Children Naked As Hottentots In Euro "Art" Film: Ratings board a caution to Paris Longhairs: Read this and be Shocked!

New at Reason: We were gonna change the world, man! A. S. Hamrah treats Bernardo Bertolucci's The Dreamers for acute nostalgia

Comments

[Tyler Valdez]

Great to see Scott Hamrah published in Reason. He has been sorely missed since Suck closed. But how did "Ferris Bueller's Day Off" add anything to cinematic museumgoing, I'd like to know? The scene in Godard's "Bande a part" remains unsurpassed, if you ask me. At least Godard's youthdon't make fun of the grownup world of art -- the art is irrelevant to their purposes.

[Overlord]

If anyone is tempted to see this movie because it's rated NC-17, just keep saying to your self "Showgirls, Showgirls, Showgirls".

[Ebert]

Man, two posts and we've already devolved into "Showgirls"!

[s.m. koppelman]

What is this, a right-wing version of the Catholic Worker or something? Hamrah's such a scold and killjoy I'm tempted to think it's Mr. Cavanaugh himself writing under a pseudonym.

I haven't seen The Dreamers yet and lord knows Bertolucci's one frustrating old lefty (and frustrating filmmaker), but that's who he is. He's less out of touch than Mr. Hamrah gives him credit for, though. Equating the '68 uprisings with narcissism, na?vete and iffy sexual experimentation is hardly dewy-eyed nostalgia. Then there's the cited irony of self-imagined "revolutionaries" living with Mom and Dad. It it sounds like par for the course Bertolucci, though that doesn't mean I necessarily want to sit through it. Remember how populist peasant revolutionaries turned on their own in "1900"? Or how idyllic and benign imperial neglect looked in "Last Emperor"? It's called ambiguity, and maybe that's the real crime against a worldview that can be reduced to a five-word slogan.

[dan reines]

"Great to see Scott Hamrah published in Reason." Agreed. Also great to see that Tyler Valdez is still alive and kicking. Tyler, I used to love your proto-blog at Tripod. You must be, what, 23 now?

[Spur]

So when do we get a review of that Gibson flick -- or are you looking for a libertarian who writes well and speaks Arameic?

[Dan]

It's called ambiguity, and maybe that's the real crime against a worldview that can be reduced to a five-word slogan.

I'll watch movies about uninteresting people if there's an interesting message to the film. I'll watch movies with ambiguous meanings if the characters or situations interest me. But Bertolucci's fascination making ambigous films filled with uninteresting characters has always left me cold. I'd just as soon sit at the coffee shop and construct elaborate fantasies about the people coming in to order cafe americanos.

[Scott Hamrah]

Sorry I seem like a wet blanket to you, S. Koppelman. But what's to cheer?

Any Bertoluccian ambiguity in the film is willed and not felt. In my opinion it's phony, a way for him to deflect criticism so he can say he didn't mean what he seemed to be saying. He was, you see, criticizing his incredibly beautiful and often naked rich-kid characters. And he was trying to help them! He pities them, he really feels for those confused kids, etc.

[MALAK]

Hottentots?