Top Five Movies about Quests

Disclaimer: All Lord of the Rings and Indiana Jones movies were eliminated from the running to avert obviousness.

5. Aguirre: The Wrath of God

I watched this in Film Club in high school and hated it.  And I was a kid who liked art films (obviously, since I was in Film Club).  When I watched it again recently, though, I adored it.  Klaus Kinski is a sackful of crazy in a conquistador suit.  The Amazon is the Amazon, and the rain forest is filled with death.  The long shots that bored me as a teen really work for me now (it probably helps that I watched a ton more Herzog and some Malick in between).  Herzog’s lingering camera emphasizes the indifference of nature (his favorite subject); the river and the jungle will just keep on going, doing what they do long after the inevitable deaths of these fools who think they’ve come to conquer.

4. The King of Kong

If I get around to making a “Top Five Documentaries of All Time” list, this film will make that one too.  I get frustrated trying to convince people how good this is, and that you don’t have to have the slightest interest in video games to appreciate it.  I mean, I imagine it’s a better film if you know what Donkey Kong is than if you don’t, but we’re talking about a game that’s permeated our culture for almost three decades.  Anyway, this is a movie about a guy who sets a goal, discovers it’s harder than he expected and there are forces working against him, and only becomes more determined as a result.  Also, the “wipe my butt” scene… wow, that’s a heady mixture of suspense and pathos right there.

3. Blood Tea and Red String

If you only see one experimental puppet film this decade, see Blood Tea and Red String.  Christiane Cegavske spent thirteen years making this wordless saga about the Creatures Who Dwell Under the Oak and their journey to retrieve a beautiful doll from the incredibly creepy aristocratic White Mice.  Along the way they encounter carnivorous hallucinogenic plants, a frog shaman, and a spider with head of a woman.  This isn’t so much a fairy tale as a dream that has borrowed a fairy tale’s shape.  The world feels fully realized, despite the utter lack of explanation for anything within it.  With this film alone, Cegavske became my favorite underground animator working today, and I really hope she releases her second feature before I’m middle aged.

2. The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou

“Now if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to go on an overnight drunk, and in 10 days I’m going to set out to find the shark that ate my friend and destroy it.”  And thus the aging adventurer sets out, like King Beowulf to slay the dragon.  He was barely competent to begin with, and time hasn’t been kind.  He spends his days drinking, smoking weed, and driving away everyone who wants to help him.  But he really, really wants to find that giant shark that ate Esteban, if only because he can’t come up with anything else to do.  Bill Murray, under the direction of his biggest fan, Wes Anderson, creates a beautiful portrait of a man past his prime.  Like Beowulf, he’s a larger than life hero in a fantastical world full of grand adventure and man-eating creatures.  Unlike the King of the Geats, Zissou (like most of us in the real world) is defined by his flaws as much as (perhaps more than) his strengths.

1. Planes, Trains, and Automobiles

I meant to write about this film back when John Hughes died, as I think it’s his most underrated work as a director.  Steve Martin and John Candy are a comic duo in the classical mold, and it’s kind of a shame they didn’t make any more buddy films together.  They’re both actors that it’s become easy to dismiss, but here they’re both at their best, and their best turns out to be pretty amazing.  Martin is a bundle of anger, tension, and judgment in a well cut suit and expensive overcoat.  Candy is his opposite: as obnoxious as he is kind, dressed in the bulky winter clothes of the uncultured rube.  The nighttime interstate scene ought to be taught in school (and will be one day, if I have anything to say about it).  The ending is maybe a little too heartwarming, but surely a film this funny can be forgiven some schmaltz in the last five minutes.