Sam's death seemed almost King Lear-like to me. Just as Lear divided his kingdom among his three daughters, Sam divided his properties among Sonny, Genevieve and Miss Mosey. In "King Lear," the division spelled disaster, mainly because Lear's daughters could not get along, which is not the case with Sam's "children" in LPS. In LPS, we see Miss Mosey shut down the theater within a year of inheriting it, saying that if Sam had still been around it would have stayed open (Would it have?). Will the other two properties (the only entertainment in the town) follow suit? Is it Sam's death — and what he stood for — that is really the last picture show, or is the last picture show something more literal having to do, as many suggest, with the romantic demise of cinema and the pedestrian rise of television? (Roger Ebert's review of LPS talks about the role of the moviehouse in American life before TV competition came along, and I think it notes the fact that a TV show is playing in the background of the last scene where Ruth is reading Sonny the Riot Act).
Thursday, January 18, 2007
King Sam
Sam's death seemed almost King Lear-like to me. Just as Lear divided his kingdom among his three daughters, Sam divided his properties among Sonny, Genevieve and Miss Mosey. In "King Lear," the division spelled disaster, mainly because Lear's daughters could not get along, which is not the case with Sam's "children" in LPS. In LPS, we see Miss Mosey shut down the theater within a year of inheriting it, saying that if Sam had still been around it would have stayed open (Would it have?). Will the other two properties (the only entertainment in the town) follow suit? Is it Sam's death — and what he stood for — that is really the last picture show, or is the last picture show something more literal having to do, as many suggest, with the romantic demise of cinema and the pedestrian rise of television? (Roger Ebert's review of LPS talks about the role of the moviehouse in American life before TV competition came along, and I think it notes the fact that a TV show is playing in the background of the last scene where Ruth is reading Sonny the Riot Act).
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
5 comments:
This is such a human movie, so I like the idea of tying the title to Sam's death. Sam was the heart of the town, certainly.
Will Sonny fill Sam's shoes, or is he as Jacy is to the generation that came before her?
Why did he split it, I wonder? He must have foreseen the failure of the three enterprises if they didn't stay together.
None of the businesses were viable as a sole means of support. The cafe was closest in that it gave Genevieve and her ill husband a second income. But neither the movie house nor the pool hall paid. Sonny could keep the pool hall open if he had a day job too. The movie house was doomed since it had no outside income to support it.
The very end of the picture is a slow fade from Sonny and Ruth to the street of closed up shops with the movie house at the end of the block. Erin has the right idea in seeing Sam as an image of the town and a way of life that is passing. This is a bigger theme than just the rise of TV.
Yes, and I like how the movie ended just how it began — panorama of the empty street on a blustery day. It's like, to all appearances, to anyone driving by, nothing had ever happened, nothing had ever changed, but we know — from having been inside — that EVERYTHING had changed.
And yet there's a sense, with the wind scouring everything — Ozymandias-like — that the line from "Casablanca" is true: the problems of three little people don't amount to a hill of beans in this crazy world.
Post a Comment