05 July 2018

Intense

It’s a little weird seeing Repo Man for the first time, in this “So many people have been a few weeks too long in the conspiracy-theory pickle” epoch.  Also, having read Don de Lillo’s White Noise, multiple times.  Is it comedy, or docudrama?

The trenchant wit of the script gives joy to the butterflies of my soul.  I want to joke that the ending is just like 2001:  A Space Odyssey.  It isn’t, of course, but maybe I am not the only one whose mind will flit to that other transcendent apotheosis.

The movie as a project is probably perfection.  There is a grubby grit to the production which I should not want to be characteristic of most of my viewing, but it works here.  My mind buzzes with questions which ultimately reaffirm the movie’s power, rather than gnaw away at it.  Harry Dean Stanton is a marvelous actor, capably playing a squalid character.  Emilio Estevez is perfect as Otto, which is not quite the same thing as claiming that he is a great actor.  The cast is so good, you’d think they were farmed for the purpose.  The sound and music are (in the parlance of our times) bitchin’.  The televangelist and the vegetative state of Otto’s parents are entirely true to life, as we know from current events.

I almost want to watch John Wick and Repo Man as a double feature.  It would be a mighty loud afternoon, though.

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