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It's raining Terry, Johnny, and Benicio
Jan. 10th, 2006 05:51 pmAh, the Puget Sound in January. Rivers are flooding, mudslides are closing roads and railways, and the foundation of my house is springing leaks, although so far not in my bedroom. But give it a few more days. I've twice gone for long walks in the rain without an umbrella in the past week. Is that perhaps why this cold has stuck around? Dunno, but you get cabin fever after a while, and I've got an Australian raincoat and mostly waterproof boots.
But I've been home the past two days, feeling sick -- and heartsick too. Wintery days. So I've been watching Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for distraction. Saw it twice in the theater when it came out in 1998 and thought it was a brilliant return to form for Gilliam. Saw the beginning on DVD last year and thought that Depp's performance was actually maybe too gimmicky. Now I've watched it twice on DVD in the past two days (once with Gilliam's commentary) and I'm back to thinking it's a brilliant performance, as is del Toro's. An amazingly fierce, deranged performance by del Toro. And it's a pretty deranged movie, too -- as in derangement of the senses. It perhaps proposes that the American Dream is of absolute freedom, and that true freedom is weirder and uglier than most people want to face. On the other hand, there is a petulance to the disillusioned idealism underneath it all that seems pretty adolescent.
I noticed the colors more this time around. An amazingly sophisticated use of color to communicate conflicted states of mind and emotion. The whole production design is incredible, as usual in a Gilliam movie. The way that more and more weird shit accumulates in the various spaces the characters inhabit becomes almost encyclopedic, quoting complex strata of the material world, signs and symbols that run askew to the so-called plot. Definitely makes for a movie that can be viewed repeatedly just to pick out more of the details, if you can handle the assaultive nature of it all.
Meanwhile, it's the heart of darkness, except the savages are us.
But I've been home the past two days, feeling sick -- and heartsick too. Wintery days. So I've been watching Terry Gilliam's Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas for distraction. Saw it twice in the theater when it came out in 1998 and thought it was a brilliant return to form for Gilliam. Saw the beginning on DVD last year and thought that Depp's performance was actually maybe too gimmicky. Now I've watched it twice on DVD in the past two days (once with Gilliam's commentary) and I'm back to thinking it's a brilliant performance, as is del Toro's. An amazingly fierce, deranged performance by del Toro. And it's a pretty deranged movie, too -- as in derangement of the senses. It perhaps proposes that the American Dream is of absolute freedom, and that true freedom is weirder and uglier than most people want to face. On the other hand, there is a petulance to the disillusioned idealism underneath it all that seems pretty adolescent.
I noticed the colors more this time around. An amazingly sophisticated use of color to communicate conflicted states of mind and emotion. The whole production design is incredible, as usual in a Gilliam movie. The way that more and more weird shit accumulates in the various spaces the characters inhabit becomes almost encyclopedic, quoting complex strata of the material world, signs and symbols that run askew to the so-called plot. Definitely makes for a movie that can be viewed repeatedly just to pick out more of the details, if you can handle the assaultive nature of it all.
Meanwhile, it's the heart of darkness, except the savages are us.
