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'100 Cheers' list: reality or escape from reality?

By STEVE PERSALL
Published December 9, 2005

The American Film Institute has another three-hour regurgitation of movie clips planned for television broadcast in June 2006. This one is titled AFI's 100 Years, 100 Cheers, and the ballot arrived a few days ago.

100 Cheers sounds like a Toastmasters handbook. However, this ninth edition will spotlight movies that make us leave the theater feeling better about the world and our chances to make differences in it. The AFI believes we need a pep talk more than ever, or at least any time since their redundant lists began in 1998.

"We now live in the shadow of September 11, 2001," wrote AFI director and CEO Jean Picker Firstenberg in a cover letter. "We are a country at war. And hurricanes Katrina, Rita and Wilma have devastated our Gulf Coast and Florida, further emphasizing the fragility of all that we tend to take for granted."

By celebrating escapism, the 100 Years, 100 Cheers list will reflect what matters to Americans, both through the films included and those omitted by voters. The results will be revealed as mid-term election campaigns start heating up. They will be an American values barometer politicians, or those trying to defeat them, can use.

The prime talking points of every election since the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks - religion, patriotism and military might - are very much in evidence.

The usual suspects have been rounded up as nominees: Casablanca, The Wizard of Oz and Gone With the Wind, almost anything starring Henry Fonda or Tom Hanks (the leaders with eight films each on the ballot), or directed by Steven Spielberg or Frank Capra (six nominees each). We'll see many of the same clips shown during previous AFI programs on heroes, thrills, quotes, laughs and songs, which duplicated much of the only AFI list that mattered, the inaugural 100 Years, 100 Movies.

Those previous lists were pure nostalgia. 100 Years, 100 Cheers looks forward by looking back, hinting at national opinion about the war in Iraq, confidence in our leaders and the social impact of Christian conservatism. The voting deadline is Dec. 18, but the choices will be spun one way or another on talk shows and op-ed pages six months from now.

As surveys go, the list of AFI voters is an interesting sample, nearly 2,000 people nationwide. Voters are mostly movie industry professionals, but not all working in Hollywood or New York, so don't assume a bicoastal liberal slant. Many voters are theater owners, and I'll attest after years of covering their ShoWest convention that exhibitors generally operate by heartland standards countering any show-biz liberalism.

Assuming that voting balance, the list will be a referendum of sorts on several hot topics, notably the rising influence of Christian values in politics.

No less than 16 nominees are films steeped in Christian values, from Bing Crosby and Audrey Hepburn playing good Catholics to Mel Gibson's The Passion of the Christ. The latter selection is odd, since rules dictate only English-language films are eligible. Gibson's actors spoke only Aramaic, Latin and Hebrew. That obvious bending of the rules is evidence of AFI's concessions to the spiritual mood of U.S. culture.

Yet there are other clues. Mediocre nominees such as John Huston's The Bible, The Robe and Godspell shouldn't be considered in the same league as Schindler's List or even Rocky when it comes to lifting the human spirit. Half of the religion-themed nominees detail the crucifixion of Jesus of Nazareth while none specifically deal with other religions. The AFI nomination board is so intent on preaching to the Christian choir that two versions each of Ben-Hur and King of Kings are nominated.

Imagine the public reaction if none of those films makes the final cut. Christian conservatives would brand it another example of Hollywood being out of touch with their ideals. Proponents of separating church and state would call it public support. The spins would be reversed if all 16 spiritual films made the top 100. Neither landslide is likely.

But even partial representation would be intriguing. Voters can choose their favorite brand of movie Christianity, from the brutality of Gibson's film to the kinder, gentler style of The Greatest Story Ever Told and the modernized Jesus Christ Superstar. Or maybe the less biblical inclinations of Going My Way and The Nun's Story are preferred. The scenarios are varied and intriguing.

And that's before believers in other religions or even atheists join the next morning's water cooler debates.

The potential for stirring topical opinion continues with a fairly equal share of nominees glorifying America at war and antiwar movies.

Comparisons between Vietnam and Iraq may bolster support for movies such as Born on the Fourth of July, Coming Home, Forrest Gump and Good Morning, Vietnam. Or we might see a list including gung-ho dramas such as Sands of Iwo Jima, The Longest Day and Destination Tokyo, recalling a more popular U.S. war.

Even the tragic resignation to patriotic duty expressed by Saving Private Ryan and The Best Years of Our Lives echoes today with a nation divided on Iraq. But that's rebutted by the unabashed flag-waving of Yankee Doodle Dandy, Apollo 13 and Mr. Smith Goes to Washington.

Whichever way the AFI list leans on wartime cinema, both supporters and opponents of U.S. military involvement overseas will have something to talk about.

Finally there's an issue of trust in political leadership suggested by the ballot. President Bush's currently low approval rating in polls would certainly make All the President's Men a provocative choice, as would The American President and its Clintonesque hero. The Dust Bowl desolation of The Grapes of Wrath means more after the hurricane devastation and inadequate government response.

The only glowing representations of U.S. presidents on the list are two Abraham Lincoln biographies and Sunrise at Campobello, a profile of Franklin Roosevelt. You might also count PT-109, covering the Navy exploits of John Kennedy. Has it been that long since the election of a president deserving a movie?

Of course, the survey results may dodge all these ideological land mines and simply reinforce the notion that Americans view movies as a distraction from bitter realities. It's more likely that Ferris Bueller's Day Off and Babe will make the list than Amistad, American History X and Malcolm X.

Escapism certainly has a place in entertainment, but so does illumination of sticky issues and divisiveness. The AFI list has a chance to prove that. Movies have shown us the worst of ourselves but also how we rise above it, even though the process isn't always fun. That's also something to cheer about.

- Steve Persall can be reached at 727 893-8365 or persall@sptimes.com

[Last modified December 8, 2005, 08:38:03]