Moonstruck (1987, Norman Jewison) (Patreon)

82/100

Umpteenth viewing, last seen sometime prior to 1996 (when I started logging repeats). My passion has not waned. This is still simultaneously one of the most unabashedly romantic movies ever made—crowd-pleasing enough to be nominated for Best Picture—and my go-to example of a gifted screenwriter's singular personal vision surviving the Hollywood development process mostly intact. Hell, I can even forgive Jewison for changing the title, since he replaces The Bride and the Wolf's fairy-tale connotation with an opening-credits sequence that arguably does an even job of priming us for what's to follow, observing the mundane tasks involved in creating an opera. Emotions are heightened throughout, most conspicuously whenever Cage is onscreen; Ronny's introduction, which probably ranks among my 20 or so favorite scenes of all time, was the subject of an early Scenic Routes column, so I won't rehash my astonishment at its high-wire act. At the same time, though, Shanley keeps it all grounded in resigned pragmatism. Some of that will be upended, of course, but it's nonetheless bracing when Loretta tells her mother that she's engaged to Johnny, Rose asks "Do you love him?", Loretta matter-of-factly and without hesitation answers "No," and Rose replies "Good." Because Ronny is right: Love don't make things nice, it roons [sic] everything. Superficially heartwarming vibe notwithstanding, Moonstruck essentially draws the same bittersweet conclusion that Kaufman would in Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, admitting that real ardor is fundamentally destructive but insisting that the alternative, doing without it, is even worse. 

And the thing is, we actually get Loretta and Ronny's rocky future, in a sense. Moonstruck doesn't quite qualify as an ensemble piece, but Shanley distributes the film's romantic-pragmatic worldview among the entire family, with Rose's discovery of Cosmo's infidelity, and subsequent not-quite-fling with John Mahoney's middle-aged wolf, revealing where true love ultimately lands. That entire sequence, with Mahoney's on-the-make professor repeatedly dropping clumsy hints that he'd love to be invited upstairs, is just plain ruthless, ensuring that the movie doesn't come across as pure fantasy; it'd be nice if Cosmo's affair had been afforded the same knife's edge, but I can make do with the Met-lobby scene in which Cosmo and Loretta sort of achieve détente. ("I didn't see you here." "I don't know if I saw you here or what.") We also, toward the beginning get thematically relevant interludes with just about everyone Loretta comes across—the old lady putting a curse on Johnny's plane, hoping to kill her sister who stole the man she loved; the liquor-store couple who introduce Shanley's once-titular lupine conceit—which creates the impression, even before a ludicrously gigantic moon is mentioned or appears, that all of New York, except Loretta, is experiencing the same sympathetic vibration. Shanley's Oscar for Original Screenplay is among the most justly merited in AMPAS history, and I credit Jewison for trusting that these actors speaking those words and taking those actions would result in old-school movie magic with a slightly modernist flair. (And while the Scenic Routes piece linked above complains about some flat reaction shots and needless coverage, Jewison, whether by luck or design, pulls off one great moment, having Loretta ironically appear a fraction of a second late in the frame on the cut between Ronny's "I'm here" and Loretta's "You're late.") 

Minor reservations: Dick Hyman's jaunty refrain can be a bit pushy; my mind tends to wander every time we're with Grandpa and the dogs (and nothing comes of him seeing Rose with the professor, apart from a cute fake-out at the end); Loretta's mid-film makeover is perhaps a bit too fabulous (I miss the gray, honestly, it really suited her); worst of all, Robin Bartlett gets only one line (as the bakery employee who isn't Chrissy and doesn't get asked to bring Ronny the big knife). I should also note for the record that I was 19 years old and impressionable when Moonstruck was first released, and had a reaction to Cage here that's probably not too much unlike that of audiences who got to witness Brando play Stanley Kowalski on Broadway. (I'd already seen Cage in Birdy and Peggy Sue Got Married, but this was the performance that made him my favorite actor in the world for the next decade or so, through Face/Off.) Ultimately, though, I don't feel the need to justify my love for this crazy UFO of a Hollywood movie. It's 90% pure, unfiltered Shanley, and that was something to behold back then. (See also Joe Versus the Volcano.) 

TESTING TESTING: Don't want to create a whole otherwise annoying test post for this, but I think Patreon finally fixed it so that I can make proper lists. Here are all of the Jewison films I've seen to date; let's see whether it looks the way it's supposed to in the email, with no inserted spaces between lines.

The Cincinnati Kid

The Russians Are Coming, the Russians Are Coming

In the Heat of the Night

Fiddler on the Roof

Jesus Christ Superstar

...And Justice for All

A Soldier's Story

Agnes of God

Moonstruck

In Country

Other People's Money

The Hurricane