Sadly, I'm Still Shallow

For the past couple of years, but 2008 especially, I've been congratulating myself for finally being mature enough to enjoy '70s cinema.

I'm not talking about anything with a level of violence that was pertinent to my teenaged self - Taxi Driver I've been watching since junior high, for instance. I mean the movies that're about people and feelings and shit. Nothing could bore me faster.

Until recently...

One of the best things about Netflix is it offers a cheap and painless way to plug the more glaring holes in my viewing. So I'm finally catching up with titles like Last Tango in Paris, Serpico, Easy Rider (I know it's '69, close enough), etc. I watch them, the whole time sitting there thinking, "This movie's awesome! Why'd it take me so long to get around to it?" But I stopped the self-beratement... only to replace it with self-congratulation when I came to understand that before now I wouldn't have enjoyed them. Now, however, I have the requisite maturity. I am a man of the world who can watch a movie about people's emotions and shit. A time comes for all things.

Unfortunately, this blog posting thus far is nothing but a long-winded preamble to me saying that I shut off Five Easy Pieces fifteen minutes in so I could go back to shooting bandits in Fable II.

If I said something like that back in film school, everyone would've fallen outta their chairs like I'd released sarin into the room. "But it's Jack Nicholson's tour de force! He won the Oscar that year for Best Performance!"

Yeah, yeah...

The movie opens on a montage of oil workers in Texas doing their jobs. One of them is Jack Nicholson. He goes home and cracks a beer when he walks in the door like a man should, sits down and listens to his waitress girlfriend (Karen Black - and her legs) ask him to help her choose a song to perform. He begs off. They go bowling. She's a shitty bowler, and Jack gets pissy with her over it. But -- and here's where I started to check out -- it's not a fun Jack Nicholson flip-out, he's just a normal guy having a normal-guy-style temper tantrum over nothing, just being a dick. I guess that's Jack acting, but it wasn't fun to watch, just kinda... ugh.

Karen gets upset and goes out to wait in the car and cry. (There's a sense this is a normal Saturday night routine). While she's gone, Jack sits by himself and is sad... more acting. A couple of chicks from the next lane over throw Jack some game. He says nah and goes out to make up with Karen. They have a scene in the parking lot. She tries to get him to say he loves her, and Jack wiggles out of it. This is a long scene.

I shut off the movie.

From what I've read online, Jack is actually a brillaint pianist who's squandered his talent by running off to work in the oil fields. I'm sure this explains why Jack's a perfectionist, even when it comes to bowling, and the bitch-fest he weighs on Karen is probably the kinda thing he grew up with, and fled, even if it meant not using his musical ability. Apparently, he gets called home and has to face his past, etc.

The thought of watching this play out made my skin itch in a familiar way. It was the same itch I felt when I tried to watch Ordinary People when I was in high school. It was the same itch that bedeviled me the entire time I sat through Gosford Park, a movie I hated. Hated. HATED.

I knew Jacks' visit home would be a lotta long scenes of people being sad, and rooms full of actors just acting the living shit out of their sadness and each other.

It's difficult for me to wade through stories about people who have just kinda decided to be miserable. This isn't a 100% thing... I still love The Graduate, probably because I was able to get where Dustin Hoffman was coming from. And I think Paul Thomas Anderson is one of the great filmmakers of our generation. But the emotional travails of a pianist as told in long takes of bitch sessions? Not so much.

But... who knows? I'll check back in with Five Easy Pieces in ten years or so. Maybe by then I'll be able to enjoy it. And when that day comes, I'll take another crack at Altman and Cassavetes again, and my future, that-much-more-mature self will slap his forehead and yell, "Why did it take me so long to appreciate these awesome movies?"

I suppose I just have to take these things by degrees. You gotta walk before you can run, blah-blah.

And by the way, Last Tango in Paris is pretty fucking great.