Some things you remember for absolutely no reason at all. This is one of those.July, 1984. Cali, Colombia. No, this is not the start to some drug epic. It's the story of a ten-year-old boy who travelled by himself to visit a friend who had returned home from living in America. He stayed with him for about two weeks in a beautiful home that had its own swimming pool. And no, his host family was not part of the drug trade.
But the boy and his host family did indeed go out to the drive-in one night, to see the big new American release Breakin'. And for some reason, 36 years later, that boy retains a memory of having seen the trailer for a movie called Gorky Park, about a murder that takes place in frozen Moscow. It was released in December of 1983 in the U.S. and was finally making it to South America six months later.
It couldn't have disturbed me that much -- the most disturbing thing in this movie, the removal of the faces of the snow-buried victims, could not have appeared in the trailer. Could not have.
So why did this trailer, images of which I can still remember, stick with me for 36 years? It couldn't have just been that I remembered the Spanish pronunciation of the title as being Gairkway Parkway, could it? (I think "Gerkway" looks better, but I pronounce the first syllable as rhyming with "air," not "her.")
I won't explore the eccentricities of my ten-year-old brain here today. Instead, I'm here to tell you that I noticed this movie popping up on Stan earlier this week, and I watched it on Thursday night, scratching the itch of the ominous curiosity that formed in my brain 36 years ago and never left.
With all this build-up, I wish I had a more interesting payoff.
This was a fine movie. It didn't disturb me, though it had a good early 80s synth score (by James Horner, who could work in that mode apparently) that set up the possible conditions for that. It's a fairly average murder mystery, I suppose, though the detail of taking place in the former Soviet Union made it a bit more memorable in that regard.
My biggest takeaways:
- I was surprised there were so many actors I knew in this film. Having never even really looked up the film before now, and having not known who these people were back when I saw the trailer, I was surprised to learn that it starred William Hurt, Lee Marvin and Brian Dennehy, and that Ian Bannen (Waking Ned Devine) and none other than the emperor himself, Ian McDiarmid, make small appearances. I guess I figured that since it was a movie set in Russia, and that the trailer I saw was in Spanish, there was something doubly foreign about it. Except no, it's just a Hollywood movie, directed by Michael Apted.
- I was distracted by how handsome William Hurt is. I guess Hurt was probably always considered a heartthrob, but I hadn't remembered thinking of him that way previously. He's sparklingly beautiful in this film.
- The uncovering of the dead bodies with their faces removed was, indeed, pretty disturbing. Maybe that did make it into the trailer? But if so, why isn't that the thing I remember most? Maybe they mentioned it, though I don't believe that trailer had subtitles, though I guess the trailer was probably in English with a Spanish voiceover, though really, I'm just not sure.
One thing that surprised me was how many people seem to know about Gorky Park and have some affection for it, which is strange because I literally didn't think I'd heard a single other mention of it between 1984 and now. The next day I told a friend I'd watched it, and he recalled seeing it in the theater with his parents. As I was watching, my wife walked through the living room and got a little smile on her face, like she was calling to mind some fond memory. When I told her what movie it was, she said "Oh yeah," with that fond smile growing a little more definite.
Who knows, maybe she had her own Colombian drive-in movie experience with it.
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