Diractors is an ongoing series in which Hassle writer Jack Draper examines films, new and old, whose directors are better known for their work in front of the camera.
Talk about a movie that’s ahead of its time. Bob Balaban’s Parents isn’t aiming for too much, and never overreaches for scares or laughs. How it can be so disturbing and sad is from a masterclass of perspective, blending anxieties and dreams from humor that’s all situational. No matter the behavior of our parents when we are kids, they are seen as large and weird, which is a very specific thing to see as horrific– especially concerning sensory details like food and odors which last from home to home. I can remember the smell of snacks at childhood friends’ homes, and how their parents’ seemingly normal behavior would make me feel. The line is even smaller between drama and horror, I love that Balaban realizes that too. It was a critique from Ebert that the movie feels disjointed and unclear of its thesis, yet just how it’s able to specify normal adulthood seems unsettling to kids.
Ebert’s being so hard on the movie is annoying; it’s not as plotty as the critic prefers, but dives headfirst into something tangible. When New England family Nick, Lily, and Michael (Randy Quaid, Mary Beth Hurt, and Bryan Madorsky) move to the suburbs of California things should be peaceful. They really are, until Michael’s social awkwardness starts to take stage and his attempts to make friends worsen. He is also prone to strange and disturbing dreams; he dreams that he has jumped into bed, only for it to collapse into a pool of blood. One of the characters that stuck me this time around is the school counselor (the great Sandy Dennis) who meets with Lily to see if life at home is any more peculiar than in school. When asked if Michael and his dad are close, Lily replied that they do many things together and I’d just leave it at that. It’s amusing to see everything Michael witnesses everyday has this undercurrent of creepiness. Except for kids his own age like Shelia (London Juno), who may be a troublemaker but aren’t his parents at least.
I do admire Balaban for wanting to have anxieties of assimilation articulated through cannibalism. Sacrificing any components of individuality is weird and grotesque, as the film turns the subtexts into texts. Being scary isn’t its main goal; it’s just another joke the movie has up its sleeve to imagine if your already-offputting parents also happened to be cannibals. Parents is a crisp 80 minutes without plotting to pad out its thesis that of what children fill in the emptiness of what they do not know. Balaban has described, as an example, how his mom was previously married before marrying his dad. A messy past isn’t good for fitting in with others, while presumably the others that you’re fitting in with have their own past that’s being repressed. Balaban presents all this with such clear intention that nowadays it may seem obtuse. Which is easy to look past for me as Quaid and Hurt in particular slip into the titular parents so easily. Like Michael, we are viewing his parents like strangers. His mom’s tenderness and dad’s ball-busting is comically sinister.
Screenwriter Christopher Hawthorne is best known for just this movie, and it struck Balaban who was best known as a character actor and for directing TV such as episodes of Tales from the Darkside or Amazing Stories. Which makes sense as a step up to Parents has the feel to be contained and small scale. Balaban had some interesting thoughts on what it meant to be a director in this Q&A from 2017
- Directors don’t get to see how others direct
- He learned from Sidney Lumet, after working on Prince of the City, to not talk too much or overexplain. Later he would study Lumet while he made Deathtrap
- Working on Absence of Malice, he remarked how Sydney Pollack had a completely opposite view of rehearsal than Lumet does famously.
- Probably most important, that Lumet had imparted onto Bob Balaban that every actor had their own language that they should be talked to
To that last point, not only another anecdote as to why Lumet is the greatest, but how approachable Bob Balaban is. As an actor and a person, he comes off as perfectly chill, intellectual and deadpan. Its a sensibility that reflects very well in Parents yet not an enormous name where he can slip into making television again after his time with making movies. Looking into his life, he is also related to industry executives like grandfather Sam Katz as vice president of MGM or uncle Barney Balaban as president of Paramount. This makes so much sense as well, Balaban just has this comfortability you may imagine to see in a nice guy executive. Yet that doesn’t make his on screen persona for people like Wes Anderson or Christopher Guest any less valuable.
Parents
1989
dir Bob Balaban
89 min.
Currently streaming on Tubi
