it's a depiction of the disintegration of lower class white america.
i'm in the middle of re-reading charles murray's coming apart right now, and i think a lot of the things he discusses in that book - lack of industriousness among poor males, the lack of the kinds of institutions that would have given those kids some footing in life, unstructured families - are all right here in the film.
as i said in the other thread, i think it's a flawed movie for sure. some things, like crispin glover's character, dennis hopper to some extent, feel a bit out of a different story. but i think it's a very raw, powerful film in a lot of ways, and it's never left my head in the 30+ years since i first saw it.
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davodikum (6203)
4 years ago
Yeah it sticks with you. Some of the subplots with Dennis and Crispen feel a bit tacked on I guess. I feel that way about alot of flicks. Some stuff feels like it's there just to add to the runtime.
The worse thing about movies is this built-in need to go for a certain amount of time. If that makes sense.
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[deleted]
4 years ago
i completely agree.
though i don't think i'd say glover's character is tacked on, necessarily. he's part of the story...more so that his performance is so wild for an otherwise fairly naturalistic movie.
i love crispin glover, but he maybe wasn't a great fit here.
but i completely agree with your point about films being needlessly drawn out. i think a lot of stories are dragged out past their natural length to meet the basic requirements of a feature.
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davodikum (6203)
4 years ago
Yeah my point about river's edge is from memory of watching it years ago.
But yeah, so many bad movies would be awesome, if they were aloud to be say 40, 50 minutes instead.
So you have tv shows and you have movies. We need to invent a inbetween, a novella of film. We can, right now come up with a name for it. Im drawing a blank though.
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[deleted]
4 years ago
if you ever go through my letterboxd account, probably 25% of my reviews are some variation of me saying 'this is too long!'
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mtxmind (3296)
4 years ago
it's a depiction of the disintegration of lower class white america
I don't remember any of the characters depicted as being "lower class" ; maybe more lower middle class at best. They definately came from dysfunctional families, but they didn't seem to be poverty stricken to me.
I think the film is a very realistic portrayal of the aimlessness & indifference of GenXers/Younger Boomers..
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davodikum (6203)
4 years ago
Yeah but lower middle class is pretty much lower class. In the area the live in. Or nearly anywhere. What is they lowest class in your opinion? Homeless?
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mtxmind (3296)
4 years ago
Yeah but lower middle class is pretty much lower class
Well, maybe that's more true nowadays, but at the time this film came out ( and at the time a few years earlier when the real case it's based on happened) "lower middle class" was still pretty respectable in most areas (especially Milpitas,CA which is where the actual murder happened) & I think by most people.
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[deleted]
4 years ago
based on what we see of their home lives - limited mostly to keanu's character i think, maybe a bit of clarissa's home, i think they could be called working poor.
lower class is sort of a broad category - usually defined as people in the bottom third of incomes. so that's not below the poverty line, necessarily, but well below median income.
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