an autopsy report from shark attack to boating accident because the mayor and local business people are afraid a panic will keep away tourists, and their money, from Amity on the crucial 4th of July weekend. Of course, “this is no boating accident,” shark scientist Matt Hooper (Richard Dreyfuss) declares after conducting his own autopsy. The attacks continue until finally Brody, Hooper, and Quint (Robert Shaw), the grizzled shark hunter, are at sea hunting the great white shark. 

The behind the scenes drama has become the stuff of movie legend, and to many may be as familiar as the scenes on screen. The mechanical shark, nicknamed Bruce, would not work and this is why Spielberg used the hide-the-monster-until-the-end approach; there was conflict about who would get top billing; the script was rewritten so many times that no one knows for sure who wrote Quint’s famous U.S.S. Indianapolis speech (it is not in the novel or early drafts, and depending on who is telling the story the speech was either written by writer-director and Spielberg friend John Milius or by Robert Shaw himself). 

According to legend, B-movie producer-director Roger Corman’s reaction to JAWS was concern because it was the first time a major studio put a major budget behind the kind of movie he would typically make for as little money as possible. While many Corman movies are better than their low budgets would suggest, young Spielberg made the most of his big studio budget, lack of executive interference, talented collaborators, and his own unparalleled talent and skill to make the ultimate monster-on-the-loose movie.

Consciously or not, Spielberg borrowed much from Hitchcock; most famously the uncanny zoom-dolly that pulls the camera away even as the camera lens zooms in fast on Brody's face when a shark attack happens (Hitchcock used this effect to visualize Jimmy Stewart's vertigo in Vertigo.). Since Spielberg could not show the shark, he suggests the shark. In a terrifying scene, two locals throw a roast tied to a chain off a dock. The shark takes the bait, pulling the dock apart, and one of the locals falls in the water. "Take my word for it Charlie, don't look back just swim!” says the other as we see the wrecked pier turn back and move toward the man in the water. POV shots also suggest the shark without showing it and build suspense (we know the shark is stalking swimmers but they do not). Countless slasher movies would also utilize the POV shot for the same reason but far less effectively. Nothing suggests the shark better than its ominous leitmotif by John Williams. However there are also many scenes and scares that would fit comfortably in any less sophisticated horror movie including: severed body parts, a geyser of blood, a close up of a decaying decapitated head, and an animal doing something it would never do, like a massive shark jumping onto a boat, but by that point you’re too caught up in the movie to care.

One of the many great things about JAWS is that there are many ways to enjoy it. You can watch it and analyze the filmmaking techniques: the staging, cinematography, editing, score, the combination of all of these and more. You can watch and pay attention to subtext and social commentary. Like all great movies, JAWS offers different interpretations for different eras. In 1975, some might have seen the coverup plot by the mayor and thought of the Watergate scandal and coverup. During the height of the COVID-19 pandemic the arguments between the mayor and Brody and Hooper about closing the beaches for public safety vs keeping them open for the sake of the economy had an especially deep resonance. The dynamic between Brody, Hooper, and Quint is fascinating. Quint and Hooper can’t stand each other but Quint likes Brody and Brody likes Hooper so they all put up with each other. Each portrays a different kind of masculinity, each with positive and negative qualities, and that deserves its own thorough analytical essay. Or, you can just settle in and experience one of the scariest movies ever made. Even 50 years later, even after multiple viewings,  JAWS still works wonders and that is movie magic. 

JAWS is available to stream on Netflix. It is also available on 4K, Blu-ray, & DVD and is probably at your local library.

Review: Sonatine (1993)

by A.J.

Sonatine

“I’m in wonderland.”

Takeshi Kitano’s Sonatine upends and subverts all expectations of a yakuza (Japanese mob) movie. For example, here’s some dialogue you might not expect to hear in a serious gangster movie: “You call that dancing?!... I’ll join you.” There is violence to be sure, but the main character, Murakawa (Kitano himself, who also writes, directs, and edits), has grown bored with the gangster life and with violence. The film sees acts of violence as Murakawa sees them: unexciting or even dull. Rich in the quiet mundanities that happen in every job and life, no matter how thrilling certain jobs or lives may sound, Sonatine is far from dull. This is a peculiar and beguiling picture that doesn’t explain any more than it feels necessary, thus drawing us into the world of a criminal in limbo.

Using his stage name “Beat Takeshi”, Kitano plays the midlevel Tokyo yakuza boss Murakawa who has been assigned by the boss of the entire crime syndicate to mediate a gang war between two rival clans in Okinawa. Murakawa and his lieutenant think there is something fishy about the Okinawa job, but he and his crew go nonetheless. After a restaurant shootout that is simultaneously surprising and subdued, Murakawa and his crew are taken to a beachfront house to lay low. As they bide their time the movie becomes something quite special.

Sonatine is a movie about waiting. In Okinawa a young gangster plants and bomb in a building and runs back to the car with his partner. Nothing happens. They wait and still nothing happens. The next scene has the entire gang outside of the building bored with waiting. Several scenes later, the bomb finally goes off to little consequence. The gangsters may be bored with their situation but there is not a dull or boring moment in the movie. It never treads water though it is about people doing exactly that. Instead, Sonatine comes to life in these moments.

The most oddly comedic, beguiling, and even enchanting scene happens when the gangsters are at the beach. They’ve grown bored with playing a children’s game where paper figures “fight” when you tap the edge of a board with you finger, so they act out a life size version of the game in the sand, hopping as though they are paper figures. Kitano ramps up the camera speed for added comic effect but also their unnatural movement emphasizes the odd situation these characters find themselves in: there’s nothing to do, but they’re still there.

Takeshi Kitano began his career as part of a comic duo (this is where he picked up the nickname “Beat Takeshi”) and he puts his comic eye to great use. When the gangsters are in a house with no water, they run outside when it starts to ran, soap themselves up, only for the rain to stop. The shootout I mentioned earlier is so routine to Murakawa that his blank expression is comical. The jokes don’t hit like jokes in a comedy, the action scenes don’t hit like scenes in an action movie, but still Sonatine is engaging on a few different levels. This movie goes from violent to darkly comic to lightly comic to meditative and back again with each tone flowing smoothly and naturally into the other.

This movie takes place in a peculiar universe: indifferent but jovial. When Miyuki, a local Okinawa woman interested in Murakawa, asks if she can come visit again, he says “you can, but you won’t, bitch,” so passively there’s somehow nothing aggressive about it. Later when she takes off her top offering herself to him during the brief rainstorm he smiles and says “Indecent exposure is fun.” In the intervening time they’ve connected on a more mental, less physical level. While watching Sonatine I was reminded of the HBO series The Sopranos, specifically an episode where Tony and his loyal but goofball captain Pauly have to hideout after a body is discovered. That series focused on what happens between the thrilling and violent moments of the criminal life. Predating The Sopranos by six years, Sonatine does the same. It is a meditation that allows itself to wander and play in the sand.