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To: Borges
boiling art down to YES/NO

Black and white? That's precisely why Hollywood embraced it. If you ever watch the Nanny show, with Jo Frost, you'll see her technique involves creating rigor, schedules, certainty, sameness for little children. And they tend to respond well to such conformity. Well Hollywood is no different. They consistently promote the worst sort of vice. And they did not applaud THIS film because they thought it was a conservative non-conformist treatise. They embraced it as comfortably more of the same in a promotion, no doubt similar to that of Goebbels so long ago, for 'mercy' killing; which is uncharitable and not merciful. The characters who object in the film have no basis for it, or seem petulant. The 'logic' of the situation demands 'mercy', supposed mercy, as in 'mercy' killing. And the anti-hero dutifully does the anti-moral thing, seen as 'morality', and the villian is justified for having done the 'right thing' - i.e. he kills, he poisons, and then he runs away and dies or whatever as signified by the exterior shot of the 'pie-diner'. That's why the guy who originally wrote that column suggesting parallels to Goebbels' film seems to have really gotten the point of all this.

39 posted on 03/10/2005 6:06:48 PM PST by sevry
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To: sevry
You're reading the worst of motives into it. People in Hollywood and elsewhere have been responding to this film because they found it moving. I didn't. I got dirty looks from the people I was with when I snickered abuot how manipulative it was.

But even people like James Woods, a conservative, were falling over themselves to talk about how much the film touched them. That's the reason it got the plaudits it did. Everyone likes a good cry. It did not win Best Picture (with some exceptions, winners of this award tend toward the conservative side BTW) because an academy member, say a film editor or set designer, thought to themselves...this a pro Euthanasia film so I'll vote for it!

As for promoting vice...It's a matter of taste and interpretation. Does 'The Godfather' glamorize the Mafia? Probably. It's still a great film. :-)
40 posted on 03/10/2005 8:14:29 PM PST by Borges
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