TUCKER: THE MAN AND HIS DREAM – francis ford coppola – 4.8 / 10

It’s somewhat pointless and borderline foolhardy to pyschoanalyze a director through his work. That being said, there have to be some conclusions about Francis Ford Coppola’s state of mind that can be drawn from his work in the 1980s. Tucker: The Man and His Dream is the last in a line of films that sees Coppola retreating into the golden hued remembered (rather than realistic) past to tell a story about families (actual or surrogate) realizing how good they have it and pulling together when the chips are down.

From The Outsiders (and Rumble Fish) to Peggy Sue Got Married, Gardens of Stone and Tucker, every single one of Coppola’s films in the eighties is set in the past. And as you watch each of these films you can’t help feeling that Coppola is retreating into some idealized version of his early life. Added to that, his greatest successes (The Godfather films) were set in the past so it’s likely that he felt comfortable there (and that he didn’t have to try very hard to convince studio executives to back these films).

Making period films exclusively is not in and of itself cause for concern, of course. It’s just that the dark and dangerous undercurrent that runs through his earlier films has been entirely scrubbed clean leaving only the burnished amber glow of a time that only ever existed in people’s memories. Whereas The Godfather was a stylized and somewhat theatrical version of a period in history that, through its stylization, achieves timelessness, Tucker is theatrical and stylized in an artificial way that all but defeats the audience’s attempts at identification with this man and his dream.

More troubling than that, however, is the indication, gleaned from bonus materials and commentary tracks, that Coppola, in his post-70's output, cared as much or more about the atmosphere on set than about the film that he was exposing. All of the DVDs of those 1980s films mentioned above are full of actors talking rapturously about the nurturing atmosphere of a Coppola set. They talk about how wonderful a time they had and how much they learned. It’s as if, after the disaster that was the making of Apocalypse Now, Coppola decided that filmmaking wasn’t worth it if the people involved were going to hate every minute of it.

Thus the film that was actually being made ceased to be the sole purpose of a Coppola shoot. The enjoyment of the process by the cast and crew became almost as important as the finished film itself. And thus the finished film became hopelessly compromised.

It’s not necessary that a film set be a tyrannical environment in which all manner of hardship has to be endured for the sake of the finished product. But it is required that, when called for, individual sacrifices in comfort and pleasure be made for the good of the film. Without occasional hardship (overwork, multiple takes in the rain, etc.) the film becomes irretrievably compromised. And that’s what Coppola’s 1980s output is, compromised.