(PG) ★★★★★
Director: Robert Zemeckis.
Cast: Michael J. Fox, Christopher Lloyd, Lea Thompson, Crispin Glover, Thomas F. Wilson.
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| "Seatbelts? Where we're going we don't need seatbelts." |
Unlike other monumental films of my childhood, I don't remember the first time I watched Back To The Future. It was one of a handful of movies we had pirated on VHS, so it was in high rotation in my house in the late '80s. I don't remember a time before Back To The Future. It was just always there.
But I distinctly remember buying a book at Target on the making of the trilogy when I was 11. This was my first foray into learning about how a movie was made. It was the moment where the curtain was pulled back, and what I saw behind the silver screen proved just as compelling as what was on it.
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| And I've still got it. |
Even today, the behind-the-scenes story of Back To The Future is a compelling study in persistence and adaptation. I'm still fascinated by the huge changes made to the story and the production. It's a great "kill your darlings" example in cinema - few ideas were sacrosanct during the writing of the script, with each alteration becoming an improvement.
The time machine went from being a fridge to a Delorean, Marty McFly went from being a video pirate to a student who dreams of being a rock star, and the climax involving a nuclear explosion turned into an iconic combination of lightning and clock tower. Even during filming, changes were made in search of perfection - Eric Stoltz was replaced by Fox a month and a half into production.
The results are incredible, and so much of it has become iconic. The DeLorean, 88 miles per hour, "1.21 gigawatts!", Marty McFly playing Johnny B. Goode, the title, the lightning striking the clock, two streaks of flaming tyre marks, the flux capacitor, and a common understanding of how time travel works - all these things are cultural touchstones now. They're references understood by millions. Many films wish they could be even half this iconic.
And at its heart - the unchanging thing among all the changes and zeitgeisty moments - is a comedy with a slightly cartoonish sense of humour delivering a now-classic high concept: "what if you went back in time and met your parents?".
Joanna Berry, writing in 1001 Movies You Must See Before You Die, pins the film's success down to "an extremely clever premise... further enlivened by quick-fire direction from Robert Zemeckis and a superb, witty script" from Zemeckis and Bob Gale. Zemeckis and Gale were also clever enough to aim the movie at anyone and everyone, whether they be nine or 90.
In declaring it the best film of the '80s, Consequence's Michael Roffman pushed that wide appeal notion further. "Back To The Future is so many things to so many different people. It’s a brilliant comedy, it’s a sentimental love story, it’s a tale of remarkable triumph, it’s a stylish sci-fi adventure, it’s a perverted commentary on the American nuclear family, it’s a haunting parable on the spoils of Reaganomics," he wrote, only half-joking about the last one.
However you come at it, it's the quintessential time travel film. Back To The Future is about how our choices shape us, how we can be the masters of our own destinies, and how the way we live our lives ripples out to those around us. Marty McFly's haphazard butterfly effects are played for laughs (Twin Pines Mall becomes Lone Pine Mall after he crashes into a tree in the DeLorean) as well as being the heart, soul and plot of the film. He transforms his mother and father from alcoholic and dweeb respectively to white-picket-fence capitalist/Reaganomic success story, and turns his dad's bully into a helpful servant. It's ultimate wish fulfilment - we wish our lives worked out how we wanted, so what if we had a second chance to make that happen? It's the core of almost every time travel movie, and few do it better than Back To The Future.
Perhaps the most fascinating character in all this is Marty's mum Lorraine (Thompson). She is revealed as a far more complex person than her son (or we the audience) suspected. As a teen, she lusts, she breaks rules, she falls in love with the wrong person (her son!). Lorraine figuring out her destiny becomes a key tenet of the film - it's basically the driving narrative that everything else fits around. Marty's arc is even defined by Lorraine - by film's end he understands his parents and everything they went through a lot better, which is essentially his biggest personal growth in the film.
And then there's Rick and Morty, sorry, Doc and Marty. Fox and Lloyd's pairing is inspired, as is Zemeckis' direction of their performances. There are moments of subtlety, but the cartoonish air Fox and Lloyd bring at Zemeckis' urging really sells the comedy, without feeling off. As Fox explained in that aforementioned "making of" book I bought aged 11, "(Zemeckis) has, at times, asked me to do enormously exaggerated moves and facial contortions that go against every instinct I have as an actor".
But the results speak for themselves. Lloyd and Fox deliver fantastic comedic performances that have defined their careers.
And despite Zemeckis having Forrest Gump, Who Framed Roger Rabbit?, Death Becomes Her and Romancing The Stone next to his name, this is greatest film.
While it's hard to pinpoint films influenced by Back To The Future, its legacy and importance is evident. In 2007, the United States Library of Congress added it to the National Film Registry, and it appears regularly on greatest-of-all-time film lists, especially those voted for by the public. And at the time of writing, it was still in the 75 top grossing films of all time when adjusted for inflation, and #101 in my totally scientific and completely infallible mega-list of the greatest films of all time.
While it sucks to think we live 10 years beyond the future Doc and Marty visited in the under-appreciated Back To The Future II, at least it's good to know that 40 years of from their first outing, Back To The Future remains a timeless classic.
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