Great comedy is born, forged, fashioned and bred in a crucible of sensitivity, learning and icon-worship/iconoclasm. Mel Brooks, a man who I believe could have made his career as a historian, a film-critic, a political columnist, has opened up his vault of talents to create a comedy that will persist for generations. Why? Why does Mr. Brooks have the keys to the kingdom?
Well, for starters, someone once said that genius stands on the shoulders of giants. Mr. Brooks is well versed in American movie history and has viewed and sublimated the cannon adroitly and with considerable flare and facility. From Cole Porter references to "Gabby Johnson," Brooks unfurls a flag of American film history and a quick hand at the card table of American comedy. He knows when to drop the right line, the correct reference, he understands how films and human knowledge build upon the advances made by their predecessors. Brooks could be a historian because he knows what films work together properly, how they are connected and why if you cross certain themes the result is unmitigated hysteria and gut splitting laughter. Who else would have paired Cole Porter's "I Get A Kick Out of You" with an inter-racial western complete with Yiddish Indians? Who else would have the sense to know how to properly assault the genre of the American Western with just the right dose of absurdity?
Brooks is a sensitive man. Comedy is the result of those who must laugh at themselves, their short comings, their myopia. Comedy is born out of the humility imposed by suffering, therefore if suffering is to be remedied and good fortune and mirth restored, whose suffering is safe from the razor-blade of satire, self-reflection and parody? To laugh is to forfeit the sanctity of the human mind in order to reap a whirlwind of instant gratification, a luminiscent gratification that can only come when one makes a joke or becomes the butt of someone else's joke. We remember folly and foolishness much more readily than morality and the lessons of profound wisdom. Why? Because we are all, deep down inside, confronted with our own appalling inequities and a horrific sense of timing. A comedian knows this and unlike a psychologist or psychiatrist who takes these coups seriously, the comedian knows that truly great art, born of suffering, is still more irridescent when it evokes a laugh, at least for him bent on instant gratification.
Brooks knows his stuff. He understands how to cross genres and he has been blessed with an immutable gift for irony. Everything is ironic! Watch this movie! And learn a little about the mythic and cosmological past of your entertainment industry as well as find out what it could have been like on the range with all of those fools who thought they were doing God's work in settling our wild frontier.
Well, for starters, someone once said that genius stands on the shoulders of giants. Mr. Brooks is well versed in American movie history and has viewed and sublimated the cannon adroitly and with considerable flare and facility. From Cole Porter references to "Gabby Johnson," Brooks unfurls a flag of American film history and a quick hand at the card table of American comedy. He knows when to drop the right line, the correct reference, he understands how films and human knowledge build upon the advances made by their predecessors. Brooks could be a historian because he knows what films work together properly, how they are connected and why if you cross certain themes the result is unmitigated hysteria and gut splitting laughter. Who else would have paired Cole Porter's "I Get A Kick Out of You" with an inter-racial western complete with Yiddish Indians? Who else would have the sense to know how to properly assault the genre of the American Western with just the right dose of absurdity?
Brooks is a sensitive man. Comedy is the result of those who must laugh at themselves, their short comings, their myopia. Comedy is born out of the humility imposed by suffering, therefore if suffering is to be remedied and good fortune and mirth restored, whose suffering is safe from the razor-blade of satire, self-reflection and parody? To laugh is to forfeit the sanctity of the human mind in order to reap a whirlwind of instant gratification, a luminiscent gratification that can only come when one makes a joke or becomes the butt of someone else's joke. We remember folly and foolishness much more readily than morality and the lessons of profound wisdom. Why? Because we are all, deep down inside, confronted with our own appalling inequities and a horrific sense of timing. A comedian knows this and unlike a psychologist or psychiatrist who takes these coups seriously, the comedian knows that truly great art, born of suffering, is still more irridescent when it evokes a laugh, at least for him bent on instant gratification.
Brooks knows his stuff. He understands how to cross genres and he has been blessed with an immutable gift for irony. Everything is ironic! Watch this movie! And learn a little about the mythic and cosmological past of your entertainment industry as well as find out what it could have been like on the range with all of those fools who thought they were doing God's work in settling our wild frontier.