Wednesday, February 15, 2006
FRIGID
left me cold.
Some think that it is a movie masterpiece. It is one of the 1176 Best Films in the NYTimes list.
I guess that I have been dreading it. Maybe I spent the whole thing in a crouch not wanting to see any spatter.
Well, I didn't have to worry about that.
It is a crime spree, then a police procedural and finally a tract on the death penalty and the insanity question.
And I don't think it really does all that well at any of it.
It fights up hill of course. We already know how it is going to turn out. There is not too much to figuring out who did it. The guys leave a trail a mile wide. Stupid.
And the case for the death penalty or not is naive and somewhat loaded.
I don't know if I would have pulled the trap door on them but I am glad someone did.
I sorta wanted to pull the trap door on the movie a couple of times.
I linked to Ebert's original review above.
Here is a later more reflective one.
In its time, this work was revolutionary because Truman Capote turned the facts into a journalistic novel.
The movie does the same. It was actually filmed on the site of the killings.
Ghoulish.
We also know a lot more, now, about how Capote worked. A new film has been made about him with this event as a key point of study.
I suppose all these works should stand alone. But I brought a lot of baggage to the teevee set today and so did the film.
I will end up with a 3 out of Netflix 5.
