INTRO: On most occasions, I don't care for lists, or listings. Things like AFI's top 100 lists are interesting, but fairly pointless. I'm working on some writing, and I'm examining various themes in film, and while dabbling on that very broad pallate, I was listening to the soundtrack to Chicken Run...and it struck me--Escape.

Escape is one of the great themes in film. It can be escape from a place, a concept, a mindset. I think (just to give it some criteria), that Escape is often from a finite area, but not always.

I brainstormed to come up with a rough list of ten good (not necessarily the greatest, but good) Escape films. Here they are, in no defining order:

10. Chicken Run. Credit where credit is due. The place: Mrs. Tweedy's Poultry Farm. The clock is ticking, and the pie-machine is warming up.

9. Escape from New York. John Carpenter's dark and satirical vision of the future--and one that the audience sees as plausible (if not possible.) Once again, the clock is ticking.

8. THX-1138. George Lucas' freshman feature film. Elements of societal paranoia and technology converge as Robert Duvall escapes from a futuristic subterranean enclave.

7. The Matrix. What is Reality, and can we escape from that which we assume to be real?

6. The Truman Show. Again, a profound look at escape from an assumed "reality", and the voyuerism that the rest of the world can't seem to escape.

5. The Great Escape. A film about unbreakable Allied spirit and undeniable freedom.

4. Enemy of the State. The world you live in is turned against you by a government that can put eyes and ears everywhere. But who's more paranoid? Will Smith's only escape is to beat them at their own game. This film suceeds at setting a new standard for the "techno-thriller"/identity-loss attempted some years earlier with The Net.

3. Jurassic Park. When mans' scientific reach exceeds his grasp, Isla Nublar becomes the prison. It's 50% fantasy, 50% nightmare. Escaping from a place that is too fascinating to leave, yet too deadly to remain.

2. Innerspace. Jack Putter's (Martin Short) need to escape from his mundane existance parallels with Tuck Pendleton's (Dennis Quaid) need to escape from Jack Putter...who is enslaved by whom? At times, identity must be swapped, and even superimposed in order to achieve freedom.

1. The Shawshank Redemption. An amazing film, again dealing with the indominatble human spirit. A slightly modernized Count of Monte Cristo, where the criminals guard the criminals.

Anyway--there is my list, certainly by no means "definitive". I'd be really interested to see what anyone might add to it, and how they might qualify their choices...put some thought into it.

Three movies that all deal with the escape from human slavery or man’s
inhumanity to man and that all sport great film music by Rozsa, Gerald Fried,
and John Williams are Ben Hur, Roots, and Schindler’s List. It is amazing to see
how many movies deal with the human need to enslave their own race
juxtaposed against the eternal driving force to be free.
(Spartacus and Gladiator could be added to this idea.)

I always liked the movie The Thorn Birds (wonderful music by Mancini)
because explored a man’s rabid obsession with duty and the life-long
consequences of escaping those self-made shackles for a few moments
of passion.

Two similar movies about literal and metaphoric escape are Cool Hand Luke
and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest. Both main characters are Christ
figures, non conformists, and fettered by the inmates’ expectations to be
heroes and to fight the oppressive establishment. Great scores by Shifrin and
Neitsche. I’m sure I’ll think of more.

Well, with my tongue in cheek, look at the great scores composed
for Zulu escapes.

Zulu: Music by John Barry. I never thought a single British soldier would survive.
Untamed: Music (gorgeous) by Franz Waxman. Barely remember a few scenes
from this on AMC. Tyrone Powers is the hero carving out a settlement in
Africa and if I remember right, a wagon train of settlers is attacked by Zulus.
Zulu Dawn: Music by Elmer Bernstein. Once again, the British and the Zulus battle.

Maybe it would be nice to see the Zulus win . It was their land. Maybe they are the ones trying to escape.

Greatest childhood ESCAPE movie with great music? Wizard of Oz.
Look at all the wonderful lessons taught in that escape flick about courage,
heart, and brains, and of course the fact that there is no place like home.

NP: The Lion Roars.

Actually...is Wizard of Oz Escape or Escapism?

I guess I always looked at Wizard of Oz as a Male Quest, with a female transposed. (That's not attempting to belittle it at all...Dorthy doesn't have to carry around all the need to prove her sexual identity, overcome the stigma of her father...that sort of thing. At least not in Wizard...maybe in Return to Oz, where she's got to defeat the Gnome King to retrieve her slippers, overcome the Witch with 20 heads and free the mysterious feminine figure in the mirror....

Oz is your basic bildungsroman, for certain. But I can see how those elements of Escape would pull into it.

I had though of Cool Hand Luke, too, around the same time I thought of Shawshank....

Another one that I came up with was Cool World, with Deebs (Gabriel Byrne) the cartoonist who's a convict, and "escapes" from the real world, and Brad Pitt who is (traumatically) forced into a separate world, and then Holli, who's trying to escape her (more or less) 2-dimensional existance....

Hmm...

ACT I (Prologue):
Dorthy in Kansas.
Gulch Takes Toto.
Toto Escapes. (Clue #1.)
Toto Returns/Dorthy Runs Away.
Dorthy Meets Professor.
Dorthy Enters House/Knocked out/Cyclone.

ACT II (The Journey):
Free the Munchkins/Killed the Witch (Escape from tyranny?) (Clue #2)
Yellow-brick Road.
Free the Scarecrow. (Escape from mundanity?) [b](Clue #3)
Free the Tin Man. (Escape from solitude?) (Clue #4)
Joins the Lion. (Escape from fear?) (Clue #5)
Arrival at Emerald City.

ACT III (Interlude):
Refreshed.
Meet the wizard/New quest.

ACT IV (The Dark Cave):
Enters the castle.
Kills the witch (accidentally).
Frees the winged monkies (Escape from slavery?) (Clue #6)

ACT V (Victory/Return Home/Resolution):
Wizard revealed.
Rewards granted.
Wizard leaves Oz--prematurely? (Escape from Fantasy/Assumed reality?) (Clue #7)
Dorthy learns lesson/realizes true power.
Dorthy goes home. (Escape from fantasy.) (Clue #8)
There's no place like home/The End.

. . . . . . . . . . .

Ok, so basically, Dorthy is trying to escape from the place that she eventually returns to, but in her quest, realizes that Home is not a place to escape from.

Hmm....

Anyone every notice how many science fiction movies involving space travel
deal with the escape themes? Seems like we get excited to explore a new
space territory and then work like crazy to exit. This is especially prevalent
in the 50’s science fiction flicks like The Angry Red Planet and Forbidden
Planet. (Of course, it may have something to do with aliens that like to kill
or eat humans. ) The current Mission to Mars and The Red Planet still
show us struggling to survive and return to home.

Best two JUXTAPOSED science fiction escape movies?
1. Alien: Ripley and crew wish to escape the acid dripping, womb implanting,
double dentured creature.
2. E.T. The Extra Terrestrial. E.T. wants to escape the prodding, probing,
“we’re going to isolate and autopsy this new creature,” natives of “this island
earth.”

A mixed bag of escape movies without commentary:
Hombre, Gulliver’s Travels, Stalag 17, Desperate Hours, Gilligan’s Island,
Terminator, Victory.

b. age matters not.