Reviews

This is a film for those who love democracy -- the victory of what Jefferson called the "aristocracy of talent" over the dead weight of the past. You will be swept up in this marvelous adventure, this heroic tale that recounts the American and the French revolutions at their best. This film is the LIFE, not the letter -- as it is presented in text books. Hurray for the American revolution and the French revolution and remember that their goal was wit and delight and love -- not advancement as an end in itself. The French cinema has presented this film in such a lovely, believable, natural manner. Thank you to them. Wonderful, humane acting graces a noble subject.

Most of us come from families who came from the old country with practically nothing. Naturally, our grandparents worked from dawn to dusk to survive in the new land and make a better life for the kids. It was the generations that followed that caught the American disease of wanting to become a "somebody" as a substitute for the integrity of the Old World that was left behind. The paradox of this film, the paradox of achieving "the American Dream", of "building this great nation" is that after all the generations of struggle for position, money, and importance, we wake up and realize that it's all empty, that simple integrity and friendship are all that mean anything, that our fore-fathers had that in the beginning.

It has been said that in order to save one's life one must loose it....

this long, dull string of clichés about revolution and counter-revolution, with its "magical realism" style -- given the excellent films you both have to your credit ? When I saw the two of you listed as having major parts I assumed that this film would have the brilliance and terror of, say, "Darkness at Noon". I respected your judgment....

For those of you who were impressed by this film, may I suggest that you read volume one of Alexander Solzenitzen's "GULAG Archapelligo" ? Although the content is bracing, Solzenitzen has a wonderful, droll sense of humor that tellingly mocks the State's authority over our hearts and minds. Or consider "Life Inside", Mindy Lewis' remarkable autobiography about how her controlling mother absurdly had her committed to a mental institution because Mindy was too alive to fit the mold.

These two books deal with the issues that the film Land of the Blind deals with but they are telling, pithy, and substantial.

Perhaps this film has gotten mixed reviews because it breaks an unwritten code about how far a movie can go in satirizing America's myths. When before have we seen the President of the United States on happy pills and robotic-ally pro- gram-med by his Rovelike handlers ? Who would suggest that an Al-Quaeda training camp could be funny and that someone in it has up scale all-American relatives in Orange County, California ? Could our love affair with American Idol be an escape from the collapsing American middle class way of life ?

This film IS often funny but it doesn't want that humor to stay in a feel good zone. It WANTS to make us uncomfortable and to face things that we don't want to look at too closely. The "sin" that this film has committed is that it wants us to grow up.

Yes, this is a love story about two unusually attractive people but its power comes from Hurt and Matlin's ability to increasingly convey vulnerability and authenticity as they fight to become completely real to each other. Marlee in particular is remarkable in her expressiveness. There is a scene where she watches Hurt while she's in an indoor swimming pool and you only see her eyes over the edge of the pool -- but the depth and variety of what "just those eyes" express!

Because all of us intuitively know what they are going through as they strip away layer after layer -- who of us hasn't feared exposure of the person we feel the world shouldn't see? -- we are drawn into their revealing their secret selves because we wish we knew who OUR OWN secret self is.

And the film is funny, engaging, touching, crazy and human!

that explores, opens up, reveals the unconscious, socially conditioned ways we limit ourselves. Because the film deals primarily with the Black and African-Indian communities, I found myself wishing that I could have seen it in a Black/Indian audience to see what the film stirred up!

This is a good film for those of you who like explosions, cool mafia hit men, and high tech because it is about real human difficulty and real courage -- not the Die Hard and Terminator fantasy versions of those virtues.

It also happens to be a very sweet, often tellingly funny love story about two believable people you will end up really liking.

within an interesting heist flick. All of the leading actors are middle aged men and they are INTERESTING people who enjoy being together and respect each other. This is what captures us, the film audience -- as well as the two young actors (guy and girl) who want to be part of this engaging friendship. Nolte's warmth and ironic humor are at the center of this. As his longtime cop friend says, "Everybody likes Bob, that is the problem!".

The heist is really a question of whether this group of men's unusual dignity, intelligence, and ability will be victorious over the Establishment in which people never do more then live half lives; i.e., unlike what makes the main characters appealing. Perhaps all of the films built on this classic pattern are saying, "the real criminality is never to have been alive."

because of its humor, life, and especially its humanity. You will fall for the magic that Italians can make of a dinner. I used to think that Fellini was creating a private vision of Italy with his magical realism. Not so I now see! And the film is in no way other worldly. That's the remarkable thing as seen from my utilitarian, protestant perspective: The real, work-a-day world can be spontaneous and unexpected. Adults can show all of their emotions and that's o.k. The humor, life, and humanity of this kind of living fulfills us so there is much less need for "living other peoples lives vicariously", as Lennon put it.

The three main characters have a wonderful straightforward openness that was, for some, in the late 1960's, characteristic of the time -- if you were lucky! The director recognized that this quality was unusual and captured it on film -- remarkable. The main characters are still young enough so that the fun of being alive is completely fulfilling and old enough so that they can see and challenge each others perspectives and motivations.

You wish you could be with them because they are really TOGETHER, whereas our interpersonal game playing, mutual trips on each other, and subtle sexual politics, now that we are older, rob us of that.

Meg is hit with a succession of family disasters that follow from

her divorced parents being deeply self absorbed and irresponsible. She turns for support to a teacher who betrays her

trust. I felt manipulated by the film maker. To create the dramatic

effect she wants, she piles on so many disasters and paints

Meg's world in such dark colors that the film becomes implausible. However, because the film is about Meg's courage

and honesty, her seeing through her parents immaturity and her

teachers manipulation, it is important. Three cheers for Meg ! In a

less extreme (thankfully), and therefore more believable form,

many girls are faced by the kind of situations she is faced by and

can therefore learn from this film.

Watch this film and then watch Last Tango in Paris -- which also

deals with revealing human motivation beyond convention. If you

do this, you may conclude, as I did, that Bitter Moon isn't really

possible because the characters have no human depth of

emotion. They are cardboard figures whom the director pushes to

an extreme but who never come to life. This humanity and life, in

an authentic human relationship, is what gives Last tango in Paris

so much power, and is why the film "gets" to you and stays with

you. Bitter Moon attempts to achieve this kind of greatness, with a

similar plot idea, but can't.

The core of the film is Lucy's (Liv T.'s) courage to discover who her

real father is and to see through the pretensions of men to whom

she might loose her virginity and recognize the unpretentious man

at the end. She is understood and touchingly supported in this

process by Iron's character. And it is with him, it seemed to me,

that she forms the deepest bond of trust and affection.

My guess is that all young women go through this challenging

process and that, therefore, the feelings Lucy has and the

situations she faces will touch them. I was touched by Lucy's

courage and Liv's effectiveness at communicating what Lucy was

feeling.

...Saint-Exupery's The Little Prince.

Mr. Hulot being the Little Prince as an adult ! In both there is such gentleness, charm, and perceptive observation of "normalcy" and "adulthood". And In both we are captured by a way of looking at life, a manner of being, that we have forgotten -- a kind of salvation by innocence -- because this innocence is more potent then the psychological authority of adulthood ! With every movement Mr. Hulot transforms how we customarily perceive everyday interactions so that those interactions can never be the same for us again.

...and beauty of the imaginative power of this immortal film it is a tragedy. Cocteau CONVINCES you that the world of the beast and of the merchant and his troubles exists and that our "real" world is impoverished by comparison. The tenderness beauty comes to feel for the beast , the Dreaded Other, the Stranger shunned by the world, isn't this a transformation of perception we all need to undergo until the every day world no longer shuns any human being as a Stranger? Until this has happened our every day world will be the unreal illusion that the expression "fairy tale" conventionally suggests, but when that day comes some of the grandeur and meaning of the fairy tale will be seen to suffuse the every day world.