Hollywood’s penchant for staging wide-scale disaster or
apocalypse is well known. While the contemporary state-of-the art technologies
that showcase annihilation promise pop-corn entertainment, the film-makers forget
to add the vital ingredient of disaster cinema: emotional connection. The
flattened, stereotypical portrayal of characters are so bad that we begin to
pray violent on-screen death for them (and of course all these movies have
annoyingly stupid happy ending). But disaster or apocalyptic cult films haven’t
always been this worse. American cinema’s fear for The Bomb (at the height of
cold war) has provided some of the best apocalyptic standoffs. Films like On
the Beach (1959) [despite being an underwhelming novel adaptation], Fail-Safe (1964), Testament (1983) created a subdivision of
disaster cinema, projecting Cold War tension and fear of preemptive strike.
In
the same era, Kubrick’s timeless comedy Dr. Strangelove (1964) exposed the
fallacies and absurdities of nuclear war. By the early or mid 1980s the Cold
War cooled off and nuclear apocalypse threat turned to an archaic subject
(Cameron’s Terminator – 1984 – took the theme in different directions replacing
urgency and bleak nature of the narrative with fun entertainment). So when
Steve De Jarnett’s off-the-wall disaster thriller Miracle Mile released in
1988, it had a very brief theatrical run. Although Mr. Jarnett wrote the script
for the film ten years before, it had taken him that much time to stop the
studios from stamping on his vision (in 1983 Miracle Mile was in the first
position of ‘10 Best Unproduced Scripts in Hollywood’
list).
Steve De Jarnett who had made two films before Miracle Mile
didn’t make another feature film. He directed television episodes in the 1990s,
wrote an award-winning fiction and is a visiting professor of Film. The script
for Miracle Mile should be studied by aspiring screenwriters who can learn how
to maintain an underlying sense of coherence despite diffusing erratic
narrative turns and dream logic. Even in 1988, the narrative’s urgency was seen
as memory of bygone era. Now the protagonist’s tension looks far-removed and
slightly goofy yet the ambiguity and mash-up of genre provides great meaningful
entertainment. If you are curious about Miracle Mile after reading its plot in
IMDb or Google, it’s better to dive into it before reading detailed reviews (including this one).
The fascination in watching this film lies in witnessing how the bizarre
scenario unfolds as it gradually descends into a full-scale chaos.
Opening with Tangerine Dream’s ethereal soundtrack, the narrative’s
ominous mood is slowly built from the start. The film’s heart is the love story
between Harry Washello (Anthony Edwards), a struggling trombonist and Julie
(Mare Winnigham), a waitress. The city of Los Angeles itself plays the other
important character. Touring Los Angeles’ Natural History Musuem (La Brea Tar
Pits), on one boring day Harry meets and captures Julie’s attention by his goofy
antics. Fate brings them both to spend the afternoon in the museum. Thirty-year
old Harry immediately feels she is the girl of his dreams.
Later, Julie brings
her grandfather Ivan (John Agar) to see Harry play trombone in the jazz band.
Harry meets Julie’s grandfather and accidentally meets her grandmother Lucy
(Lou Hancock), who hasn’t spoken with her husband for years. Julie agrees to
meet Harry later that night at Johnie's Coffee Shop in the Miracle Mile
district after she finishes her shift. But fate once again intervenes and this
time by stopping Harry from meeting his lover at midnight. When Harry finally
wakes up it’s close to 4 a.m. He arrives at Johnnie’s asking Julie’s co-worker
for the phone number to apologize. After the unsuccessful phone call, Harry
hears the phone ringing in the booth.
He picks it up and a frantic voice at the other end, who
thinks he has called his dad, tells Harry that Los Angeles will be Ground Zero
in an hour. The frantic voice belongs to a young guy who says he works in a
missile silo and conveys certain significant codes. The guy never gets a chance
to dial his dad as Harry hears him getting shot by the superiors. Then a burly
voice picks up the phone and says, “forget everything you’ve heard and go back
to sleep”. Harry is shocked since it seems too real to be a prank. Anyway, he feels the need to alert Julie. And to do that he has to get her address from the waitress
inside. On this process, he tells what he just heard to the small crowd inside the
shop. Some are panicked and some laugh it out. But the curious gaze of one
woman named Landa (Denise Crosby), cloaked in formal business attire and
carrying the brick-sized 1980s mobile phone, seems to confirm Harry’s fear. She
immediately calls up some government sources and cooks up a air-borne evacuation
plan. And, Harry races up through the limited time period to save Julie. But
fate and chaos impedes his path.
Jarnett’s frenzied race against time shares some tonal
similarities with Martin Scorsese’s After Hours (1985). The dreamy, unforeseen
textures in the work bring to mind the efficient Joe Dante movies. But Miracle
Mile is one of the very few American movies to approach impending disaster on
such an intimate level. On the surface, the script has enough theatricality to
make up a typical Hollywood film. Nevertheless, despite the unbelievable
coincidences and turns of fate, the film works mainly due to its firm emotional
core. Moreover, Jarnett never shies away from diving into the unsettling
chaotic nature of the scenario.
The slow-burning energy in the first thirty
minutes or so was engaging, but it pretty much stays in the Hollywood
territory. The shift happens with the terror-tinged gas station sequence. Up
until the point, it looks like a harmless entertainment where the narrative ends with the lovers locking their lips in a peaceful habitat. Alas, the violence at the ‘gas
station’ scene changes the equation to sends us on an unanticipated nightmarish
path. The performances in key scenes aren’t up to the mark although Jarnett’s
visual sucker punches makes up for those flaws.
Mr. Jarnett could have tightened up the script especially
towards the end. Yet Miracle Mile would have been only a laughably silly movie
if Jarnett didn’t take up the directorial duties. The tonally erratic and weird
script would have been definitely chopped up by another director (Jarnett
perfectly turns the script’s playfulness into the visuals) . As I mentioned
earlier, there’s coherence in terms of emotions felt which instilled within me a sort
of readiness to take in the bumpy narrative turns. The full-fledged unrest in
the LA streets during early hours of sunrise was the film’s most astoundingly
staged sequence.
The hazy red-tinged color palette sets up the mood for
upcoming catastrophe. Furthermore, in one moment at this final stretch, Jarnett
showcases the chaos at different plane of actions – from top of the cars,
street level and ground or sewer level – to impeccably spread the discomfort
(the scene is done on a very limited budget but more effective than many modern CGI
works). The resolution to Harry and Julie’s romantic getaway is something one
wouldn’t expect from a Hollywood product. The unique and chilling final shot
will definitely stay with us for some time.
Overall, Miracle Mile (88 minutes) is a powerful, darkly humorous and
an unbelievably odd nuclear-disaster movie.
Trailer
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