I expect A Complete Unknown to at least hold its own and perhaps even improve slightly. I already know, of course, what’s wrong with it so there won’t be any unexpected potholes.
Jeffrey Wells
Bad People
It would’ve been one thing if my Dribble Dream ball (which cost $47 plus shipping and taxes) was in the States and slowly making its way. That’s life — you can’t always get what you want.
But I hit the roof yesterday when a tracking report said my package was still in effing China…CHINA!
Hiding In The Vaults?
I have no problem with the idea of never, ever seeing the missing gas chamber finale from Billy Wilder’s Double Indemnity (‘44).
Because the finale that Wilder ultimately went with (i.e., Edward G. Robinson lighting Fred MacMurray’s cigarette) pays off so perfectly — why spoil it?
MacMurray’s Walter Neff was an absolute idiot, of course, for killing Barbara Stanwyck’s cranky-ass husband. Risking his life for some great sex on the weekends? Not worth it, bruh. It was obvious she was a wrong one from the get-go.
Would I like to see the missing finale anyway? The scene sounds awfully grim, verging on grotesque. But if it turns up one day, sure. I can take it.
From https://filmnoir.art.blog/2008/04/09/double-indemnity-the-unseen-ending/:https://filmnoir.art.blog/2008/04/09/double-indemnity-the-unseen-ending/:
Arguably The Most Arduous Trilogy in Cinema History
I’m finally about to sit through Pablo Larrain ‘s Maria (Netflix, 12.11) which I blew off seeing during last September’s Telluride Film Festival.
Reviews have been middling to mediocre, and I just know it’s going to sap my spirit and send me into the doldrums.
In my eyes, ears and soul the first two of Larrain’s feminist dramas — Jackie and Spencer — were torture to sit through, and it’ll be a miracle if I wind up being pleasantly surprised by Maria.
Later today I’m also going to sit through Part Two of The Brutalist, and I guess I’m kind of wondering how the…uhm, violation scene will be handled.
Not So Much Missing As Omitted
If there’s a slight problem with A Complete Unknown, it’s that Timothee Chalamet’s Bob Dylan is a little too elusive and circumspect — too much of an artful dodger or a snotty sidestepper — to register in straight dramatic terms.
It needs at least one scene in which Dylan lays his cards on the table and says “this is what I want” or “this is who I fucking am or at least who I’m not any more”…something like that.
And if you ask me, Dylan’s rambling remarks at the Bill of Rights dinner at the Americana hotel on 12.13.63 (three weeks after JFK’s murder) are fairly declarative in this sense.
Martin Scorsese read from Dylan’s remarks in a passage from No Direction Home (‘05), his 208-minute documentary about roughly the same period in Dylan’s life that A Complete Unknown covers. Re-using this event — this scene, these words — would have added a little something to James Mangold and Jay Cocks’ upcoming feature.
Excerpt: “Man, I just don’t see any colors at all when I look out. I don’t see any colors at all, and if people have taught anything through the years [it’s] to look at colors. I’ve read history books, but I’ve never seen one history book that tells how anybody feels. I’ve found facts about our history, I’ve found out what people know about what goes on but I’ve never found anything about what anybody feels about anything that happens.
”It’s all just plain facts. And it don’t help me one little bit to look back.
“I wish sometimes I could have come in here in the 1930s like my first idol – used to have an idol, Woody Guthrie, who came in the 1930s. [Applause] But it has sure changed in the time Woody’s been here and the time I’ve been here. It’s not that easy any more. People seem to have more fears.
“There’s no black and white, left and right to me anymore. There’s only up and down and down is very close to the ground. And I’m trying to go up without thinking about anything trivial such as politics.”
