Taking Off

As I slowly consume the filmography of director Milos Forman, I am entirely convinced that he was born with a pure visual sense.  It seems like something that maybe can't be learned.  Even if his films fall short in some fashion, his ability to create true cinema is always in evidence.  I can nitpick HAIR and MAN ON THE MOON in more than one sentence, but both films possess that hard to explain quality that makes a movie feel like a movie.  Not something created for television, a distinction that has all but disappeared in these times.

With DP Miroslav Ondricek, Forman creates the wildly cinematic 1971 feature TAKING OFF, which may well be my favorite in his filmography so far.   The Czech director's first American production is probably the most astute take on the generation gap of its era. The hippies and their parents, Establishment types who've settled into middle class catatonia.  But despite the milieu of a very specific time,  the thoughts and developments of those thoughts are probably timeless.  A quartet of screenwriters, which in addition to Forman includes John Guare, have beautifully satirized and even embraced two cultures baffled with each other.  But in its brilliance, has also considered role reversal.

Larry and Lynn Tyne (Buck Henry and Lynn Carlin) have a daughter named Jeannie (Linnea Heacock).  When she doesn't return one evening, their numb idyll is shaken.  Well, mostly for Lynn.  But as any good husband/placator would do, Larry sets out to find her.  The audience knows she is at an audition, from which she returns later that night. But then she leaves again, perhaps after observing her father and his friend Tony (Tony Harvey) coming home drunk after their fruitless search. 

As TAKING OFF progresses, the Tynes will meet The Lockstons (Audra Lindley and Paul Benedict), whose daughter has also split.  They are part of a self help group called The Society For Parents of Fugitive Children (SPFC).  Forman quickly establishes the joke, but never milks it for cheap or dark satire.  Instead, a dinner turns into a session in which a shaggy headed guy named Vincent Schiavelli (played by Vincent Schiavelli, who would become a Forman regular) teaches the group of parents how to properly smoke marijuana.  A carefully orchestrated, yet natural and loose sequence that is some kind of classic on its own.  If the film's themes are summated in one scene, this is it.

The freeform spirit of improvisation is also nicely captured when the Tynes and Lockston play a game of strip poker.  After they puffed the weed, of course.  Here again, what could have been a heavy handed bit of embarrassment is rather airy and hilarious. Fans of '70s sitcoms will really get a kick out of seeing Lindley and Benedict, as well as Georgia Engel as Lynn's friend Margot, who nearly steals the early part of the movie.

Interspersed throughout the movie are several singers at the audition Jeannie attends.  Among them are an uncredited Carly Simon and Kathy Bates (listed onscreen as "Bobo").  Jessica Harper also appears, as do Ike and Tina Turner in a concert scene.  These punctuations are energetic, uncomfortable, funny, and sad.  And wonderfully cinematic.