Taking Off (18) (This review on FilmJuice.com)
Whether it’s exploring Peter Jackson’s gore fuelled horror films, or Stanley Kubrick’s rarely seen Fear and Desire, there is a certain fascination to be found in discovering how future masters of their craft honed their cinematic vocabularies in the early days of their careers.
Taking Off, the 1971 feature debut for the U.S. market by Czech-American director Milos Forman, is an almost forgotten gem and a must see for any fan of his later work, such as the bonafide masterpieces One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest and Amadeus.
Jeannie Tyne is a shy teenager who runs away from home to take part in an audition with a popular anti-establishment band. Naturally her parents Larry and Lynn are sick with worry, and at a loss as to how to begin searching for their special only child. But as time passes the empty hole that Jeannie leaves in their lives begins to give way to a strange sense of rediscovered freedom.
Opening with a sequence showing countless auditioning young girls singing their hearts out, Forman makes brilliant use of music and unorthodox editing. The auditions continue to be intercut throughout the film, acting as a kind of Greek chorus complimenting and enriching the unfolding plot.
Larry, memorably played by Buck Henry, soon discovers a whole subculture of parents searching for their lost teens. Together with his wife he joins the so called ‘Society for Parents of Fugitive Children’, and they find themselves at such a large and prestigious meeting of this group that it feels like an awards dinner. The many parents there are willing to try anything in an attempt to understand the youth of the day, culminating in an outrageous but hilarious drug taking experiment.
Taking Off entertainingly studies the growing divide between an ageing and conservative generation and their offspring, young people growing more and more disenchanted with the free world that was won for them in World War Two.
Interestingly there is a young actress who is on screen for no longer than a minute or so, yet she sings a song so haunting and with such obvious talent that it might be the most lasting memory the film leaves with you. It’s the brilliant Kathy Bates, making her feature film debut as one of Jeannie’s musical peers.
Although a product of a bygone era Taking off can still speak to us in 2011, what with every successive generation of parents perpetually lamenting over ‘kids today’. Using a blend of edgy themes and absurdist comedy Forman instantly made his mark on American cinema, and given the stone cold classics which were to follow it’s something to celebrate that he was given that chance.
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