Wednesday, November 09, 2011

The Nudity Clause

Eastern Promises (2007)
directed by David Cronenberg
rating: 3 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Netflix

In retrospect, I can see why a man so obsessed with the more grotesque aspects of biological matter would be attracted to a fictionalized account of the vory v zakone. What better mainstream platform for "body horror" than vengeful, violent criminals? The opening scene, in which a young man with an intellectual disability hacks through a victim's neck with a straight edge razor, clicked into place like the world's easiest jigsaw puzzle.

Did Cronenberg and Viggo agree behind everyone else's back to play it as a comedy? Is my attraction to Naomi Watts still so much goodwill from Mulholland Dr.? I did like the moment when her old-world uncle makes a racist generalization about black men, but Anna waits for her mother to come to her defense with a misguided rejoinder ("But he was a doctor!") before getting angry - at mom. On a motorcycle with Viggo in a hospital gown behind her, I have to say she's still got it.

Generally speaking, mob movies, like this blog, are plagued by inflated self-regard. It would be nice if more directors approached them as genre films without wanting to "elevate" the genre to something else. The bathhouse scene is a great example; why not put a naked man in a knife fight? It felt like a horror movie, not because it was scary or supernatural, but because it was fun. Silly, goofy fun.

Drive, He Said (1971)
directed by Jack Nicholson
rating: 1 out of 5 cravats
on DVD from Carnegie Library

I want to be careful about blaming Jack Nicholson for this mess, but it did feel like the unhappy revelation that the cool guy you want to be friends with isn’t as fun as you thought. Male nudity here includes one more shower sequence and an episode involving a draft-dodger releasing lab animals while naked. Between conversations about “diseased culture” and the campus basketball star picking fights on the court, the counter-culture trend of 1971 is alive and well.

Problem is, there are few narrative angles in movies more dated than disaffected political fomentation. Make the professor open-minded about his adulterous wife, let the hippie be a misogynist, and keep the cheerleader naked half the time, and all you’ve got are three more drips in rainy Eugene, Oregon. The part of me that respected Nicholson for not putting himself in front of the camera yearned for a well-timed twitch of physical comedy. No part for a thirteen-year old New Yorker?

Nothing doing. If it didn’t have to culminate in the attempted rape of Karen Black, I could at least let Drive, He Said slide as a sincere, if tone deaf, imitation of the era’s trendiest disenchantment. As it is, forget it. Remind me of those Hollywood afternoons with Anjelica by your side before I get cynical, Jack.