Decided to start the new year on a real positive, up beat note by watching this again. Havent seen it in more than a decade though Ive always loved and admired it. Still, it is and always was an undeniably hard watch, made almost unbearable at times despite the satisfactions to be had in De Palmas handling of this material, his aesthetic and formal accomplishment. This is actually subdued by his standards and appropriately so though I would imagine that many think of it as excessively melodramatic. But is it, really? Or is that not an utterly appropriate mode for this, a stylistic analogue for what is at stake and the way it matters. Because despite the fact that some effort is actually made to complicate the scenario and make the situation of the Penn character, for instance, more compromised and complex rather than purely evil, none of that matters. Its all made irrelevant and nullified by the idealism of the Fox character, the purity of his virtue. I see that as no flaw but a kind of devastating insight and acknowledgment. The film couldnt be more perfectly cast, with both leads emblematic of iconic or archetypal qualities, exuding those qualities. Fox especially has never been better in anything and its kind of sad to see this now and imagine what might have been, what should have been. The melodrama is an effective form to get at another underlying theme, too: identifying the moral cause of sympathy, its very possibility, and tying that to action. To that end, melodrama as broad idealism, necessarily steamrolling subtle nuance, is fitting. Its a mythic form. Its interesting to remember that this was De Palmas follow up to The Untouchables, another film that was remarkable for the pronounced virtue of its protagonist (especially coming from De Palma). It also seems a striking response to the confusion and moral muddle presented by almost all the Vietnam pictures of the era. De Palma, to his credit, makes a film of no easy triumphalism though. Theres nothing easy about any of this. Its as deep and disturbing a portrait of war and humanity as any I can think of.
Posted on: Sat, 03 Jan 2015 01:34:20 +0000
Trending Topics
Recently Viewed Topics
© 2015