Anyone who grew-up obsessed with movies had that one friend that you made home movies with. Making movies with a friend as a kid formed the most intimate of bonds a young person can have because you are realizing a shared imagination together. It’s the natural extension of play and, when done passionately, bridges the gap between play and art. This is why in film school the horror movie nerd’s projects are always the most fun to work on because it’s so easy for everyone to find a point of reference in order to imagine together. From the childhood days of Super 8, VHS, and DV Tape to the art school days of 16mm, 35mm, and HD; filmmaking is about community.
5-25-77 (2022) evokes these experiences wonderfully. The lead character’s imagination is so present in the visuals and is so rooted in the popular lexicon of Kubrick, Spielberg and Lucas that it forms an intertextual tableau that is accessible and reassuring. The main character becomes a kind of proxy for every cinephile and as the collective audience relates to him we in turn become a community at that intersection.
When imagination bleeds over into the reality of narrative it is almost always articulated as a visual quotation from another film executed reflexively either at an editing table or literally reflected in the eye of the character. Filmmaker Patrick Read Johnson weaves from the objective reality of the film to the subjective reality of the protagonist almost constantly as if to constantly reiterate the cyclical relationship between cinema, imagination and reality.
We go to see movies and look for our reality reflected in the film so that we can invest in its fantastic elements. These fantastic qualities that cinema possesses then stimulate our imaginations which in turn reframe our reality which we then go looking for again in another film. It’s this complex relationship between the cinema and its power over the audience that 5-25-77 is in total awe of.
It took Patrick Read Johnson eighteen years to get 5-25-77 onto screens. Eighteen years committed to one picture is the definition of a passion project. 5-25-77 is Johnson’s story of where he came from and the films that launched him into his career in Hollywood. It’s a coming-of-age story and it’s an homage to the films of Steven Spielberg.
5-25-77 was shot piecemeal, sometimes with years passing between the camera rolling. Johnson’s autobiographical screenplay was ambling to begin with but these circumstances make it borderline structureless. In a way that becomes an asset for 5-25-77. Life and how the experiences in life are remembered often don’t have a sense of linearity or order; things change or events intersect randomly. Like Hollywood Boulevard (1976), Kenny & Co. (1976), and The Pom Pom Girls (1976); 5-25-77 rambles along. In a way adopting this free wheelin’ approach to narrative structure just helps ground 5-25-77 in its temporal setting (Colleen Camp also appears in the film).
First and foremost 5-25-77 is about its author. To this end it may feel self-indulgent at times. Johnson’s mistake is that he’s put too many character arcs into his film, essentially muddying the film so that his own arc (played by John Francis Daley) is obscured or diminished. At times 5-25-77 feels like an ensemble piece, other times a buddy movie, and sometimes a romance. Life surely is all of these things but 5-25-77 can be only so many things before it begins to collapse on itself.
Yet, even a flawed or imperfect film can accomplish or evoke more feelings in its audience than the most polished blockbuster. In a way, 5-25-77 is a film that is impossible to dislike simply because it tells the story of a cinephile realizing his dream. Johnson spent eighteen years of his life making this movie for people like me and the people who read blogs like this one. You may not love 5-25-77 as much as Johnson loves Star Wars (1977), but you gotta respect it. It’s Free Enterprise (1988) for Star Wars fans.
