Since we're on a movie kick, I have something to say about David Mamet. I don't get it. He strikes me as someone who, always writing from a position of intellectual superiority, is incapable of writing struggle. The characters he writes that do not operate in cocksure-itude fall extremely flat. Paul Newman's character Frankie Galvin in The Verdict is a great example. Newman does his job well, and I find myself completely uninterested. Charlotte Rampling's character is by far the most interesting. Mamet seems to know this, which is why the verdict referred to in the title is not the verdict with which we, as an audience, are concerned. The fact that Rampling's character's fate is more compelling than the main character's or...frankly...the main plot should not be the basis for some clever, script-driven legerdemain. It should be the basis for a rewrite. But that's where Mamet and I seem to differ. So, see The Verdict. Let me know if what I am saying makes any sense whatsoever.
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Also, there is no possible way for someone's prowess to be "potent and secretly stern." Why does that bug me so much?
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Zero-sum or bust.
4 comments:
I laughed at State and Main many, many times, and GlenGary GlennRoss is one of my favorite movies.
I've never read any of his plays.
And that's all I'm going to say about that. I think Ed made all the points that really needed to be made, and now I'm off to play Super Nintendo.
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