Entry 7:

Dear Geoffrey,

Visconti's The Leopard is on my all-time 10 best list. It almost ruins you for other movies. I know what you mean about the hollow feeling you're left with at the end of Pollock. It's true about all bio-pics about addicted artists, Bird as well. They make art, they get high, they clean up, they make art, they get high. And the episodic nature of bio-pics as they give scrupulous treatment to life's stages: The same impatience came over me when I was watching the last half-hour of Schnabel's Before Night Falls. Still, what amazes me about both pictures is the scenes that work--like the one where Lee tells Pollock she won't have a child with him or the one where she lectures his family on Jackson's importance in the media. My friend Carrie Rickey, the film critic for Philadelphia Inquirer, said astutely that Pollock is about his control or lack of control of liquids (paint, semen, alcohol).

I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon twice. The first time I was very tired and fell asleep in the middle. (It happens even to film critics.) I suppose my essential lack of interest in kung-fu fantasy pushed me over the edge into sleep. The second time I was alert and liked its clarity and the quiet underneath. In fact I found myself mesmerized by all the scenes where they were just saying hello or sitting down or talking. I loved the art direction: Every doily and shmata shone with authenticity. My mind wandered during the fight scenes although I was riveted by the poetry of bouncing through the green trees. And, to be honest, I was riveted by Michele Yeoh: the sexual poise of a woman approaching middle age, the sense of power under restraint. She should get the Oscar for Best Actress, though I don't believe she's even nominated. Michele Yeoh, yeah. ... Anyway, I came around to Crouching Tiger, and it's my personal choice for Best Picture. Though it hasn't a prayer!

The hoopla around Traffic baffles me. I don't see what's so original about it; it juggles several plot lines like any number of police TV shows. Much of it is patently unbelievable, such as Michael Douglas chasing his daughter through the ghetto or walking out of the White House in midconference, and the ending is sappy. What worked for me was Benicio del Toro: I left the theater thinking of the young, heavy-lidded Robert Mitchum. A star is born. But the notion that we should honor it because it may change national drug policy, which I strongly doubt, is bunk. As for Soderbergh's direction, very competent, though I was more excited by his work on The Limey.

You mention Karl Malden's work in Fear Strikes Out. I recently saw On the Waterfront again, where he is excruciatingly hammy, and he's not too subtle in Streetcar Named Desire either, if I recall. Was Malden an aberration of the Method, or did he do any other good acting jobs besides Fear Strikes Out? I await your elucidation of this all-important matter.

Fondly,
Phillip