4:27:25

The Breakfast Club, 1985. Rewatched this tonight. The quality of Breakfast Club in contrast to movies today, even the arthouse or empty Euro-prestige vehicles, is striking. All the actors are interesting, unique, soulful. A lot is happening in their eyes and faces. The costume design, lighting, and editing (Dede Allen. She did Reds too!) is great. The way the music is cut with the images is fantastic, the way it moves in the background of a scene and bridges the editing. Keith Forsey’s instrumental score is really good. He also did The Never Ending Story, you can hear notes of it in Breakfast Club. It’s also a strangely quiet, clever, and very interior film. All the characters are battling demons, shadows, and despite their teenage dramas and egoism, they are very interior characters with a lot of empathy and self-awareness (particularly Kirby’s character). All four characters also have a nobility and strnegth to them, as all archetypes are meant to. That’s how we learn and reflect on what it means to be human. The movie is a reverse-engineering exercise. The characters all forced into a room together to confront, and hopefully undo, their programming. Also, Molly Ringwald’s solo dance number is still the best.