dogfight (1991), dir. nancy savoca
'dogfight', my beautiful underrated gem, my beloved anti-war, pro-love and kindness film. my sweet, tender balm for trying times. god i i miss river phoenix so much. what an incandescent talent. what a privilege that cinema has his performances immortalized in celluloid forever.
every scene in this film, every frame, pulsates with such pure, young emotion: first thrill then confusion and anger and then something warmer, something realer, something almost like love, the kind only possible on certain summer evenings. they never last forever the way we so desperately want them to. and then growing up, coming into terms with the inevitable cruelty of the world.
there's a scene about midway through the film when eddie and rose slow-dance around a music arcade, there are no words spoken, only the unraveling and revealing of something unnamed but so, so unmistakable.
but what also elevates this film from your standard forever-in-one-night romance fare is that it comes from a place of real hurt, it carves out its joy and grace and young love from a place of real cruelty. and that seeps through in every nuanced beat, even beyond language. that we need each other to survive—that our entire species depends on it in spite of all our protests—is such an embarrassing thing to come into terms with sometimes, but to be seen is a necessary precursor to being loved.
it's films like these that make me believe in everything again and thank god and the heavens that cinema is a capsule of time and memory and emotion.
