{"id":27,"date":"2025-08-21T23:11:43","date_gmt":"2025-08-21T23:11:43","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/?p=27"},"modified":"2025-10-24T02:25:17","modified_gmt":"2025-10-24T02:25:17","slug":"five-movies-about-trying","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/?p=27","title":{"rendered":"Five Movies About Trying"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
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\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"The<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

A few days ago I happened to watch The Great Escape<\/em> and Quick Change<\/em> in the same day, and realized I’d seen half of the main characters from my favorite movie Once Upon a Time in the West<\/em> back-to-back; Charles Bronson in Great Escape<\/em> and Jason Robards in Quick Change<\/em>. I mentioned it off-handedly to a friend and he suggested On Golden Pond<\/em>, a Henry Fonda movie about fishing. I decided to round it out with Claudia Cardinale in Fitzcarraldo<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Charles<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Jason<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

There were some fun inversions at work in all of these movies compared to Once Upon a Time<\/em>. Instead of the unflappable, repressed Harmonica, Bronson played a tunnel-digger whose fear nearly gets the best of him until a friend helps talk him through it. Robards goes from playing a bandit to a police captain. Henry Fonda befriends a kid instead of shooting him. Claudia Cardinale’s love interest with a wild dream is alive and gets to make a go of it without being killed by a rival interest, and she owns a brothel rather than working in one.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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\"Henry<\/figure>\n\n\n\n
\"Claudia<\/figure>\n<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

But the thing that struck me about all five of the movies was how much they centered on a struggle being undertaken for its own sake, with limited extrinsic motivation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Henry<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

In Once Upon a Time<\/em>, Harmonica pursues his revenge against Frank beyond all reasonable bounds, hounding him relentlessly until he can even the score. Revenge is perhaps one of the foremost acts that people do not for their actual benefit but just because they want to do it. Harmonica’s brother doesn’t come back; Frank doesn’t realize the error of his ways. But Harmonica got to shoot the guy who killed his brother, and then has to live with the unchanged world that comes after.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Angus<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

The characters in Great Escape<\/em> are invited early on by the camp’s commandant to relax and ride out the end of the war in peace. Haven’t they done enough already, risking their lives and being captured? But they’re escape artists by nature; schemers and exploiters, boundary-pushers, hackers. Being put into a prison camp merely gives them a new target and a cohort of accomplices. And whatever their captors might say, they know there’s more they can contribute to the war – even the very act of escaping is their own contribution, siphoning resources from the front lines.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Bill<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Bill Murray’s character Grimm in Quick Change<\/em> plots an elaborate bank robbery and getaway just to get money together to move out of New York, a city he hates and which spends the whole movie hating him right back.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Henry<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Norman’s pursuit of Walter in On Golden Pond<\/em> is just some made-up feud between an old guy and a fish. But it helps Norman stay motivated and focused as age saps him physically and mentally. It gets him out on the lake each day, befriending the kid he finds himself stuck with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"Klaus<\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Fitzgerald’s obsession with opera and bringing it to Iquitos in Fitzcarraldo<\/em> drives him to incredible lengths, leading an expedition with all the makings of a disaster as he tries to haul a boat over a mountain. He wants to be someone, and he has an aesthetic vision that he wants to see realized, and to make it a reality he’s willing to try just about anything.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was very fun to see this ad-hoc project of watching various movies featuring the main cast of Once Upon a Time in the West<\/em> accidentally produce a set of movies with a coherent throughline. Just like in all these movies, something interesting can emerge from undertaking a self-appointed mission. Sometimes the journey is the destination.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A few days ago I happened to watch The Great Escape and Quick Change in the same day, and realized I’d seen half of the main characters from my favorite movie Once Upon a Time in the West back-to-back; Charles Bronson in Great Escape and Jason Robards in Quick Change. I mentioned it off-handedly to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":47,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27\/revisions\/47"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blog.metaregress.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}