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There's a moment in the car scene that I always remembered: When Cameron first starts kicking the Ferrari, Sloane instinctively steps forward to stop him, and Ferris holds her back. Ferris has been exulting about how incredible this car is all throughout the movie, but he doesn't hesitate to let his friend trash it if that's what he needs to do.
It's a nice character moment, but it also speaks to what is, to me, the fundamental message of the film: Objects, like sports cars, no matter how beautiful and rare, are there to be used and enjoyed, not hoarded and held in pristine captivity in fear of negative consequences. And the single most beautiful and rare object you have is your own life. Don't waste it paralysed by fear of what might go wrong, or stuck in a boring classroom or job.
> Objects, like sports cars, no matter how beautiful and rare, are there to be used and enjoyed, not hoarded and held in pristine captivity in fear of negative consequences.
I saw it more as, the Ferrari represented Cameron and his father's damage relationship. Cameron was the way he was, because his father was the way he was, and Cameron knew the Ferrari meant a lot to his dad. Him smashing it was basically a self-destructive cry for help (in my eyes). I felt like the viewer is left knowing Cameron and his dad will "work through something big/transformative" given the colossal impact the son (who the dad probably doesn't really care for) smashing his prized possession (that he really cars for) would have.
Ferris Bueller's Day Off - 1986
Fight Club - 1999
Doesn't Fight Club have the same kind of "life isn't about possessions, step out of your comfort zone while you are still alive otherwise you're wasting your life chasing Ikea furniture" message?
I genuinely wish I could read deeper into movies and book like this. Is this an inherent trait or one that can be learned? I wouldn't even know how to begin to learn to do this.
I've always read books and watched movies for the simplistic entertainment value. Now as I grow older I'd like to get a deeper meaning / inspection to enhance the entertainment value (if that makes sense).
That Ferrari belongs to Cameron's father so Ferris really has no say in what Cameron does to it and it does not mean anything to Ferris.
From the previous scenes we know exactly what that Ferrari is and represents from Cameron himself so I think Ferris is just telling Sloane that this is Cameron's call and not for them to interfere, and perhaps that Cameron actually needs to do it as a catharsis.
Some zoomers on my team recently came across Bueller's "isms" speech and enjoyed it.
Lot of philosophy there if you look below the surface.
Indeed. And it’s exemplified by the working class guys in the parking garage that live in the moment. They see their chance to do something they normally wouldn’t be able to and run with it, likely risking their jobs. But it’s a worthy trade as it’s something always they’ll always remember.
As someone who struggled against their parent’s tragic hoarding for decades and now am tasked with clearing it all out, I feel this.
My partner and I prefer the gifts of time and experience over objects that eventually become clutter and junk.
The question I would have in this case is who made that decision for Ferris' character? Was that scripted? Something the director added, something Broderick did?
As was mentioned elsewhere, everything seen on film is (mostly) intentional. It was either decided to be put there, or decided to be left in (even those goofs where the camera is seen, someone probably saw it in post and decided "not worth fixing").
Sometime actors and have some autonomy with their characters, similarly directors can have great flexibility in the rendering of the story. So, anyway, when you seem moments like that, always curios where they come from.
If I could submit a "Love" symbol for this comment, know that I would.
I've always liked the fan theory that Fight Club is the sequel to Ferris Bueller's Day Off.
I can see Cameron growing up to live in a "neat" apartment, working as an insurance adjustment claims officer. But this time, the alter ego that surfaces is Tyler Durden, not Ferris, and it goes beyond destroying Ferraris.
That's pretty good. I'd like to rewatch both back to back through that lense.
Does it hold together, even if it wasn't originally intended this way?
I really must chime in that Ferris Bueller's Day Off is not even close to even 1% of all the ways to arrive at Fight Club.
That's why Fight Club relates to way more people and persists in a much more significant way.
Ah - now from the title i thought this would refer to that famous recut trailer of Ferris Bueller’s Day Off that makes it look like a poignant coming of age indie film.
It’s now 11 years old and most people alive today have never seen it - so here it is:
Unrelated, but this finally prompted me to add "youtube.com##.ytp-ce-element" to My Filters in Ublock Origin. I am very glad not to have to see those cards pop up and obscure the last 10 seconds of a video any longer.
Great post, I hadn't seen this before
I actually watch this regularly for the feels! Glad someone else loves it.
It's funny that the linked article doesn't mention the heaviousest thing about the film, which is the surprise reveal toward the end that the day was not a lark, but specifically engineered by Ferris because he was afraid that Cameron was contemplating suicide, and he wanted to give his friend a glimpse of the value of life.
It touches on this:
> Which is precisely the point: Ferris has staged this adolescent fantasy of omnipotence expressly for his best friend.
> Ferris himself is, for the most part, a fabulous cartoon—half James Bond, half Holden Caulfield. But he understands the very real crisis Cameron is facing and takes it as his role to push his friend into emotional danger.
I remember watching the Ferrari scene as a kid in tears. That was my relationship with my old man too (minus expensive Italian sports cars, and sending them through windows).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FVqqVlW1a34
Honestly though every time I see the close up at the end of the video I'm waiting for it to fade to black and show:
Cameron Frye 1970-1986
John Hughes captured the 80s. If you want to know what the 80s were like as a teenager, watch The Breakfast Club (1985). His best work, in my opinion. Unlike Ferris Bueller, The Breakfast Club is close to the reality of teenage life in the 80s.
Disclaimer: American, middle class, suburban teenagers in the 1980s.
Growing up in rural Ireland in the late 70s and 80s The Breakfast Club seemed so damn cool to us. Life for these kids seemed impossibly great and it was hard to understand why they were so jaded. At least the more privileged ones. But then I grew up and saw Ireland go from fairly poor to rich and understood that when you solve one set of more basic problems then new higher level problems emerge.
I wasn't a teen in the 80s (and European) but TBC still had echoes in my generation. Although I grew up many Hughes movies, I only heard about it way way later (early 2000s) and it left me speechless to feel that again.
/agree
>But Hughes made only one film I would consider true art, only one that reaches toward the ecstatic power of teendom and, at the same time, exposes the true, piercing woe of that age.
While I really appreciate the author's examination of FBDO, TBC achieves what he states here in a far more poignant way.
/80's suburban teen
I had more than one friend in the 80's who loathed FBDO because he was the prototypical popular spoilt rich kid who got away with everything in High School and all the other parents loved.
> [Alan] Ruck is tall, blue-eyed, big-jawed, movie-star handsome.
Took me by surprise. Ruck isn't bad-looking, but he's not what I think of as "movie-star handsome".
At least, not in FBDO. I think he's grown more into his face as he's got older, but back then that's not how I'd have described him.
...or maybe the make-up department just did a really great job of making look a little bit goofy for the role.
He was 29 when they filmed FBDO. He definitely looks handsome in his more recent roles. I think it's a combination of makeup/wardrobe/acting. A lot of what was less-movie-star about him in FBDO was his awkwardness.
I read this, too, and was confused. He repulsed me in that film. Maybe it was his character bleeding into his looks, though.
My favourite thing about Ferris Bueller's Day Off is that Alan Ruck was 29 when it was made.
I often wonder how many people didn’t get the throwback at the end of deadpool.
My wife didn’t get it but it prompted us to watch Ferris Bueller’s Day Off which she ended up loving.
The movie should be understood as Cameron imagining Ferris and Sloane. They are not really there, none of it really happens. The whole day is his fantasy, and his epiphany at the end is the only real event.
That only works if you throw away half the movie. Ferris is real to his sister, his parents, and the school administration.
Now, what if Cameron isn't real?
This is funny for me to read today. i just decided to call out of work and take my own day off. i told them i was sick. i feel fine. just don't feel like working.
"How can I possibly be expected to handle school on a day like this."
https://open.spotify.com/track/1iOHLlEsMbgJfYBFWy4TjG?si=QnT...
I just spent 5min looking for usage of the word "heaviosity", which appealingly sounds and seems likes a real word, but in fact doesn't seem to be one. Perhaps the author used a seemingly deep, but incorrect, word as a way to poke fun at literary critics. Perhaps the word doesn't exist and the author just made a mistake. Or, perhaps the word is used by certain groups of of people, but it hasn't shown up on the web.
It is fascinating when someone does a deep dive into movies and flesh out potentially deeper meaning. For example this YouTube video (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MALVhzMcJ1k) does something similar for the Vader-Luke duel in "The Empire Strikes Back" albeit on more emotional interpersonal level than philosophical.
I had to get out a dictionary for this one... "Dishy" means attractive.
"Cut to Cameron, at the wheel of a white junker, his long, rubbery face cast in a morbid posture."
Cameron's car was a 1982 Alfa Romeo Alfetta which is far from a junker.
It's not a bad a piece, but too much exposition and not enough analysis. I think it is a psycho-analytical lens, because the most interesting observation to me is when the author assigns Ferris Bueller's id to Cameron's ego. This should've been the main thesis. And this bit: "By definition, the adults in a Hughes film are beyond hope of transformation" obviously doesn't apply to Planes, Trains and Automobiles.
> It featured a number of techniques that I recognized from other, later films: direct addresses to the camera, on-screen graphics, the prominent use of background songs to create de facto music videos, the sudden exhilarating blur of fantasy and reality.
That would be any Hughes film and lots of films from the 80s, the MTV decade.
Breaking the 4th wall was not close to a Hughes invention:
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls050751793/
> Matthew Broderick, unbearably young
Weird. I always thought he seemed too old to be Ferris in high school. He seemed like a fairly mature but more believable high school kid in Wargames a few years earlier.
Don't forget the John Hughes commentary track on the original DVD.
Separate is the 'Bueller... Bueller...' DVD which has documentaries but no commentary track.
It is Cameron’s Day Off; he is the protagonist.
“I needn’t labor the basic plot”
proceeds with complete retelling of entire film
(2006)
Kinda good article, but why write 'heavyosity' when 'gravity' was already available?
This film resonated with 14-year-old me so profoundly that I became obsessed with it in every way. I managed to go see it in the theater at least 9 times, Mrs. Bueller. I was absolutely enthralled by Ferris' audacity and the overall thrill ride Hughes took me on. I had no particular love for any Hughes films before or after that; I was absolutely a Ferris Bueller boy and that's how it was for years. This favorite movie status was finally supplanted by Steve Martin in LA Story.
The author's "charming manipulator" has always seemed like a simply bully to me. I've never liked that film.
Am I the only one here who thinks that this movie is bland, very shallow, not really funny and immensely overrated? Maybe because most people watched it as a child and still feel attached to it emotionally somehow?
A nice analysis but not much that goes beyond the obvious. Perhaps it's actually more an interpretation than an analysis, if the former term were to allow for more of a personal stance / opinion. There's certainly a couple of things where I would disagree with Almond's view but then again, it's a film from the 80s that I haven't seen in over a decade if not two. Perhaps because there's more important things to life. Still, Ferris Bueller's Day Off certainly holds a nice and cozy place in my memory.