The film is above all an evocation of mood. It is about a town with no reason to exist and people with no reason to live there. The only hope is transgression...
—Roger Ebert.
Directed by Peter Bogdonavich.
Written by Larry McMutry and Peter Bogdonavich, based on McMurtry's 1966 novel.
Sonny Crawford: Timothy Bottoms.
Duane Jackson: Jeff Bridges.
Jacy Farrow: Cybil Shepherd.
Sam the Lion: Ben Johnson.
Ruth Popper: Cloris Leachman.
Lois Farrow: Ellen Burstyn.
Genevieve Morgan: Eileen Brennan
Abilene: Clu Gulager.
Billy: Sam Bottoms.
Budget: $1.3 million.
Box Office: $29.1 million.
Maybe hard to believe today, but The Last Picture Show was both a commercial and critical success. It was nominated for eight Oscars, winning two for Ben Johnson as Sam and Cloris Leachman as Ruth. A sequel based on McMurtry's novel Texasville was made in 1990. McMurtry wrote three more novels about Thalia (called Anarene in the movie) and particularly about Duane.
1. Your reaction to the film—and why? Talk about a specific scene or scenes in your answer.
2. What to you is true about the depiction of growing up in the film? Conversely, what to you is not true about growing up?
3. How do these teenagers compare to the ones in Rebel Without a Cause? Do they seem more or less real than Jim, Judy, Plato, Buzz, Clutch (ok, there wasn't a Clutch in the movie, but there could have been), etc.? Where do the visions of the kids—what motivates them, what they see as their lives ahead of them, their sense of values—overlap, if at all? And if not, why is that?
Lots to talk about tomorrow. A scene to leave you with...
1. This movie is incredibly shocking at first, most movies that I’ve seen at least don’t really tackle sexuality in teenagers so openly. Sex was a driving force for many of the characters, particularly Jacy. She begins very loyal to Duane and wants to only have sex after marriage, but soon sex becomes a very imporatant thing to her as she needs to lose her virginity to have a relationship with a boy. There was also the relationship between Sonny who was 18 and Ruth who was 40. This was very surprising to me. One scene that really stood out was where Duane and Sonny argued about who was going to have sex with Jacy and who’d girl she was. This was because it was so important to them Duane smashed a bottle into the side of Sonny’s head.
ReplyDelete2. Some parts are very true about growing up and being a teenager. One thing that’s very common is the great importance surrounding relationships and how variable they are. Particularly with Jacy losing her virginity only to really have a relationship with another boy. One thing that is untrue is that none of them are really concerned about college or their futures. It’s something very casual to them. This movie is all about the relationships they have with other people and not about anything else. It’s all bout the now.
3. Both movies have in the common the importance of the now. The teenagers are all concerned about themselves and what’s best for them. Judy can be compared to Jacy as they’re both the main and only teenage girls and both fall in love with the main characters. I personally feel that this is more realistic in a sexual or illegal sense. Though Rebel Without A Cause has much more relatable parental relationships.
1) I am really enjoying the film so far. I like how open the film is about sex and sexuality, especially for the time it was released. I think a defining part of being a teenager is having to deal with sex in relationships but a lot of films do not explicitly show this. One scene I found interesting was the one where Jacy goes with Lester to the pool party and she has to undress on the diving board in front of everyone. The audience can tell that she is grappling with her morals and her desire to try her luck with a richer boy. I think this scene is a turning point for Jacy because that is when she decides to follow her mother’s advice.
ReplyDelete2) I think the fact that the movie acknowledged exploring different relationships and sex as a teenager is realistic. However, I think the way the movie showed these different relationships may only be true to that particular time and place. I do not think that many teenagers go to skinny dipping parties or get in relationships with 40 year olds. I think the carefree attitude that Sonny and Duane have can also be very true for some teens and very foreign to others. An idea that was presented in the film that is becoming less true as time goes on is the pressure to get married. It seemed as if every character thought that marriage was the end goal of their relationship
3) I feel like the characters in The Last Picture Show are more realistic than the ones in Rebel Without a Cause. For one thing, these characters have a definitive home and the fact that they are from a southern town plays a lot into these characters’ identities and activities throughout the movie. These characters make sense with their environments. Also, they way they express themselves and go about dealing with their problems is a lot less dramatic and exaggerated. I guess it helps that the events of this movie play out over the course of several months rather than 24 hours. Rebel Without a Cause comments on how teens relate to their parents while this film shows how teens relate to one another. The teens in Rebel Without a Cause don’t seem to see themselves with much of a future; they are living for right now and cannot seem to look beyond the issues that they have now. The teens in The Last Picture Show are sort of similar, as sex seems to be an immediate goal of theirs. I think both films show that teenagers are often the most concerned with themselves and as a result, make rash decisions.
Though I find this film a bit uncomfortable, I like how it has been executed. The film exhibits a lot of taboo and unsettling subject matter, including significant age gaps in relationships and the implication of child molestation. I feel for the two main boys in the film, Sonny and Duane, because they seem to be greatly misguided. The scene in which Sonny encounters his father during the Christmas dance really stuck with me because I could sense the awkwardness Sonny felt around his neglectful father.
ReplyDeleteI think the general sense that these kids are confused and trying to figure out their way in life is true to real life. New relationships can be confusing, especially for teenagers with a severe lack of good role models in their community. The depiction of teenagers as overwhelmingly exclusive and mischievous is a bit exaggerated in comparison to my own experience; however, I did not grow up in the middle of nowhere. I would like to believe that teenagers are not as manipulative as Jacy, though I know a rare few can be. I would also like to believe that teenagers in real life are not as concerned with the concept of ‘virginity’ as the movie depicts.
In my opinion, the kids in The Last Picture Show are much more relatable because they are not nearly as dramatic or as involved with death. Whereas the kids in Rebel Without a Cause felt the need to do crazy things for the sake of being teenagers, I believe that the kids in The Last Picture Show get into the trouble they do because there is simply nothing else to do in their environment. The kids in both movies relate in that all of them are incredibly irrational and misguided. None of the kids have any plan for their future, and kids in both films overlap in that they seem to do things as they respond to them emotionally in the moment.
1. I really enjoy this film so far. The acting is great, and this is the first time I have seen Jeff Bridges as a young actor. I like how there is not many boundaries in this film. Sex is not at all a confined topic and I think that really makes the audience think and ponder on what they are watching. For example: the scene in which the group of boys get Billy a prostitute really speaks on virginity and how, between men at least, being a virgin is a bad thing past a certain age. That scene, along with others, have power messages in them, displaced in an extremely raw form. That is why I like this form, it doesn't mess around, it is straight forward about everything.
ReplyDelete2. Since I am a male, and hang around other guys in groups similar to the movie. I definitely relate to the whole sex type talk that is so often spoken between young men. As a teenage boy you often feel the need to speak about women in a certain way; sometimes due to pressure, sometimes because you really just want to speak your mind with ought any censoring, like how you have to talk with adults. Something I don't think happens often when growing up is sexual relationships with adults. In the film, Sonny is in a relationship with Ruth, who is forty. And him being a senior in high school, it just doesn't seem realistic that he would, by choice, have a sexual relationship with her.
3. The teenagers in The Last Picture Show are definitely relatable to the ones in Rebel Without a Cause. But, I think this just has to do more with the fact that they are teenagers than anything else. In both movies the teens are interested in sex, and love, etc. But, in The Last Picture Show, the teenagers are not really rebelling like how they are in Rebel Without a Cause. Sure, Sonny is switching back in forth between loving a girl his age and one that is forty, but that isn't really rebelling. But, the teens in the two movies do seem to have more or less the same end goal. Jim, Sonny, and Duane all want to leave their town. Jim and Sonny both wan't to get married to run off with their girlfriend. So, while the rebelling factor is more present in Rebel Without a Cause, commentary on the complex life of teenagers are in both films.
1. I liked the movie okay. I read the book last summer, and I thought the movie did a good job of following the book’s storyline, but it wasn’t nearly as good as the actual book. A lot of Larry McMurtry’s appeal for me is the way he explains what’s going on in the characters’ heads, and in a movie, getting in the characters’ heads is a lot harder to do. The characters in the movie were really hard to identify with, and I found myself not caring what happened to them. For instance, I wasn’t really sad during the movie when we learn that Sam has died over the weekend, but I remember how sad I was reading that scene last summer.
ReplyDelete2. I think that the confusion about sex, relationships, money, and reputation that the characters experience is true to teenage life. The characters experience a clear conflict between wanting to be kids and wanting to be adults, and oftentimes throughout the movie, they push themselves to do things they’re uncomfortable with just because everyone else is doing it. For instance, Jacy strips naked in front of the other kids in the pool and Sonny helps the other boys harass Billy despite their instincts telling them not to just because they feel pressured by the other kids to do so. I think these feelings are really true to my own experience as a teenager.
The circumstances that the kids wind up in seem really different from my own life, but these characters also live in a completely different place and time. Growing up in a big city in the 2010s is different from growing up in a small Texas town in the 70s. The plot is definitely dramatic and feels a little random at times, but it doesn’t strike me as incredibly inaccurate.
3. In both movies, the kids experience the negative effects of peer pressure and group mentality, but the occurrences in The Last Picture Show feel a little more normal. Sonny, Duane, and Jacy’s lives aren’t like mine, but I do know real people who grew up like that. Rebel Without a Cause feels surreal. The plot and resulting emotions don’t seem at all possible. It was hard for me to identify with either set of characters, but Sonny, Stacy, and Duane are more accessible to me than Jim, Judy and Plato because their lives and emotions seem more realistic.
1 ) I liked the film for the most part. I thought the film might need some more action. The plot was a little bit slow paced. I thought that it was very interesting how they shot the film in black and white even though they could have filmed it in color. I don’t know if they were trying to make the movie look older or if they liked the black and white because it changed the tone of the movie. The black and white gave the film a more melancholy feel.
ReplyDelete2 ) I think that the film showed how difficult it can be to grow up. It showed that some teenagers can be manipulative. Jacy in particular was very manipulative. She seemed to enjoy people fighting over her. The film illustrated peer pressure by showing the scene at the pool party. The movie also was very unrealistic in some ways. I feel like there is not as much fighting over people in real life. In the movie all of the boys were fighting over Jacy and I thought that that was unrealistic.
3 ) I think that the teenagers in “Rebel Without a Cause” were more realistic than the ones in “The Last Picture Show”. They did have some similarities though. They were both very rebellious and neither of them liked their parents very much. They both also saw themselves growing up and getting married and both couples in the movies thought that they were in love.
1. I really like this film because of the fascinating characters and because I think sexuality is a very interesting topic. It is interesting to watch these teenagers deal with figuring out how to deal with sexuality and figuring out what they want from relationships. A scene that stood out to me was the bathhouse scene, partly because it was so shocking, but also because the scene where Jacy is taking her clothes off depicts the confusing feeling of wanting sex yet at the same time not feeling ready and feeling scared and feeling like you’re not ready to grow up. Many teens live in this confused state of both feeling like you’re ready for sex but also feeling like you’re not ready for sex. This scenes shows Jacy’s rushed loss of innocence. This scene marks her transition from feeling like she’s not ready for sex to feeling like she is ready.
ReplyDelete2. Obviously the things that the teenagers do in this movie would be very unusual for teenages to do in real life, but there were definitely parts of this movie that captured the adolescent experience. One aspect of this movie that rang true to the teenage experience, even though it is uncomfortable to discuss, is the fact that teens are honestly really horny and oftentimes don’t know how to deal with their sexual frustration and confusion. Another aspect that rang true was this sense of not knowing how to go out into the bigger world. The teens in this movie don’t directly talk about their future much (an unrealistic part of this movie) but the fact that they are living in this dying town forces them to think about what the larger world is like, which is scary as a teenager.
3. In both movies, the teenagers deal with feeling lost and not knowing how to figure things out. The kids in the last picture show feel more real because they are less over the top dramatic, but I probably actually related to the teenagers in Rebel Without a Cause more because that movie was able to capture the feelings of teenage angst so well. The adults in The Last Picture show were much more realistic than the adults in Rebel Without a Cause.
1.I agree with Ebert; the film effectively evokes "a town with no reason to exist and people with no reason to live there. The only hope is transgression..." Many of the characters made choices that seem to make no sense, but the characters feel they have no choice. For example, when the group of boys try to get Billy to lose his virginity with the prostitute, this seems senseless and hurtful. However, the boys live in a town with nothing else to do. Without any sort of purpose in life all that is left for the boys to break the rules because there is nothing else to give them any meaning or excitement in life. The film was not very fun to watch and there were very few likable characters, but the film effectively conveyed the directionlessness it was trying to.
ReplyDelete2. The film accurately captures the teenage feeling of wanting to rebel. Throughout the film many characters revel in rebellion, especially in the skinny-dipping pool party Jacy goes to. However, what the movie got wrong, at least for teens in a modern, big city like Atlanta, is the teens' motivation. In the movie, the teens rebel because there is nothing else for them to do, in a modern city teens rebel because there is too much to do. Teens today in Atlanta rebel because they have so much going on: seminars, SAT tutoring, internships, sports, and on and on and on. Teens rebel because they need some form of escape and stress relief. Meanwhile, teens in Anarene in the 70's rebelled because there was literally nothing else to do.
3. The teens in Rebel Without a Cause were more similar to my teenage experience than the teens in The Last Picture Show. In Rebel Without a Cause the teens act out due to the immense stress they are under which matches more closely with the motivations of my peers and I than the boredom of The Last Picture Show. Both sets of teens act out but I think the motivations are totally different. The teens in The Last Picture Show see sexual rebellion as more attractive than the violent rebellion of Rebel Without a Cause. The Last Picture Show focuses on several storylines, such as Jacy's struggle to lose her virginity and the boys buying Billy a prostitute, that show that the teens see the loss of virginity as a rite of passage. Rebel Without a Cause sees more value in violent rebellions like knife fights and chicken runs. I think that comparing the motivations and values of these kids is very interesting because their reasons for ending up at rebellion are very different, but they end up in the same place. I think this speaks to the appeal of the rebellious teenager narrative. I think that the reason the motivations and values of the kids are so different is that their environments are wildly different. The Rebel... kids live in a world dominated by their fraught relationships with their parents while the The Last Picture Show kids live in a world dominated by a sense of purposelessness. The kids are struggling with two different issues which drive them to the same place.
Your reaction to the film—and why? Talk about a specific scene or scenes in your answer.
ReplyDeleteI enjoyed it. The leisurely pace was not as painful as I thought it would be. Thinking back to the movie, it doesn't seem like a movie I would enjoy because of its slower pace and seemingly random plot, but I oddly liked it. I still don't understand why the title is “The Last Picture Show” because it seemed like the boys getting banned from the theater was a fairly minor occurrence in the movie. A scene that resonates with me is the one in which Jacy talks with her mom after having sex with/being raped by Abilene. Her and her mother seem almost like peers in the way they so nonchalantly acknowledge the situation.
2. What to you is true about the depiction of growing up in the film? Conversely, what to you is not true about growing up?
The way Jacy handles her sexual relations seems fairly accurate because it is immature; she claims she loves Duane but then marries Sonny on a whim (no one my age is getting married, but the way she jumps from one boy to the next without seeming to know what she wants is something people my age do). Something that is inaccurate about the movie is that there is very little to no mention of academic or family responsibilities. None of the characters are shown at home with their family besides Jacy, none of them ever do homework, and they are only shown at school in two brief scenes.
3. How do these teenagers compare to the ones in Rebel Without a Cause? Do they seem more or less real than Jim, Judy, Plato, Buzz, Clutch (ok, there wasn't a Clutch in the movie, but there could have been), etc.? Where do the visions of the kids—what motivates them, what they see as their lives ahead of them, their sense of values—overlap, if at all? And if not, why is that?
I think that the defining difference between the two sets of teens is that, in The Last Picture Show, they're shown as more grown up (in my opinion). Duane moves away to work, Jacy and her mother discuss marriage, and Sonny has an affair with his coach’s wife. While in Rebel Without a Cause, the main conflict is initiated on a school field trip and the main characters (Judy and Jim) are much more involved with their parents at home. The one link between the two sets of characters is Judy and Jacy’s slightly bizarre way of handling ‘love’. Judy falls in love with Jim hours after her previous boyfriend drove his car off a cliff and Jacy easily marries a boy she hooked up with once in a car.
Overall, I enjoyed the film. I liked the plot, and how the friendships developed as the kids got older. The relationships got a bit out of hand, but it did establish how chaotic a tennager’s life an seem. I thought that the death of Sam made Sonny realize that the issues he was dealing with were not really that important, and put life in perspective. The scene were he is in the car with his friends, who are laughing, showed how he seemed to realize that these problems he was facing were miniscule.
ReplyDeleteI thought that the film did a good job of showing how you can be so naive when you’re young. Every decision feels like it is the most important situation in the universe. The kids would go from dating someone to immediately liking someone else, showing how they did not put much thought into their first decision. I liked how Jacy feared being alone towards the end of the film, because so many kids are worried about simply fitting in and finding people they like or love.
I feel like the teenagers from Rebel Without a Cause were more relatable, because they were caught up in their own lives and focused on teenage hijinks. The kids in the Last Picture Show were so focused on relationships that I felt little connection with them. The kids in Rebel Without a Cause felt that they had to do something; whereas, the kids in the Last Picture Show seemed to act spontaneously. As soon as an opportunity presented itself, they would immediately grasp it: Jacy going to the pool party. I feel that each kid has a different motivation for their actions; however, the kids in Rebel Without a Cause seemed to be facing greater odds. Plato wanted to be accepted and find a family and Jim and Judy felt no connection with their families. Despite these differences, both groups of kids want to feel like a part of something. They want to be loved and cared for. I think this shows how parents view teenagers and believe that their acts of independence are cries for acknowledgement.
ReplyDelete1) So far, I think this film is pretty good. I think it definitely has some morally unsound concepts in it, such as sleeping with your gym teacher’s wife, but I also think the inclusion of the topic of sex, especially between teens helps strengthen the film. The fact that sex and relationships are such topics in the movie is a bit shocking, but I also think that is what makes the movie so different and outstanding. I also like how raw the emotions seem to be in this movie. It is easy to see how the characters feel, even when they are doing things they know they shouldn’t be doing. The scenes that specifically stand out to me are the scenes that highlight Sonny and Ruth. Frequently in these scenes, Ruth is crying or seems emotionally unstable. What is interesting about her is you know she is unhappy with the coach and happy with Sonny, but she has such a sense of fear built in to her that she cannot enjoy her time no matter who it is spent with. I think this fear relates to the expectation in the past that women stay with their husbands, even if they are emotionally and physically abusive. Ruth feels stuck and so does Sonny in the small town so they find comfort and entertainment within each other.
2) One of the true depictions of teenagers in this movie is the focus on relationships and the constant search for something to do. In my experience, teens tend to get bored very fast. I can only imagine the boredness of teenagers in the small rural texas town the movie is set in. Duane and Sonny cope with this problem by spontaneously taking a trip down to Mexico. Their need for adventure and quick decision making is all very accurate to teenagers. I think the sense of freedom these kids have is not very true of growing up, especially from my experience. The kids in the film seem to have no curfew, or if they do, they don’t follow it closely. Also, there is so much focus on sex and marrying someone who will support a family, rather than someone who you truly love. I think that is more of an older concept, that has definitely been outgrown quite a bit, especially in a city such as Atlanta. No one I know has their dream set on marrying after graduation and running away from their parents.
3) I think the kids in The Last Picture Show are more real than the kids in Rebel Without a Cause. In general, the drama in The Last Picture Show was much more realistic and their problems were some that are easier to imagine happening in real life. It is hard to picture yourself running through a planetarium at night to try and catch your crazy friend who has a gun rather than the easy concept of navigating boys and sex and relationships. Although the dramatisation in Rebel Without a Cause was relatable, I think the troubles the kids have in The Last Picture Show are much more realistic. They may be less exciting and thrilling to watch, but they are more real depictions of what life is really like. In both movies, the teens seem totally disconnected and misunderstood by their parents. Similarly to how Jim feels misunderstood, Jacy feels like her mother does not understand her because of her desire to marry Duane. Jacy also seems very similar to Judy because of their reckless love. Judy falls in love extremely quickly with Jim and is willing to do anything for him. This is like Jacy and how she sticks up for Duane and the fact they she loves him and wants to get married, no matter what. The kid’s motivation all stems for spontaneous decisions. In both movies, nothing is particularly planned out. I think this was done on purpose to reflect the chaos in a teen’s mind and how society think teenagers are compulsive and reckless.
I really enjoyed this film. I feel as though it really demonstrated the drive for sexual contact that all teenagers feel and how that need powers their decisions. Although some parts of this movie made me slightly uncomfortable, such as the scenes with Judy and Sonny, I thought this film was very entertaining and provoking. A scene that stuck with me was the scene at the pool with Jacy and the other rich kids. It just seemed like such a realistic thing that teens would do. Although dumb, this naked pool party was a right of passage that felt important for Jacy in the moment. Even though I have never been in a situation exactly like this one, I can truly understand the peer pressure and need to fit in that Jacy felt in that moment.
ReplyDeleteI think that an aspect of this film that is very realistic is the importance of sex in a teenager’s life. With adolescence comes an explosion of hormones and wants. The movie greatly depicts how much these teens want to have sex, even if they do not exactly understand what they want. Every teen in this movie is striving for some kind of sexual contact and will do whatever they have to do to receive this contact. Although the ways in which they engage in sex are a little unrealistic, such as the affairs, I think that this need to feel some sexual feeling is pretty realistic for high schoolers. I think all the scandals in this movie make a little less true to growing up. This is typical to movies though because they have to get a way for people to come and watch it.
I think that these teenagers are a little more realistic than the ones in Rebel Without a Cause. It may be because of the small town aspect of the movie, but these teens felt more real and relatable. Also I feel as though the actors in this movie looked more like the age they were supposed to playing. Sonny had a very youthful and innocent look to him. This contrasts heavily with the mature look of James Dean. They were similar in that they all had zero motivations and simply thought about what was in front of them. None of these teenagers had any true plans for the future. They simply went along with their lives and focused on the problems around them.
I liked this film but it was a little hard to relate to. They live in such a different town and time obviously that I think our experiences were very different. I did however find the kids more realistic. There was a lot of blunt sexuality as John had warned us about but the kids were definitely portrayed accurately. They were curious and not confident in themselves. One thing I did realize about halfway through was that there wasn’t much of a progressing plot overall, but the kids were figuring out so many things at once that I was never bored. One scene that stuck with me was when Jacy’s mother just sat down with her once she realized what happened. She didn’t pass judgement she just sat with her daughter as if she related. I just was surprised that that was her reaction. Her daughter is doing strange things to try and figure out life and she was just kind of there.
ReplyDelete2.I think the confusion is true. I’m not sure if kids are really dying to swim in a pool naked, but there are definitely things that kids want to explore and are not sure about. These kids not only are confused sexually, but are also just confused about how to interact and treat each other. They are all making mistakes and doing things without thinking such as going to Mexico. Something I didn’t find true was the sexual activity with adults. It just doesn’t seem like something that normal high school students these days would do. I think it does represent how extremely curious these kids are though. Most people act out the most when they are teenagers because they want to try everything, so although it wasn’t true to real life, it helped the story.
3. I think none of them are confident between the two movies. They all have something that they don’t want to talk about. The kids in Rebel Without a Cause try and brush the taboo topics under the rug while the kids in The Last Picture Show are trying out everything just because they are curious. The movie just made them seem more uncomfortable, and seem more aware of those things than kids like Judy and Jim. Marriage does come up in this one unlike Rebel Without a Cause. Judy and Jim play house but they didn’t think it was within the near future. I think this may have been because of the difference in the towns that they lived in.
1. I found the film very blunt in the way that it dealt with sexuality. Most movies, even by today's standards, don't show sex and sexuality this openly (especially when the characters are children). I thought it was interesting how every relationship in the film wasn't motivated by love but they were motivated by lust. The film did a great job showing the lack of understanding that teens often face in regards to sex.
ReplyDelete2. The way that the kids in the movie grew up and the way that I grew up are very different. Paideia tries to have as much education on sexuality and relationships in order to avoid situations found in the movie. Despite not being in the same situations as the characters in the movie, there are still some things that are very realistic. The lack of understanding about sex and relationships is very true to the life of teens. Peer pressure is the main motivator behind the bad decisions made throughout the film. Peer pressure makes the characters feel as if they have to lose their virginity in order to become an adult.
3. In both films, the characters are highly effected by peer pressure and make irrational decisions because of it. In Rebel Without a Cause, Judy says, "You shouldn't believe what I say when I'm around the rest of the kids... Nobody acts sincere." She feels that she has to act a certain way in order to fit in with her group of friends. In the Last Picture Show, Jacy is pressured to undress in front of everyone despite obvious not wanting to do so. She does this solely because everyone else has done it and she just wants to fit in.
I was honestly surprised by the film. I think that in “The Last Picture Show”, the director was trying to boil adolescence down to its essence by portraying quite a few scenes of overt apathy, sexual attraction, superficiality, and defiance. For me, the scene were the group of boys bought the other a prostitute to try and get him to lose his virginity represented the apathetic and hormonal sides of adolescence almost all concentrated in one scene. There are many other scenes like this that try to capture a tenet of teenagerdom on their own, and, for the most part, they do their job. However. I just can’t relate to the raw, almost primal behavior shown on screen, and I wish their had been more sensitive, nuanced moments to balance out the film.
ReplyDeleteI think that the Director does a good job of portraying the daunting confusion of newfound independence that comes with adolescence by blurring the sense of time throughout the film. Without a clear chronological order or pacing, the viewer can start to relate to how lost a teenager in a small town can feel, and how bleak their lives can seem. On the other hand, o thought the film was too extreme on its portrayal of teenage emotions, and more specifically, how they act out on their impulses and hormones. I didn’t feel that that part of the film was realistic.
This group of teenagers feels less real than those in “Rebel Without a Cause”. However, I think that is done on purpose. Besides that, I’m having trouble finding similarities between the two groups and maybe it’s because of the differences in setting or other factors