The classics of Imitation: Taking off (1971), a film by Milos Forman

Taking off (1971) (93min)

Director: Milos Forman

Writers: Jean-Claude Carrière, Milos Forman, John Guare, Jon Klein

Cast: Lynn Carlin, Buck Henry, Linnea Heacock, Georgia Engel, Tony Harvey, Audra Lindey, Paul Benedict

Even admitting the limitlessness offered to the cinema buff by the art of filmmaking, which renders any attempt at completeness pointless, there are certain films one is supposed to have seen. Taking off, Milos Forman's first American film, is one of those films, so last night I was pleased to finally cross it off my personal shame list courtesy of the superb summer program Écran Total at Cinema Aremberg. (Incidentally, if you haven't signed up the request to stop the ghastly plans to evict this marvelous arthouse cinema by the end of the year yet, you can do it here).
Forman tackles the subject of the generation gap against the backdrop of the American youth counterculture of the beginning of the seventies, more precisely through the subphenomenon of the teenage runaways, but he shrewdly refrains from lingering in the growing pains of the young, focusing instead in the equally troubled parents, which proves to be a revelation.
One of the most striking aspects of the film is the bold use of the editing, which makes the action move from one space and time to another, usually to an exhilarating comic effect, with one scene providing the answer to the question presented in another, unrelated scene. The editing is specially giddy and vertiginous in the audition sequences (a film inside the film), most notably in the scene of the song split up in phrases sung out by different contestants.
The cast is led by two notable performers, Lynn Carlin (Oscar-nominated three years before for Cassavetes' Faces) and Buck Henry (also the writer of films like The Graduate and To Die For), but it is mostly made up by non-professionals, which adds to the improvised style of the film. The audition scenes include wonderfully enjoyable cameos by the likes of an impossibly young Kathy Bates (billed as Bobo Bates) or Carly Simon, and Ike and Tina Turner appear as themselves in a nightclub show.
The end result is a memorable, disrespectful comedy about a whole generation (and its many misperceptions) which lives up to its own status as a cult film and that, although approachable and delicious in its viewing, retains the auteurist distinction of its helmer.

Favourite scene: Inevitably, the pot-smoking collective session by the members of the hilarious Society for the Parents of Fugitive Children, although many of the casting performances (including the fuck song, featured in the clip below) are as much a delight to watch as that one.