THIS MOVIE IS THE BOMB

On this date in 1989, Steve De Jarnatt’s film Miracle Mile opened. I saw it the following afternoon, at a shopping mall multiplex in Greenbelt, Maryland. I loved it, but because it potently dramatized certain morbid scenarios that have long haunted my imagination, I could never bring myself to see it again. Yet scenes and details from the film stayed in my memory through the decades, more vividly than many films I’ve seen multiple times.

Recently I was urged, by the director himself, that it was time to revisit the film, so I acquired the fine Kino Lorber Blu-ray. I hadn’t misremembered; it was at least as spellbinding this time as it was three decades ago.

For the uninitiated, Miracle Mile starts as a wistful meet-cute romance. Harry (Anthony Edwards), a trombone player passing through L.A. on a gig, meets Julie (Mare Winningham), a waitress who lives in Park La Brea, while they’re touring the Page Museum and gazing at the tarpits.

Whimsical circumstances make Harry oversleep for his big date with Julie; he shows up after three in the morning at the diner where she works, in the title neighborhood, but of course she’s long since gone home. He answers a ringing phone in the booth outside the diner, and on the other end of the line hears a frantic young soldier (voiced by Raphael Sbarge) in a missile silo, who claims he’s misdialed trying to reach his father to tell him: World War III is on, and the U.S. has a little over an hour before the missiles hit.

From there on, Miracle Mile is a headlong real-time nightmare, as poor Harry tries, first, to convince a bunch of strangers in the diner to take his story seriously, and then to find Julie and get her out of town. Even without the threat of nuclear devastation, things do not go smoothly.

Not only by bringing to woozily plausible-seeming life a threat that many of us spent the Reagan years fretting about, but also from Theo Van Sande’s queasy-yet-beautiful pastel/neon L.A.-hangover cinematography and the brooding score by Tangerine Dream, Miracle Mile seems very much an ‘80s movie. But it doesn’t seem dated; especially in our current weird times, the feeling of plausibility very distressingly remains.

I should also note that, while the movie is scary, it isn’t a downer. Edwards and Winningham are almost achingly lovable, and the supporting ensemble is tough to beat: Mykelti Williamson, Denise Crosby, Lou Hancock, John Agar, Robert DoQui, O-Lan Jones, Kurt Fuller, Alan Rosenberg, Danny de la Paz, Earl Boen, Brian Thompson, Claude Earl Jones, Howard Swain, Diane Delano and Edward Bunker, among others.

There’s a surprising amount of grim but hectic and effective comedy, and while De Jarnatt shows us horrifying rioting in the streets near the end, he persistently balances this jaundiced view of humanity with touches of human tenderness and integrity. Indeed, the overall sensibility with which De Jarnatt—who hasn't made another feature since, though he’s written and directed copious TV—imbues the film is warm and generous-hearted, and gallantly romantic.

One specimen of this romance may be found in the extensive and entertaining special features that come on the Kino Lorber disc: De Jarnatt’s alternate “happy” ending—two sweet extra seconds.

HOW DO YOU SOLVE A PROBLEM LIKE PHILOMENA?

Philomena Lee was a teenager in rural and very Catholic Ireland when she got pregnant in the early ‘50s. She was turned over to the nuns and, after delivering her son Anthony, she and her fellow unmarried teen mothers were kept in the convent as, essentially, slave labor, while their kids were adopted—sold, essentially—to any Catholic who could come up with the sizable adoption fee. In 1955, Anthony was taken to America, along with another little girl from the convent. Philomena had been made to sign a document renouncing any claim on him.

Philomena later married, had other kids, and had a successful career as a nurse, but needless to say, she never forgot her first child. She tried several times to get information about him from the convent and was denied each time. Eventually a journalist named Martin Sixsmith took an interest in her case, and the two of them travelled to the U.S. where they made startling discoveries about the boy. The result was a book, The Lost Child of Philomena Lee (Sixsmith also wrote a summary of the story for The Guardian in 2009, with the True Confessions-ish title “The Catholic Church Stole My Child.”).

If this story were an old-school stage melodrama or a TV soap opera, it would seem corny and overwrought, down to its tear-jerking final twist. But Philomena, the movie version, isn’t even a little depressing. The director, Stephen Frears, brilliantly treats this real-life tragedy as an odd couple comedy.

Judi Dench plays the gabby, cheery Philomena, an intelligent but unpretentious woman, unfiltered but so warm that she doesn’t give offense to those she chats up. Her openhearted, un-ironic manner wears a bit on Sixsmith—an educated, sophisticated but oddly unlikable cold fish played by Steve Coogan, who also co-wrote the adaptation of the Sixsmith book.

The bracing, self-deprecating wit of the movie helps us manage our fury at the Church’s crimes against Philomena and her son, and God knows how many other families. Sixsmith isn’t able to contain his; his journalistic objectivity dissolves as he unravels the final mystery about Philomena’s son in the climactic scenes.

Yet Philomena keeps her magnanimity to the end, and Dench leaves us with a sense of awe at the grandness of this woman’s soul, even while she keeps on making us laugh. After seeing her so many times as Queen Victoria and James Bond’s boss and other such dour roles, it’s great to see her in what can only be called a lighter vein.

While it isn’t the most remarkable piece of filmmaking I’ve seen this year—the documentary The Act of Killing currently holds that title, and I doubt it will be unseated—Philomena is, I think, the movie I’ve most enjoyed so far in 2013. As cinema craft it’s conventional but polished, and the leads are sublime. If you’re like me, the critical cliché “You’ll laugh, you’ll cry” applies.