Do you ever get the feeling that there's something going on that we don't know about?
Fascinating film with a lot to chew on and a lot to admire. The first thing that comes to mind is that most of the actors are folks who I kind of think of as memes now. When I think of Mickey Rourke, I think of 30 Rock. I think of Kevin Bacon. I think of, well, Kevin Bacon. I think of Steve Guttenberg. I think of Party Down. Seeing them in this production a little north of 40 years ago, I am just absolutely blown away. It is perhaps obvious to commend a film called Diner for its diner scenes, but the ease and grace with which these five friends plot and chide and yap and shit talk and love each other is legitimately one of the most earnest and beautiful depictions of male friendship that I've ever seen in any medium. Watching these guys talk about sandwiches is cinema, and on those notes alone, I'm grateful.
The other thing that comes to mind is that for this being a hangout movie along the lines of Everybody Wants Some or Dazed and Confused, there's a melancholy and a gravity to this that feels honest and interesting and not at all heavy-handed. Everybody Wants Some is probably my favorite film, or at least was my favorite film in this genre, and that had a seriousness too, but it was a sun-drenched seriousness. There was a nostalgia for a simpler time in Linklater's life. Diner feels like, in many ways, the opposite argument, even if it is so vividly informed by Levinson's own memories and childhood. He is not trying to use the past to talk about the present; he is trying to use the past to remind us about what doesn't change. These people are happy and some of them are having a good time, but they don't all necessarily end the film in a better place than they start. Nor do they get the freeze frame happy ending that you'd expect out of this sort of 80s ensemble dramedy. The point in this film that I come back to and know will live in my head forever is, of course, the strip club scene. This is a cliché that shouldn't work. The idea that we've seen this sort of thing dozens and dozens of times before, before and after dinner, to varying degrees of success, I have always found it maudlin and fantastical. This is not how the world works. This is pointless and a little bit demeaning to the viewer, and yet I loved this scene. This might have been one of my favorite scenes of all time, not because of the music, though that worked well too. Seeing Billy, this guy who is introduced as the graduate in more senses than one, having figured it all out, being on the precipice of the greater world in a way that the other four guys haven't quite reached. Getting punched in the face a few times and breaking and letting that break not turn him into a shell but into a virtuoso pianist, letting the light displace everything.
What worked for me about this scene was Guttenberg, whose performance topped the class in what was a really, really great series of performances. He's delightful throughout this entire thing, but that one scene where he goes from a certain kind of very real 25-year-old despair into a man so caught up with joy and music and the understanding that life will still have its moments. I don't know how you come away from that scene without feeling 10 pounds lighter.
What are we to make of the fact that we never see Elyse's face? I think it's easy to read this with a certain backwards-facing criticism: that this film is not just a product of its time but a product of a product of its time. And I think that's not giving Levinson enough credit for the nuance he's trying to hit. We know everything about Elise that we need to know from her voice, warm and timid and half amused as she rattles off answers to NFL trivia questions. But the movie is not about Elise, nor is it about Beth, Carol, or Jean. It is about what it means to be one of the boys. And what it means to have yourself change or not change in rhythm and syncopation with the people you consider your whole life.
★★★★★
