There are some movies out there that so perfectly capture the moment in time in which they're created that they become timeless snapshots of an era and their soundtracks become the soundtracks of that era.
No other film truly captured the seventies like
Saturday Night Fever and even to this day hearing its hit soundtrack conjures images of not only the classic film but of the era in and of itself.
But at the same time there's a timelessness of the human condition, an everyman appeal to Tony Manero (John Travolta). Either we knew "that guy" or we were "that guy" at some point in our own lives—the one who has trouble making that transition from being the big fish in the small pond to realizing he's really just a small fish in a much bigger pond than he realized was out there.
Deep down inside Tony's a good guy, but with his ne'er do well friends his life is stuck in a rut. It's only through his friendship with his new dance partner, Stephanie (Karen Lynn Gorney) that he comes to realize that there's a much bigger world out there and much more to life than living for the nightlife.
Now nearly thirty years later, despite the music and fashion being dated, there's still a magical timelessness to the film-- the capturing of a moment in time that some of us may remember well, others were in diapers for, and some of us weren't even a gleam in our parents' eyes for. Whether or not we were there for the seventies, this film is an excellent postrcard from that era and Tony Manero's story remains one of the rites of passage of life that we can still relate to today.
(review originally posted @:
http://perplexio76.blogspot.com/2006/10/saturday-night-fever-1977.html)
