August 23, 2004

• The other day I picked up some LaserDisc movies at the used bookstore. Some smart person had bought all the Hong Kong action movies that were there last time, so the pickin's were a little slim.

  I thought about getting 'Blue Velvet,' but I just wanted to be entertained, not whacked over the head with weirdness. Oddly, even though that was the case, I ended up getting 'Boogie Nights' and 'Unforgiven.' Grand total: $9.

  'Boogie Nights' is the breakthrough film for Paul Thomas Anderson, a director I admire. He did two of my favorite movies: 'Magnolia' and 'Punch Drunk Love.' 'Boogie Nights' explores the world of the people who make pornography, and the wacky weirdness that ensues in such situations. Much of it also takes place in the perfectly-lit urban night, which is always a plus for me; the donut shop scene in particular is perfection unto itself, even if it doesn't quite fit with the rest of the movie.

  P.T. Anderson movies are all the same movie, in many ways. Compare the donut shop scene with the prelude to the rain of frogs scene in 'Magnolia.' Compare the gay bashing scene with Barry Egan getting beat up in 'Punch Drunk Love'... Both sets of assailants are even in pickup trucks. And it's always at night.

  Spoiler alert. Turn back now if you haven't seen:

  'Unforgiven' is a western with high ambitions. It's going to dispell myths and transform the American western into an interplay of character studies. No one is going to be purely evil, and no one is going to be purely good. Everyone will be victimized as surely as everyone will victimize someone else. Basically, it's a picture of life made hard not by the land, but by the desire of all the characters to protect what is theirs and keep their sanity. Clint Eastwood directs the thing, and it's obvious he's been watching lots of Kurosawa. It's expertly crafted, beautifully shot, and does a pretty good job of fulfilling its ambitions, though the ending goes too far back into the realm of myth. At the beginning of the movie, Eastwood's Munny can't shoot a tobacco tin with a pistol at 10 yards, but two weeks later, for the movie's climax he's able to gun down six men in quick succession.

  My main problems with this movie have to do with the ending, and with the fact that Richard Harris simply disappears halfway through. Also, the prostitutes have no personality except as a group. We're not allowed to get to know them, except the way the men in the movie know them: A class of people who are oppressed by circumstance.

  Finally, the message here is that there's no way out. You simply can't escape the life that surrounds you, no matter how dark or horrible. Munny's life of subsistence farming is a facade, just as the aspirations of all the characters are shams. The sherrif's carpentry skills, for example.

  Perhaps the realm of myth is the only way to find meaning in any of this. Maybe we mythologize the American west today because it was settled by sadists and murderers, and transforming sadism and murder into heroics helps reduce our shame. So here's Eastwood, an icon and manufacturer of American west mythology, rubbing our noses in that shame.

  Complex movie, worth seeing.

  • 4:48 am
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