Trying to understand why this is a good movie

if you thought it stunk then it stunk. there's no hidden sixth sense twist, move on brah.

It captured and portrayed (and maybe even analyzed) the "youth alienation" that was so prevalent in those days. It performed a huge cultural service, and was felt to be very important by a whole lot of viewers back then. It helped "define" a generation to itself. And it firmly and noisily announced that generation to the older generation. ...but that has pretty much zero cultural resonance these days - improving the understanding of a weird anomaly doesn't score many points.

To say the same thing in different words, it _was_ undeniably very important ...which doesn't necessarily translate to it _is_ still important to anyone other than historians.

Apart from relevance to that cultural time, I can think of three other reasons why it's still listed among the greats:

One is it was the "breakout" movie for Jack Nicholson, the beginning of an important movie career many are familiar with some of the later episodes of.

The second is it does a pretty good job of being a "character study". (The character it studies though is _not_ one most folks would enjoy understanding better ...but maybe that's the point.)

And the last is (and there's violent disagreement about this) some feel it's a pretty good example of movie technique. It has some very memorable and/or gripping scenes and an overall arc that really rivets some (but obviously not all) viewers' attention, all on a fairly limited budget and with fairly simple tools.

dont try to. this is one of those movies that if you've felt like that you'll understand, if not, even if u get it explained you wont appreciate it.

dont try to. this is one of those movies that if you've felt like that you'll understand, if not, even if u get it explained you wont appreciate it.

Everything chuck-526 said. But he forgot to mention that it's funny as hell. Every scene has a pretty good laugh, and they're often drawn right from the heaping pathos. Nicholson is tremendous, and at least for my part I found myself invested in his struggles, even if they were almost completely self-created or came out of his simple lack of toast. Rafelson's direction (as he was consciously reinventing himself post-Monkees) is superb in the way he handles the tone and pace and puts 1970 - the look and the palpable feel - on record.

In this perfect working syncopation they (in service to Carole Eastman's wonderful script) offer a full and nuanced portrait of a man who is totally lost (and kind of a piece of sh**) and keeps trying to lose himself further, shed everything he can until he catches up with himself and sabotages that scenario and then moves on hoping to stumble into who he wants to be. It's a little angsty, but I figure anyone who's ever been in their 20s can at least somewhat relate to those feelings.

But as someone further up the thread said, there's no real trick to the movie. It either hits you or it don't. If you don't even find it entertaining there's no real reason to mine it's deeper places.

You either get it or you don't. I loved it, but I could understand some people thinking it a little slow at times.

Dini

Feel the love, feel the hate. Feel the love/hate.

Resist the commitment. Steep in the resentment.

Behold the chicken salad sandwich, hold the chicken.

Watch as a man is drawn and quartered by his fear of suffocation.

Karen Black, wow! If she hadn't opened her mouth, everything would have been just fine.

A definite top ten for me.



Something smells at the ol' factory!!

I disagree with Chuck-526 on this one, as I believe the movie has a lot of relevance to me and many other people today. The movie shows the struggles of a man who is stuck between two different worlds, neither of which he likes very much. He abandoned his childhood piano prodigy career because, as he stated to his father, the pressure of the expectations on him became too much for him. In addition, Bobby is simply bored with the upper-crust life on the Island - he says more than once that there is "nothing to do" on the Island with his family.

On the other hand, Bobby's relatively uneducated and unsophisticated friends, and his girlfriend, also bore and frustrate him. He has also chosen a job (on oil drilling rigs) that is very dangerous (especially to the hands that used to be his bread-and-butter for his promising music career).

Bobby is an interesting character because he both identifies with and is repelled by each of the lives he shuttles between in this movie. He is attracted by aspects of both worlds, and some of the people, too, but in the end he runs away from his commitments and responsibilities in both worlds - as a boyfriend, as a father, as a brother, as a son, etc.

It is interesting to see Bobby, after berating and abusing Rayette continuously during the movie, suddenly come to her defense at his family's house, when an arrogant guest of his family insults Rayette's lack of sophistication. Rayette is as susprised as Bobby's family, when he angrily rebukes the guest in defense of Rayette's character.

It is a strength of the movie that, after illustrating the conflict in Bobby, it doesn't resolve the conflict neatly and with perfect timing, as would a more conventional movie. Anyone who has ever felt conflict with his or her background or environment, and anyone who has felt ambivalent about either, will find something to identify with in this movie, if they are paying attention.


My real name is Jeff