There is a scene halfway through the movie that, though very brief, allows all the virtues of Diner's overt quotidianness and subtle honesty to crystallize into a glittering little geode of relatability. Eddie (Steve Guttenberg), the literal-minded, happily aimless, slightly adenoidal groom-to-be and Billy (Tim Daly), the unhappily aimless, romantic yet resilient grad student who has come home to be Eddie's best man, walk into a movie theater whose marquee reads "ANOTHER BERGMAN CLASSIC." For anyone who feels like I do about The Seventh Seal, we suspect this might not be such a thrilling cinematic experience for the pair. It will be especially bad for Eddie, who balks at all things evasive or amorphous--and whose side the audience is secretly encouraged to be on, from the opening scene in the diner with the roast beef sandwich to his ingeniously spastic dance with the oddly-shaped stripper late in the movie.
A close-up in the theater shows Eddie and Billy in the audience, their faces lit by the bleak whiteness of the monochromatic Bergman classic. With his eyes fixed on the screen, Eddie frowns--more out confusion than displeasure--and asks, "What am I watchin'? Movie just started, I don't know what's goin' on."
"It's symbolic," Billy replies.
"Who's that guy?"
"That's Death walking on the beach." Billy seems apathetic, but his face looks almost appreciative next to Eddie's
"I been to Atlantic City a hundred times, I never saw death walk on a beach."
Yes! Thank you! To understate it immensely: Ingmar Bergman is not for everyone. I love Max von Sydow and I love the occasional chainmail muscle tee, but come on. I am sure many people in the Film Department and beyond would consider that an unenlightened remark, but I am also sure that a great many Diner viewers had the same reaction to this scene that I had. But regardless of anyone's fondness for allegorical Swedish cinema, The Seventh Seal with all its symbolism is such a perfect foil because Diner is free of symbols--nothing in the movie is charged with meaning anything, it just is. When we watch this movie, we watch people--Eddie, Billy, Boogie (a delicate pre-boxing, pre-reconstructive surgery Mickey Rourke), Shrevie (Daniel Stern), Fenwick (Kevin Bacon), Modell (Paul Reiser), the annoying old guy buying a TV (Herb Levinson, the writer/director's uncle)--just existing, to no particular end. I don't know how I could aptly describe the plot while still doing justice to how engaging and satisfying Diner is.
There is one other metacinematic touch that bolsters the movie's realism: the inspired character of Methan (Tait Ruppert, a local Baltimore kid), who appears only twice and says only quotations from Sweet Smell of Success. As we're watching it, these expertly crafted lines delivered in a precise, intense monotone make the movie going on around the polished interjection seem all the more like real life. When we've finished it and, say, have a blog post to write, we realize how organic all the dialogue in Diner is. However many moments in the movie were ad-libbed, there was still a script that captured what happens in conversation between guys and their friends, their parents, their girlfriends, their wives, even their useless, pretentious brothers like Fenwick's. I feel as if I could saunter into the Fells Point Diner anytime and, as Shrevie says, "bullshit the entire night away" with those six lost soon-to-be-men. I only wish I could.
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