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DigitalDjigit

Honky Tonk Woman
This one goes out to Jed. What is so great about this movie? I found it really tedious. Just when you think something is going to happen or some point is about to be made, nothing happens. The movie feels exactly like the main character, you just want to slap her and say "stop whining you stupid cow". What was the significance of the retreat and the new age stuff there, it didn't seem to develop anywhere.
 

owen

Well-known member
thought it was the eeriness of nothing much happening that was the point- people going quietly, inoffensively mental
 

jed_

Well-known member
this film was actually voted by Village Voice critics as the best film of the 90's and i agree with them. here are some thoughts i posted elsewhere on the film cut and pasted to here. i watched this (for about the 10th time) a few nights ago so i'll write some more later but here's what i said a while back:

There is no other film i think about so much - scenes from it pop into my head a few times a week. Its meanings are so slippery and difficult to grasp - your opinoins on the characters change with every scene: Is she getting better or worse; does she reach some kind of peace or has she been brainwashed; is her illness psychosomatic or real? is her husband unfeeling or confused or does he have some kind of empathy? i have watched the last scene maybe 10 times and every time i do i feel something completely different - she's gone mad - she's at peace - she's dying...; is the acting realistic or stagey? do people talk this way now or do they just talk like that on television: Do they learn it from television and now use it in life?

I love the way Julianne Moore looks directly at the screen/ mirror /YOU - and says she loves you - is she telling you as the viewer or herself as a reflection? Nothing else Todd haynes or julianne Moore have made has approached this power. There is nothing like it. Most movies, Even other intelligent films, signal to you what kind of emotion you should be going through this one leaves everything hanging. i keep going back to it.

...

DigitalDjigit said:
What is so great about this movie? I found it really tedious. Just when you think something is going to happen or some point is about to be made, nothing happens. The movie feels exactly like the main character, you just want to slap her and say "stop whining you stupid cow". What was the significance of the retreat and the new age stuff there, it didn't seem to develop anywhere.

the film is a confusing mixture of TV style reality and actual reality and sheer horror. nothing happens? there's no resolution? much like life then, no? which is to say that things do happen in the film and in your real life but it's hard to know what your life is "about" in the way that films tend to be "about" things. it's hard to know what this films means and i find that refreshing.

...

the key scene in the film is the one at the end where carol is at the retreat and is asked to make a speech because it's her birthday - she says something like...

"oh i just want to thank you for having this meal and i [...long pause] just want to say... that i really am beginning to love myself... and i really hated myself before you know?... and im so happy everyone is dealing with this illness... cos it <i>is</i> an illlness, just going into malls and... AIDS and [she becomes inceasingly aware that all eyes are on her].... just reading labels in grocery stores cos thats important..." and she kind of dries up and loses track of her thoughts.

The reason its interesting is because she begins relatively confidently then what she says kinda evloves into Oprah-speak and she falters - the more she speaks the less articulate she becomes, more doubtful and conversely more like the real carol. Its one of the truest things i have ever seen in a movie. You never see that kind of inarticulacy depicted on fim or even on T.V.

it's never clear whether her sickness is real or manifestation of despair.
 

Buick6

too punk to drunk
DigitalDjigit said:
This one goes out to Jed. What is so great about this movie? I found it really tedious. Just when you think something is going to happen or some point is about to be made, nothing happens. The movie feels exactly like the main character, you just want to slap her and say "stop whining you stupid cow". What was the significance of the retreat and the new age stuff there, it didn't seem to develop anywhere.

Put it this way, compared to Haynes other shit, this film is a flat out fricken M.A.S.T.E.R.P.I.E.C.E
 

owen

Well-known member
i like velvet goldmine....and that is DESPITE ewan macgregor

far from heaven tho is very overrated- gimme 'fear eats the soul' over that kind of lazy po-mo guff anyday...
 
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