When I was young, in the fruitful days of VHS, my family had a ripe selection of movies as good as they were bad. One, in particular, I remember with utmost curiosity.
It was a movie that made the trip in a cardboard box with my stepmother when she moved from Pennsylvania to Atlanta in the fall of 1998. It was a movie that her daughters had recorded onto a tape when they were watching it on HBO one night.
It was John Hughes’ film “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off.” I watched it tirelessly when I was 12. Watching the tribute to John Hughes at the Academy Awards brought back the memory of that movie and the reason his films have endured with youth.
Every one of his movies, even the ones that don’t work, exist with an empathy that modern films about teenagers don’t come close to approaching. There are a few films that try and call back to Hughes’ work nostalgically, but they are lyrics without the order or the melody. Hughes understood those years of awkward teenage shyness with a clarity and vision that is unseemly.
Some of his films seem almost prophetic in the way they engage their subjects. “The Breakfast Club”, “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” and “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” are probably his three best films. The movies are vastly different, yet, like the best of Hughes, they all build characters we care about in the midst of genuine humor.
Since I was young, I have always thought “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is oddly named because it isn’t really about him, but rather the new perspective on life Bueller gives his best friend.
“Planes, Trains, and Automobiles” works the same kind of magic, and, for me, it is his best film. This movie is about men who couldn’t be more different but form a friendship and a bond in the most unlikely of circumstances.
Every Thanksgiving, give or take a few days, my oversized family sits down to watch “Planes, Trains, and Automobiles.” Each of us can quote the movie in multiple chapters, and in the moments of true emotion we each become as drawn in as the first time we saw it. Though this is a movie that is built upon emotion, it is more a film about understanding other people and how truly connecting with another person can make you realize the beauty of your own. It is equal parts Capra and Sturges.
But, Hughes will always be remembered for the way he approached the youth of America and rightly so. He understood the confusion of youth and the inevitability of being terrified of finding out who you are. In only eight films, Hughes got at something in the teenage psychology that modern day films don’t seem concerned with.
In an era of “High School Musical” and Miley Cyrus, Hughes seems almost like a saint. He cared deeply about the teenage years because he knows how important they are.
For some reason, his films aren’t really dated. Yes, they feature soundtracks and clothing that are only at home in the ‘80s, but a fifteen year old goes through the same awkward life changes regardless of the music or the clothing.
When I received news of his death on the day after my birthday, it was one of the multiple deaths of last summer that I knew would stick with me. I don’t expect these movies to go away.
I genuinely believe that they will go on as a snapshot of the ‘80s and a testament to those years he captured. He treated his subjects with dignity and respect, which in the end is the only way to talk to someone.
