Lounge
‘Moonstruck’ remains a screen romance like no other
Summary
Romantic comedies have grown self-conscious, ironic, afraid of sincerity. But ‘Moonstruck’ is fearless
Valentine’s Day may be a crassly commercial invention, but any excuse to rhapsodize about a beloved romance is never wholly unwelcome. This week I choose to write about Norman Jewison’s 1987 stunner, Moonstruck, streaming in India on Amazon Prime.
Moonstruck is a film of impossible rhythms. It breathes in Italian opera and exhales Brooklyn profanity, walking a tightrope between the banal and the enchanted—a romance both sincere and absurd, grandiose and grounded, swirling and strangely still. It may be, perhaps, the last great Hollywood fairytale—one that makes love in the moonlight while howling at the moon.
Jewison and the film’s writer John Patrick Shanley understand love’s contradictions. This film is full of people who are both weary and wide-eyed, longing for stability yet driven mad by passion. Consider Cher’s Loretta Castorini, a 37-year-old Italian-American widow from Brooklyn who works as a bookkeeper and feels cursed with bad luck. She has measured out her life in careful steps, accepting a proposal from the safe, dithering Johnny Cammareri (Danny Aiello), a man she does not love but who, at least, does not threaten her. And yet, the moment she meets Johnny’s estranged brother, Ronny—played with ferocious intensity by Nicolas Cage—she is swept into something untamed.
Cher’s performance is a marvel of command and clarity. This is a romance about awareness, about waking up. Loretta is a woman who understands how the world works, pragmatic about money, family, and duty, but she has yet to see herself clearly. She wears her widowhood like a mask, her hair in a tight bun, her love life in a state of bureaucratic settlement. And then, with one incredible, moonlit moment, she sees all. She takes a cab to the Met, wears a red dress, and demands more from life. Cher plays Loretta with an intoxicating mix of control and surrender—her voice steady and grounded, her gestures direct, yet there is a twinkle in her eye, a growing heat beneath her composure. When she slaps Ronny and tells him, “Snap out of it!" it is an order, yes, but also a plea.
Nicolas Cage bursts into this film like a man who has just escaped a tragic opera. Ronny Cammareri is not merely a man; he is a wound, a bleeding heart in a sweaty undershirt. He lost his hand in a bread slicer, lost his fiancée, and has lived in a state of melodramatic self-pity ever since. He is a man of grand pronouncements, of fists slammed against tables, of fiery speeches delivered with the reckless intensity of a wounded beast. Yet he is also inexplicably sensual. Cage, always a performer of extremes, gives Ronny a rough poetry, an unexpected smoulder. He grabs Loretta and declares, “I love you. Not like they told you love is, and I didn’t know this either, but love don’t make things nice—it ruins everything. It breaks your heart. It makes things a mess. We aren’t here to make things perfect. The snowflakes are perfect. The stars are perfect. Not us. Not us!" It is unhinged, it is ridiculous, and somehow, it is perfect.
Jewison has a way of making the film both lyrical and utterly prosaic. The moon looms large, glowing and full, swelling like an aria, yet the drama is played out at the breakfast table, over plates of eggs and sausage, across kitchen counters and street corners. Loretta’s parents, played to perfection by Vincent Gardenia and Olympia Dukakis, bicker and philosophise, their marriage a comfortable battle. Dukakis, in particular, is fantastic as Loretta’s mother, Rose, a woman who understands men better than they understand themselves. When she asks, “Why do men chase women?" and then answers her own question with, “Because they fear death," it is one of those moments where comedy and tragedy collapse into one another.
The earthiness in Moonstruck keeps it from floating away. Love here is tied to food, to meat sizzling in a pan, to hot bread fresh out of the oven, to sugar cubes fizzing in champagne glasses. It is a film that understands romance as a sensory thing, as something tasted and touched, as something that leaves flour on your hands and warmth in your belly.
And what of that final scene, the breakfast table crescendo? There, in the Castorini household, gathered around coffee and toast, the entire mad tangle of love and loyalty unravels and re-knits itself. There is betrayal, forgiveness, absurdity, revelation. The great truths of the night before are met with the morning’s practicality. Marriage is accepted with a clink of glasses, love declared with an arm around a shoulder. It is a scene that ought to feel too neat, too symmetrical, and yet, it plays out with such warmth, such natural rhythm, that it feels inevitable.
There has not been a film quite like Moonstruck since. Romantic comedies have grown self-conscious, ironic, afraid of sincerity. But Moonstruck is fearless. It believes in passion, in the kind of love that knocks you off your feet and into a stranger’s bed, in moonlight that changes everything. It is a film about knowing yourself, about seeing yourself, about taking off the safe, sensible mask and standing bare before love.
This brings us back to Ronny Cammareri, the one-handed, tuxedoed, wounded lover. Love could never be wholly without harm—and yet, sometimes, it may be armless.
Raja Sen is a screenwriter and critic. He has co-written Chup, a film about killing critics, and is now creating an absurd comedy series. He posts @rajasen.
