"I wouldn't mind thinking I was someone myself." (Breaking Away (DVD))

Member Name: Jake Speed

Product:	Breaking Away (DVD)
Date:	22/06/09 (121 review reads)
Rating:

Advantages: Charming, funny

Disadvantages: Nothing too major

'Breaking Away' is a cult 1979 film directed by Peter Yates. The story revolves around four working-class teenagers, Dave (Dennis Christopher), Mike (Dennis Quaid), Cyril (Daniel Stern) and Moocher (Jackie Earle Haley), from Bloomington, Indiana, who have left school but don't know what to do with their lives and spend lazy summer days hanging around and swimming in an abandoned limestone quarry. The boys are known as 'cutters' by the rich kids at nearby Indiana University due to Bloomington´s stone cutting history and are generally looked down upon as losers by the students they encounter. Mike is an aimless out of shape former school quarterback while Moocher has fallen in love but can't even afford a marriage licence. Cyril is tall and clumsy and expected to fail while Dave worships all things Italian through his love of cycling and now speaks in an Italian accent, much to the exasperation of his blue collar car salesman father Ray (Paul Dooley). When they ask Dave to form a cycling team to enter the Indiana University Little 500 bicycle race, the boys finally have a chance to make their mark on the town and life.

Nominated for five Academy Awards, Breaking Away is a very charming and uplifting coming of age film about making choices and trying to work out who you are. The film is both an interesting drama and a crowd pleaser with some very funny moments and has a languid summer atmosphere generated by the numerous scenes of the boys lazily lounging around the quarry talking nonsense. The famous central character in Breaking Away is Dave Stoller and Dennis Christopher gives a very natural, sensitive, and appealing performance in the film. Like Bud Cort as Harold, you couldn't imagine anyone else playing Dave Stoller after watching Breaking Away. Whether shaving his legs in the bath ("Certo! All the Italians do it") or singing along to his Italian opera records, Christopher gives a memorable performance and his interaction with his mother and father in the film is wonderful at times. "Since you won that Italian bike, man, you've been acting weird," says Moocher of Dave, who has even renamed the family cat Fellini.

There are some lovely images and moments in Breaking Away like Stoller racing along the motorway in the slipstream of a lorry or gliding down hazy country lanes on his cycle. The scenes in the quarry with the sun glinting off the water are great too and the location is also used for quite a tense swimming duel between Mike and one of the rich kids. I love too the bit where Dave furiously pedals away on a rooted bike at his father's car dealership in the rain to prepare for a race. Another sequence where Dave races a professional Italian bicycling team is hugely enjoyable as he attempts to banter with them as they rattle around country roads, the Italians not quite sure what to make of him!

The town and campus scenes are very authentic in Breaking Away. You get a real sense of a town where the young alienated locals feel somewhat sad when they contrast their own lot and prospects with that of the ambitious students who live in their midst. The fact that this seems like a real place rather than some sort of Spielberg 'Hollywood' town makes Breaking Away feel like a real slice of small town Americana. Because they are dismissed as local 'cutters', we sense that the boys confidence is such that they don't think they are capable of being anything else. "We rednecks are few, college paleface students are many," says Cyril. Dennis Quaid's character comments that the school's quarterback will be new and young each year while he grows ever more out of condition and farther away from his youthful dreams. Despite the occasional bittersweet nature of the film though, Breaking Away is ultimately an uplifting and enjoyable film where you come to like the characters and hope everything works out alright for them.

Ray Dooley has brilliant comic timing as Dave's increasingly bewildered father ("I'm not papa. I'm your god-damned father!") and the scenes between him and Christopher are a delight. There is a wonderful sequence in the film where Dave works at the car dealership for a brief spell and proves far too naive and romantic to survive in the real world, or in this case, hustle cars to customers. The look on Dooley's face as Dave tells a customer "We are poor but we are honest" is priceless. "I had a dream last night," says Dooley. "That everyone I ever sold a car to came back and there you were, handing them back their money!" Their relationship has a real arc and is quite touching in places, particularly a moment when Dave overhears his father talking about him in bed late at night and starts crying.

One of the best scenes comes later in the film when Dave and his father walk around the quiet town centre at night and talk about Dave applying for University, being a 'cutter', and the quarries, where Dave's father used to work but now, due to industrial decline, serve as a makeshift swimming pool for local kids with too much time on their hands. "I was proud of my work. And the buildings went up. When they were finished the damnedest thing happened. It was like the buildings were too good for us. Nobody told us that." Barbara Barrie is memorable in the film also as Dave's mother, the parent more willing to indulge his retreat into fantasy until he works out what he wants to do.

All the cast have their moments in the film and come across as interesting, human characters. Dennis Quaid conveys a real sense of frustration as Mike ("They're gonna keep calling us cutters. To them, it's just a dirty word. To me, it's just something else I never got a chance to be") and Daniel Stern is gangly and wisecracking as Cyril, who has some good lines in the film - "I wouldn't mind thinking I was someone myself." Cyril's jokes hide his own insecurities but he has some funny moments, including a bit where he gets a bowling ball stuck to his hand in a scuffle with the rich kids. Jackie Earle Haley, now famous for playing Rorschach in Watchmen, was, oddly enough, a David Cassidy type heartthrob in the seventies and Moocher has a romance with Amy Wright as Nancy in the film which is touching given their lack of money and prospects. Haley is also given a nice bit where he lands a job as a general dogsbody in a garage and lasts about twenty seconds.

I suppose you could say the film becomes more conventional for the cycle race climax but you are emotionally invested in the characters by this point and find it easy enough to get into the spirit of the race which is certainly well staged by Peter Yates. You want these characters to have a victory of some sorts in life and boost their self esteem so they can move on. There is a sweet subplot in the film too where Dave woos University student Kathy (Robyn Douglass), who, naturally, thinks he's a real Italian on an exchange visit! A pleasant sequence involves Dave sneaking onto the campus at night to serenade Kathy outside her dorm bedroom. The film has a very satisfying resolution and ends on an amusing note with a great final line from Christopher to Dooley. Breaking Away is just a very charming and enjoyable film with great characters and performances and an uplifting quality.

A cult classic that is definitely worth a look if you've never seen it before.

Summary: Classic