Hollywoodland (review)
Feb. 20th, 2007 11:44 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
selenakMy ![[livejournal.com profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/external/lj-userinfo.gif)
remixredux assignment makes me very happy, and the pseudonym I was given cracks me up. Dear remixer assigned to me, I'm absolutely delighted you're going to have a go at one of my stories. The FFN link to most of them is in the email you got, and I regret they are not sorted by fandom but in order of writing. One of these days I'll get a website for my fanfic. Someday. Meanwhile, this must do, unfortunately.
The other night I watched Hollwoodland, which only just started here in Germany. I've seen it called a film noir, which it is, but it also belongs to the "Hollwood on Hollywood" genre that produced such gems as Sunset Boulevard and more recently Gods and Monsters. Sunset Boulevard was what I thought of most often, and not just because Billy Wilder gets mentioned by name in Hollywoodland.
Early on, when our private eye, Simo (Adrien Brody), finds George Reeve's watch, turns it around reads the inscription - "Mad about the boy" - I immediately thought of Norma Desmond giving her kept lover the cigarette case which just that inscription in Sunset Boulevard. And Tony Mannix (Diane Lane), the studio tycoon's wife whom Reeve has a long affair with, is in many ways Norma revisited: her young lover does enter the affair in the hopes she'll be able to help him with his career (though Reeve is portrayed as far more genuinenly attracted to Tony than William Holden's character ever was to Norma in addition to the calculation), which doesn't happen at all. Instead, he becomes her emotional crutch while she gives him every material benefit he could ask for but wants to keep him dependent, and when he tries to leave he/break it off, she has a breakdown. The scene where Tony's husband, Eddie, near the end of the film tells her she'll always be beautiful and he'll always be there for her mirrors and parallels Max (who, after all, is Norma's former husband) giving Norma her final illusion by directing the news cameras as if they were in a movie studio, so she can believe they're finally making a movie again. I half expected Tony to descend on a stair and declare she was ready for her close-up. Eddie is Max who never lost his power as a movie director because he was a producer instead, so he didn't have to become his Norma's butler in order to stay with her, he could remain her husband.
As Hollywoodland is, among other things, a mystery (did George Reeves commit suicide or was he killed?), the interesting thing is that none of the three possible explanations the movie offers through its detective has Tony, who through the Norma parallels is clearly positioned as a suspect - and even is show as the one to give George Reeves the gun mid-movie - as the killer. And yet. There is Eddie (who is the culprit in one of the three scenarios) telling her that he loves her "whatever happened", which would argue that he doesn't exactly know, either, but thinks she might have done it. In the end, though, the question of who pulled the trigger becomes less and less relevant, because Reeves, who started out playing supporting roles in classics like Gone with the Wind and ended up becoming famous - and typecast to a degree that made him virtually unemployable - as Superman in the 50s tv series -, much like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and James Whale in Gods and Monsters, is presented as dying by inches from Hollywood. From the paradox of being simultanously famous and forgotten, of having gotten a taste of fame but now no more work. Ben Afflek is great in the part, better than he was in years, giving Reeves charme, wit and sadness, and that awareness that before he even reaches middle age (though he's getting there quickly), he's a has been who has never quite been, in fact.
The two stories - Reeve's and the detective's, Simo's - serve as double narrative strands, and echo each other; Simo, in true noir private eye tradition, is another man with a past, a troubled present and not much prospect of any future. He initially takes on the case because he needs the money and wants the publicity, much like Reeve isn't just taken with Tony Mannix because she's attractive, he is aware of what she could do for him, and he wants to be a star, but becomes so taken and absorbed by it that he loses what little he has. Since he's fictional, as opposed to Reeves, the movie can let his story end on a subdued note of hope and the promise of healing. But then, to offer more would be against the laws of either noir or Hollywood on Hollywood.
remixredux assignment makes me very happy, and the pseudonym I was given cracks me up. Dear remixer assigned to me, I'm absolutely delighted you're going to have a go at one of my stories. The FFN link to most of them is in the email you got, and I regret they are not sorted by fandom but in order of writing. One of these days I'll get a website for my fanfic. Someday. Meanwhile, this must do, unfortunately. The other night I watched Hollwoodland, which only just started here in Germany. I've seen it called a film noir, which it is, but it also belongs to the "Hollwood on Hollywood" genre that produced such gems as Sunset Boulevard and more recently Gods and Monsters. Sunset Boulevard was what I thought of most often, and not just because Billy Wilder gets mentioned by name in Hollywoodland.
Early on, when our private eye, Simo (Adrien Brody), finds George Reeve's watch, turns it around reads the inscription - "Mad about the boy" - I immediately thought of Norma Desmond giving her kept lover the cigarette case which just that inscription in Sunset Boulevard. And Tony Mannix (Diane Lane), the studio tycoon's wife whom Reeve has a long affair with, is in many ways Norma revisited: her young lover does enter the affair in the hopes she'll be able to help him with his career (though Reeve is portrayed as far more genuinenly attracted to Tony than William Holden's character ever was to Norma in addition to the calculation), which doesn't happen at all. Instead, he becomes her emotional crutch while she gives him every material benefit he could ask for but wants to keep him dependent, and when he tries to leave he/break it off, she has a breakdown. The scene where Tony's husband, Eddie, near the end of the film tells her she'll always be beautiful and he'll always be there for her mirrors and parallels Max (who, after all, is Norma's former husband) giving Norma her final illusion by directing the news cameras as if they were in a movie studio, so she can believe they're finally making a movie again. I half expected Tony to descend on a stair and declare she was ready for her close-up. Eddie is Max who never lost his power as a movie director because he was a producer instead, so he didn't have to become his Norma's butler in order to stay with her, he could remain her husband.
As Hollywoodland is, among other things, a mystery (did George Reeves commit suicide or was he killed?), the interesting thing is that none of the three possible explanations the movie offers through its detective has Tony, who through the Norma parallels is clearly positioned as a suspect - and even is show as the one to give George Reeves the gun mid-movie - as the killer. And yet. There is Eddie (who is the culprit in one of the three scenarios) telling her that he loves her "whatever happened", which would argue that he doesn't exactly know, either, but thinks she might have done it. In the end, though, the question of who pulled the trigger becomes less and less relevant, because Reeves, who started out playing supporting roles in classics like Gone with the Wind and ended up becoming famous - and typecast to a degree that made him virtually unemployable - as Superman in the 50s tv series -, much like Norma Desmond in Sunset Boulevard and James Whale in Gods and Monsters, is presented as dying by inches from Hollywood. From the paradox of being simultanously famous and forgotten, of having gotten a taste of fame but now no more work. Ben Afflek is great in the part, better than he was in years, giving Reeves charme, wit and sadness, and that awareness that before he even reaches middle age (though he's getting there quickly), he's a has been who has never quite been, in fact.
The two stories - Reeve's and the detective's, Simo's - serve as double narrative strands, and echo each other; Simo, in true noir private eye tradition, is another man with a past, a troubled present and not much prospect of any future. He initially takes on the case because he needs the money and wants the publicity, much like Reeve isn't just taken with Tony Mannix because she's attractive, he is aware of what she could do for him, and he wants to be a star, but becomes so taken and absorbed by it that he loses what little he has. Since he's fictional, as opposed to Reeves, the movie can let his story end on a subdued note of hope and the promise of healing. But then, to offer more would be against the laws of either noir or Hollywood on Hollywood.
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no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 02:13 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 04:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 04:16 pm (UTC)I'm so blaming you for all the crack that I will be going through the next two months.
Crack. Pure Crack.
*grin*
no subject
Date: 2007-02-20 04:30 pm (UTC)