Learning how to watch 200 movies I've never seen before, and I'll never tell you the secret ingredient.
Mystic Pizza
1988
Donald Petrie
The name is maybe a bit too on-the-nose.
Or maybe not. Mystic Pizza is a real pizza parlor, in the real town of Mystic, Connecticut. Screenwriter Amy Holden Jones grabbed a slice when she vacationing in the '80s, and had the good idea that this might be a good location for a coming-of-age tale. She was right.
But still, the name: "mystic." A definition is "one who self-surrenders to the idea that some knowledge is beyond the self." No one in Mystic Pizza treats the name of the titular restaurant as a double entendre, but it ends up being one anyway, at least in my interpretation of this wonderful little film. I think maybe the movie is better for it—let the actual mysticism remain in between the lines.
Here is a story of three young women in a small New England tourist town. Two are sisters, plus a best friend, and here, at the end of the summer after high school, their paths, their destinies, have been established. Kat (Annabeth Gish) is off to Yale in the second semester, Daisy (Julia Roberts) is wondering how she'll ever be able to plan her own escape, and Jojo (Lili Taylor) is trying to maintain her independence by bailing on her own wedding (sidenote: her fiance Bill is played by Vincent D'Onofrio, and he plays a WILDLY different role than his Full Metal Jacket character from just a year earlier).
This is one of those romantic comedies that features multiple storylines laid out on mostly parallel tracks, rarely crossing except for when the three leads are all working the same shift. Do they intersect enough for this to be a coherent movie? I'd argue so. The scenes with Roberts, Gish, and Taylor are just so real and true and warm that it really does feel like all their stories are happening at the same time in the same town, in the same group of friends.
Early in the film, when Daisy is telling Jojo that's it no big deal that her wedding didn't work out, she says something along the lines of "the only reason to marry is to get out of Mystic." That line struck me as important, early on, and it continued to resonate with me, even as the film barrelled toward the ending and no one really felt the need to underline the point.
That point—interpreted by me, and for once an original thought about one of these Never Seen It movies instead of just me responding to points that have already been made—is that Mystic, Connecticut, itself is central to these characters and how they behave. Everything they do and every action that they make is either an embrace or a dismissal of their hometown. It makes Mystic, ahem, the fourth main character.
Think about it. Daisy wants so badly to escape, and is so self-deprecating that a core belief of hers is that she'll only escape through meeting a boy who will take her away. Meanwhile, her sister Kat really is planning her escape, off to college, but is threatening to blow that plan up by hooking up with a 30-something married dude (whose daughter she babysits!), and see how Daisy gets so angry at her for threatening to piss away the one thing Daisy wants so badly. And then Jojo is on the cusp of settling down with a guy she sincerely loves but who is a forever-Mystic dude, and she knows that, and she frames it as "maintaining my own independence and identity," but really she's just grappling with the fact that, in marriage, she's gonna be stuck here.
That's what makes a scene like the three of them hanging out and drinking on the outside perimeter of the country club so sad and poignant; you can see how entrenched they are in Mystic, and how they have accepted their subordinate roles in this fucking tourist town they call home. When she thinks she sees her ticket outta here disappearing, Daisy blows the fuck up, and rightly so. If Charlie isn't the real deal, then she continues to be mired in the only place she's ever known, and that idea is so suffocating that she dumps two barrels of fish guts into Charlie's Porsche. It's played for laughs, and it ends up being a misunderstanding anyway, but yo—this film feels deeper and sadder than anyone seems to be willing to give it credit for.
And it gives extra electricity to a scene like the one where Kat returns from a quasi-date with Tim (the dad of her affection) and finds Daisy cleaning up, being forced to cover Kat's shift. On the surface, the tension is presented as being borne of frustration at the unfairness of having to pick up a shift last-minute, and Daisy missing a planned dinner with Charlie's family, but look at what's really going on here. The playing field is uneven because Kat has something that Daisy desperately needs—a reason to leave town—and Kat doesn't even see it that way (or else she wouldn't be flirting with the dad). I'm impressed that the movie didn't feel the need to go melodramatic with it; the real reason they're fighting goes unsaid, but it's crystal clear, there under the fluorescent lighting of Mystic Pizza in Mystic, CT.
I don't know if Mystic Pizza means to touch on these themes. Might just be one of those "the audience member interprets it in exactly the way he needs to" situations. I am known to think about my own hometown on occasion. But I do sincerely think that examining where one comes from is one of the most important things we can do as we grind our way through adulthood, and I appreciate Mystic Pizza presenting the triplicate of reactions one can have to their hometown, as exemplified by its three main characters. You can embrace your hometown (Jojo), you can be meant for something better (Kat), and you can just be meant for something different (Daisy). There is no right answer, and the film doesn't suggest that there is.
That, to me, is the true mysticism of the film. If there is a right answer to this question that we call life, then none of us know it. We can find peace in the not knowing, and comfort in the fact that life will inevitably move us in the direction of what's right anyway.
Surprisingly great film.
But still, the name: "mystic." A definition is "one who self-surrenders to the idea that some knowledge is beyond the self." No one in Mystic Pizza treats the name of the titular restaurant as a double entendre, but it ends up being one anyway, at least in my interpretation of this wonderful little film. I think maybe the movie is better for it—let the actual mysticism remain in between the lines.
Here is a story of three young women in a small New England tourist town. Two are sisters, plus a best friend, and here, at the end of the summer after high school, their paths, their destinies, have been established. Kat (Annabeth Gish) is off to Yale in the second semester, Daisy (Julia Roberts) is wondering how she'll ever be able to plan her own escape, and Jojo (Lili Taylor) is trying to maintain her independence by bailing on her own wedding (sidenote: her fiance Bill is played by Vincent D'Onofrio, and he plays a WILDLY different role than his Full Metal Jacket character from just a year earlier).
This is one of those romantic comedies that features multiple storylines laid out on mostly parallel tracks, rarely crossing except for when the three leads are all working the same shift. Do they intersect enough for this to be a coherent movie? I'd argue so. The scenes with Roberts, Gish, and Taylor are just so real and true and warm that it really does feel like all their stories are happening at the same time in the same town, in the same group of friends.
Early in the film, when Daisy is telling Jojo that's it no big deal that her wedding didn't work out, she says something along the lines of "the only reason to marry is to get out of Mystic." That line struck me as important, early on, and it continued to resonate with me, even as the film barrelled toward the ending and no one really felt the need to underline the point.
That point—interpreted by me, and for once an original thought about one of these Never Seen It movies instead of just me responding to points that have already been made—is that Mystic, Connecticut, itself is central to these characters and how they behave. Everything they do and every action that they make is either an embrace or a dismissal of their hometown. It makes Mystic, ahem, the fourth main character.
Think about it. Daisy wants so badly to escape, and is so self-deprecating that a core belief of hers is that she'll only escape through meeting a boy who will take her away. Meanwhile, her sister Kat really is planning her escape, off to college, but is threatening to blow that plan up by hooking up with a 30-something married dude (whose daughter she babysits!), and see how Daisy gets so angry at her for threatening to piss away the one thing Daisy wants so badly. And then Jojo is on the cusp of settling down with a guy she sincerely loves but who is a forever-Mystic dude, and she knows that, and she frames it as "maintaining my own independence and identity," but really she's just grappling with the fact that, in marriage, she's gonna be stuck here.
That's what makes a scene like the three of them hanging out and drinking on the outside perimeter of the country club so sad and poignant; you can see how entrenched they are in Mystic, and how they have accepted their subordinate roles in this fucking tourist town they call home. When she thinks she sees her ticket outta here disappearing, Daisy blows the fuck up, and rightly so. If Charlie isn't the real deal, then she continues to be mired in the only place she's ever known, and that idea is so suffocating that she dumps two barrels of fish guts into Charlie's Porsche. It's played for laughs, and it ends up being a misunderstanding anyway, but yo—this film feels deeper and sadder than anyone seems to be willing to give it credit for.
And it gives extra electricity to a scene like the one where Kat returns from a quasi-date with Tim (the dad of her affection) and finds Daisy cleaning up, being forced to cover Kat's shift. On the surface, the tension is presented as being borne of frustration at the unfairness of having to pick up a shift last-minute, and Daisy missing a planned dinner with Charlie's family, but look at what's really going on here. The playing field is uneven because Kat has something that Daisy desperately needs—a reason to leave town—and Kat doesn't even see it that way (or else she wouldn't be flirting with the dad). I'm impressed that the movie didn't feel the need to go melodramatic with it; the real reason they're fighting goes unsaid, but it's crystal clear, there under the fluorescent lighting of Mystic Pizza in Mystic, CT.
I don't know if Mystic Pizza means to touch on these themes. Might just be one of those "the audience member interprets it in exactly the way he needs to" situations. I am known to think about my own hometown on occasion. But I do sincerely think that examining where one comes from is one of the most important things we can do as we grind our way through adulthood, and I appreciate Mystic Pizza presenting the triplicate of reactions one can have to their hometown, as exemplified by its three main characters. You can embrace your hometown (Jojo), you can be meant for something better (Kat), and you can just be meant for something different (Daisy). There is no right answer, and the film doesn't suggest that there is.
That, to me, is the true mysticism of the film. If there is a right answer to this question that we call life, then none of us know it. We can find peace in the not knowing, and comfort in the fact that life will inevitably move us in the direction of what's right anyway.
Surprisingly great film.
GRADE: 4 pukes out of 5
NEXT TIME: I'm just gonna go ahead and assume that Mystic River is a sequel to Mystic Pizza.
2 comments:
Wow, I can't wait to talk your ear off this weekend about all of my Mystic and Mystic Pizza experiences. Hot take- the pizza's pretty good!
I'm also interested to hear your perspective, as someone who seems to have "escaped" your hometown, whether you see yourself as a Kat or a Daisy in that regard (whether you needed something better or just something different).
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