Thursday, March 04, 2021

Chinatown: Movie Review (Scripted)

Video version of an old post (as I explained about HERE)
For the original post, see:
http://joelswagman.blogspot.com/2011/04/chinatown.html

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10 comments:

Whisky Prajer said...

Your observation re: a 70s trend toward 30s movies struck me. It is spot-on, for one thing, and it begins in the '60s with Bonnie & Clyde. I think that generation had something of a jones for that era -- my aunt is of that age (just a year or two too jaded to feel the pull of the flower children, but certainly in the sweet spot to enjoy the cultural shift) and she frequently says things like she must have been a flapper in her previous life. But the 70s version of the 20s/30s/early 40s is sooooo languorous -- soft-focus shots for days. Robert Redford's attempt at the Great Gatsby is especially guilty of this. These guys really want to be back there. If you meditate on it for any length of time, the romance of it all is ludicrous. But then that's how I felt about the 50s and 60s when I was an adolescent/young adult in the 80s/90s. Thankfully, "That 70s Show" helped me give my head a freakin' shake. I'd lived the 70s and they were nothing like that -- these chuckle-heads experienced no societal trauma over Watergate, the war in Vietnam/Cambodia, inflation/stagflation, OPEC, etc etc. The 20s-30s-40s only look attractive once you are safely on the other side of them.

BTW, I gather you haven't yet given Chinatown another viewing. Kinda tough to do with a little one on the scene, I realize. :)

March 5, 2021 at 6:59 AM
Joel Swagman said...

Oh yeah, I totally forgot about Bonny and Clyde, and the Great Gatsby. Thanks for that.

According to the Internet, there are various theories of nostalgia going around. one is the 30 year cycle theory. People in their 40s become nostalgic for what they remember as kids--which explains Stranger Things, etc. And one is the 40-50 year cycle theory.
People become nostalgic for a time that happened just before they were born--something they didn't personally experience, but remember hearing about. This would explain the popularity of Mad Men
https://slate.com/culture/2012/04/the-golden-forty-year-rule-and-other-nostalgia-cycles-could-trends-possibly-return-every-40-years-20-years-and-12-15-years.html#:~:text=15%3F&text=In%20the%20latest%20issue%20of,years%20past%2C%E2%80%9D%20he%20proclaims.

Of course, that 70s show came out in the late 90s (only 20 years), but it was aimed at people too young to remember the 70s. (At least, I think that was the target demographic, right?)

But yeah, whatever it was, there was some sort of fascination with the 1930s and 40s going on in 1970s Cinema.

Of course, at the same time, the 1970s were also very nostalgic for the 1950s (Grease, Happy Days, etc). But then, a decade can be nostalgic for two things at once.

March 5, 2021 at 11:11 AM
Joel Swagman said...

Oh yes, and as to the other question...
No, never re-watched it. Over due for a re-watch at this point, aren't I? But yes, it is hard with the kid. Plus, I'm not sure where I would find a copy in Vietnam. (Those streaming websites wouldn't carry it--it's of interest to young Vietnamese people.)
I'll get around to a re-watch one of these days.

March 5, 2021 at 11:19 AM
Whisky Prajer said...

I know I've said it before, and probably over here, but my father resolutely refused to allow us kids to watch Happy Days. He was normally an approachable figure on these matters, often allowing entertainments my mother did not. When I asked about this, the only answer he gave was, "Because I lived through the 50s. And it was nothing like that." When That 70s Show came along I finally understood what he meant.

March 5, 2021 at 4:44 PM
Joel Swagman said...

Come to think of it, Happy Days was also aimed at the kids as well, wasn't it?
So you have Happy Days, and That 70s show. Both aired about 20 years after the time period they took place in. Both aimed at people too young to remember the actual time period.

...my memory (and this may be selective) is that no one in my generation was much interested in the 1970s. It was that boring non-descript decade between the colorful 1960s and the colorful 1980s. But then, Dazed and Confused movie all of a sudden made 1970s nostalgia really cool.

I don't suppose you have thoughts on that movie?

March 6, 2021 at 10:53 AM
Whisky Prajer said...

It's curious that the 80s rates as "colourful" for you, probably in an apposite way to the colourful 60s (I'm guessing). I hated the 80s -- Reagan's decade, in my books. The music was shit, television, you name it. I mean, I was young and I have plenty of fond memories from the decade. But the entire decade seemed custom-tailored to get on my nerves. When the 90s finally delivered Grunge I let out a huge sigh of relief and let my hair down.

I'm generally a fan of everything Linklater does, so D&C gets nothing but props from me. It didn't seem especially nostalgic, at least not to these eyes. The physical and psychological abuse these kids dish out and put up with is pretty close to how I recall that decade (which bled over into the 80s, I'd say). But Linklater has a good eye and ear for how people bolster each other, even in environments that are both overtly and covertly hostile. Even a nightmare like A Scanner Darkly, with its houseful of drug-addicted paranoids, breathes with a congeniality among the inhabitants. So I can get why D&C might play as nostalgic for some viewers, particularly those with little to no exposure of the era it portrays.

March 7, 2021 at 9:09 AM
Whisky Prajer said...

Re-reading that last sentence and thinking it sounds really talk-downy. NOT what I hope to convey! But what I took from watching it, back in the day, was that sense of loss and imminent failure these characters were facing. I recall laughing at Rory's pot-induced soliloquies, but not much else. And that Wooderson, the McConaughey character, became a sort of aspirational figure in the men's magazine set always struck me as bitterly ironic. Right from his introduction he struck me as a figure who'd be tragic if he weren't so patently reprehensible. But, of course, McConaughey brought charm to the table and it became a given that this character would keep driving by his old high school to scout the latest crop of 16-year-old girls.

I'm rambling, but maybe you can see what I'm angling toward. You, or your generation, saw it as nostalgic?

March 7, 2021 at 9:17 AM
Joel Swagman said...

Re: the 1980s--I'm guilty of speaking imprecisely again. But the 80s had a distinctive character in a way that it didn't seem that the 70s did. But maybe that's just me.

As for Dazed and Confused: Yes, I saw it as 70s nostalgia.
To me (and I think many in my high school class) it made the 70s look way more fun than our generation. The teenagers seemed to have more fun, party more, no cable tv or video games, it was just about really experiencing life back then.
I was younger and more impressionable, and I made the mistake of thinking that what I saw in the movie was pretty close to what real life was like back in the 1970s.

March 7, 2021 at 12:18 PM
Whisky Prajer said...

"70s nostalgia" -- this is curious to me, because to my mind so much of what D&C explores is people's (particularly adolescents') willingness to bend to someone else's sadistic impulses. Again, this explains why Wooderson struts across the screen as if he honestly believes he's someone everyone else wants to be. It's because he is! And that is wildly out-of-whack.

But then there has to be an acknowledged universally held masochistic streak as well. When I was 21 I worked in a shipping bay for a furniture factory. For a few weeks we had a 17-year-old guy helping us out. He'd ALWAYS tease on the guy who clearly left work to go to the gym to do a full-body workout, then drink his protein shakes before heading to the sensory deprivation tank to recover. HUGE. And ALWAYS Gym Guy would calmly demonstrate an extremely painful wrestling suplex reducing this clown to a puddle of tears. Twenty minutes later, however...

Finally, I said to this kid, "You're the oldest in your family, aren't you?"

"Yeah! How'd you know?!"

Mm. Takes one to know one really...

March 7, 2021 at 7:52 PM
Joel Swagman said...

I should be careful before I talk too much about this movie because I'm way overdue for a re-watch. I think it's been over 20 years since I last saw it.
I suspect my perspective will have changed if see it now. Instead of "Isn't cool how much partying these kids are doing?", I might well think, "Isn't it sad how none of them are concerned about their career paths. They're going to be in for a rough awakening once they hit 42."

...and, yes, I suspect I would see McConaughey's character as a lot more tragic if I were to view it now.

March 7, 2021 at 9:49 PM

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