The Moolah Theater is to your living room what a restaurant is to your dining room. With its symmetrically arranged curve of leather sofas and love seats, placed for optimal observation of the almost intrusively giant screen, this is the place where movie watchers become a family. And when the movie itself complements the comfy environment, it’s akin to folksinger Fred Neil actually achieving his quest to find a place where “the weather suits my clothes.” Do people go to the Moolah for the furniture? Probably not – but they don’t necessarily go there for the movie, either. What’s playing at the Moolah is, no doubt, available at many other theaters; and at most of them, it’s only one entrée on an eclectic multiplex menu.
So, when something like Up in the Air lands at the Moolah, it’s a kind of semi-perfect Missouri storm – a fleeting one, considering our weather -- a feature film partially lensed in St. Louis that’s showing at a uniquely St. Louis theater. Most impressively, our city not only portrays itself in the movie but doubles for other locations – mostly, via interiors -- including Milwaukee, complete with fake snow. While we who live here can spot the landmarks – which are essentially identifying birthmarks -- of our fair city, we’re also the only audience for whom the charade of St. Louis pretending to be other locations doesn’t work. Still, we’re secretly proud that our hometown is such a good geographical impressionist. And there’s another aspect of the perfect storm -- an instance of being struck by lightning. By now, most people are familiar with the plight – and subsequent flight – of local composer Kevin Renick. Having written a song called, quite cannily, “Up in the Air” before he even knew about the movie, Renick seemed to psychically tune into the zeitgeist that made it possible for such a film to thrive in the first place. Not only had Renick recently lost his job, but his mother, too – an ordeal which gave the term “hard times” a painful resonance that entailed a lot more than economic strife. Renick seized the unlikely chance to get a cassette tape of his song into the hands of Up in the Air’s director, Jason Reitman, who ended up using it. Renick’s home recording was a case of something being tailor-made, sight unseen – his was a kind of unconscious, if inevitable, prescience. Renick, who introduces the song on the tape (alluding to its theme of an uncertain future), imbued the track with a sincere blue-collar humbleness. It matters not a bit that he’s a laid-off proofreader as opposed to a brick-layer. Not all jobs may be the same – but unemployment is identical for everybody.
Sitting in the ballroom-sized living room that’s the Moolah Theater, watching a movie that fits the cold economic climate like a hole-filled glove, proudly taking note of St. Louis actors in vital bit parts; and then staying for the credits in order to hear Renick’s signature song, all felt to me like a different kind of being in the right place at the right time. The movie itself was a small balancing act, a kind of down-sized satire. Its easy-going cadence – somehow conveying the stress of the main characters and their victims in relaxed cinematic terminology – evokes another small masterpiece called Lost in Translation. Even though the talented Reitman tends to undermine some surprisingly stark scenes by falling back on familial clichés and sweet sentimentality, he’s about as optimistic as a village doomsayer. While George Clooney is simply made for the lead role, his patented smirk and jazzy nonchalance make him seem (at least to himself) above it all; often literally so, when he’s on a plane – but that also happens to be when he’s in his element. He’s a guiltless yuppie, getting all fired up about firing people. The movie is perfect when it functions as the tip of an iceberg that only hints at the meltdown underneath. It does what very few films manage to do these days: be relevant.
Jordan Oakes is a local journalist who has written for publications such as St. Louis Magazine and the Christian Science Monitor. He has strong opinions that begin to atrophy if he doesn't exercise his right to express them. Tune in every Wednesday for another installment of Mediatribe - and if you missed last week's post, click here.
