Welcome!
If you thought of something brilliant to say on your way home from a Rowhouse Film Fest night, or if you were too shy to talk during the discussion, let this blog be your opportunity to chime in! We're hoping the dialogue about the films will continue here even after the evening ends.
An entry for each movie will be posted here which will include some of the points made during the discussion. We'd really like it if YOU -- the attendees of the Film Fest (or any other fans of thes movies who couldn't make it here) -- would comment on the entry and start the conversation going.
(Btw, you do NOT need to have a Blogger or Gmail account to post comments. You can remain anoymnous if you'd like.)
WILD AT HEART (1990). Barry Gifford's neopulp novel inspired this controversial cult film from director David Lynch. A star-crossed couple on the lam (Nicolas Cage and Laura Dern) is in for the most gruesome ride of their lives when they encounter a handful of bizarre -- and perhaps murderous -- strangers (played by the likes of Sheryl Lee and Willem Dafoe). (124 mins)
Some of the themes:
Elvis as:
Rebellious prototype
Camp humor
Nostalgia for the 50’s
Baudrillard says of the 50’s “ the real high spot for the US (‘when things were going on’) and you can still feel the nostalgia for those years, for the ecstasy of power, when power still held power.”
“To ridicule and to celebrate are reversible and interchangeable”
Flame as symbol of rebellion (like Badlands)
Again there is the impetus to start a family (like True Romance), but on the road, they are actually sexy and sensual
Like other post-modern road films the journey gets diluted, restricted, circumscribed, and minimized.
Dream-like ending- surrealist strategy of not distinguishing between the dream world and the real world (making freams real)
In the end, the car is actually stuck in traffic- not moving.
Traditional family represents stasis and being on the run turns them into a dangerous, mobile pair.
Peacock feathers....
BADLANDS (1973): Young garbage man Kit Caruthers (Martin Sheen) and his girlfriend, Holly (Sissy Spacek) hit the road in South Dakota on the run from the law. Writer-director Terrence Malick's script (for his feature film debut), based on a real outlaw couple in 1958, does not judge its characters as they make their way to the Badlands of Montana, leaving a trail of senseless and random murders in their wake. (95 mins)
Thoughts from Badlands...
Utilizes the stark landscape and verite cinemetography
The woman is the storyteller while the action is done by the man- in other words, the laconic voice over in the begining represents apathy rather than agency.
- Kit deisires to become a rebellion like James Dean, and yet his dream is to move to Canada and get a job on an oil rig (rather a blue collar worker's dream)
- Play-acting by Kit and Holly
build a treehouse and play house
kit plays a soldier who must protect their camp
Holly plays at being a cheerleader and an outlaw
- There is a futility to the chase that Kit is loathe to admit- it ends because he runs out of gas.
- Kit is likeable- even glorified by the police at the end and we, as the distance audience (like Holly), can comment on the lack of real disctinction between good and evil, law and disorder.
- "Outlaws belong in society"
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