Saturday Night Fever

Oh, Travolta. I'm sure he had the girls eating out of his hand after this one. The first thing I want to bring to attention is the idea of Tony seeming so 'fake'. When you watch him on screen, you get the idea that this is a sheltered, young, rowdy teenager who cares only about his looks, and girls, and what he is going to spend his next paycheck on. Everyone sort of looks at him the same way in the film, they all sort of...pity him. The amusing part about it, is when you realize that he's the only one who really knows who he is, and what he wants. This really comes to light when you see the conversation between Stephanie and Tony at the coffee shop. You begin to realize that even though Stephanie thinks he's a teenager, who doesn't know anything, and has no plan, that she is really the one that is fake, not Tony. The line Tony says to her, "You're full of shit", really tells it like it is, when you find out later that she is in a job that she really doesn't like, simply so she could get across the bridge, and out of Brooklyn. Then, there is the use of the bridges. The bridge was really a passing transition throughout the film. Every time you crossed the bridge, there was another "character revelation", so to speak.

Throughout the film, you get the idea that Tony feels boxed in because of the life he leads. I an especially big fan of the scene where he "hangs" himself with his brother's priest collar. I love the idea of the older brother leaving him his collar as a reminder to not do what he did, which is try to please everyone else and then kill yourself in the process. Which leads us into the most heavy line in the movie, "There are ways of killing yourself without killing yourself". If the coffee house scene was a lightbulb for Tony, then this was the straw that broke the camels back. This was the turning point for Tony, and when you really look at it, it took a LONG time for it to happen. This leads into the scene in which he just rides around on the train system all night, eventually ending up at Stephanie's home. The ending, is bitterly satisfactory, it really is the new beginning. This film is the pinnacle of "every ending is a new beginning".