Hacker Cinema
Breaking Away
1979 · Film · 101 min
Directed by Peter Yates
Dave, nineteen, has just graduated high school, with his three friends: the comical Cyril, the warm hearted but short-tempered Moocher, and the athletic, spiteful but good-hearted Mike. Now, Dave enjoys racing bikes and hopes to race the Italians one day, and even takes up the Italian culture, much to his friends' and parents' annoyance.
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8 comments on Hacker News
Carter didn't deregulate the gas, which was a huge drag on the economy as everyone had to wait hours in line for gas.
> Reagan switched to a deficit-based fiscalized economy,
That was caused by the Democrat-controlled Congress. Reagan tried to get a balanced budget, and Congress stymied him every time.
> hollowed out manufacturing, and channeled cash upwards towards the wealthy.
That's just propaganda.
> “breaking away”
is a fictional movie. Please use factual references.
Those are all pre-modern people before the invention of vaccines and antibiotics and who had terrible health and suffered by now preventable childhood diseases. Their 35 is not our 35. Shakespeare, I believe, wrote about joint pain, aging, and losing his memory and mind at 35, which is not typical of a modern 35 year old. Substance abuse and artistry go hand in hand and a lot of these artists were addicts and drunks who badly damaged their brains. Many of them had mercury poisoning from medical treatments of their day and other edge cases not common today.
Not to mention these people were elite global competitors, so if they felt less sharp at 35, that means they were merely just the top 1% instead of being the top .1%. They still were amazing thinkers and producers after 35.
Just off the top of my head, Stanley Kubrick's career peaked with his decade plus long Lolita, Strangelove, 2001, and Clockwork Orange period in the 1960-70s, which was around his 30-40s. Then nearly 20 years after Lolita, well into his 50's he made The Shining, which is considered an important American film, perhaps not as groundbreaking as the others, but something miles ahead of his younger competitors. So even as these people supposedly age out of their peak years, these super high performers are still amazing. The Oscar winner that year? Kramer vs Kramer, a largely forgotten piece of art and "safe pick" that played to social issues of the time. The best screenplay? Breaking Away, a completely forgotten movie. The Shining is still a beloved classic, cultural icon, horror master-class, an iconic actor's defining role, and a movie studied in film school religiously today and for the foreseeable future.
Then almost a decade later in 1987 at age 59, he directed Full Metal Jacket, a lesser work, but considered one of the best anti-war films, arguably stealing or matching the crown from beloved critic favorites like Apocalypse Now and The Deer Hunter, long after the 60s and 70s fad of anti-war movies faded away and Vietnam a now faded memory and during the right-wing, pro-military, pro-interventionist foreign policy Reagan administration. This was a bold and provocative move you'd associate with a younger director trying to get attention and not a man close to retirement. So even "old" Kubrick was competing on a world class level and doing interesting and challenging things.
A genre horror film from a famous director who hasn't delivered a great film in a decade? An anti-war film in the late 80s on the tail of Top Gun? Both of these genres were fads once and decidedly uncool at the time of their release. This on paper sounds almost foolish, but in practice, an artist of his calibre pulled off something very special in both cases.
For modern people, career peaks are mid-30s. The "wisdom" of two hundred old plus composers and poets is a nice toilet read but isn't scientific at all. Science has its own ideas about aging:
The journals Psychological Science, Science Direct, and Harvard claims various mental peaks come later in life. New vocabulary peaks at 67, learning new information at 50, concentrating at 43, learning new faces 32, etc.
https://nextluxury.com/mens-lifestyle-advice/what-age-do-men-peak/
So yes 35 is not only a good age, its the start of a peak, and a 35 year old modern worker has still another two decades of high performance waiting for them.
I wonder if this is the College in Breaking Away. Great movie.
One of the more interesting bicycle races of the year does exactly this: the Little 500 (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Little_500)
All the bikes are identical in spec (single speed, coaster brake, flat pedals).
This is the race that features in the movie Breaking Away. I wish more were like it, but I guess part of its charm is its uniqueness.
Helmets have changed substantially since their introduction, starting with the "hairnet" designs (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bicycle_helmet#History_of_designs also shown in the classic film Breaking Away), better foam/shell materials, fitting, visors that protect the nose from ground contact, and specialization toward different types of cycling. Full-face helmets are used in mountain biking for frontal impacts.
Breaking Away (1979) "They're gonna keep callin' us "cutters." To them, it's just a dirty word. To me, it's just somethin' else I never got a chance to be." http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078902/
Can't believe nobody has mentioned Breaking Away
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0078902/
http://rogerebert.suntimes.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/19790101/REVIEWS/901010308/1023
An oldie, nothing tech movie: Breaking Away