Saturday, May 19, 2007
JAMES DEAN
Today's NYTimes Best 1176 Film was
I assume that everyone in the world has seen this.
How can we detach from the real life aspect of this movie?
My whole adult life experience is a context for appreciating it.
For example, we know that this was Dean's last film.
Very few people saw it before he was killed in an auto accident.
This makes the car race sequence all the more scary.
We know that later, Sal Mineo and Natalie Wood died in similarly violent circumstances. Whew.
In this, Sal gets shot instead of knifed but there is knife play in the film.
In a different dimension, we know that just ten years later, the culture erupted with rebellion, this time with a cause. A lot of them!
Ebert says that the film is subtly subversive but I think that it was not subtle at all.
The role of parents, gender identity (Plato has a picture of Alan Ladd in his locker), the failure of the system; all that was under examination here.
The gang is not your typical street gang. It is like a negative greek chorus. The car race is not a typical drag race. It has a cataclysmic drop at its end.
Dean could not have known that this would be his last film but his performance (quirky or not) is for the ages.
And, of course, he is a stud.
What else?
Dennis Hopper is one of the thugs. Nick Adams too.
I had thought that I would be immune to another viewing.
Wrong.
It still holds on tight even when I see through the phony stuff. Even when I insert the history.
I had even decided I would give it a 3 out of Netfl5 ahead of time.
No way.
It is still a fiver.
