Post by Capo on Jul 22, 2007 22:21:27 GMT
Opening Night
John Cassavetes 1977 USA
A stage actress is affected by the death of a young fan, and she begins to question why she is playing her current role (a character a lot older than she is), and how she can go about playing it.
Infinitely ambiguous work all to do with notions of acting. It opens with Rowlands and Cassavetes acting in a play, our view obscured by a theatre audience (it's fascinating to see how the inclusion of a fictional audience affects the otherwise harmonious reality of a film), and it unfolds in a continually episodic manner thereafter; it seems overlong, and the spiritualist turn of events midway through seems a bit naff, a mere plot device for Rowlands to have a breakdown (fighting with herself and throwing furniture at her imaginary friend), but it's easily forgivable in light of its overall lingering qualities. For one, it's a convincing, fantastic exploration of various relationships found in the cinema - actor-character, reality-metareality, actor-audience, audience-reality, author-audience, etc. The story, comprising the production of a stageplay and the interrelations of the cast and crew involved, is treated in a most elusive and liberating fashion, so that it becomes almost secondary to the performances (there's no exposition of who's who, no clarity given to how they know each other, and the play itself could be about anything, so sparingly are we given its scenes and details). If it loses its way somewhat in the final third, the final thirty minutes or so are unforgettable in their mystery and intensity: Rowlands and Cassavetes act on stage as in the opening scene, apparently ad-libbing outside the bounds of the script (or are they?), with the audience laughing at them (or with them?), and the writer, producer and director coming in and out of the theatre in either giddy excitement or helpless distress; there's something incredibly profound about this scene in particular, riveting as both a reality in itself and as a self-conscious deconstruction of all that has gone before it.
John Cassavetes 1977 USA
A stage actress is affected by the death of a young fan, and she begins to question why she is playing her current role (a character a lot older than she is), and how she can go about playing it.
Infinitely ambiguous work all to do with notions of acting. It opens with Rowlands and Cassavetes acting in a play, our view obscured by a theatre audience (it's fascinating to see how the inclusion of a fictional audience affects the otherwise harmonious reality of a film), and it unfolds in a continually episodic manner thereafter; it seems overlong, and the spiritualist turn of events midway through seems a bit naff, a mere plot device for Rowlands to have a breakdown (fighting with herself and throwing furniture at her imaginary friend), but it's easily forgivable in light of its overall lingering qualities. For one, it's a convincing, fantastic exploration of various relationships found in the cinema - actor-character, reality-metareality, actor-audience, audience-reality, author-audience, etc. The story, comprising the production of a stageplay and the interrelations of the cast and crew involved, is treated in a most elusive and liberating fashion, so that it becomes almost secondary to the performances (there's no exposition of who's who, no clarity given to how they know each other, and the play itself could be about anything, so sparingly are we given its scenes and details). If it loses its way somewhat in the final third, the final thirty minutes or so are unforgettable in their mystery and intensity: Rowlands and Cassavetes act on stage as in the opening scene, apparently ad-libbing outside the bounds of the script (or are they?), with the audience laughing at them (or with them?), and the writer, producer and director coming in and out of the theatre in either giddy excitement or helpless distress; there's something incredibly profound about this scene in particular, riveting as both a reality in itself and as a self-conscious deconstruction of all that has gone before it.