LOVE STREAMS A
USA (141 mi) 1984
d: John Cassavetes
I’ve never seen an
exploding helicopter. I’ve never seen
anyone go and blow somebody’s head off.
So why should I make films about them?
But I have seen people destroy themselves in the smallest way, I’ve seen
people withdraw, I’ve seen people hide behind political ideas, behind dope,
behind the sexual revolution, behind fascism, behind hypocrisy, and I’ve myself
done all these things. So I can
understand them...What we are saying is so gentle. It’s gentleness. We have problems, terrible problems, but our
problems are human problems.
—John Cassavetes
Very few great artists, other than those named Mozart or
Beethoven, save what is arguably their greatest creation for their last and
final work, where a gaunt Cassavetes makes his last great film, written
immediately after playing in Paul Mazursky’s film, TEMPEST (1982), filmed after
he had already begun to be ill with liver damage. LOVE STREAMS is Cassavetes’ Prospero, a
farewell to his art, using dozens of references from his earlier films. Like Faces
(1968), all the interiors are filmed in the actual Cassavetes household, adding
a documentary element of family photos and portraits lining the walls,
interestingly containing no hand-held camera work, a staple in nearly all his
earlier films, yet this may be his most intimate film. Unlike most married couples that strive for a
sense of balance and security, Cassavetes and Rowlands continued to struggle
and evolve creatively directly in front of the camera during the course of
their lives, an outrageously courageous and highly original form of personal expression,
with Cassavetes waving goodbye to Gena Rowlands, and goodbye to the audience in
the final shot. With it, a career of
risk taking comes to a climax in this rich, original, emotionally immense film
about a brother who cannot love and a sister who loves too much. The film is adapted from a series of three
plays called Three Plays of Love and
Hate, with Cassavetes writing the initial segment Knives, The Third Day Comes was written by Ted Allan, while the
third Love Streams was supposedly
co-written by Cassavetes and Ted Allan, though according to Allan it was almost
all the work of Cassavetes, though both are credited with the screenplay. Cassavetes characters insist upon their
relevance, they demand to be heard, even when they don't have a clue what they're
about to say, like the befuddled Rowlands who loses her daughter in the opening
divorce proceedings, something inconceivable to her, as no one could love her
more. But she can't find the words and her loss is immeasurable, so she spends
the rest of the film trying to fill the empty void from that missing love.
Initially the film follows the separate lives of Robert and
Sarah, Cassavetes and Rowlands, parallel lives of loneliness and loss, where
Sarah loses her 13-year old daughter in a divorce, losing her companionship and
love, trying to introduce love into the legal proceedings, but there’s simply
no place for it. Looking largely
disheveled for the first half of the picture, Sarah is a natural extension of
Mabel from A
Woman Under the Influence (1974), a hyper-emotive woman who tends to get
carried away with herself, growing deliriously happy or utterly
despondent. Referred to a psychiatrist,
she attempts to explain to him, “Love is a stream. It’s continuous. It does not stop,” to which he replies, “It
does stop,” but she insists otherwise, which is the heart of her personality,
driven to be liked and appreciated, refusing to accept the middle ground of
mediocrity. Recommending that she take a
trip to Europe and meet people, the film turns comically hilarious when we see
the mountainous pile of luggage she drags behind. Robert lives in a dream house on top of a
Hollywood hill reachable only by a steep, winding incline making a successful
living writing sex books about women. We
see him visit a gay nightclub picking up Diahnne Abbott after hearing the
club’s singer doing a sultry rendition of “Kinky Reggae” Love streams - kinky reggae -
YouTube (2:10). Robert never sleeps
alone, filling his house with beautiful young bimbos, where sex is all that is
real. Life is one long champagne party
of women and sex, where there are literally several carfuls of call girls who
spend the weekend, most of the time amusing themselves however they wish, as
only one or two are ever with Robert, who occasionally takes the time to get to
know them, actually asking probing questions which are beyond their years.
In something of a surprise, mixing up the drunken revelry is
an 8-year old kid Albie (Jakob Shaw) arriving on his doorstep, who turns out to
be a son he never knew existed, whose mother says she’ll come back for him the
next day. Needless to say, Albie is terrified
at the drinking and lewd behavior going on, so Robert clears the house of
everyone else while the two get acquainted, ridiculously plying him with beer,
offering him the fatherly advice that by the time he’s 14 he should hitchhike
across the country and discover “real” people, “not these guys out here with
their suits and ties, but real men.”
What distinguishes this film is the heavy mix of humor along with the
depth of realism and warmth of the characters.
What do you do when you’re finally alone with a newly discovered
son? Take him to Vegas, obviously, where
you go out partying all night leaving him alone in a hotel room, basically
quivering in fright. But before they
leave, Sarah is greeted affectionately on Robert’s doorstep with her boatload
of luggage that arrives in two cabs.
There’s a wonderfully extended ambiguity about their relationship, as we
don’t discover the truth until about 90 minutes into the film. Needless to say, the Vegas trip is a
disaster, culminating in what could almost be described as spectacle, which is
so bizarre in its own uncompromising way that Robert’s most embarrassing moment
turns into something poignant and perversely comedic at the same time.
One of the more beautiful sequences involves Robert’s date
with Diahnne Abbott’s mother Margaret, repaying earlier kindness, where they
dance and drink champagne in her living room, where she’s treated like a queen
to the music of Jack Sheldon singing “Almost in Love With You,” Love
Streams 1984 - Fragmento ("Almost In Love With You") YouTube
(2:53), a Bo Harwood song also heard playing in an early bar sequence featuring
the suave and debonair Ben Gazarra as Cosmo Vittelli in The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie (1976), given a completely different texture, The
Killing of a Chinese Bookie - 1976 - Fragmento ("Almost In Love With
You") YouTube (2:10), but Cosmo similarly flirts with his girl friend
Rachel’s (Azizi Johari) mother, where in each instance the mother used is the
real life mother. Returning home to a
quieter, darker house, Cassavetes gently tells Rowlands, “Life is a series of
suicides, divorces, broken promises, children smashed, whatever,” which is not
in any way meant to be downbeat or maudlin, but simply an acceptance of
reality. From that, Sarah gets the idea
to go bowling dressed in a classy black sequined dress and heels, where her
response to the desk clerk’s “How are you?” is simply classic, as she’s bound
and determined to give the man an honest answer, most of which is simply
contorted facial expressions searching for the truth. Of course, she’s a sensation wearing no shoes
on lane 13, meeting Ken (John Roselius), returning home with renewed exuberance,
where the two of them sit down and discuss the idea of love as art. Sarah, however, refuses to abandon her
romantic dreams about love, and in a brilliant conversational climax, defends
her ex-husband, who no longer loves her and is giving her nothing but grief,
telling Robert, “We’re talking about a man who put food on the table, who held
my hand in the hospital, who cried when his baby was born. Where were you?”
Sarah’s way of providing balance to their lives is returning
in a cab one afternoon with two miniature horses, a goat, a parrot, chickens, a
duck, and a dog named Jim, but swoons in a spell when Robert doesn’t seem to
appreciate the gesture. Feeling
miserable and disconsolate, barely able to move, Sarah has two extraordinary
dream sequences while a storm rages outside and Robert, the Ancient Mariner,
lovingly gathers up all the animals, providing them a shelter from the
storm. The first dream is one of
Rowlands’ greatest scenes, tragically obsessed with the idea of making her
daughter and ex-husband happy, she performs a burlesque comedy routine, trying
every cheap vaudeville gag, fake mustard and ketchup, water spurting out of
flowers and pens, fake eyeballs on springs, funny glasses, but gets nothing,
despite the fact she is simply sensational, she gets no reaction from either
one of them. Her second dream is more
surreal, LOVE
STREAMS de John Cassavetes - Extrait - Le reve merveilleux de Sarah (Gena
Rowlands) YouTube (4:58), an intriguing Stephen Sondheim style song staged
like something out of Bob Fosse’s All That
Jazz (1979), a small autobiographical operetta where her daughter’s
feelings are being tugged back and forth between the mother and father, with
Sarah on one side of the stage and her husband on the other, the spotlight
shines on Sarah in a haunting, classical image of beauty and motherly love,
where her daughter is seen as one of the dancing Degas ballet girls.
Meanwhile, Cassavetes comically gathering all the animals is
a bit like Rowlands’ earlier luggage scenes, where they are carrying their
emotional baggage like an added weight on their shoulders. Cassavetes, however, has the presence of mind
to use the back door for comedy, so reminiscent of WC Fields’ “Not a fit night
out for man or beast” in 1933
The Fatal Glass Of Beer (W. C. Fields) - YouTube (18:32), as each time they
open it to the raging storm outside, Robert stumbles in out of the deluge with
another animal. Despite the howling
storm, Sarah resolves to make something of her life right then and there,
claiming sudden family clarity, not waiting another moment, while Robert urges
her to never go back to any man that doesn’t love her and to stay and live with
him. But to the music of Harold Adamson
and Jimmy McHugh’s “Where Are You” MILDRED BAILEY - Where Are
You (1937) - YouTube (3:15), “Must I
go on pretending, where is that happy ending, where are you?” Rowlands is
whisked away in a cab as Robert waves goodbye to his sister, framed in a
windowsill, his image distorted by the rain.
Of interest, there is no trace of
a play in this film, arguably Cassavetes’ best and most accessible film, no
dialogue driven moments, instead the occasional improvisational bursts offer
needed energy to Cassavetes’ free-wheeling style, briskly moving between
sequences where both Cassavetes and Rowlands offer such rare emotional
authenticity, creating a cinematic farewell that will forever be beautiful and
heartbreaking.
