Post by wdm0744 on Sept 5, 2008 11:04:38 GMT -5
I love my wife. For me, it’s more than just a bumper sticker. I know it sounds corny, but she’s my best friend. I get the same kind of excitement going home to her that I used to get as a kid before a big party sleepover.
Movies are a big part of our lives. I grew up in a family where the television was always on, and most times, a videotape was playing. I remember once when I was eight years old, our old VCR was sent away for repair. Those were some dark and cheerless days, let me tell you.
My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a home with a secure lock on the television cabinet. (Seriously, before such things existed, her genius of a father actually designed and developed an electronic lock to prevent the kids from turning on the TV.) She loves to tell people that she wasn’t allowed to watch “Muppet Babies” and that the dozen or so times her mom or dad brought home a movie on VHS, it was like Christmas morning.
You can imagine that the early days of our marriage were full of adjustment, but to be fair, she did most of the adjusting. My way’s more fun, after all. This mismatch of entertainment backgrounds has, in fact, provided us with hours of enjoyment. I get to show her the classics I grew up on, and she gets to discover the wealth of cinematic joy she missed over the past two decades.
Every once in a while though, we’ll tackle an older film that’s new to both of us, often because we were both too young to see it when it premiered. We both like suspense, and my wife’s deeply interested in psychology, so we thought we’d try “Fatal Attraction”.
Michael Douglas stars as an “everyman” (if a high-power lawyer can be considered an everyman) husband and father who meets and is instantly attracted to advertising executive, (or something like that – it doesn’t really matter) played by Glenn Close. When Douglas’ wife and daughter go off to visit her parents, he and Close have a torrid weekend affair. But as Monday rolls around – as it always does - Douglas attempts to return to his family and his life and act like the whole thing meant nothing and never happened. Needless to say, Glen Close has other ideas, and the rest of the film unfolds as her efforts to “not be ignored” take ever more provocative and dangerous turns.
It’s not a bad film, really. I didn’t dislike it so much as just feel strongly ambivalent about it (if such a thing is possible). It has garnered so much notoriety, and has become such a part of our pop culture lexicon, that it is really less of a film and more of a buzzword. Movies like that spawn countless imitations, which makes it difficult to view the original objectively. I came in expecting to experience the same excitement that propelled “Fatal Attraction” to semi-mythic status, and I went out wondering what all the fuss was about.
It isn’t a complete loss, obviously. It is well written, well shot and well acted. Michael Douglas is as effective as he ever was. Glen Close definitely is deserving of all the accolades she’s received. Her performance is truly stellar, at once tragic and repulsive. There is a scene early on where she slits her wrists to try to keep Douglas from leaving that creeped the hell out of me.
Still, I think the crux of the matter is that the film disturbed me, and not always in the way it was meant to. Rather than drawing me further into the narrative, certain things about it kept me from being fully in engaged.
First - and I’m sure the filmmakers intended this - my sympathies were conflicted. Sure Glen Close is scary and bat-“blank” crazy, but Michael Douglas’ character is a total “blank” himself, if you know what I mean. According to the DVD extras, the filmmakers had a hard time selling a script in which the main character cheats on his wife in the first ten minutes.
And I can see why. If this affair had been a one-time deal, if he had been somehow seduced, or if he felt instant remorse and sought to heal his marriage, I would have had a lot more compassion for the guy. But when you spend the whole weekend with another woman, have multiple rounds of wild sex, go dancing, discuss your childhood over homemade pasta, and then expect her to be perfectly cool with you going back to your old life and forget it ever happened; then, my friend, you have crossed the “Feder-line” into d-bag territory.
Secondly, there really wasn’t an effective conclusion. The filmmakers changed their original ending when it didn’t test well in the States. The theatrical ending is definitely effective in a generic kind of way, but it lacks the dramatic conclusion of the original ending that is present in the DVD’s special features. That ending closes with a truly dark image that will be sticking with me for a long time.
Now, my other objections are far more trivial, but oddly, these are the ones that really took me out of the movie:
1. Am I supposed to believe that all the men who come into contact with Glen Close’s character are struck by her uncommon beauty and “sex in high heels and a pants suit” vibe? Seriously?
I know this is not nice to say – but when the character was first introduced, my reaction wasn’t “Yeah, baby!”, it was, “Please don’t take my soul!”. My wife and I both recoiled in horror, as if Sam, the World’s Ugliest Dog, had just licked us. I nearly peed myself. I may have a little.
Maybe her look was the style in the late 80’s, but…. Damn. If I were Michael Douglas, I wouldn’t want to sleep with her for fear she’d eat me afterwards. So, when all the men in the film seem to drag their tongues on the floor whenever she enters a room, I just had trouble buying it, and it kept me from really relating to the narrative.
2. Where does one without a professional license of some sort go to buy an acid strong enough to eat through a car engine?
3. Okay, prepare yourself, because what I’m about to say isn’t nice, and I’m really sorry, but what in hell’s bathroom is up with Michael Douglas’ androgynous spawn in the film? I kid you not; I thought the kid was a boy until they said she was their daughter. Even then, I didn’t believe it. I had to check imdb.com before I was convinced.
I’m serious – SNL’s Pat is positively masculine (or feminine) compared to the kid in this movie. I was utterly baffled. The actress went on to play the completely unambiguous “Cousin Ruby” in “Christmas Vacation”, but in this film her short hair and boyish clothes threw me for a loop.
Here’s the thing – rather than watching the movie, I spent two hours wondering what in the world the filmmakers were thinking. I’ve decided they making some kind of unisex social statement. Why else would you hire a kid actress, cut her hair and dress her in boy clothes? It makes no sense. It’s an utterly ancillary issue and it completely took my mind off the film's narrative.
4. Am I the only person who found the sex scenes in this movie freaky and more than a little repulsive? I’m not exactly a prude, but what the movie intended to be sensual and erotic actually made me a bit nauseous. It was animalistic, and not in a good way. Something about it struck me as debasing. All the humanity was stripped away, and suddenly, we’re just lions in the heat on the Serengeti.
Not to mention that the whole freaky Glen Close thing discussed above. When watching a movie that has nudity or a sex scene in it, I always cover my eyes and fast-forward in respect of my wife and the exclusive nature of our marriage and commitment to each other. This time, I fast-forwarded for completely different reasons.
So, in conclusion, if you’ve made it this far, I can’t really recommend “Fatal Attraction”. Chances are you’ve probably already seen it or caught some of it on cable anyway. While I can appreciate its significance to modern cinema, it isn’t something I would want to watch again. It’s a well-crafted film, to be sure, but ultimately, its distractions weigh more than sum of its parts.
Movies are a big part of our lives. I grew up in a family where the television was always on, and most times, a videotape was playing. I remember once when I was eight years old, our old VCR was sent away for repair. Those were some dark and cheerless days, let me tell you.
My wife, on the other hand, grew up in a home with a secure lock on the television cabinet. (Seriously, before such things existed, her genius of a father actually designed and developed an electronic lock to prevent the kids from turning on the TV.) She loves to tell people that she wasn’t allowed to watch “Muppet Babies” and that the dozen or so times her mom or dad brought home a movie on VHS, it was like Christmas morning.
You can imagine that the early days of our marriage were full of adjustment, but to be fair, she did most of the adjusting. My way’s more fun, after all. This mismatch of entertainment backgrounds has, in fact, provided us with hours of enjoyment. I get to show her the classics I grew up on, and she gets to discover the wealth of cinematic joy she missed over the past two decades.
Every once in a while though, we’ll tackle an older film that’s new to both of us, often because we were both too young to see it when it premiered. We both like suspense, and my wife’s deeply interested in psychology, so we thought we’d try “Fatal Attraction”.
Michael Douglas stars as an “everyman” (if a high-power lawyer can be considered an everyman) husband and father who meets and is instantly attracted to advertising executive, (or something like that – it doesn’t really matter) played by Glenn Close. When Douglas’ wife and daughter go off to visit her parents, he and Close have a torrid weekend affair. But as Monday rolls around – as it always does - Douglas attempts to return to his family and his life and act like the whole thing meant nothing and never happened. Needless to say, Glen Close has other ideas, and the rest of the film unfolds as her efforts to “not be ignored” take ever more provocative and dangerous turns.
It’s not a bad film, really. I didn’t dislike it so much as just feel strongly ambivalent about it (if such a thing is possible). It has garnered so much notoriety, and has become such a part of our pop culture lexicon, that it is really less of a film and more of a buzzword. Movies like that spawn countless imitations, which makes it difficult to view the original objectively. I came in expecting to experience the same excitement that propelled “Fatal Attraction” to semi-mythic status, and I went out wondering what all the fuss was about.
It isn’t a complete loss, obviously. It is well written, well shot and well acted. Michael Douglas is as effective as he ever was. Glen Close definitely is deserving of all the accolades she’s received. Her performance is truly stellar, at once tragic and repulsive. There is a scene early on where she slits her wrists to try to keep Douglas from leaving that creeped the hell out of me.
Still, I think the crux of the matter is that the film disturbed me, and not always in the way it was meant to. Rather than drawing me further into the narrative, certain things about it kept me from being fully in engaged.
First - and I’m sure the filmmakers intended this - my sympathies were conflicted. Sure Glen Close is scary and bat-“blank” crazy, but Michael Douglas’ character is a total “blank” himself, if you know what I mean. According to the DVD extras, the filmmakers had a hard time selling a script in which the main character cheats on his wife in the first ten minutes.
And I can see why. If this affair had been a one-time deal, if he had been somehow seduced, or if he felt instant remorse and sought to heal his marriage, I would have had a lot more compassion for the guy. But when you spend the whole weekend with another woman, have multiple rounds of wild sex, go dancing, discuss your childhood over homemade pasta, and then expect her to be perfectly cool with you going back to your old life and forget it ever happened; then, my friend, you have crossed the “Feder-line” into d-bag territory.
Secondly, there really wasn’t an effective conclusion. The filmmakers changed their original ending when it didn’t test well in the States. The theatrical ending is definitely effective in a generic kind of way, but it lacks the dramatic conclusion of the original ending that is present in the DVD’s special features. That ending closes with a truly dark image that will be sticking with me for a long time.
Now, my other objections are far more trivial, but oddly, these are the ones that really took me out of the movie:
1. Am I supposed to believe that all the men who come into contact with Glen Close’s character are struck by her uncommon beauty and “sex in high heels and a pants suit” vibe? Seriously?
I know this is not nice to say – but when the character was first introduced, my reaction wasn’t “Yeah, baby!”, it was, “Please don’t take my soul!”. My wife and I both recoiled in horror, as if Sam, the World’s Ugliest Dog, had just licked us. I nearly peed myself. I may have a little.
Maybe her look was the style in the late 80’s, but…. Damn. If I were Michael Douglas, I wouldn’t want to sleep with her for fear she’d eat me afterwards. So, when all the men in the film seem to drag their tongues on the floor whenever she enters a room, I just had trouble buying it, and it kept me from really relating to the narrative.
2. Where does one without a professional license of some sort go to buy an acid strong enough to eat through a car engine?
3. Okay, prepare yourself, because what I’m about to say isn’t nice, and I’m really sorry, but what in hell’s bathroom is up with Michael Douglas’ androgynous spawn in the film? I kid you not; I thought the kid was a boy until they said she was their daughter. Even then, I didn’t believe it. I had to check imdb.com before I was convinced.
I’m serious – SNL’s Pat is positively masculine (or feminine) compared to the kid in this movie. I was utterly baffled. The actress went on to play the completely unambiguous “Cousin Ruby” in “Christmas Vacation”, but in this film her short hair and boyish clothes threw me for a loop.
Here’s the thing – rather than watching the movie, I spent two hours wondering what in the world the filmmakers were thinking. I’ve decided they making some kind of unisex social statement. Why else would you hire a kid actress, cut her hair and dress her in boy clothes? It makes no sense. It’s an utterly ancillary issue and it completely took my mind off the film's narrative.
4. Am I the only person who found the sex scenes in this movie freaky and more than a little repulsive? I’m not exactly a prude, but what the movie intended to be sensual and erotic actually made me a bit nauseous. It was animalistic, and not in a good way. Something about it struck me as debasing. All the humanity was stripped away, and suddenly, we’re just lions in the heat on the Serengeti.
Not to mention that the whole freaky Glen Close thing discussed above. When watching a movie that has nudity or a sex scene in it, I always cover my eyes and fast-forward in respect of my wife and the exclusive nature of our marriage and commitment to each other. This time, I fast-forwarded for completely different reasons.
So, in conclusion, if you’ve made it this far, I can’t really recommend “Fatal Attraction”. Chances are you’ve probably already seen it or caught some of it on cable anyway. While I can appreciate its significance to modern cinema, it isn’t something I would want to watch again. It’s a well-crafted film, to be sure, but ultimately, its distractions weigh more than sum of its parts.
"If I'm going to be desensitized into a mindless stock animal, I may as well do it with a cushy ergonomic seat and magnificent THX-certified sound. -Kevin Murphy