Number 20

Ferris Bueller’s Day Off (1986, Directed by John Hughes)

For a few years in the 80s, a mysterious writer/director named John Hughes came out of nowhere and gave teenagers a voice. Most people think his gift was the ability to make realistic films about adolescence, but I disagree; even the most down-to-earth of them (“The Breakfast Club”) feels theatrical to me. What John did do better than anyone else was write teenagers the way they saw themselves. He captured a feeling of youth, as if he had never forgotten what it was like to be young. His movies were about the way teens saw things, which was a natural fit for the cinema, because at that age the world is big, exciting, terrifying, and fundamentally mysterious. This is the secret to a John Hughes film: they are always about the unknown, because his subjects are young enough not to be saddled by a lifetime of biased knowledge.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jIuD6YtaFxQ&feature=related (This is one of the best-edited scenes in comedy history. Watch how each element plays off of the other. “Do you have a kiss for daddy?”)

I have great respect for most of the films Hughes made, but “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is easily my favorite. Aside from simply being funnier than anything else he ever did, “Bueller” wins my heart because it is purely magical. I have never known a movie whose spirit was so full of wonder and joy. It’s hard for me to even express in words how much my soul is lifted by the film’s relentless energy and constant, unyielding excellence. And let it not be forgotten that this is not some simple comedy whose aim is only to entertain: “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” has a very genuine and thoroughly developed world-view, and makes a bold statement about the things that are important in life.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TO68zwTXFWk

The film uses a fourth-wall violation technique that I must admit I am particularly weak to. Ferris addresses the viewer as if they are his inner monologue, stepping away from the action of the scene to discuss things with us. I find this to be an incredibly absorbing tactic, especially since Matthew Broderick’s performance is so natural that I never question it for a second. We follow the titular hero’s thought process as he masterfully fakes sick to his parents and takes the aforementioned “day off.” From there, he scoops up his girlfriend and his borderline-catatonic best friend and heads into downtown Chicago for a day none of them will ever forget.

Ferris is one of the better written comic characters of his time, a fairly original blend of Falstaff mischief and Prince Hal intelligence. He forces his neurotic friend Cameron Frye (who is also faking sick but doesn’t think he’s faking), to crawl out of bed and come pick him up (Ferris doesn’t have a car…it’s a touchy subject). As if that wasn’t enough, he employs him to crank call the principal, even steals his father’s prized Ferrari. It is at this point we as the audience are allowed to ask: is Ferris Bueller the world’s biggest jerk? It would be easy to assume so, but then we have reason to sneakily suspect that Ferris has more on his mind than cutting class. Everything he, Sloan and Cameron do seems built to force his friend to man up and take chances. Ferris confides in us that he’s worried about he and his best friend’s chances of staying in touch once they graduate high school, and he bemoans the bad choices Cameron’s lack of self-respect might lead him to make down the road: “If things don’t change for him, he’s gonna marry the first girl he lays, and she’s gonna treat him like sh**, because she will have given him what he has built up in his mind as the end-all, be-all of human existence. She won’t respect him, ’cause you can’t respect somebody who kisses your a**. It just doesn’t work.”

It takes a few viewings to notice, but eventually one realizes that Ferris’ “day off” is all about Cameron. He is raging against the dying of the light, trying to heal his suffering friend before they lose each other forever. Cameron has never experienced love from his parents, who are cold and distant, and he has never had a girlfriend. Ferris is the only connection he has. About half way through the movie, Bueller disappears for a few minutes, and his girlfriend Sloan gets a few minutes alone with Frye. She is tender with him, and he opens up and confides in her; perhaps Ferris knew that would happen, too. And then there is the climactic showdown between Cameron and his father’s car, which has replaced him as the object of love and affection in the family. It’s a heart-wrenching scene, movingly performed by all three actors, and a serious emotional climax for an otherwise giddy and lighthearted film. It’s unlikely that Bueller had this kind of event in mind when he set out to exorcise his friend’s demons, but it was what needed to happen. When he and Sloan have left Cameron to deal with the consequences, she asks Ferris if his friend will be all right. He smiles and replies, “Yeah. For the first time in his life, I think he’s going to be just fine.”

Ferris, like any good hero, has a number of sworn enemies. Principal Rooney, the uptight, dimwitted jerk who runs the high school, makes the terrible mistake of attaching his entire self-worth to the successful apprehension of his wayward student. At every turn, he grows more desperate (and more unprofessional) to subdue Bueller, to extinguish the fire of youth that stands as a painful reminder of how old he’s become. Ferris’ sister Jeannie is constantly antagonized by the prim rose path her brother gets to walk through life. I find her to be a fascinating character, because there’s a fundamental “chicken or egg” question hiding in the fact that Jeannie hates everyone because everyone hates her. In her eyes, she is hated so she hates, but to the world it goes the other way around. I have known many people like this. There is no question that Ferris is the favorite in the family, and that Jeannie has probably lived her entire life in second place. I also think she’s a more relatable character than she appears: we have all known people who seem incapable of doing wrong in the eyes of others, and we have all felt unloved by comparison. Jeannie’s journey from a girl who cannot let go to a woman who makes peace is as satisfying as anything in the film. And Charlie Sheen’s cameo is almost worth the price of admission.

At the end of the day, however, “Bueller” is a comedy first and foremost, and a masterful one; not a single joke falls flat. Its punchlines come almost unrelentingly, a deft mix of physical slapstick, dry wit, situational comedy, dramatic irony, screwball and melancholy. Only a film about youth could contain this many tones without bursting at the seams. “Ferris Bueller’s Day Off” is more than just a great comedy and an insightful character drama, it’s a key to those things in our heart that get buried with time and age. This is no mere film; it may be the closest cinematic equivalent to the fountain of youth.