Werner Herzog
1984
100 minutes
This film brings back a lot of memories for you, so many that you can't decide which to remember first.
You had an aunt farm when you were in grade school.
That's not actually true. You had an ant farm when you were in grade school. An aunt farm would be absurd.
You had a beloved aunt whose name was Auntie when you were in grade school. She drank quite a bit. Sometimes if she was babysitting you, she would mix you makeshift "white Russians" consisting of weak iced coffee mixed and lots of milk and sugar and a shot or two of vodka to get you to take a nap, which probably sounds worse than it actually was. Not that it's ideal or anything, of course. When she passed from this world years later, you ordered an actual proper White Russian at a bar in her honor.
As far as you know, your Auntie never would drink and drive, and she certainly never would fly a plane. You did however know a man who used to fly planes in the military. He refueled B-52s in mid-air during the Cold War to make sure we were able to destroy the world at a moment's notice. He drank heavily, but as far as you know he never flew a plane while intoxicated. He and his brother did however regularly drive while intoxicated when he was at the height of his alcoholism. You ended up in the backseat of his car a few times for some of these rides, which were terrifying. You remember at least one occasion when you were in middle school and he and his brother were driving you somewhere. Both were rip-roaring drunk and you can't remember which was behind the wheel. The roads were very icy, and you remember whoever was driving was having fun "doing donuts" in the middle of the highway. This struck you as being a strange thing for grown men to do and as being tremendously unsafe, even at your tender age. It certainly made you stop trusting in the wisdom of adults just because they were older than yourself. Once his son (who was a few years older than yourself) got his license, you remember him doing the same, sometimes when sober. You still have nightmares about this sometimes, of course.
The Australian setting reminds you of Mad Max, as does the fact that the guy who played the Gyro Captain aviator guy is in this film as well. You don't remember if he ever operated his autogyro under the influence of any substances.
Your ant farm consisted of a vertical layer of sand between two upright sheets of thick plastic, with a whimsical green plastic farmscape on the top at "ground level". When you dropped the ants from the small bottle they were mailed in into their new home, one of the ants fell onto the plastic bridge and hung there motionless for several days. You named that ant Sleepy and you wondered what he was dreaming about. After several days of tunnel excavation, the ants finally dug a burial pit for those who had passed on. Sleepy was carried to this new location by his comrades to guard the room, a little myrmecoid Maytag Man stationed there to make sure no one disturbed the slumber of the dead.
Time to choose something different: