You'll notice the worrying and the reporters, the carrying's-on and the debate - it's like something out of Pynchon's 'V.' (Florence, not Rome), or the NYU students (and Christopher Walken's head vampire - "You read Burroughs? 'Naked Lunch'?") or the UT Austin students in 'Slacker' and ... what, Oliver Assayas's 'Carlos'? Uli Edel's 'The Baader Meinhof Complex'? The show-boaty Mesrine played by Vincent Cassel starting to turn in a lefty check, in the 2nd of two films about him, called 'Mesrine: Public Enemy #1.'
It has subtly become fashion again to make these films, to insert them into public discourse - even with Marvel™'s ascendancy and their relatively quiet reception.
"There was such a thing as *belief put into action* in those days ... " - as the old anarchist says in 'Slacker,' speaking from the point-of-view of the late '80s, and cuing (in no small part ... ) the '90s into being ...
How well is this working?? I should know - by Assayas's 'Non-Fiction,' the tension seems to be slipping, the reporters doing the endless querying seem to be (imported from) the past to (hopefully) I still then for the *future* ... inquiring minds want to know. Sadly, the Espresso Book Machine mentioned in the movie (" ... yeah ... it can print out a book in less than ten minutes ... ") was used by me, twice, as a self-publishing platform for those hopefully still *holding* those views, but even though I got two featured review in 'Kirkus,' I hardly sold two copies ... about as many as 'Poems by Currer, Ellis, and Acton Bell,' as it happens. And, to add insult to injury, 'Bookforum' folds for good not 6 years later.
Why watch this film ... ?? Do you want to keep that European, undergraduate, collegiate *debater* in you alive ... ?? Or ... *risk* it -
Why not watch it for its own sake.
It's a terrific picture - Ferrara's always are.
Dafoe's in it, and he's never half-asleep, always on the ball.
Why not watch it.
*This is, of course, saying the least of it*.
So.
There you *go* -
