Rumble Fish

We're going to get a lot of complaints about this title at the store, I can just feel it. Not because it's a bad movie. Quite the contrary - it's an excellent movie, a highly underrated addition to Francis Ford Coppola's already stellar filmography. But because the movie itself is in black and white, yet all the stills from the film on the box are colorized. Even the cover of the box is colorized!

Why on Earth would they do this? One of the most prominent, memorable features of Rumble Fish is the stark black and white cinematography by Stephen Burum (best known for his collaborations with Brian De Palma, like Body Double and The Untouchables). Coppola and Burum employ some low-key special effects - like time lapse photography and even some splashes of color with metaphorical significance - but it's the bleak, stark visual sense of the film that sticks with you after it's over. It's a movie filled with people, noise and chatter that's extremely empty, a movie filled with plot and conflict that's somehow eerily still.



Like the heroes of all great coming-of-age films, it's kind of hard to pinpoint exactly what's wrong with Rusty James (Matt Dillon), the wannabe gang leader at the heart of Rumble Fish. He's affected with a strong sense of ennui, of nostalgia for a time he never knew, when vicious bands of young people ruled the streets with an iron fist. But even in his delusions of grandeur, when he imagines himself and his tough-talking friends as experts in organized crime, can he match up to his idol and older brother, The Motorcycle Boy (Mickey Rourke).

The very first image in the film is some graffitti that alerts us, "The Motorcycle Boy Reigns," and he, in fact, does. He's the legendary street kid who grew up and left town, essentially chased out by law enforcement and a judgemental society. As inhabited by Rourke in one of his best performances, The Boy regrets a lifetime wasted on violence and criminality, but can't find any other life for himself.

Though the dialogue, as lean and uncompromising as Burum's imagery, never gives us adequate background, we gather Motorcycle Boy committed some particularly nasty crime and fled, hopefully to make something of himself somewhere far away. His return, with nothing but his bike and stories of time spent with his estranged mother in California, signifies something of a defeat - he left, but only so he could come back. He's a drifter without the stamina or will to continue drifting.

We follow Rusty and Motorcycle Boy as they navigate a feud with a rival gang, and Rusty and he navigates a troubled relationship with a neighborhood girl, Patty (Diane Lane). Rusty is strangely unable to commit either to a life of rumbles with other gang members or to a peaceful quiet relationship with Patty; Motorcycle Boy, on the other hand, seems unable to commit to the idea of living itself.

Coppola explores this sense of meaninglessness and despair gracefully. Though its two main characters exist in a nihilistic universe, one where their true natures foil them at every turn, the movie never turns heavy-handed or overbearing. In the hands of a guy like Lars von Trier, bleak stories about people whose depressing lives just get worse and worse seem to punish the audience, whereas Coppola finds odd beauty in even the most dire of circumstances.

In a scene where Rusty's best friend Smokey (a young Nicholas Cage) reveals his master plan to steal Patty away, a reflection in the window behind them shows clouds drifting by in time lapse photography. Though the foreground situation - the cruelty of one close friend to another - is ugly and painful, just the reflection seems to add a note of optimism. Things may be difficult right now, but the universe moves at a fantastic rate, and nothing is the same for very long.

It's a lesson these characters could stand to learn. Everyone in Rumble Fish lives inside some sort of desperate routine. In the diner operated by Benny (Tom Waits), the camera pauses continually at a clock on the wall, watching the moments tick off. Rusty lives his life like that camera - staring at the clock, aware that time is passing him by, but stunted and unready to move forward, afraid that there is nothing but a void beyond the ticking of that clock.

The only world he knows is one of gang rumbles, and if a truce holds and the rumbles stop, will there be any more need for a gang at all? And if there's no need for a gang, is there a need for a gang leader?