Look Back in Anger

There was a period in my youth when I often went to the local library, and browsed the films they had for rent some of which were starring Richard Burton (The Robe, Cleopatra, The Night of the Iguana, The Spy Who Came in from the Cold, Who's Afraid of Virginia Woolf? . . . ).

I admit I loved his work and found him instantaneously captivating, naturally gifted with cinematic composure enviously admired around the globe (but no Laurence Olivier).

It's honestly like he's not even acting, like he's just going about his daily routine.

What to the 50s and 60s Brad Pitt was to the 90s and early 2000s?

Irrefutable irresistible magnetism.

(Foucauldian investigation pending).

But angry.

In Look Back in Anger it's like you're watching solidified anti-spiritual acid vehemently castigate every moment of every day, with irate fury the superlative venom obdurately infects everyone he encounters (although he also uses it to productively fight racism).

Notably his wife, who's as right as rain, who just wants to chill and ethereally float, as modest as a Boston cream or perhaps mint chocolate chip, still adamantly tempting like chillaxed camaraderie.

Every time he sees her (Mary Ure as Alison Porter) he lays it on thick with bellicose rancour, fit only for the field of battle, the poor lass habitually scornful of things like separation.

But a friend comes to stay (Claire Bloom as Helena Charles) and his vitriolic fury regularly erupts, even going so far as to ruin one of her auditions, for the sake of meaningless voltaic banter.

One bitter interaction to the next he furiously proceeds beyonds limits or bounds, as if an aristocrat suddenly found themselves penniless, or an impoverished worker sought to make a fortune.

Apart from close family, every woman he encounters must endure his pernicious ramble, like watching one of the world's most idyllic cads consistently berate gentle fauns who then fall in love (written by men).

Do things still proceed so obtusely, is socioevolution just something you read about in the news?, I admit to having read several books and newspapers, and never really having met anyone who attempts to live that way (it's often a trap). 

I'm convinced that if I ever did I'd never know it because they're so stuck up beyond oblivion.

And doesn't that defeat the purpose?

Who knows?, discourses of the sincere.

Written on the Wind

Two friends having grown up together remain collegially close as mature callings beckon.

Romance passionately translates reflections from one to the other, but Kyle (Robert Stack) seeks the damsel more readily, outmaneuvering alternative constructs.

His outlandish sister (Dorothy Malone as Marylee) has been in love with Mitch (Rock Hudson) for as long as she can remember, but he only sees her as family, which encourages rebellion.

They're some of the wealthiest peeps in Texas yet aren't detached or country club, preferring less ornate otherworldly enrichments to pretentious self-aggrandizement.

But young, Kyle seeks to raise young and encounters structural impediments, which leads to an excess o' corn, and generally swished saturation.

Mitch still loves Kyle's formerly blushing bride (Lauren Bacall as Lucy) but would never betray his friend, and even though she's somewhat flattered, she'll stay true to the bitter end.

The assiduous patriarch is none too impressed with the lackadaisical proclivities of his offspring, but he's too busy to run their lives, and they're far too independent.

Principled woe and abandoned happiness stoically blend within, to remain forever youthful, punishment Written on the Wind.

The first twenty minutes or so, the inspired improvised courtship, pull you in with literary enchantments, strictly spellbound as they subside, the austere tooth & nail.

Douglas Sirk holds things together enabling tragic tight-laced wonder, misfortune lamenting dreams, distressed dissolved exaggeration.

A solemn reverence for loyalty doesn't lack charming consistency, desire manifest and consequent yet forbidden barred ill-favoured.

The townsfolk hesitantly assert themselves to add poignant sociocultural depth, as demographics merge collide to interrogate what's left.

Acrimonious acclimations.

Antique shivers cloaked.

To have everything but what you want when it isn't even out of the question.

Friendly fusions immoderate misgivings distant lands picturesque pastures, if more had to be done perhaps everything would have seemed less demanding, like a light bit of sweet shushing distraction, honeysuckled spruce butterscotch haunts.  

A shake.

Camping.

Ye olde Yahtzee or Trivial Pursuit. 

Unconcerned with discourse immutable. 

Take it easy. 

Just the way things go.

L'Insulte

Politicians spreading hate to prey upon the weaknesses of their flocks, to turn their latent prejudices into jingoistic warlike ambitions, to transform tolerant markets into breeding grounds for death and destruction, to gain power for themselves which they will share with no one, perniciously pervert and corrupt the religious and/or secular principles they exploit to gain recognition, then bask in luxurious splendour while lives are lost and communities torn apart, after their viewpoints become codes of conduct, and harmless repartee starts invoking wanton bloodshed.

A mechanic falls for the volatile rhetoric of a Lebanese demagogue in Ziad Doueiri's L'Insulte, and proceeds to express himself contemptuously thereafter.

But the Palestinian man whom he targets isn't willing to let things slide, and immediately comes a' knockin' to assert his sincere displeasure.

He's ignored, tensions escalate, his boss, a levelheaded kind hearted understanding person, asks him to apologize for the way in which he retaliated, he agrees, only to have his people vitriolically criticized as he prepares to do so, a genocidal comment that inflames his passions, and leaves his provocateur on the ground with two broken ribs.

As they wait for their day in court, both men are reasonably counselled, and even though Yasser (Kamel El Basha) has a legitimate defence, he refuses to air grievances when eventually pressed by the judge.

He's an ethical person whom the world keeps beating down.

He won't sit back and take it, but he won't rat out his adversaries either.

Complicated film.

Multicultural dilemmas.

Their dispute makes headlines and soon the appeal is a national sensation, ethnocentric hatreds refuelled by each carefully calculated examination, a recent civil war still haunting collective memories, only the truly wicked hoping to see them reanimated once more.

L'Insulte shows how misguided individual actions can have horrendous cultural repercussions if hatred is left to pontificate unchallenged while those who profit from its dissemination publicly promote its virulence.

Tony (Adel Karam) and Yasser can't stand the spectacle. It's one of the film's best aspects. They detest the ways in which their simple disagreement becomes a demented political powder keg.

They slowly learn to understand, and as they tacitly agree to tolerate one another, both as people and as people who have suffered greatly, the film's deep multifaceted layers become more respectfully binding (revolutionaries turned civil servants, diaspora discourses, a child is born, workplace health and safety . . .).

Myriad characters offer brief challenging insights that condense manifold local, regional, national, and international personal and communal ethicopolitical viewpoints into a compelling heartfelt cerebral narrativization.

An argument that could have just been quietly settled.

If they had listened to their wives.

And ignored mad extremists.

Fury

Sadistic circumstances, engendered by power mad xenophobic imperialistic bombast, retreating, hunted by freedom fighters, the Fury of the Allied Forces, annihilating the remnants of Nazi Germany, near the end of the Second World War, still, mired in combat.

Aldo Raine (Brad Pitt) was amazing.

My favourite character to emerge from war-related American cinema in the last 30 years.

By 30 years, I mean ever.

Let's make another film starring Aldo Raine, once again, killing Nazis, but this time stick him in a tank, once again, in command of loyal subordinates, dedicated to reasserting, the magnanimity of the free world.

The free world is not always magnanimous.

One of his loyal subordinates is new.

Green and foolhardy, he is unprepared for battle.

Yet battle engulfs him, and he must quickly acclimatize himself to its demented terrors, its requisite insanities, to become part of Aldo's team, thereby taking responsibility for his own actions.

His acclimatization permeates the film, which is generally another, mass produced somewhat cool entertaining ra-ra we won World War II flick, focusing on the greenhorn's shock, Fury, then saved by an unexpected scene.

Suddenly everything stops, and domestic bliss is upon us, patient and forgiving, miraculous medicinal mercy.

The scene shifts from the blissful to the hogtied, however, as the confines of the present, tacitly shriek euphonics in memorial.

Unexpected and outstanding.

The Germans are divided into the good and the bad, the civilians and the SS, the former, liberated, the latter, condemned.

Perennially.