Today we went to see the movie about Steve Jobs . . . more on that at World Magazine . . . but whatever the merits of the film (and they were there) the movie and the trailers around the motion picture were grim, serious, and often unpleasant. The Christmas movies coming up look cynical and irreligious with humor mostly drawn from mockery.
I am not saying all films must be pleasant, but it would be nice if some were.
Of course, the Hallmark Channel and hundreds of jolly films are pouring out of Hollywood in a never ending stream, but these are not films a grownup can watch too often. They insult the intelligence of the viewer, often carry hipster subtexts mocking the target audience thought too stupid to notice, and are B-grade in acting, writing, and visuals.
“Pleasant” is not a polite way of saying mediocre. A pleasant person is delightful and can also be a genius . . .as Woz tells Steve Jobs: being a genius and a good person is “not a binary choice.” O’Hara managed to be pleasant without being dull, tempestuous without being merely boorish. She was pleasant to watch and hear. There are worse qualities in an actor . . . a person we pay to be able to watch and hear.
Apparently, I can go see a happy film and turn off my brain or go see a serious film and wish, momentarily, that the world would blow out its collective brain. Comedy need not be stupid, see As You Like It, and cheerful need not be schmaltz: start with Jeeves and Wooster and move on to the Andy Griffith Show.
What one cannot find, at least not without looking hard, is a pleasant time at the movies. If one wishes to watch something cheerful, but not juvenile, serious, but not straining for an Oscar, then a movie goer is out of luck. Our serious films are unpleasant and our pleasant films are unserious. Today marked the death of one of the last pleasant movie stars: Maureen O’Hara.
She was a beautiful woman. She was most beautiful precisely because even under the makeup, costumes, and glam lighting, she was really a woman. She never seemed weak because she was always womanly. And yet her strength, her spirit, her fire were pleasant things . . . nobody I ever met was sorry that Maureen O’Hara made pictures.
Her death is not a tragedy: she lived long and well and her time had come. For movie goers, however, it marks an admission that nobody does what she did anymore. She was glamorous without being stuffy, sexy without nudity, and adult without crudity. Her films were pleasant. Was she a great actor? Her performance in Quiet Man is hard to beat.
There should be room in this great planet of film making for more than one person who does her job, loves her life, and gives us a good time at the movies without insulting our intelligence. She made being a middle-aged mother look awesomely adult and sexy in The Parent Trap without ever being anything less than what she was. Maureen O’Hara had overwhelmed an aging Errol Flynn with her beauty, so she had nothing to prove.
She gave my family scores of hours of pleasant entertainment that never left us feeling tawdry, dumber, or grim. She was serious without taking herself too seriously and when she was good, she was not only very good: she was pleasant. There isn’t anyone like her left in pictures and that is a shame.
Rest in peace, Maureen O’Hara.
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