Saturday Night Fever

There’s this scene in SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER in which Tony’s riding in a car with his crew. His friends are complaining about how the game is rigged, about how The Man is keeping them down, about how they’ll never get anywhere because no one will give them a break. Tony’s looking out the window. He’s thinking, “I know thee not, old man.”

OK, he’s probably not thinking those exact words, even if he did take Shakespeare in high school. But he’s thinking something very much like them. You see, Tony Manero is a young man on the cusp of going from Hal to Henry, from potential energy to energy in motion, from boy to man. He’s realizing something that his friends do not know and may never know: what’s worth having is worth working for, and what’s worth working for is too valuable to want someone to give it to you.

Tony’s basically a good boy. Ignored on the street, stuck in a dull job, living at home in a quasi-functional family, he’s nobody. He’s small time. But get him with his crew, and he’s a leader. Get him on the dance floor, and he’s a god. Tony rules Odyssey 2001, the disco where, every Saturday night, he burns through his week’s wages with unfettered joy. But even here, at the beginning of the movie, he’s different. He rehearses. He doesn’t pop or snort. He poses, but he’s essentially celibate (and potentially gay. I think one could make the case for it. I think the film’s “eye” is definitely gay. If you doubt me, notice how the camera caresses Tony’s body just before he awakens in his bed.). He’s in love with dance, with the way he feels when he’s lost in the moment, about the fact that finally, somewhere, he’s the best at something.

But working at a job that gives him just enough money to spend on Saturday night isn’t manhood. Being the big fish in a small pond isn’t manhood. Tony’s got to get out there, he’s got to earn his bones, he’s got to find his way. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is the story of how that realization goes from vague feeling to actionable reality. It works because we believe in Tony, flawed and limited though he may be. We understand that when he does that thing he loves, he really is special, amazing. He has something that’s worth working to cultivate, something that can lead to goals worth achieving, something too pure to be sullied by begging for handouts from The Man.

Sure, this movie has issues. There are subplots that go nowhere. Tony does things that are unforgivable. Some of the ADR is downright bad. But at its heart, SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER communicates truths so universal that they speak across decades, taste, and fashion. SATURDAY NIGHT FEVER is about leaving behind childish things, and that’s a theme that speaks to me. Can you dig it? I knew thatcha could.