Review of Breaking Away (1979) by Marilee A — 03 Jun 2011

Having lived in Bloomington the last seven years of my life, it was high time I watch "Breaking Away." And let me tell you, it's a surreal experience watching a movie filmed in your hometown with such specificity. I've walked on the sidewalks these actors walk, driven those streets, bowled in that bowling alley, eaten in the union where they get into a brawl, sat in those stadium seats, etc. I told my girlfriend in the middle of watching that "this is like watching a home movie" because of how familiar the setting is to me. There are only a small handful of shots in "Breaking Away" that depict locations I've never seen, and most of those are inside houses.

But apart from the sheer weirdness of my personal watching experience, the film starts off with a lazy pace, a sort of lukewarm meandering that doesn't engage me at all. I sense the film pulling at the corners a tiny bit to create conflict with its central four characters, friends recently graduated from high school in Btown. It goes a little like this:

Dave (admittedly played very well by a young Dennis Christopher) has fallen in love with all things Italy which drives his father nuts, but in a goofy way. Mike (did you know Dennis Quaid used to be ripped?) as an ex-high school quarterback who has a never-ending grudge against the college kids because they're rich, snobby, and educated. Cyril (Daniel Stern) and Moocher (Jakie Earl Haley) are less explored but have their own less relevant and frankly uninteresting side-stories.

The movie is about these things, and it's also about Midwestern values. It's also about jealousy, it's about athletic ability, it's about money, determination, socioeconomic status, intellect, how to deal with hatred, how to be an honest person, and how to mature into a man, all at once. It's an ambitious movie without coming across as ambitious at all.

Although this filmmaking approach leads to a light-hearted tone and a few funny moments, it prevents the early parts of the film from allowing us to take these complex elements very seriously. The cinematography, strangely enough, feels similarly lax in many places, reeking of an older time when not all filmmakers were created equal, and many simply didn't polish as neatly as most cinematographers do now. The cinematography in "Breaking Away" is largely boring, repetitive, and flat, which is disappointing considering the fact that it's obviously the camera that's responsible for showing my home and favorite Indiana city.

But back to the story. Dave is the central character, and although his obsession with Italy starts to bother us as much as it bothers his father, he's an overall very likable character. He's a boy with a ton of potential stuck in a tough place with no money and no opportunity. All his friends and family have ever done is seek jobs after high school and have no higher ambitions. Dave is different. He enjoys the idea of college, even if he won't admit it. He falls for a college girl and woos her with his fake Italian accent.

An avid biker, he's persuaded by his friends to race in the Little 500, the most famous college bike race in the U.S. The 500 race takes place at the very end of the film and so serves as the climax. Any of you who've seen the cover know what the result is, but that's hardly the important part. The point is that Dave has come full circle. By defying his father and racing in the 500, he counterintuitively has finally gathered an understanding of his father, who used to be a miner in the famous Bloomington limestone quarries (one of the movie's most interesting scenes is of Dave's father paying a visit to the old quarry where he used to work). His father comes to see him race and, in the end, defies everything he knows and pushes his son to go to college. His father, too, has come full circle. Just shows you're never too old to grow up.