2018 Blind Spot Series: Rebel Without a Cause

It's Blind Spot time once again. It's time to talk about a significant film that has somehow escaped my eyes all these years. Before I get into it, let me give a shout out to the host for the Blind Spot Challenge - Sofia at Returning Videotapes. Please check out her site and all those of all the other bloggers who take part. Now, let's get to this month's movie.

Why did I pick it? We all have those coming-of-age movies that we love. I have a ton of them. And as a male, the ones I gravitated towards were about young men. Even if the details of their lives were drastically different than mine, as they invariably were, I experienced a kinship with other boys at similar stages of their existence. Of course, the ones I hold dearest are the ones that came out during my formative years. I'm way beyond that time period, these days, but I still have a fondness for such movies. When I became an amateur cinephile and started tracking down highly regarded films I hadn't seen, Rebel Without a Cause was squarely in my sights. I read and heard about James Dean's legendary coolness, his tragic early death, and this movie. It always shows up on lists of the greatest coming-of-age movies. Yet, for some reason, Rebel kept getting pushed behind some other classic I hadn't seen. One day, I walked into one of those discount stores that has a spinning rack with hundreds of DVDs on it. I skim through it every now and again. It's always ninety percent workout videos, crappy TV shows, compilations of crappier movies, and films of which there were obviously way too many copies printed. The other ten percent are decent movies. Every now and again, you even find a good one. This one was waiting for me. It was right there on the front of the rack. I couldn't help but pick it up. As usual, I rushed home with the intent on watching it in a few days, but found a spot for it in my collection where it sat for several years. I finally got tired of telling myself I need to watch it every time I looked at it on the shelves with its less dusty neighbors. Here we are.

The movie starts with our very drunk hero, Jim (Dean), being detained in the police station. We quickly figure out he's underage and that he's a pretty troubled kid because of the argument that ensues when his dad comes to pick him up. His issue is that he thinks his dad is too soft and won't stand up to his mom. We also meet Judy (Natalie Wood), another troubled youth. She has some major daddy issues. Namely, her old man calls her a tramp like that's her name. She's in for violating curfew. Yeah, the 50s. Finally, we meet Plato (Sal Mineo). He also has daddy issues since he grew up without one. It doesn't help that his mom is usually not home. He got himself hauled in because he killed a litter of puppies. Jim sleeps off his intoxication and gets up the next morning for his first day of school at Dawson High. As if you had any doubt, Judy and Plato are among his new classmates. Judy hangs with the cool kids. No one hangs with Plato. In fact, everyone bullies him. Jim comes to his rescue and Plato quickly becomes enamored with Jim. After the run-in with the guys that like to beat up on Plato they challenge Jim to come out later that night and play a game of chicken with their cars and a cliff. Unsurprisingly, someone ends up dead and the story progresses from there.

Maybe I was paying too close attention to the title. More accurately, maybe I was viewing it through more modern sensibilities. Point is, I had a lot of problems with this movie. The first thing that bothered me was the murky representation of time. This first day of school comprises much of the first half of the movie and it seems like it's about 36 hours long. And that's only until school lets out. It's like another 36 hours after that. The highlight for me was the fact that students were expected to drive themselves to the class field trip. Imagine that in 2018. That's neither here nor there. It just amused me.

Once we get passed the whole time issue, I'm faced with my biggest hurdle - the protagonist. He's not the rebel the title makes him out to be, far from it, in fact. In most instances, he's just a kid trying to do the right thing. After the knucklehead he was playing chicken with dies, Jim is only one out of a dozen or so kids who actually wants to tell what happened. The rest of those jackasses are all set to pretend it never happened. And I've already mentioned how he gets into this mess, in the first place. He is merely helping out a kid who is getting bullied. Unfortunately, the way he goes about things makes me want to punch him in the face. Repeatedly. He constantly whines and yelps about everything. And I do mean EVERYTHING. There is nothing cool about this person, intentions aside. I can't even say "intentions aside" with a straight face because he pulls a total dick move at the end. But he cries about it, so I guess it's okay. Sigh.

Jim is also the least interesting person with the least daunting issues of the three kids we met at the police station. His big hangup is he wants his dad to grow a backbone. That's spoiled brat stuff compared to what Judy and Plato are dealing with. Judy's relationship with her father is clearly going to have greater consequences on her life. Her self-worth is deteriorating in front of us. She's actively seeking out the wrong kind of attention and appears on the way to making her father's words a self-fulfilling prophecy. A film more directly about her should, could, and hopefully, would be better than the one we got, by leaps and bounds. So, too, would a movie about Plato. His problems are leading him down a potentially even more destructive path than Judy. Remember, he's already killed a litter of puppies. He was abandoned by his father and is mostly left to his own devices by his mother which isn't much different. Add to that the fact that he's meant to be gay, he clearly has a crush on Jim, living in a time far more intolerant than the present, even with you know who in the White House. Since this was made in the 1950s, we don't get either one of those movies, but the one about the straight, white guy blowing things way out of proportion. Judy gets to have her problems instantly expunged because she met the right guy while Plato's sexuality condition is a tragic flaw.

Let me check the back of the DVD again.

Yup.

It still says 1955.

Sigh.

Don't get me wrong. I am not one of those people who automatically dismisses old movies. There are plenty of movies from precisely this era that I love. Rebel Without a Cause is misfocused and so hopelessly, philosophically locked into its time it has no chance to escape. The purported coolness of its star comes across like a super-annoying Marlon Brando impersonation. After all, Brando's iconic turn in A Streetcar Named Desire came out only four years prior. It didn't help that I have recently watched both The Room and The Disaster Artist and burst into uncontrollable laughter the moment James Dean said "You're tearing me apart!" Honestly, I don't think Tommy Wiseau did it any worse. Blasphemy, I know. Anyhoo, had I seen this when I was a teenager, I might feel differently. Watching today, far removed from the days when I might've thought sneaking out to race my car towards a cliff was cool, I just wanna shake Jim and tell him, "Look around! Your life ain't that bad! Man up!"

Click below for more 2018 Blind Spot reviews

Bad Education

Bird

Reefer Madness

Dirty Dancing

Ronin