A Celebration of Care: Why Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is the feel-good movie | Ferris Bueller’s Day Off

IIt’s hard to ignore a film’s message when the main character is addressing you directly down the barrel of a camera. Granted, the first time I watched the 1986 teen comedy Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, I was an impressionable 11-year-old, and the maxim “look people in the eye when they’re talking to you” was in constant rotation in my house. So my green eyes met Ferris’ brown eyes and I took it all in.

Centered around Matthew Broderick’s delightful turn as Ferris Bueller, a high school student who feigns illness to miss school, Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is certainly a celebration of carelessness, though the story is by no means weak. After you get frantic doing the thing you’re not supposed to do with the help of a red Ferrari, the day speeds up compared to the fantasy days of other American teen movies, like American Graffiti and Dazed & Confused — which, to be fair, do contain a fair amount of marijuana.

The pace owes to the constant change in location. Once Ferris’s doting parents fall for the wet-hands trick (“lick your palms”), he has a really good day. With his charm and a little verbal manipulation, he wrangles his best friend Cameron Frye (Alan Ruck) and his girlfriend Sloane Peterson (Mia Sara) out of Chicago’s North Shore suburbs to tour the city’s many shows, all while escaping the clutches of a jealous sister and an angry Dean of Students.

These antagonists are merely the embodiment of the status quo – a signature of the film’s writer and director, John Hughes, who has devoted much of his career to telling coming-of-age stories. Through jokes, monologues and occasional devastating comments about growing up, Hughes’s texts expressed his disdain for adults who mask capitalist values ​​with maturity – just do what you’re told and smile. For Hughes, young people see the world with a clarity worthy of attention.

This is a belief that is confirmed by a shot of Ferris, Sloan, and Cameron, standing on the railing while pressing their heads against the glass windows of the then tallest building in the world, the Sears Tower (now called the Willis Tower). “The city looks so quiet from up here,” Sloan notes, looking down. “Everything is quiet at 1,353 feet,” Ferris says. The exercise of awareness is a power, honed by this titular character.

The film’s signature quote is known as the final line, and also appears at the beginning as Ferris prepares for his day off: “Life moves so fast. If you don’t stop and look around every once in a while, you might miss it.” It’s a lesson I’m still trying to internalize in adulthood — and one in which I know I’m not alone. Most of us do not stand in front of stained glass windows enough.

Ferris Bueller broke the fourth wall, and the line was delivered to the audience, to me at 11, 15, 21, 28 – and that meaning becomes more important with each passing year. Upon that first viewing, I was captivated by the idea that one can be extraordinary because one enjoys ordinary life activities: visiting a local landmark, attending a baseball game, wandering around a museum; There was no need for super strength, a high level of intelligence, or even the love of the right person. With charisma and the ingrained knowledge that singing in a parade is something one should do if given the opportunity, it’s only natural that a passion for “jockheads, car heads, nerds, sluts, bloodsuckers, dweebies, and dorkheads” follows suit.

Cameron is admittedly the most relatable character, being heavily influenced by his unfeeling parents and Ferris’ schemes. Many viewers cite Ferris as a “psycho” regarding his insensitive method of getting Cameron out of bed. Maybe we’re too immersed in talking about therapy these days, but we don’t have friends who tell us we’re perfect, we have those who remind us what’s out there. Challenge us when we claim we haven’t seen “something good,” as Cameron does. Life is friction that becomes palatable when it is not a solitary endeavor. However, Ferris should have shouldered some of the blame for the wrecked Ferrari; He’s not a hero, not even to me.

Lip-syncing with Danke Schoen doesn’t cure my anxiety-ridden brain, and Ferris’s direction doesn’t make me impenetrable – it’s better to leave the one-dimensionality of the characters on screen. But film gives me the tools to feel. Help me understand my path. Ferris Bueller’s Day Off is there for me when I need a reminder to stand still. I watch to stop every once in a while, so I don’t miss it.