So it looks pretty even, and note that none of them is bad. Three of the films were at least as good as I remembered, and three of them were not. Overall, more stars were lost than gained (narrowly), so we might possibly say that on the whole, the films aren't as good as they were, but it's still pretty close.
Can we use these six films to chart definite trends in the films of the Eighties? Well, they were all highly-regarded in their time. All but Prick Up Your Ears were nominated for at least one Oscar (the screenplay for Witness actually won, which astounds me). So it might not be a bad cross-section, although I don't know that anyone would say this list represents the best of the decade. Only one of these films made my personal Eighties top 25, and I doubt the others would make anyone else's lists, either. But, let's use them anyway and see what we can say.
Are there common threads here? Well, let's start by looking at the music. The Elephant Man had the only good original score. Of course the music in Amadeus was brilliant; it would have to be, but that music wasn't original to the film, obviously. Diner relied mostly on diagetic music (I've only just learned the word “diagetic,” or music that is actually played by characters or devices during a scene, and am pleased to get to use it), and because it was jazz and good early rock & roll, it works. Prick Up Your Ears also relied on diagetic music, but did have a score, which although rarely present was not very good. Educating Rita had a terrible score, and Witness was even worse, so we're one-for-six on good original music. That sort of reflects what I remembered of the Eighties, actually. Soundtracks were relied upon more heavily than scores, but when original music was used it seems like everybody took to heart the good work Vangelis did on Chariots of Fire (a score which, by the way, does still hold up) and tried to imitate it, and did so poorly. The Eighties was the era of crappy synthesizer scores. These films provide evidence of that.
Good writing, though. Diner, Educating Rita, Amadeus, and Prick Up Your Ears all had excellent scripts, and in the case of Rita I would go so far as to call it brilliant. The Elephant Man was solid, if a bit heavy-handed, and I've already complained at some length about the TV drama-quality script for Witness, but collectively these films represent some brilliant screenwriting. I always call the Eighties the “Dumb Fun Decade,” but each of these movies has intelligence and emotional depth that belies that (even Witness, though that's due as much to performances as to what's actually being said).
Cinematography is a bit of a problem. The Elephant Man and Amadeus are both gorgeous, and Prick Up Your Ears has some interesting, moody photography, but the other three just didn't look that good. None of them are ugly, but visually they don't offer much. I'm beginning to suspect, though, that this might be due in part to crappy DVD transfers. Those films aren't even available on blu-ray, and the DVDs are from that first wave of DVDs, where the transfers were often a bit spotty, especially for films that didn't have huge followings. I kind of feel like I can't judge their visual style too harshly until they get a blu-ray release, or I get hold of a time machine and can go watch them in theaters. So I'm retracting some of the mean things I said about how Educating Rita looks. Not all of it, though.
The acting was quite solid. The leads in every film were at least very good, and many were brilliant. The supporting cast in Educating Rita wasn't very strong, and in Witness the supporting cast wasn't good mostly because they were given nothing to do. There were no bad performances in Amadeus, but I do think that a few actors might have been miscast and sort of overcame it. In The Elephant Man and Prick Up Your Ears the supporting casts were very strong, and in Diner nearly every role was played perfectly. If I was giving out an ensemble-cast Oscar (which the Academy really needs to institute) for the Eighties it would definitely go to Diner.
And finally, direction. I'd say the class job of the bunch was done by Milos Forman in Amadeus (hardly controversial, since he won the Oscar), and Stephen Frears did an excellent job with Prick Up Your Ears, as well. A lot of credit has to go to Barry Levinson for getting strong performances out of unknown actors and holding together a story that isn't really a story in Diner, and since that was his debut it's even more impressive. While sometimes David Lynch drags The Elephant Man off into weird places, and I complained about this at some length already, he's still David Lynch, and I love him. I can't say I love the work done by Lewis Gilbert and Peter Weir, but they weren't actually bad, just maybe a bit uninspired.
So if we take these six films as a valid cross-section of the Eighties, the typical movie of the decade had very strong writing and great performances by its lead actors, decent supporting work that occasionally shined, good-but-not-great direction, spotty cinematography (or at least bad DVD transfers) and appalling original music. Does that sound like the Eighties you remember? Discuss.
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