Movies that I've seen often stick back in the time when I first saw them, rather than when they were made or set. Not in the time's greater cultural meaning, but in that certain headspace--in some layer of accrual of brain cells, of knowledge or of forgetting.
Therefore it's kind of interesting to read Pauline Kael's review of the Coen Brothers' "Blood Simple," which is up on the New Yorker's website. I think I first saw "Blood Simple" in 2002 or 2003, or in one of those stages where I thought I had grasped some knowledge about life. Somehow seeing an old movie had given me some knowledge about life, about movies, about irony, about accrual. Pauline Kael was less excited about forgotten dogs and incinerators that don't deliver in 1985 when she saw it. Read her review (bottom of page two). It places the movie in "The Current Cinema" with "Witness."
"It’s like opening day at a miniature-golf course," Kael says of the look of "Raising Arizona," which I saw around the time of its release. That damned scary biker was perhaps the scariest thing I'd ever seen, although the review reminds me he was only blowing up a bunny rabbit and setting fire to a daisy. The Current Cinema, April 10, 1987
2 comments:
i know what you mean. i saw _raising arizona_ in the theater back in '87 when my own mental state was rather precarious. and yet, the movie is one of my favorites of my favorites and remains on the top of my list for the coen bros considerable body of work. i still remember sitting in that darkened theater getting what was left of my mind blown by the lone biker of the apocalypse and the overall sweetness of being that permeates the movie.
take care.
Thanks Richard. It's one of my favorites too.
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