Film Review: Diner (1982)
Barry Levinson’s debut movie no doubt inspired by his own experiences as a young man in Baltimore in the late 50s, early 60s, is a classic. The tagline on the film’s poster, “Suddenly, life was more than french fries, gravy and girls.,” sums up the movie perfectly. This is a movie about the crises I imagine are fairly common for the men in their early 20s, when they begin to have such thoughts as: “Maybe I shouldn’t have dropped out of college.” “Maybe I shouldn’t have married so early.” “What will happen once all my friends are married?”
The stage that the characters are in in the film is the period just before graduating from college; i.e. the end of boyhood and their adult entrance into the workforce. Some of the characters are in the middle of contemplating law school, others forwent college, and still others are college dropouts. However, one thing they’re all doing is killing time - (if they had been born ten years later they may have been fighting in Vietnam). As such, the characters are in the habit of waking up late, hanging out at the all-night diner and talking until the sun comes up. Indeed, this is a movie about conversation: arguing about sports, opining on rivals in pop music, persuading your gambling creditors for deferments, and striking up conversations with pretty girls you drive by on joyrides with your friends; the latter being a perfect microcosm for the movie as a whole: riding around in your car just for the pleasure. (Less than ten years later, as seen in 1967 in Godard’s Weekend, the characters will be adults leaving the city in vehicles for a weekend holiday to escape the stressors and bourgeois values of the city only to find traffic jams, road rage, and more stressors.) Indeed, like the characters themselves, much of the pleasure of watching the film is in the feeling that you’re hanging out with them, each likable in their own right - most of the film takes place at the diner, the cinema, the pool hall or the night club. However, it’s all a bit bittersweet because the viewer knows this camaraderie won’t last. Inevitably after the Paul Reiser character gets married - whose wedding has brought them together again - and the other characters go to law school, graduate school, get divorced or go to rehab, things will never be the same.
Steve Guttenberg, Daniel Stern, Mickey Rourke, Paul Reiser, Kevin Bacon, Timothy Daly and Ellen Barkin are the players, each of whom gives a memorable performance. The star of the movie, however, is definitely Mickey Rourke. His character is the most complex and his scenes are the among the ones you remember most after watching the movie. Recommended.
