David Lynch often had to remind us that the film is the thing, or the talking. If you can find the language to convey your ideas in another medium, maybe you wouldn't make a film about it.
Gregg Araki used that "beautiful language called cinema," as Lynch put it, to say things that might otherwise seem unspeakable, to give dignity and vitality to characters who are not just broken, who contain depths beyond even their deepest shames. Talking about it…
"Why don't you do what you dream?"
That's when the tears started for me this time—not in the swamp—at least twenty years since I last watched it. I was born a week before this movie premiered in the United States. It has always been with me, it is in my bones.
The primacy of imagination, the flash of inspiration when I see some small part of myself in a story that is out of this world or beyond my experience....this…
Remove the swingin' soundtrack and airport B-roll, add a dump truck's worth of Calvinist handwringing, and you basically have Paul Schrader's Hardcore. Mostly hums along on the strength of Mac McGregor's grade-A leering and Wood's own (kinda great?) performance, until the ten-minute sequence clearly designed for climax and clean-up. Basically nothing happens after that, but if you take it on its as an adult film then I guess it does its job. Watch and be reminded that Russ Meyer and John Waters were masters of their craft.
Even slighter than I might have guessed it would be. Also maybe the most 70s ending possible for a rompin' sports comedy? It makes complete sense why I never encountered this during weekend network movie time growing up—a TV version would have to be bowdlerized beyond recognition. Newman entirely believable as an aging hockey player who beds almost every woman he encounters. Michael Ontkean didn't age a day between this and Twin Peaks.
What's a dreamer to do in the midst of a national nightmare? I appreciate that this presents a complicated and troubled legacy without any easy answers. "The wind is rising....we must try to live!" could easily be Japan's motto post-1945, both for the nation's actions and for the horrors visited upon it during the war. Future double with Oppenheimer.
Miyazaki's most personal film, no doubt. His life and work are shining examples of how to make sense of all the beauty…
