All great art rooted in human tendency to fail
- Mike Dewey: Life Lines
- June 13, 2020
- 884
“Movie quotes for a thousand, Alex.”
“You’re not too smart, are you? I like that in a man.”
I may not be the only guy who knew Ned Racine was doomed as soon as Matty Walker purred those words, but I was one of them.
There are layers of subtlety and subterfuge at work in the movie, “Body Heat,” so much so that a lot of people had to watch it two or three times before they got the final plot twist.
I mean it’s not “Sixth Sense” surprising, but there’s a textured “Maltese Falcon” meets “The Third Man” film noir sleight of hand that has always impressed me.
Then again, I’m easily amused.
Matty Walker would have made ice chips out of my steely resolve.
It’s hard to believe “Body Heat” is nearly 40 years old.
Then again, who’d have guessed I’d be 65 and still writing about it?
In 1981 I was two or three years into a relationship that, to my recollection anyway, was unique in its shut-out-the-world cocoon-edness. She and I were quite content sharing our “paint-by-number dreams,” to quote Jackson Browne.
We didn’t get out much, and it was especially noteworthy when we ventured into the outside world for much more than a quick lunch.
In all our years as a couple — nearly a decade’s worth — we saw exactly one concert together: Bob Dylan, joined by the Grateful Dead and Tom Petty and the Heartbreakers, at the Akron Rubber Bowl on a hot July day/night on July 6, 1986.
Oh, she went to see Prince at the Richfield Coliseum with her girlfriend, and I drove up I-71 pretty regularly to the Cleveland Agora, where the Babys or Todd Rundgren were playing.
But mostly we lived apart from the real world, and that was fine.
It all came crashing down, and it was mostly my fault, given my epic failures as a committed partner in crime.
Check that.
It was all my fault.
She trusted me when I was at the height of my least trustworthy phase, and when she got out that autumn night in 1987, about the only intelligent thing I had to say was, “What took you so long?”
Just to give you an example of my toxic behavior, consider the fact I hooked a ride back to Notre Dame to pay a surprise visit to my college girlfriend who, within a few hours of our crash-course reunion, demonstrated precisely why we had never lasted.
It’s such a typical guy thing: You forget all the bad crap while you’re reimagining all the good times yet to come, based on memories you’ve defanged for safe consumption.
So long story short, I found myself stranded in South Bend on New Year’s Day 1982, waiting for a bus that would take me to Columbus and needing someone to pick me up at the station.
I’ll give you one guess as to who I called to help me out.
Yep, my trusting girlfriend who, being the wonderful person she was, never even hesitated when I made my lame request.
For that hideous transgression alone, I’m certain to spend untold centuries in Purgatory, assuming I’m not cast into the lake of hellfire immediately upon my demise, God smirking, “As if.”
We are all prey to the varied weaknesses of the flesh, flailing about with no true north, no moral compass to lead us from temptation even as the tortured angel on our shoulder whispers emphatically, “You’re not too smart, are you?”
“Body Heat” works on so many levels.
It’s that artistically good.
Even the subplot involving Ned’s evolving/decaying friendship with Ted Danson’s district attorney is treated in a Kafkaesque way, a sad clown representing the bad choices our anti-hero has made.
“Oscar’s in pain,” he says, referring to the detective who’s closing in on Ned’s guilt, “because he likes you.”
Everyone likes Ned Racine.
It is, to my way of thinking, anyway, William Hurt’s finest career performance, and I don’t even want to get in to how incredible Mickey Rourke is as Teddy Lewis, the con who tries to warn him.
“Any time you try a decent crime, you got 50 ways you’re gonna (mess) up,” he says. “If you can think of 25 of them, you’re a genius, and you ain’t no genius.”
He pauses and looks at his dedicated, doomed attorney.
“Remember who told me that?” he asks, and Ned can only nod because he knows he can’t be talked out of what he’s going to do.
It’s human nature to fail.
That’s the foundation of all great art, from “The Great Gatsby” to “Layla,” from “Casablanca” to Wile E. Coyote.
We are given a finite number of days on this planet, and what we do — or don’t do — with them is entirely up to us, that is if you believe in free will and not some version of predestination, another theme that snakes its way through “Body Heat.”
Kathleen Turner’s Matty Walker oozes sensuality, but she’s oh-so-smart too, willing to do, in her soon-to-be-dead husband’s view, whatever’s necessary. She’s playing 3-D chess while Ned Racine’s still counting how many checkers he has left on the board.
Ain’t love grand?
Let’s close with one of my favorite passages from “The Wonder Years,” perhaps the best-written television show ever created.
Well, it’s up there, along with “The West Wing” and “Buffy the Vampire Slayer,” not to mention “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.”
Listen to Kevin Arnold:
“All our young lives we search for someone to love, someone to make us complete. We choose partners and change partners. We dance to a song of heartbreak and hope all the while, wondering if somewhere and somehow, there is someone searching for us.”
I don’t have much to add to that.
Just this one thought: No matter how many times you find yourself on the ground, the only thing that counts is standing back up.