I finally got a chance to see a (poor) print of this film today after wanting to see it for years. I could appreciate its originality and sophistication for the time that it was made, but I was left wondering just what the film was really trying to say. It worked more as a character study than a film. The theme of the cruel and impersonal big city seemed to be a recurrent one in the 1970's (much like "Midnight Cowboy"), and seemed to be a symbol for the lost individual trying to find meaning in life.
I've never been able to believe Candice Bergen in any role I've ever seen her play, and this film is a good example. She's stiff and virtually emotionless in most of this, except for two scenes where her acting became so exaggerated that it was almost embarrassing; once where she laughs uncontrollably (more like shouts) when she is conversing with Peter Boyle and another at the end where she cries after a telephone conversation with her parents. They both sounded exactly the same, and were frankly kind of startling, leaving me wondering why the director allowed her to go so far and didn't ask for another take where she toned it down a little.
The "plot" never really goes anywhere. T.R. seems vacant, zombie-like and sarcastic, and the flashbacks gave me the impression they were being intentionally inserted to make a point when the film would come to an end. They didn't. The scenes in the film could have been played in real time as they happened and it wouldn't have made any difference at all.
There's some dialogue between Bergen and Caan in which she tells him that he "talks like a typewriter." I felt like this described a lot of the film; people don't talk or act this way, and I'm sure it looked great on paper. I can appreciate that this film portrayed a character and her experiences in a very different way for its time, but it didn't really seem to make a conclusion about anything.
