BEFORE: I suppose I could have saved this one for February, since it looks all relationship-oriented. But since I'm in the Leo DiCaprio chain, let's get it off the list.
AFTER: This was a bit of a struggle to get through, because it seems to focus on only the negative aspects of marriage. For some reason, filmmakers feel like they need to keep setting films in the 1950's and in so doing, focus on pointing out how much of a different time it was. I think in the 1970's and 1980's people tended to romanticize the 1950's when they reflected on them, and nowadays it's usually a much darker portrayal. That seems to be the last decade where it was "OK" for a man to hit his wife, to "keep her in line" - so that sort of thing pops up, again and again, basically for shock value. The last decade where men were prominent in the workplace, and women were mostly secretaries or housewives.
Then there's the sexual aspect - before birth control came in pill form, or before the use birth control was even considered acceptable for married couples, because that would go against the will of God, I guess that was the argument. So this didn't leave married couples with a great number of choices - either have more kids than they could support, or stop having sex, or wear a condom and make Jesus cry. Or get an abortion, but then you just might as well throw yourself into the fires of Hell, right?
It really makes you wonder why people lived under these parameters for so long, when the solutions were right THERE, they were just considered less than ideal or stigmatized in some way. I'm also wondering WHY everyone seems so intent on destroying nostalgia, proving that the good old days weren't so good after all - does that make people feel better about the present? Because we've got our own problems these days, too. Will someone make movies about the 2010's someday, and point out how our lives sucked because we didn't have flying cars and time machines and sex robots?
It's also a little spurious that the great insights in this film come from a person who's certifiably insane - that doesn't mean his insights are false, however. On the contrary, it enables him to speak openly, to say things that maybe everyone else is thinking but not saying out loud. I'm not sure what this says about people, or relationships, in fact I'm not sure I got any real point out of the proceedings tonight, the film seemed to go out of its way to be obtuse and not make some sense out of it all. Unless that was the point, that life is ultimately senseless and disappointing.
Also starring Kate Winslet (last seen in "Contagion"), Kathy Bates (last seen in "Midnight in Paris"), Michael Shannon (last seen in "8 Mile"), David Harbour, Kathryn Hahn (last seen in "Wanderlust"), Zoe Kazan (last seen in "Me and Orson Welles"), Max Casella (last seen in "Killing Them Softly"), Jay O. Sanders (last seen in "Daylight")
RATING: 4 out of 10 egg salad sandwiches
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