Moonstruck (1987)
You'll have your eyes opened for you, my friend.
There are eight perfect scenes in "Moonstruck." But the one I keep returning to is the breakfast conference in the Castorini kitchen. Loretta, our heroine, finally confesses the truth: "Ma, I love him awful," to which her mother Rose answers: "Oh, God, that's too bad."
"Moonstruck" is about the triumph of life over death. It's also about how inconvenient that victory can be. As a great man said: Life, uh, finds a way. Here, the power of life is represented by sex and love. Life's a lot hungrier than death, it turns out. The Moon, wherever it visits, represents life--specifically, the unstoppable, irrational power of romance. This movie understands love is ruthless. You won't learn that from Hallmark, but it's true.
There are four separate love stories here, but the key one is about the widow Loretta Castorini, a bookkeeper embedded in a Brooklyn Italian-American community. She lives a numb life--"dead" in every sense but biological. Her universe is a tomb; you can see it in the dark furniture of her house, in the funeral home where she works, in her conversation. Cher's performance is uncanny: every time I watch it, I am amazed at how thoroughly she embodies this woman. Loretta pretends to be everyone's Mom. She even coaches Johnny, her dopey man-child fiancée, when he proposes to her.
But then. The moon arrives. And as a favor, Loretta visits Johnny's brooding brother, Ronny (Nic Cage), in the hell-like basement of the Cammareri Bakery. When Ronny yells "Johnny has his hand! Johnny has his bride!" something in Loretta wakes up. The attraction between them is palpable. Later, in his kitchen, Ronny overturns his table in a passion, and after much mutual kissing, Loretta sighs: "Take me to bed, I don't care." She just finished calling Ronny a wolf--but the truth is, she's a wolf too.
Cage is not overacting. He's entirely in line with the film's style. "Moonstruck" is not larger than life, but as large as life itself. And how apt. Love is not reasonable, and it does not happen in a reasonable world. Or as Ronny says, "Love don't make things nice, it ruins everything."
Most rom-coms are shallow: "Aren't these actors pretty? Wouldn't you like to see them kiss?" We never get a sense for how they fit together. Do they laugh at the same jokes? I do not believe, not even for a second, that Katherine Heigl and James Marsden love each other in "27 Dresses." They're entries on a scriptwriter's spreadsheet. Not "Moonstruck." It tells me with all the specificity that implies truthfulness, that this happened, to these people. I believe in the Castorini and Cammareri families in this film like I believe that the door to Bag End is green, with a brass knob in the center.
It ends, as it must, with the family celebrating Loretta's love. The music swells, the group toasts, and one of my favorite endings follows: that splendid tracking shot, over the dark living room--and finally, over to an ancient photo of the first generation of Castorinis, who seem to be smiling inside their serious faces.
I don't know why it moves me. You've watched our heroes be silly--moonstruck--for two hours, but you just feel their dignity and worth; everyone's heart is treated seriously. Perhaps the lesson of the photo is this: when it comes to love, we are all immigrants--newcomers in a strange country. Or maybe it's the quiet knowledge that life wins. She always does. Well, that's amore.
Jason, I love this--it's such a great description of one of my all-time favorite movies. I've watched it many times, but I first saw it in Bloomington, either in 1987 or 1988, with my Mom and my first-generation-Italian Dad. In the thirteen years I lived in Bloomington, it was the only time both parents made the journey from New England to visit Bloomington, and we went to see a movie together at the theatre where the Buskirk-Chumley is now (if it's still there). I do believe that it may have been the only non-drive-in-movie that I ever saw in a theater with both my parents at the same time. Dad loved the film and laughed very hard, the kind of laughter that comes from something being hilarious because it is so familiar. I remember him being especially amused by the confused old grandpa's "Somebody tell a joke!" at the breakfast scene (this could have come out of the mouth of his own Italian-born father, whom I remember well). Many of the greatest lines in the film, in my opinion, were from Mrs. Castorini - the one you mention ("Oh, God, that's too bad"), and her explanation for "why men cheat," which I'll save for anyone who hasn't yet seen the film.