The Last Picture Show

THE LAST PICTURE SHOW          A                 
USA  (118 mi)  1971  d:  Peter Bogdanovich

A darkly layered melancholic film adapted from the Larry McMurtry novel which has the true ring of authenticity stamped over every frame of the film, and don’t we wish films could be this refreshingly honest today, particularly the inhibitions to tell the truth about sex?  Featuring a first rate cast, set in a small windblown west Texas town where you either work for the oil industry or you don’t work at all, where there’s next to nothing to do, so the entire town comes out to support the local high school football team every week and then lives or dies with their efforts.  Filmed by Robert Surtees in Black and White, the town looks worn out and lived in before anything happens, where the flatness of the land extends in all directions beyond the horizon, where there is the feeling of no escape from this predicament where the same thing is likely to happen week after week.  Only death brings change, as otherwise humans are tiny specks on the landscape.  Seen through the eyes of high school kids who haven’t a clue what to expect other than a grilled cheeseburger with onions and a coke, the older ones around them, in contrast, have seen it all.  They can look out into an endless patch of land that probably looks no different than it did a hundred years ago and speak of how it is all changing, how time feels faster, how the world is closing in on them making them feel squeezed when there used to be wide open empty spaces.  They’re not really talking about the land, but the person standing there observing how life has changed, how in their youth everything felt possible, they could feel wild and carefree, but nowadays by the time you’re out of high school, your future is set.  There won’t be any other possibilities, and it’s going to be that way for the rest of your life, where only death will change the inevitable.    

Anarene (filmed on location in Wichita Falls and Archer City, Texas) is a small, dusty town of a little over a thousand with a diner and a pool hall that never seem to close, and a single run down movie theater that plays old classic movies where an old woman, the lone employee, struggles to make popcorn.  A clue as to why they’re in this predicament on the verge of closing down is they don’t charge much more than a quarter.  This is an era where radio is still king, where Bob Wills and Hank Williams reign supreme, the late 40’s and early 50’s, before most of the residents in town even own a television set.  Boys work in the oil business or join the army after high school, while girls get married.  That’s just the way it was then.  Somehow, it felt simpler and less complicated, but people faced the same problems then as they do today.  Timothy Bottoms plays Sonny Crawford, a sweet kid with a kind heart, while his best friend Duane (Jeff Bridges) is an oil roughneck with slick, greasy hair and a volatile temper.  Like some kind of Peyton Place soap opera, Duane is going with the richest, prettiest girl in town, Jacy, Cybill Shepherd in her film debut, who is spot on as the spoiled brat with a charming smile who is used to getting whatever she wants by going into her helpless routine, a sex tease who can change the way a man thinks with the batting of an eye.  After a worn out relationship with a girl dies of disinterest, Sonny hasn’t really got anyone except Duane.  Ellen Burstyn as Jacy’s mother is one of the best things in this film, as she married the richest man for miles and is miserable, but she knows Duane is not the right kind of guy for Jacy, which is the only reason she’s with him in the first place.  Clu Gulager plays Abilene, a pool shark who works for Jacy’s father, a man with a love for money and women and is usually mixed up with one or the other.  Ben Johnson from the old John Ford westerns plays Sam, the grizzled old owner of most of the town’s establishments who has the decency to employ Billy (Sam Bottoms, Timothy’s real brother), a mentally challenged young boy who spends his futile time sweeping the dust from the sidewalks and the streets.  Sonny is the only other kid in town who takes a liking to Billy, who worships him because of it.  Eileen Brennan runs the diner with an iron fist, but is a soft touch with a no nonsense veneer, while Cloris Leachman as Ruth Popper is a revelation in this film, playing the eternally sad wife of a high school coach who is rejuvenated when she has a secret affair with Sonny that the entire town somehow knows about.  Every one of these performances is something to rave about, all remarkably contribute to the overall tone of authenticity, as these characters feel lived in like a comfortable pair of old shoes.  Somehow it all works. 

This film is as much about the teenage kids as it is about their all but absent or missing parents, whose empty lives they are about to fill, which is a sad truth about isolated small towns where money remains in the hands of a privileged few and everyone else suffers.  Jacy plays just about every guy in town, each move more calculated and self-centered than the next, but she gets away with it, making everyone else around her miserable.  There are a couple brilliant scenes in this film, the town Christmas party with all of its ramifications, Sonny kisses Ruth for the first time as he’s helping her take out the garbage and Jacy leaves Duane for a rich kids naked pool party where first time initiates must strip naked on the diving board while everybody watches, which Sybill deftly handles, both the first and second times Jacy and Duane have sex in a motel room, both of which are comical, where he’s still talking about it to her as they’re singing the state song of Texas at their graduation ceremony, Sam’s personal confessions to Sonny out at the lake, one of the turning points of the film which won him an Academy Award, or my favorite, when Sonny’s crazy enough to fall for Jacy’s scheme to get married, alerting her parents so they barely get past the state line, only to lose her forever when her father snatches her away for good and Sonny has to ride back to town with Jacy’s sympathetic mother and a flask of bourbon, where for one brief moment in time the balance of adulthood and childhood are perfectly in tune with one another, and finally Sonny’s visit to Ruth at the end which resonates with a kind of fury that’s been missing in this film, where someone has hell to pay, but which turns on a dime and becomes one of the more eloquent transformations of damaged souls crying out in muted pain.  This film is brilliantly written, so much of it understated, perfectly capturing that moment in time when a child is no longer a child anymore, where they have become who they are without even realizing it, still clueless perhaps about themselves and their future, but they are the living embodiment of heartbreak as time has literally begun to pass them by.      

Hell or High Water

HELL OR HIGH WATER                B+            
USA  (112 mi)  2016 ‘Scope  d:  David Mackenzie               Official site 

Three tours in Iraq but no bailout for people like us. 

—graffiti written on a wall near the bank in the opening scene 

Mysteriously premiering at Cannes in the Un Certain Regard section, this film flew under the radar in the bright lights and glamor of the Cannes Film Festival.  Finally receiving its American release during the height of the summer doldrums, it comes as a pleasant surprise from a Scottish director borrowing heavily from the Coen brothers and Cormac McCarthy, Inside Job (2010), pointing out the ivory tower sanctuary of those privileged and protected few whose actions led to the crisis and then remained insulated from any of the consequences, Andrew Dominick’s Killing Them Softly (2012), a gritty working man’s portrait describing how the American Dream for ordinary citizens came to an abrupt halt when the economic meltdown forced the government to bail out the banks, Wall Street brokerage houses, and the auto industry, leaving them flailing on their own, satirically contrasting that approach with the way the mob handles its own debt relief crisis, to Martin Scorsese’s exaggerated and wildly outlandish fever dream The Wolf of Wall Street (2013), few have captured the human cost and economic devastation quite so skillfully as this film.  Coming on the heels of the mortgage crisis, adding a uniquely American historical perspective that goes back to the land grab from Indians during the Manifest Destiny era of the mid-19th century, the film exposes the predatory lending policies of local banks across the country that seemingly have the best interests of customers in mind, while behind the scenes making legal maneuvers offering loans to financially starved and desperate people who have no conceivable way of paying it back, allowing banks to foreclose while taking their property and land, where one person’s misfortune is another person’s economic opportunity.  It’s a sickening display of how the system works, designed to allow powerful interests to prey on the most vulnerable among us, revealing how the banks stockpile their financial reserves at their own customer’s expense.  While this is a nasty business practice, it happens with an almost invisible presence, where the only signs are foreclosure notices left on the locked doors and shuttered windows of abandoned businesses and homes, along with giant “for sale” signs or a series of highway billboards offering quick “debt relief” that dot the landscape, while longstanding family-owned businesses quietly disappear.  
 

With elegiac music by Nick Cave and Warren Ellis, along with the downbeat road music of Johnny Cash, Waylon Jennings, and Townes Van Zandt, not to mention Blakwall - Knockin' On Heaven's Door (Hell or High Water ... - YouTube (4:03), the film is set in the blisteringly raw and aching loneliness of smalltown Texas, a world depicted so brilliantly in Martin Ritt’s Hud (1963) and Peter Bogdanovich’s  The Last Picture Show (1971), both based upon the literary works of Larry McMurtry, with the latter starring Jeff Bridges 45 years ago, where the common denominator is the vast emptiness of long, dusty roads that stretch across a desolate West Texas landscape that is flat as far as the eye can see, showing a land the economic recovery has never reached, revealing instead an economically collapsed world crumbling in decay, a desert wasteland with no signs of life from grazing animals or even human habitation.  That is the blank canvas from which this film emerges, poetically shot by cinematographer Giles Nuttgens with a regional focus, with particular attention paid to authenticity and detail, becoming one of the surprise films of the year.  A character study told through subtlety and dramatic understatement, where the range of the actors is captivating throughout, the driving force behind the film is the extraordinary screenplay written by Taylor Sheridan, a television actor who also wrote Sicario (2015), whose colorful dialogue allows plenty of regional personality to develop between characters, becoming intimately familiar to the audience over time.   Wasting little time, following a car creeping through the back alleys, the film opens with a bank robbery in a small Texas Midland branch location, but because they got there so early the money’s not even out of the safe yet, where only the bank manager has the key, and they have to wait for him to arrive.  This adds a kind of folksy touch to an otherwise awkward situation, where it’s actually more humorous than suspenseful.  Getting away free and clear, the two brothers are ecstatic afterwards driving out into the endless expanse of the countryside to their isolated ranch in the middle of nowhere.  Meet Toby (Chris Pine) and Tanner (Ben Foster), seen sipping beers on their front porch after burying their getaway vehicle, a couple of small timers not looking to make a name for themselves, content to take small bills so as not to draw attention to themselves.  In this way, they avoid detection by the FBI who are only called in on the big scores. This leaves them in the hands of local law enforcement, with Jeff Bridges as U.S. Marshall Marcus Hamilton, so relaxed and comfortable in this role, getting into the very soul of the character just days before his retirement, leaving him one last crime to unravel, along with his faithful partner Alberto (Gil Birmingham) as two Texas Rangers, where this has the feel of an extended The Andy Griffith Show (1960 – 68) episode, especially the back and forth banter between the sheriff and his deputy, as Marcus incessantly needles his partner about his Mexican-Comanche heritage, where racist jokes are more of a clue to the closeness of their friendship, with Alberto teasing him right back about his eminent demise after retirement. Even as Alberto detests every snide remark, his willingness to take it speaks volumes, as he’s a man with extraordinary pride, but always keeps it to himself, reminiscent of the classic battle of wits between white sheriff Rod Steiger and black police detective Sidney Poitier in Norman Jewison’s IN THE HEAT OF THE NIGHT (1967). 

Behind the scenes there’s more than meets the eye, as the brothers recently lost their mother, who was forced to sell all their livestock, as the family ranch is one the verge of foreclosure by the end of the week, where they suspect some back-handed legal maneuvering by the bank took advantage of her position, a situation they mean to rectify, and what better way than to do it than with the bank’s own money?  As a result, they make a series of bank runs, where the impulsive, always out-of-control Tanner can’t help himself, even robbing one branch by himself during lunchtime while his brother is sipping coffee in a diner next door.  As they haul ass out of there, it’s clear the division of labor needs some work, where Toby asks his brother, a career criminal known for his outlandish recklessness just how the hell he’s managed to stay out of prison for the past year, to which he replies, “It’s been difficult.”  Like Arthur Penn’s Bonnie and Clyde (1967), robbing the rich to feed the poor during the height of the Depression, part of the intrigue is the likeability of these two characters, who keep a low profile, though one’s high strung and the other’s low key, coming across as just ordinary folks, never hiding from the fact they have problems like everybody else.  Like mirror images of the two brothers, the older, more mature lawmen trying to hunt them down have their own quiet appeal, where the more loquacious Marcus has some great dialogue while his Lone Ranger sidekick, Alberto as Tonto, always remains stoic, the picture of dignity.  Once inside the bank, Marcus looks for the bank manager for questioning, whose apt response once tracking him down, “Now that looks like a man who would foreclose on a house!”  As the string of bank robberies continues, this duo tries to anticipate the robbers’ next move, staking out a bank in a dying town where literally nothing happens, where they just sit and wait, veering into Sergio Leone territory.  In this lingering pause, Alberto reminds Marcus that land was stolen by force from the Indians, while nowadays hard times and poverty have only increased the unrestrained greed of the banks, allowing them an excuse to go after everyone, including whites, “This was my ancestor’s land, the lease folks took it, and now it’s been taken from them, except it ain’t no army did it, just those sons of bitches right there.”  One of the best scenes of the film happens when the lawmen enter a small town diner called the T-Bone.  When considering their options, the bossy, world-weary waitress, Margaret Bowman, described as a “rattlesnake of a waitress,” who played a motel clerk in the Coen brothers’ NO COUNTRY FOR OLD MEN (2007), who has seemingly lived in this rotgut town all her life and seen it all, instructs them that they’ll be getting T-bone steaks, as that’s what everybody who walks in the door gets, where all she needs to know is what NOT to get for a side dish.  Succinctly put in their place, their authority stripped from the outset like schoolkids getting a scolding, both men readily accept her conditions.  As the lawmen wait for a robbery, the outlaws make a run across the border to Oklahoma to visit an Indian casino to launder their money, making sure there are no traces left behind.  Toby has two kids from an ex-wife, and though he barely sees them, he makes sure they will be taken care of, depending on what happens in the final reckoning, leaving the deed to the property in their names, claiming “I been poor my whole life.  My parents and their parents before them.  It’s like a disease.  Infects everyone you know.  But not my boys.”  Of course it’s always the final score that goes haywire, with unexpected circumstances including bank customers carrying guns, where it literally becomes every man for himself, with vigilante justice chasing the men out of town with a caravan of heavily armed pick-up trucks on their tail.  As they head out into the open expanse of the wilderness, this one leads to a typical western showdown with tragic consequences, where taming the lawlessness of the Wild West is viewed as a work in progress, where the success, or lack thereof, completely depends on your point of view.