At dusk, the annual DVD Talk forum Criterion challenge officially began! I've committed myself to watching Steve Buscemi's Top 10, and Billy Liar was first on his list. Earlier this year, I saw Tom Courtenay in the fantastic 45 Years (for which his costar, Charlotte Rampling, was deservedly nominated for Best Actress at this year's Oscars). He'll always be Strelnikov to me first and foremost, but I'll readily admit that between these other two films, I'm quickly developing a greater respect for, and keener interest in, his work as an actor.

I saw in Courtenay's performance a lot of nuances that resonated with me personally. I'm not prone to his kind of daydreaming or elaborate fantasies, but I did detect some strong elements of impostor syndrome at work. In his essay for Criterion, Bruce Goldstein quotes an excerpt from Keith Waterhouse, the original novelist who also co-wrote the play and film:

Waterhouse recalled in his memoirs, “It was fascinating to contrast their performances: Albert’s ‘I am star!’ Billy, Tom’s ‘I wish I were a star!’ Billy. Both interpretations are equally correct, for locked in Billy Fisher’s tangled psyche are both characters, star and nonentity.”

For me, Courtenay's "I wish I were a star" approach is the richer interpretation. It imbues specific moments with markedly different context and subtext, for one thing, but it also makes some specific parts of the story work better for me than I think they would have had Billy actually believed himself to be a "star".

Cut to the penultimate scene, where Billy leaves the train.

If Billy really does believe himself to be a star who just needs the right breaks, then him running away from the train at that moment makes no sense. He's already apprehensive, that much is clear, but what tips the scales is when he recognizes the band who had earlier that evening performed the song he co-wrote. A star desperate for a break would see this as a golden opportunity to at least try to ingratiate himself and forge a replacement for the tenuous alliance he thought he had going with Danny Boon.

However, if Billy doesn't actually believe he's a star, but rather wishes he was one, then it makes perfect sense for him to flee that setting. As someone with a strong impostor syndrome problem, I can easily understand how intimidating and outright terrifying that kind of experience could be.

I don't even think that Billy really wanted Danny Boon to come through and become his golden ticket out of Yorkshire. I think he was relieved. There's something about finding out that there are, in fact, limits to our fanciful notions that's comforting, and the prospect that there are no limits can be terrifying. Most of us have experienced that phenomenon at least once, whether it was actually applying to a school we thought we were unqualified to attend or buying an engagement ring and wondering, "What happens if she says 'yes'?"

This is a strong opening to my 2016 DVD Talk Criterion Challenge. Though I often appreciate the films I watch during these challenges, it's less common for me to so thoroughly enjoy them. Julie Christie lights up the screen every time she's in the frame. I also got a kick out of the chemistry between Courtenay and Rodney Bewes as his collaborator, Arthur Crabtree.

Billy Liar entered my Flickchart at #180/1845

It wasn't really intentional that I should follow In the Realm of the Senses, a Japanese film set in 1936, with Hitori musuko [The Only Son], a Japanese film made in 1936. Rather, I came to discover that I could knock out three of the few remaining checklist items for my Criterion Challenge if I watched this and its companion piece, There Was a Father.

Watching The Only Son in 2012 is nearly surreal. It's as timely now as it ever was, which is frankly discouraging. Otsune is a working poor widow pressured into sacrificing even more of herself to scrape up the money to send her son, Ryosuke, to school. She's made to see that without an education, her son will never have a chance to better himself and certainly not if he remains in their quaint, dead-end town.

However, when we catch up to Ryosuke as an adult, we discover that for all her sacrificing and all his hard work, he's no better off than he would have been otherwise. He's a night-time teacher, living in what could charitably be described as a dump with his sweet wife, Sugiko, and their infant son.

We watch as he scrounges to put on airs to impress his mother, trying to wow her with the hustle and bustle of Tokyo. He borrows money from colleagues to effectively rent some status symbols to validate his mother's investment in him. She sees through the charade, however, and more importantly - these are not things that she values. It means nothing to her to watch a talkie film.

It's simultaneously amusing and deflating to see the cliche of the struggling academic living off ramen noodles dating as far back as this film, but sure enough Ryosuke buys three bowls of it for dinner one night, trying to impress his mother that things are just fine. It's not only his mother, though; it's Ryosuke himself who feels disappointment and shame at not having lived up to his end of the bargain: to become "a great man."

How familiar is it to hear Ryosuke's frustration that all his hard work means nothing? That he had already tried to make it, only to be stymied by an economy that shut out so many that success is a bottleneck in which scant few really have even a chance? That he's just one of millions to see their ambitions and talents dashed on the shoals of an indifferent economy? The only way it could be timelier is if Ryosuke still had massive student loan debt and a medical condition.

It isn't until Otsune sees her son forfeit borrowed money to help his neighbor after her son is injured by a horse that she is comforted. Finally, this is something she recognizes and values. Though she has defied his capitulation to circumstance, arguing that he's still young and that he is wrong to give up on himself now, she is able to return home confident that her son has, indeed, turned out well. She discusses him with her coworker, and we can tell she's trying to put a nice spin on his circumstances and her visit, but when she reflects on who he is, rather than where he is, we recognize genuine maternal pride.

So many stories about characters in similar straits devolve into the kind of "bootstraps" rhetoric that's as insulting as it is saccharine, but The Only Son nimbly avoids those pitfalls. We're left with Ryosuke resolved to go back to school and become a high school teacher, but we know it's going to be challenging. How will he even pay for it? How will they manage while he's in school? These questions are left unanswered. We've seen enough to know that this is not a happily-ever-after resolution.

Rather, what matters is that we see Ryosuke embraces the challenge. Each generation sacrifices to improve the chances of the next, and we see that while Ryosuke won't be the one in the family to "make it," he will continue the generations-long task and that maybe, just maybe, his son will get a fair roll of the dice.

Hitori musuko [The Only Son] entered my Flickchart at #132/1429