In Praise of Ishtar

The Harvard Film Archive is hosting an Elaine May retrospective this weekend, and hosting Elaine May herself. The high point of this - though any May film is a high point - is Ishtar, a pristine print, a packed house, and May herself. The others have played a couple times through the years - I've seen them in a cinema over the years - but not Ishtar. It's hard enough to find it on any medium - it was sheer bliss to see it as it should be seen.

I suppose if I'm going to write about Ishtar, I have to write about my history of seeing Ishtar. When it came out, I read the reviews, all of them - that I can remember - atrocious - hung up on the budget, the miscast stars, the awkward mix of political satire and silly adventure tale, and believed them. Over the years, it turned up on TV, and I'd see bits of it - and finally saw the whole thing sometime in the early 90s. (1993, according to the notes I found.) I did not like it. I said the bad reputation was deserved. I thought it had some cute ideas, but they weren't executed well, and whenever it started to get clever, something came along and swallowed it up. I wished it was more like the Marx Brothers - the characters in on the joke. (Even if they were morons.) I suppose the cluelessness of the leads - and the consistency of their cluelessness - was a turn off.

And then? it kept coming on TV, here and there, over the years - I'd see bits of it here and there - and over time, somehow, something changed. I guess, in the simplest terms, it would come on, usually toward the end - and I would stick with it until I was bored - and I found that I didn't get bored. I started forming a new idea of it. It was amusing - crude looking, I would think, awkward and unconvincing, but funny, and sweet, in an odd way. I would watch it when it turned up, and found myself enjoying it, certain scenes - the shootout in the desert; Charles Grodin's line readings; and the songs, which in fact I'd always thought were hilarious. And then? over the years, I saw the other Elaine May films, got a better idea of what she was doing. I saw Cassavetes films, I even saw Luc Moullet films, I started noticing resemblance to Monty Python films - I started to get a context for what was happening in Ishtar, and thought I might really like it if I could see it again.

And when I did see it, a year or so ago, when it turned up streaming on Netflix, I got it - I loved it. The pieces came together - I enjoyed it without reservation. And now - seeing it on the big screen, packed house, Elaine May in attendance, a May and Nichols skit played before the main attraction - it really comes into its own. First - seen that way, it really looks lovely. Seeing it on various TV channels through the years did it no favors - it's a very handsome film, with some superb moments. I will say - for the most part it is a fairly workmanlike film - it's not showy, not too visually clever, just a solid handsome film with 2 or 3 bravura moments (the chase through the marketplace, shot and choreographed in two spaces, roofs and streets, over a couple long takes, is just wonderful). But it doesn't need to do much more - in fact, it benefits from the intimacy of its style. It's a very funny film - but the funniest moments aren't so much in the one liners, the gags, as in the playing of the gags, the delivery of the lines. It's in the timing, in the tone of voice, in the actors movements and faces - it's the way Grodin says, "We did not shoot at two Americans in the desert! We did not!" that slays me.... or the whole scene of Grodin and Hoffman talking politics in a restaurant, with three CIA waiters - Grodin's reactions to Hoffman's question about whether Qaddafi was near Morocco... the joke is a good one (Hoffman not knowing who, or what, Qaddafi is, let alone where Librya is) - but the execution of the joke makes it priceless.

And that's what I missed, more than anything else, back in 1993. I was looking for inside jokes and clever dialogue and missed the joy everyone in the film (from May down through all the performers) takes in the execution of its jokes, in the details, in the pauses and delays built into everything. It's a film about clueless Americans, screwing things up overseas, about ignorance and confusion - and the gags, as much as the plot, are built around cluelessness, misunderstanding - around nothing being what it seems, around people talking past one another, about being wrong about everything. Signs and wonders, always misunderstood - simple conversations misunderstood. No one quite sure when other people are talking in code - like Grodin telling Hoffman to move the camel, Hoffman trying to figure out what this means, what will this signal to whoever Grodin is sending signs to - when in fact the beast is on his foot... I don't know if I can explain this - I mean, if I can articulate the reasons I find this film so delightful, more enjoyable every time I come across it. You can't quote it, exactly - you can't quote it on a blog, definitely - the effect of most of the jokes comes in the line readings, or in the exact situation in the film. You can't quote a pause... The situations are funny, but they are, after all, pretty standard issue adventure spoof situations - it's in the ways they are played, the way the oddball readings of oddball lines create the gentle surrealism the film gets.

And it's in things like the way Warren Beatty walks. It's a big meta-joke that he's a schmuck with the ladies and Hoffman isn't - but what sells the joke is how well he plays it - the way he walks down the street, big and awkward, next to Hoffman's (not quite right, but not quite wrong) hipster slither... He makes himself seem more than a little ridiculous - that takes work, when you are Warren Beatty, especially when you are tasked with making a joke out of being Warren Beatty and being a little ridiculous - but he does. I could watch him all day. I could watch Hoffman or Grodin all day - though I would have to hear them, too.

The problem, of course, is that it ain't easy to see this film. It's not streaming on Netflix anymore - it's never circulated on DVD, not in the time I've looked for it. (There's a Region 2 DVD apparently - that's about all.) It doesn't turn up on TV anymore - it doesn't play theaters - it's still invisible. That's a shame. And I don't quite know how it can change - without demand, it won't become available; if it's not available to be seen, there won't be any demand. It's possible, I suppose, for fans to ballyhoo it - but I don't think talk can do it - and it's not a great quote movie, it's funniest in the delivery and in the situations, the characters - and even if there were ways to find images of it, post those - they don't quite show what makes the film so good. It's a performers' movie, and needs to be seen. It played last night along with a short film, made from Nichols and May's Bach to Bach - not that clip, which is just from the record - this film, made by Paul Leaf. It helps - it's fascinating how much of the aesthetic of their fifties skits is still operating in Ishtar. From the start (that's 1958, I think), their comedy worked as much in the timing, the pauses, the interplay of voices, the emphases, and the characters, and stories coming out of the characters, as in the jokes and lines. A like - "It's so hard to acknowledge the fact that aggressiveness need not be hostile." - is funny enough on its own - but as May says it, it's magnificent... And the joy of a line like this - "I know exactly what you mean! Exactly what you mean!" - is completely in Nichol's delivery. And that carries through to the film - whatever the merits of the story, script, and so on (and don't get me wrong - there's a lot to like there), the real majesty of the film comes in the execution. You need to see it.