133 - Saturday Night Fever

    A 19-year-old spends his days working at a hardware store, and his nights running with his friends, and occasionally going out to a disco.  He decides to participate in a dance competition.
    It's hard to say that there's much plot to this movie, since it's more like a character study of these young people, and a certain sense of inevitability they feel.  It's a very bleak movie.
    The role that disco plays in the story is a strange message that somehow, being a good dancer is enough to give a sense of hope.  What makes that message strange is how the disco itself comes off.  Like most things in the movie, it's shot realistically, even though they let some of backing lights bleed, in an effort to look a bit more glamorous.  As I saw these shots of the disco, it looked kind of scummy.  Not especially clean, a little gaudy.  And these are supposed to be the sequences that give us a sense of the hope that Travolta feels.
    Hope is really hard to hold out.  No one in this movie acts reasonably.  In fact, the only person I can think of that behaves well is probably the owner of the hardware store.  Travolta's character is brash, aggressive, mean, violent, kind of abusive.
    The hopelessness that permeates the movie is palpable.  Travolta has a sense of doom that he will be working at the hardware store for his life.  He knows that he hasn't made his parents happy, since he isn't as successful as his priest brother.  A friend of his has gotten his girlfriend pregnant, and she is very religious, so he can't persuade her to have an abortion.  (Spoiler) He chooses suicide rather than deal with the situation.  Girls seem to base their self-worth on how much attention guys will pay to them.
    While this was more interesting than I expected, it's hard to picture this movie being a hit.  In fact, I could see the same subject matter being treated as a documentary much more compelling.
    One thing that really came out was the use of Stayin' Alive.  It's written to the film, and part of it describes Travolta's popularity while dancing, but the song ends with repeating "Life goin' nowhere/Somebody help me."

    Also, the wiki article is interesting.  There's a PG, and a PG-13 version of this movie.  The original was R.  There's a massive amount of cursing, plus a bit of nudity, a gang rape, some assorted other sex, some gang violence…. I can't imagine what kind of movie would result when that material is taken out.