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Rating: Light, simple, and cute.
These are perhaps the most fitting adjectives to best describe this small film from 1981, the penultimate film starring John Belushi. An unusual Belushi, far from the boisterous and slacker roles of his early years, a film that reveals another aspect of the talent of this actor who left us too soon, a human role that never uses uproarious and overwhelming comedy to entertain, but instead draws all its strength from situations and dialogue, aided by the grotesque and simpleton nature of the actor. The plot of "Continental Divide" (as it's titled in English) is very simple: Ernie Souchak (Belushi) is a hard-hitting journalist from Chicago who invests all his time in news articles exposing the misdeeds of the corrupt municipal administration; in one article, however, he goes too hard, and after a retaliatory beating, his boss decides to send him on a "safety vacation" to the Rocky Mountains, to let things cool down a bit, under the pretext of interviewing Nell Porter, a hermit ornithologist studying bald eagles (Blair Brown). The journalist will encounter a completely different way of living and inevitably will also find love.
As can easily be deduced, the film has pronounced romantic connotations but this romance is never intrusive, the fundamental themes, especially the clash between two opposite worlds, are well addressed in the screenplay; Ernie is attached to worldly goods, cigarettes, and sex, and he barely endures the solitude and reflection that mountain life imposes, initially considering Nell "reserved, self-sufficient, arrogant, maybe frigid", he is not accustomed to calm, to human and slow rhythms, to no longer seeing skyscrapers and cars, the splendid scene where the researcher shows her "cathedral" to the journalist and immediately after the shot moves to splendid snow-capped mountains and endless valleys is magnificent. Consequently, another theme is the possibility that two opposite people, distant in their way of living, but also geographically, can manage to build a stable emotional bond, the answer is provided by the beautiful comparison with bald eagles, which in pairing engage in a whirling dance making them fall into the void, only separating a few meters from the ground to avoid death. Therefore, only by maintaining their own identities without canceling each other out can they manage to endure together, and this is the spirit of the ending, slightly sugary but easily relatable.
The film finds much of its strength in the chemistry between Belushi (who lost a good 20 kilos) and Blair, there are many scenes laced with healthy irony, no vulgarity, never a curse word, only many light sequences enhanced by beautiful cinematography that fully captures the suspension of the natural world.
A must-see.
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