Thinking about some films made in Baltimore

One of my thoughts on "sat up all night reading it to each other" in my previous post was about movie scenes that have stuck to me. To get more familiar with Baltimore, last year I borrowed from the library DVDs of films by such directors as Barry Levinson and Matthew Porterfield. What saddened me while watching the Levinson films were scenes of emotional abuse, especially toward women. In Tin Men, the character played by Barbara Hershey once asked her husband, played by Danny DeVito, if they could go on a picnic. It was obvious that the meaning of this was important to her, but he dismissed this simple, romantic request. Maybe what occurred was mainly emotional neglect, but it felt like the contempt of abuse from how he responded. There was worse abuse than this, but the lack of care affected me.

In Diner, there's the scene when the wife of one character had listened to "his" records but not put them back in the slots he preferred. It was painful watching how he belittled her and showed so much contempt. I think it would instead feel wonderful if someone would take that much interest in another's musical tastes. Rather than attacking her, they could have talked about the music, whether any songs stood out for her and the feelings they evoked. The film felt more like tragedy to me than a comedy from the abuse and predator behavior of some of the men.  One of my biggest laughs during the movie was when a guy required a woman to pass an impossible trivia quiz on football before they got married. At the same time I was disturbed by the underlying message about focusing on trivial aspects of life and male control in some relationships. [Roger Ebert review of Diner]

The two films by Porterfield I've seen, Putty Hill and Hamilton, seem not so much about abuse as emotional neglect, listlessness, and disconnect from others. These were low-budget productions that received little attention. Their atmospheres felt like what is often depicted in good graphic novels about everyday life, such as Building Stories, the box of booklets by Chris Ware.

Watching these kinds of films is a good reminder of what not to do and what to value in life.

[Added on August 2: I mistakenly attributed the football quiz to Liberty Heights when it was in Diner. I should have mentioned that Liberty Heights did depict a more positive romantic relationship, which faced hurdles because it was between an African American teenage girl and a White teenage boy.]