50 years in 10 movies

Cafe Society
1

My mind was wandering the other day, as it often does, and stumbled across an intriguing puzzle. Just suppose…a group of 20 or so Americans fell into suspended animation in 1955. They awaken in 2005, and need to be brought up to speed on all of the changes in society in the last 50 years. But…for some bizarre reason, they could only be shown movies, and you could only show 10 of them. No documentaries, no History Channel specials.

What 10 movies would you choose that give the coma-nauts the most comprehensive picture of the time they lost, and would get them ready to face 21st Century America?

2

What a great topic!

Don’t ask me to justify any of these – I just think they’re progressive enough to get someone out of the 50’s mindset.

The Graduate
Thelma and Louise
Crash
Wall Street (or is that anachronistic already?)
The Killing Fields
Dr. Strangelove
Pulp Fiction

3

Back to the Future will take care of the first 30.

4

Assuming all titles would have to be post 1955:

Cronenburg’s Crash
Imamura’s Black Rain
Robbins’s Bob Roberts
Robbins’s Dead Man Walking
Lumet’s Network
Von Trier’s Zentropa
Kazan’s A Face in the Crowd
Pakula’s All the President’s Men
Cox’s Sid and Nancy
Ashby’s Being There

That’s a first-draft list; I may think of better titles.

5

A Hard Day’s Night (Something to cover the emergence of youth culture in the 60’s. I wanted Woodstock, but you said no documentaries.)

The Right Stuff (The space race.)

Dr. Strangelove (The Cold War, and dissatisfaction and fear of it.)

All the President’s Men (The origin of mistrust of political figures.)

Saturday Night Fever (70’s culture, in a movie with a lot more going for it.)

Blade Runner (Pessimism about the future, environmental worries, etc. But only if I can discuss with them why I chose it.)

Wall Street (Businessmen as heroes in the 90’s.)

Toy Story (A well-crafted, old-fashioned story in a style that will blow them away.)

And I’ll come back with two more later. I still need something from the 80’s, and something current.

6

Wall Street was 1987.

7

I just looked it up. 1987.

God, I’m old.

8

Jeez, this place is brutal. You’d think I could get at least five minutes to catch my own mistake.

Keeping me on my toes, Ino; thanks.

9

My own list so far:

All The President’s Men - The downfall of a President
The Boys In Company “C” - Vietnam
Mississippi Burning - 60’s race problems
The Third Man - Cold War Europe
Dr. Strangelove - nuclear threat
Do The Right Thing - post-60’s race relations

Still need a few more.

10

Oh poop. Hamster’s ate my first post, and when I reconstructed it I forgot Do the Right Thing. Absolutely essential.

11

Night of the Living Dead (1968)
Dawn of the Dead (1978)
The Return of the Living Dead (1985)
Day of the Dead (1985)
Return of the Living Dead Part II (1988)
Night of the Living Dead (1990)
Return of the Living Dead 3 (1993)
Shaun of the Dead (2004)
Dawn of the Dead (2004)
Land of the Dead (2005)

Only I’m going to tell him things got weird back in the sixties and these are all documentaries.

12

The first episode of Star Wars has to be on the list somewhere.

13

Forrest Gump could bring them from 1955 to 1995 all by itself. Leaving room for nine more movies to fit the remaining ten years. And you could probably manage it with three.

Give them Lord of the Rings and the first Star Wars trilogy. Let 'em have some fun.

14

Night of the Living Dead (Romero)
2001: A Space Odyssey
Annie Hall
Apocalypse Now
War Games
Dances With Wolves
Romeo + Juliet (Luhrmann)
Jerry Maguire
Three Kings
War of the Worlds(Spielberg)
I tended away from trying to sneak history lessons in to the movies and more toward trying to show how we got where we are today. Not that I necessarily picked the best movies for that. I just think that something like Forrest Gump is too piecemeal for someone to get much out of it. It’s too obviously designed for people who experienced those things, and I think our chrononauts would be confused.

(Not to pick on you, kaylasdad99; when I was writing this no one had posted that movie yet).

15

This is what I’d show and the order I’d show them. I’ve also divided them into sections:

HISTORY
Thirteen Days - Goes into detail about the Cuban Missle Crisis. This will have happened only a few years after their “hibernation” so many of the key figures (Kennedy, Castro) will be familiar. Also helps set the stage for the Cold War.

Forrest Gump - Covers most of the other major political events post-CBC. Mentions Kennedy’s assassination, Vietnam, Woodstock & rock ‘n’ roll, the Black Panthers, Watergate & China.

Goodbye Lenin! - Like our subjects, the protagonist is forced to adjust to the culture shock of a changed world (resulting from a longterm coma)–in this case, the fall of Communism.

FINANCE
Gung Ho - Discusses the ascendancy of Japan in the global market and the importance of American unions.

Wall Street - Discusses the stock market boom, the rise of affluence and conspicuous consumption, and the economic corruption that sometimes resulted.

CULTURAL
Do the Right Thing - Contemporizes racial issues in America, while also referring to King and the Civil Rights era. Also introduces rap, and the liberalization of content in media (language, nudity).

Philadelphia - Hanks will already be a sympathetic figure from Gump, this will bring up the advancement of gay rights in America, our evolving notions of prejudice, and AIDS.

My Son the Fanatic - Explores the increased diversification of the west while also addressing the increase in Islamic fundamentalism.

TECHNOLOGY
Space Cowboys - Bridges the gap between the early test flights through the moon landings, Skylab and up to the Space Shuttle.

The Matrix - Actually does a pretty good job of discussing the nature of computers, artificial intelligence, and virtual reality. Also illustrates how film as a medium has advanced in the realm of special effects.

16

Man, this stuff is subjective! I would only show ***Gump ***before ***Philadephia ***in order to *sabotage *Hanks’s audience sympathy.

17

Actually, he’d probably be surprised to see Castro and Kennedy considered major figures so soon after his era. In 1955, Castro was living in exile in Mexico and Kennedy was a first term Senator.

18

Don’t worry about it; I was only joking in the first place. To be honest, I don’t see enough first-run movies to intelligently contribute to this discussion.

19

Man, what a fascinating idea for a thread! Too bad most of the movies I’d pick have already been mentioned.

Forrest Gump. Not my favorite movie, but, piecemeal as it is, it will give our returnees some idea of what’s happened.

Platoon. Probably the best movie to show about the Vietnam war, changing attitudes about the military, the depiction of violence in contemporary culture, increased pessimism about the U.S.'s role in the world, etc.

Wall Street. Two Oliver Stone movies, and I don’t even like the guy! (I might even consider showing him JFK, but only if we could give him a lot of material pointing out the BS nature of the movie’s theories, which we aren’t allowed to do by the OP’s rules.) This one’s a good intro to the modern American business ethic, and the “greed is good” ethic of Trump etc.

Either Malcolm X or Mississippi Burning. If anyone can think of a better movie about the Civil rights era I’d be all for it.

Hair. Hippies and silly musicals are two things they should know about.

American Pie. They’d better be prepared for frank, vulgar discussions about sex and rampant cursing.

Philadelphia Aids, and the more public presence of homosexuality, and the debates this openness engenders. Again, there may be a better movie than this

Do the Right Thing A look at contemporary race relations.

Three Kings America in the middle east, the media and war, Iraq.

The Net Yes this was a horrible, horrible movie. But it does give some warped idea for the centrality of computers in everyday life, and the diminishing of privacy. If anyone can think of a better movie for this, I’ll cheerfully exchange this. The Matrix is too fantastic for this purpose, IMO.

20

I think 2001:A Space Odyssey would fit in there nicely somewhere.
Just not sure where.