Thanks, Sarah, for your skepticism–although I’m not sure we’re in as much disagreement as your crackly tone would imply. The level of invention this year has been amazingly high, but few movies have maintained it consistently. My Slate reviews of Three Kings, Being John Malkovich, and The Limey are full of qualifications, but many of the most exciting films in a given year are messed up in one way or another. (The last film for which I have unqualified admiration is Robert Duvall’s The Apostle.) I was enraged by the killing of the Iraqi mother in Three Kings and resented some of the jokiness and formula machinations that followed in its wake. But if David O. Russell can’t (yet) make his absurdist vision mesh perfectly with his moral outrage, he deserves our awe for having pulled off the mixture as well as anyone since Coppola in Apocalypse Now. (And Three Kings is a lot less messed-up than Apocalypse Now.)
I didn’t spot microphones in Being JohnMalkovich (depending on how a film is masked, you can see microphones in movies by the greatest directors and cinematographers), but there are flatfooted patches and a distinct falling off in the last half hour (despite some marvelous puppet work). Fear of women is indeed one of the picture’s sub-themes; it’s a theme of many great sex farces and not ipso facto a bad thing. The movie’s too-casual discarding of its protagonist (John Cusack) suggests more self-loathing than unchecked misogyny–although the two impulses are clearly linked. It seems to me that when you’re braving as many weird psychosexual areas as Charlie Kaufman does in Malkovich, you’re going to lose control at some point; he does. The larger point is that his work–like Russell’s–is an inspiration; it makes you makes you realize that, The Anxiety ofInfluence notwithstanding, there are an infinite number of possibilities for framing our experience.
As for your South Park rant–them’s fightin’ words, Kerr. I’m going to cheat by pointing out that I know you didn’t see the movie in a packed, responsive house, or you would, I’m certain, have been thrilled by the screams of glee that attended each fabulous number. The second half boring? The whole damn film is a scant 80 minutes, and its second half features, among other things, Satan’s soulful “Up There” number (please oh please let them do this at the Academy Awards), Saddam’s pleas for sex, “Kyle’s Mom Is a Bitch” with a multinational chorus, Kenny’s trek through the underworld, Cartman’s obscenity chip, the blaspheming French resistance fighter, and the staggeringly brilliant medley on the eve of Armageddon–not to mention Winona Ryder’s best performance ever (courtesy of Minnie Driver). If this is witless then I might as well pack it in because I wouldn’t know wit if it bit me on the ass.
More later, alligators.
