Ron –
I just saw this movie last night. I don't keep
up with a lot of contemporary movies that much as of late, but this was
recommended by many I respect so thought I'd check it out.
So, it was good to read your timely blog comments, which were very helpful to
me in terms of my own. There's some things I'm thinking
about that you didn't emphasize as much, or that I might have a different take
on. For instance, the whole "political backdrop"
kind of movie. It's definitely a sub-genre. So, the French 1968
situation lends "color" and "intrigue" and
"romance" perhaps to this movie, but what is B's point with it?
(aside from the fact, that some of the songs in the soundtrack were not
released until after April of 68). I think part of my discomfort with the movie
was that it seemed to imply that Matthew, the Leonardo DiCaprio
American, was the "normal" narrative filter American through whose
eyes we see the "transgressive" French (you speak of this at length
so I won't), with that kind of naive fascination (he's no American
"hippie" but a mama's boy with an exotic fascination in France
largely because of its movies, and perhaps to its politics) that eventually
becomes a kind of disgust. Of course, much of this is "strictly
personal" – and certainly Isabelle and Theo are
not really down with the protests, as they "drop-out" to investigate
the triangular personal relationship. Theo's called a "loser" for not
being out on the streets enough, and even Matthew
comes to criticize Theo, not so much for not being out on the streets, but for
the discrepancy between his words and actions. It doesn't seem that Matthew,
whose politics are certainly presented as at least as unthought-out
as Theo's, is really interested in getting Theo to "put his money where
his mouth is" and join the revolution as much as he, like his dad the poet
(who Theo, in anger, compares Matt to), is trying to get him to "grow
up" and get away from the "transgressive" incestuous
relationship (of course, his own largely normative hetero attraction to
Isabelle, which started the whole plot anyway, probably plays a factor in this.
It does seem to me that there's more homoerotic attraction on Theo's part than
on Matthew's but as you say it's never explored much). Of course, the specter
of the parents certainly haunts Isabelle, who seems to want, and NEED, to continue
the relationship with Theo more than vice versa (Theo does seem troubled by his
buddies' calling him a "loser" as well as by Matt calling him a
"freak"). She says she'll commit suicide if the parents find out, and
of course when the parents find out, they seem rather NON-PLUSSED, and ever so
permissively FRENCH, and leave a sum of money (I think it was a check). Yet she
decides to to kill herself anyway. Of course, it's at
this point where HISTROY intervenes, and knocks on the door, and allows THEO to
die his great romantic death (and saves her from the "suicide") for
the CAUSE. He's certainly presented as not necessarily noble in this action,
but what is Matt's alternative? – TO KISS HIM and say something like
"we're about love but not about war." But is that convincing? Not to
me – it seems like a platitude and contrasts with his calling Matt and Isabelle
"freaks" earlier. So here is Theo (who is either erring on one side –
too domestically involved in their black hole version of a "sexual
revolution" – or the other side, breaking through the police line and
setting off the police brutality) and here is Matt (a kind of tepid embodiment
of an Aristotelian mean, but the one we're SUPPOSSED TO identify with). All in
all, I find it hard to identify with any of these characters. But what is the moral/political points that B is trying to make? That
the folly of the student protests is one with the folly of the relationship of
the 3 protagonists? Because of the way the movie ends, it's hard to escape that
conclusion. He insufficiently analyzes both the psychological complexities and
the political issues of this potentially great scenario. It seems to reduce
much of the passion of the 1960s to a few half-baked cliché ridden ill-thought
discussions and scenarios (by precocious glamour-seeking kids locked in a
fantasy world of movie quotes) the better to dismiss it (in a way this movie
trivializes the "sexual revolution" "the personal is the
political" and "Paris 1968" almost as much as, say "that
70s show" or remakes of "starsky and
hutch" etc do the 70s), as Matt, no doubt, returns to his normal AMERICAN
world of being a spectator rather than a spectacle (he probably becomes an
accountant). I'm sure I'll have more thought out thoughts later, but I needed
to get this off my chest.
Chris
I
concur with a lot of Stroffolino’s points here – he’s totally on target in
seeing Michael Pitt’s Matthew as a Leonardo DiCaprio
impression & about the trivialization of the sixties, etc.
When
I used to live in
Known
as one of Hollywood’s great cinemaphotographers (Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf, for which
he won an Oscar, Bound for Glory, for
which he won a second, One Flew Over the
Cuckoo’s Nest, The Thomas Crown Affair, No Nukes, Studs Lonigan,
several of John Sayles’ pictures) and one of film’s most committed political
progressives, Wexler had this idea of filming a movie about a television news
cameraman initiating a relationship with one of his “subjects” while in Chicago
to film the Democratic Convention. The idea was to set the fictional story into
the otherwise documentary framework of events. But the convention itself turned
into one long police riot & the Democratic Party, already frayed by the abdication
of Lyndon Johnson, the anti-war campaign of Eugene McCarthy & the
assassination of Robert Kennedy, simply unraveled. So rather
than having a simple framing mechanism, Wexler records a movie in which events
overwhelm the tale. I haven’t seen Medium
Cool since it came out in 1969, but it is available on DVD. I don’t
remember the film well enough to say clearly how it contrasts with the project
of The Dreamers, but the premise
seems so aligned (if inverted, say), it would be fascinating to find out.
