“What’s wrong with being bizarre? We’re all pretty bizarre. Some of us are just better at hiding it.”
I love a film that makes you think. Films that are all spectacle, those are a blast to watch, but when the movie ends the experience is over. Whereas films that make you think, they might not be that entertaining on the first viewing, but they linger in the mind long after the credits roll.
The Breakfast Club is one of the latter type. It’s a slow-paced film with nuances that say more than the actual dialogue. It had a rating of R upon release, which is unusual when you consider there’s only a mild amount of offensive language, but makes sense when you realise that anyone younger than that likely wouldn’t be interested in the material. And yet it’s a movie about high school kids… Try figuring that one out.
The premise is simple: five teenagers with seemingly nothing in common find themselves stuck in Saturday detention together. Frankly, I’m surprised they even showed up. Saturday detention – who goes to that stuff? Surely not the kinds of people who get a Saturday detention in the first place. I mean, just think for a moment how preposterous that is at face value: we’re so often told that life is precious, that we should prize every moment we have and live today as if it were our last – yet these high school kids are expected to attend a nine-hour Saturday detention with the express purpose of sitting around doing nothing for the day. Tough love, that. Though from what we learn about them later, Saturday detention might be the better place for them after all.
…But perhaps not with Richard Vernon as their supervisor – a man who is singularly the worst teacher I’ve ever seen. Not for his ability, for we see no evidence of that, but for his attitude. His motivation for becoming a teacher in the first place was because he thought it’d be fun to get lots of holidays, so it’s no surprise that 22 years down the line he’s as grouchy as a deprived cookie monster and has no respect for the kids he’s supposed to be inspiring.
From there, the day plays out like some sort of weird social experiment. The five teens represent as diverse a group as you might find at high school – as described in the film’s opening: a brain, an athlete, a princess, a basket case, and a criminal. (“Basket case” was a term I’m unfamiliar with, but it apparently means a person regarded as useless.)
It starts out as you might expect: first, nothing. Then a bit of bickering. Then some more bickering, with some lewd remarks thrown in for good measure. But over the course of the day the social barriers are broken down and they start to see that they all have the same struggles. I won’t spoil the rest of the film, but suffice to say, the writer/director does a great job of building tension and intrigue as you come closer to finding out the answer to the big question: how did each of them get their detention? It’s once they reveal why they did what they did that they realise they are not so different. (Try using “they” more than five times in as short a sentence, I dare you.)
But it’s not all serious. There’s humour here, too, and lots of it. Bender, or “the criminal,” reminds me of so many people when he cheekily points out the health and safety regulations in his favour. “But what if there’s a fire? I think violating fire codes and endangering the lives of children would be unwise at this juncture in your career, sir.” And Allison… well, Allison herself is an endless source of amusement.
What’s really amazing though is the contrast between now and when the film was made. The movie came out 30 years ago. Now, musical tastes have changed, technology has changed, and fashion has changed (not that I’d know), but the stereotypes and social cliques are as accurate as ever. That tells us something about the issues the five teens struggle with – that those issues are also present in the lives of today’s kids. Which, really, is self-evident from how anyone watching this movie could relate to one or more of the students.
If that doesn’t make it a classic, I don’t know what does. In fact, I hear it had a re-screening in hundreds of theatres this year, so clearly someone else considers it a classic too. Plus, it has quotes of pure gold like this:
“Did you know without trigonometry, there’d be no engineering?”
“Without lamps, there’d be no light.”
And this:
“Speak for yourself.”
“Do you think I’d speak for you? I don’t even know your language.”
And then there are the GIFs this movie’s provided…
Alright, alright, I’m two weeks overdue with this post. I’ve been on holiday. Sue me. Uni semester’s starting up again now, and it’s usually while commuting that I write most of this stuff, so ironically the frequency of new posts might pick up a bit. Might. I’m not going to make any promises. So, until the next time, stay frosty…
(Frosty, get it? Like ice.)
Observations 