Spoilers herein.
Seeing this after 30 years was like finding a formerly dear friend who you now discover is unbearably dull.
We thought this film was revolutionary when it appeared, the best of a movement that would change film forever.
It is a film about filmmaking, about reducing the equation of the encounter between filmmaker and viewer to an abstraction of anonymous passion. It is in retrospect a simple idea, potentially powerful. What makes this project stand out among its siblings was the collaboration with Brando.
Marlon was the first to explore extending his being from merely representing a character. He built the notion of simultaneously working the narrative and commenting on the process in an abstract manner. But as an explorer, he ran out of challenges and was ripe for a new way of supporting abstraction. Here he worked with Bertolucci to make his experiment far richer.
The idea is that pure spontaneous connection creates a temporal world. The payoff is that this ultimate artificiality is the purest reality. It would be a slight observation with Bertolucci's contribution alone, in fact all his other films ARE slight in this way. But it is also supported by Brando's weaving of a secondary presence, embodying instant, non-premeditated discovery. His primary character competes with the effete boyfriend filmmaker -- the secondary one with Bertolucci himself.
It is pretty marvelous. The only problem is that the basic idea is either sophomorically obvious, or he has supported it so effectively that we think we knew it all along -- I suspect the former. This sort of frangible, multidimensional connection is a tool, a means to a creative end, not something that can sustain a creation on its own. By itself, it is an empty expression.
Perhaps we needed such empty films to enter the notion into the vocabulary for others to use in actually changing our lives. Too bad these don't have Brando, but at least we have those who have learned from him: Penn, Moore, Blancett, even Depp.
Seeing this after 30 years was like finding a formerly dear friend who you now discover is unbearably dull.
We thought this film was revolutionary when it appeared, the best of a movement that would change film forever.
It is a film about filmmaking, about reducing the equation of the encounter between filmmaker and viewer to an abstraction of anonymous passion. It is in retrospect a simple idea, potentially powerful. What makes this project stand out among its siblings was the collaboration with Brando.
Marlon was the first to explore extending his being from merely representing a character. He built the notion of simultaneously working the narrative and commenting on the process in an abstract manner. But as an explorer, he ran out of challenges and was ripe for a new way of supporting abstraction. Here he worked with Bertolucci to make his experiment far richer.
The idea is that pure spontaneous connection creates a temporal world. The payoff is that this ultimate artificiality is the purest reality. It would be a slight observation with Bertolucci's contribution alone, in fact all his other films ARE slight in this way. But it is also supported by Brando's weaving of a secondary presence, embodying instant, non-premeditated discovery. His primary character competes with the effete boyfriend filmmaker -- the secondary one with Bertolucci himself.
It is pretty marvelous. The only problem is that the basic idea is either sophomorically obvious, or he has supported it so effectively that we think we knew it all along -- I suspect the former. This sort of frangible, multidimensional connection is a tool, a means to a creative end, not something that can sustain a creation on its own. By itself, it is an empty expression.
Perhaps we needed such empty films to enter the notion into the vocabulary for others to use in actually changing our lives. Too bad these don't have Brando, but at least we have those who have learned from him: Penn, Moore, Blancett, even Depp.