Saturday, January 20, 2007
The future?
Something I find REALLY intriguing about the movie — because I think it would be damn hard to convey in a work of art — is that it simultaneously offers a merciless critique of the era and the circumstances that produce it AND some undeniable nostalgia for same. I think we are supposed to glean that the generation that came before Sonny and Duane's was nobler somehow, more fun, more life-affirming, more morally distinguished, and yet it's the generation that gave rise to the current one. There's definitely a theme of youth being wasted on the young (the awkward, unsatisfying makeout sessions, the beautiful Keats ode about mortality that falls on deaf ears in the English class). And there's a sense that youth used to be more glamorous, isn't there? That a nobler age has passed with the last picture show? Do you think the film is forward-looking at the end (ready to embrace the coming sexual revolution and the implosion of "Leave it to Beaver" America) or that it's fundamentally a nostalgia piece clinging to a more romantic past?
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
Ooh, that's a good question. I do feel that nostalgia you're talking about, the nobler age of the previous generation.
But at the same time, with the opening and closing scenes of the town, there's a sense of timelessness. Like times will change, and people will come and go, but the town will remain and the human experience will remain. Different shit will happen to different people, but it's all the same shit. (This sort of goes with the "hill of beans" point you were making before.)
Yeah, and there will always be a contingent of backward old men who never have anything more exciting to think about than a high school football game and who will always call mute kids "idiots."
The movie explored an allegedly "nostalgic" period of America in a much harder-edged way. Sonny and Duane watching "Father of the Bride," then a contemporary film, at the picture show drives home the contrasts of what we assume times were like and the way they were.
Everything's romance and comedy on the big screen, and Elizabeth Taylor's got Spencer Tracy as the perfect dad. Meanwhile, Sonny's father is ill, and Duane doesn't seem to have one.
I didn't even answer the question. Anyway, I think it's forward-looking, and cynical at that (with that parting shot of the desolate, dying town). Like the "Father of the Bride" moment, I think the nostalgia's usually accompanied with something grittier. Like Jacy's departure from the town dance to that gutter-worthy pool party. Or those charming garters that accompany her innocence, cast aside by peer pressure.
This is an interesting question, but I don’t know if nostalgia is the right concept. I don’t get any sense of a passing of a golden age. Instead, the bigger message seems to be that making something of life requires reaching out and grabbing it. That is what Sam did. The other men of his age might have lived small. His life was glamorous only because he made it so, not because of when he lived.
Also, it seems that the sex lives of the current kids are very much on a par with earlier generations, so I get no sense of any looming sexual revolution. The movie does discredit any myths we might have had about how wholesome everybody used to be. Instead, it tells us that they used to be rather as they are now.
The slow death of the town and of the tightly intertwined lives in it is a major theme. I like that the movie presents that as a sad passing without romanticizing what the town used to be. Even at its best, the town still was a windy, dusty place full of mostly poor people with limited prospects.
Post a Comment