The Auteur Files #8: Four films considered: Penn, Renoir, Culp, Fincher

THE MISSOURI BREAKS (1976, Arthur Penn)- I wasn’t quite prepared for the gradually increasing oddity of this movie, a quality that is directly related to an unhinged performance from Marlon Brando as an eccentric “regulator” hired by a rancher to kill a bunch of Jack Nicholson-led horse rustlers. I’ve known of this film’s notorious status for years, and yet it still threw me for a loop. The prevailing theory is that somewhere along the way Penn lost control of the film, largely due to Brando’s mammoth ego and erratic behavior. And this very well might be true. What’s also true to my eyes is how Penn, along with his longtime editor Dede Allen, actually managed to salvage an at times powerful document from the footage. Things move from fairly typical revisionist Western territory into a surreal, fractured, dissonant environment and the steaming wreckage gets loosely assembled into commentary on the tenuous nature of control and the friction between one person’s perception and another’s identity. It’s an understatement that EVERYONE’S mileage is gonna vary on this one: I experienced at least a half dozen head smacking “what the fuck” moments as this baby unraveled (which in this case isn’t a bad thing), and there were surely elements that I didn’t enjoy, most notably John Williams’ score. However, taken as an unwieldy whole, BREAKS is one of the monumental last gasps from the New Hollywood before it basically got steamrolled by the worship of the bottom line at the dawn of ‘80s. Some directors were able to survive the transition, and a few were even able to flourish. While Penn continued to make films, he never seemed to really get his swagger back after BREAKS’ critical and commercial failure. That’s a drag, but he did make quite a few great ones along with this gobsmackingly weird one, one that just might be great as well. I need to see it again.

THE RULES OF THE GAME (1939, Jean Renoir)- One of the greatest of all films, most certainly. I’ve never met a Renoir movie that I didn’t love, and this just might be my favorite due to its rich complexity and perfect blend of satire and humanism. The use of deep focus is as integral here as in CITIZEN KANE, adding such brutal dimension to the characters and their actions that it’s unsurprising the initial reception to its brilliance was hostility. Much of the disdain is directly related to historical circumstances in Europe at the time of its release, WWII being just around the corner. It lambasts the behavioral mores of the idle rich without objectifying the working class and makes clear that social station and lifestyle are no security against the consequences of conduct. Well, his countrymen hated it, the invading Nazis banned it and for decades it was an essentially lost film, existing only in a truncated and far inferior edit. The miracle that is the currently available and justly celebrated fully-restored masterpiece stands as the foremost example of Renoir’s genius and his lasting importance. Nobody better exemplifies the concept of Classique = Moderne and his precise balance between content and form remains one of the beacons of 20th Century art.

HICKEY AND BOGGS (1972, Robert Culp)- I’m finding it really difficult to comprehend just why this film remains so unknown. Television star Culp’s sole motion picture as director, it combines a couple of very attractive elements, specifically a variation on the dark pessimism that infiltrated much of the serious cinema of its decade and a tough, raw, no-nonsense visual sensibility that is remindful of some of the older Hollywood hands that were still prolific or at least working in the same period, guys like Don Siegel and Phil Karlson. As such, it should please those enamored with the above mentioned New Hollywood in addition to folks who get randy at the sight of the lean ‘70s action cinema helmed by more underground names like John Flynn. There has been some talk about the film’s commercial failure, and I disagree with the notion that the movie was/is a downer. Culp (Boggs) and his co-star Bill Cosby (Hickey) are certainly bitter, despondent “loser” types, but they are not unsympathetic, registering more as two guys that have been bitten particularly hard on the ass by the cold, hard reality of life. And the story’s action arrives so briskly (and is so solidly directed) that it eases the presence of bleakness and turpitude, even Boggs’ flagrant alcoholism and his horrible choices regarding a nogoodnik ex-wife. My hypothesis is a simple one. People wanted a reprise of I SPY, and when they were offered this instead, they simply said no thanks. The overall heft of this very worthwhile one-shot is comparable to the grimy underbelly of post WWII American pulp crime fiction, Chester Himes in particular, and justice will go unserved until this film is available in a good transfer.

THE SOCIAL NETWORK (2010, David Fincher)- my pick as the best big-budget Hollywood film to hit screens so far this year, it’s an incredibly rich concoction of biopic, current events saga and legal film that utilizes a thrillingly tight flashback (or more appropriately, flash forward) structure (shades of Welles circa KANE) with wildly potent and smartly stylized dialogue (ala Sturges or Hawks, though obviously contemporary to the zeitgeist). Fincher has found a perfect balance between a bold approach to form and a compact, direct style of mainstream storytelling, and additionally his deft use of digital techniques and CGI gives me hope for the future of the medium as the use of 35MM film slowly becomes less commonplace. A huge part of his success, along with an unerring choice of collaborators, is the attention to detail and importance that’s given to scenes/moments that are essentially perfunctory to the overall weight of the narrative, or would seem so. Nothing is sloppy in the cinema of David Fincher. Small, throwaway moments are subtly imbued with meaning or at least with a modest, casual beauty that’s inextricably tied to the joy of watching: the clinical buzzing and brightness of a florescent light, or the noise level as people converse in a crowded bar, for two instances. And when a scene is overtly humorous, it’s a solid bet that it’s covertly much more than just that. Is this a great as ZODIAC? Well, no, since that was one of the ten best Hollywood films of the last decade. But NETWORK is scaled differently. Underneath the perceived insubstantial quality of its “tell-all” exterior is the guts of a film that speaks very deeply about how we live right now, but in a low key way that’ll work in the favor of longevity as the status of classic is eventually awarded.

Three recent listens: Screamin' Jay Hawkins, Angles, Sharon Van Etten

Back in the day, if a smart set of ears wanted a comp of vintage Screamin’ Jay Hawkins material, the best bet was FRENZY, which the Edsel label lovingly kicked out around ’81 or so. During the tail end of the LP era, if you stumbled onto a Screamin’ Jay section in a particularly happening indie record shop, it was almost guaranteed it would be fortified with at least one copy of that fine 14-track collection. Well, roughly a decade later, in a rare display of corporate smarts, Epic corralled 19 of this demented behemoth’s cuts onto compact disc, titled it COW FINGERS AND MOSQUITO PIE, adorned it with a swell cover courtesy of artist Kathy Staico Schorr, and offered it up for those who can’t resist a good time. And while the worthiness of FRENZY is still intact since three tracks from the former remain unique to that edition, COW FINGERS is assuredly stuffed to the maximum with this magnificently twisted gent’s overwrought strangeness. Jay Hawkins is often denigrated by the stingy and the stodgy as an early rock ‘n’ roll novelty act, but actually listening to the guy shows just how much weird depth was in his grasp before the nose-bone shtick totally took over. A man of legitimate operatic talent and aspiration whose booming voice just happened to be perfect for the echo laden production values of R&B-spiked mid-‘50s jukebox junk, Hawkins occasionally approached the booming stately presence of Paul Robeson, one of his early influences. The majority of the time his stuff was infused with a screwball humor that revealed him to be in stylistic cahoots with another neglected ‘50s act, The Coasters. Look down on this stuff if you must, but kids (of all ages) wanted to laugh, y’know? And while he’s no Bo Diddley in the undercover diversity department, those who are only familiar with his still immaculate “I Put a Spell On You” (as grand a testament to the powers of excess booze on the artistic process as has ever been documented) might be surprised by the breadth of what’s here. Tracks like “Little Demon” and “You Ain’t Foolin’ Me” prove that he could really sizzle in an essentially straight up R&B context and his stern goof on Cole Porter’s “I Love Paris” feels like a legit antecedent to the kind of inspired tomfoolery that Biz Markie bestowed upon the early rap scene. Sadly, it’s undeniable that “Hong Kong” is as racist a relic as Mickey Rooney’s unfortunate turn in Blake Edwards’ BREAKFAST AT TIFFANYS; Warren Smith’s “Ubangi Stomp” simply pales in comparison. But hey, those were less enlightened times. The naked truth is that tunes like “Yellow Dress” and “There’s Something Wrong With You” have inspired across generational divides and continue to be crucial to this day. Just ask Poison Ivy of the Cramps or (of course) Jim Jarmusch. Hell, I bet a couple of relative new-jacks like King Khan and Mark Sultan would tell you the same. The essence of this stuff simply won’t die.

Nothing contempo is kicking my ass quite like Angles’ EPILEPTICAL WEST- LIVE IN COIMBRA CD from the excellent Clean Feed label. I’d stupidly overlooked the debut of this Scandinavian jazz sextet, 2008’s EVERY WOMAN IS A TREE, but I’ll be remedying that slight on my next Emusic roundup. Their first release was dedicated to the women of Iraq, and that boldly humanist statement sheds much light on the incendiary mixture of music and message leader Martin Küchen is compelled to blast into the stratosphere. This sophomore effort finds an excellent improvising collective successfully navigating a longstanding tradition of political music; specifically, they stick relatively close to a generally accessible center in an obvious attempt to relate to a potentially larger audience. Frankly, for most this is a hazardous trap. While Phil Ochs or Archie Shepp shrewdly married art and ideology, thousands of well intentioned individuals and groups weren’t so lucky. This was the heart of John Fahey’s beef with Pete Seeger, and I know many who don’t really cotton to Dylan until after he went electric and started getting lyrically obscure. As an erudite gent one told me, the poster remains the best avenue for political discourse. Yeah, certainly, but occasionally some person(s) slip(s) in a righteous haymaker. And this release by Angles is one of those, largely because it’s political without being polemical or rife with sung/shouted slogans (which only ever really works in hard folk or punk rock contexts). This is instrumental music, conceived with conviction but simultaneously existing simply as inspired sound. When you hear the sheer power of the playing and then marry it to Küchen and company’s civic minded sensibility, never is there a worry over the potential obnoxiousness (the bluntness, the naivety) of words sullying the atmosphere. So, enough about this aspect of Angles, and onward into the sonic sweet spot at which they so expertly excel. To be blunt, this is some fine jazz. While it’s surely a product of the avant/free continuum, please keep in mind what I typed above about accessibility. Much like some of the more recent efforts to feature the fingers of bassist extraordinaire William Parker, the focus is stridently on hitting a perfect balance of heaviness, abstraction and brutal, beautiful groove/swing. A striking group made up of bass, drums, three horns (trumpet, trombone, and alto) and vibes, Angles marry rhythm to throat/wind dexterity to produce an often joyous equality, so you really shouldn’t be a bit surprised when I impart how the heft of this stuff isn’t incongruous with dancing. And I’m talking the swaying, get lose and loose yrself type of physical celebration. Also in evidence is a generous helping of the sharp, tough gnaw that the post ‘60s free Euros basically perfected, sustained tightness that I can’t help but equate with the more outré wing of the pre-boogaloo/fusion Blue Note stable, and a wonderful indebtedness to the grandeur of rhythmic Africa that wraps back around to the classic Euro-free jazz blast via Peter Brötzmann Group’s FUCK DE BOERE: DEDICATED TO JOHNNY DYANI, a three-way combination that forms a concentric path of undiluted brilliance. Mattias Ståhl’s vibes really stick out in this fantastic equation. There hasn’t been much (or enough, I guess) serious progressive action on the mallets post Bobby Hutcherson and Karl Berger. Ståhl’s work is somewhat comparable to Hutcherson in its lack of virtuosic busyness. He doesn’t want to show, he just wants to tell. Magnus Broo’s trumpet is as strong as when I saw him live with Brötzmann’s Chicago Tentet, and Küchen’s sax integrates hints of Dolphy and Ayler with the sort of well-conceived “inside” attack that I associate with great names like Cannonball Adderley and Joe Henderson. Mats Äleklint's trombone is fluid and huge. Along with holding down the bottom, bassist Johan Berthling can play arco like nobody’s business, and Kjell Nordeson’s drums smartly gravitate toward a mixture of force and restraint. These six are firing on full creative cylinders, and it feels like they’re just getting warmed up. What Angles ultimately produce is roughly approximate to the grandeur of Brotherhood of Breath, and this’ll be one of the year’s best, for sure. If you have any interest in the current state of improvisation, you should definitely snap it up.

Speaking of hot new ones, Sharon Van Etten’s second record EPIC finds her smartly developing her already potent sound into welcome new directions. There is a great picture of her currently making the internet rounds that finds her just candidly sitting at some modest table in a thick dark bathrobe while smoking a cigarette, and the no-bullshit honesty of that snap really gets to the heart of what makes her music so refreshingly special. I’ve reported before in this very place how Van Etten’s debut BECAUSE I WAS IN LOVE is an amazing dose of lonely late night folk. I think that record has the legs to last for decades, but it was also in a style that doesn’t lend itself to sustainability. EPIC finds her branching into the daylight without sacrificing any of the stuff that made her so initially intriguing. It’s always hard to not play the name-check the influence game, and in this case, when the references are as top-notch as Cat Power, Jeff/Tim Buckley and the Cali-nexus of Hope Sandoval and Kendra Smith, there is no use in not mentioning them. The seven tracks offered on this long EP haven’t abandoned the enthrallingly achy quality that made her work such an attention getter. Instead, she smartly shifted that bruised feel into a less overtly autobiographical context, and I for one feel that’s a sound decision. It’s far less a matter of her getting more “pro” and much more a development of sensible maturity. EPIC is a major step for an artist that could move into any number of solid directions. Based on the full band arrangements presented here, she seems well suited for collaboration, for instance. And her harmonium playing is a joy. I recommend both of her records to anyone that digs the ‘60s femme folkies (either American or Brit), the vital solo work of Skip Spence or Nick Drake and any of the above mentioned reference points. Play this in between SHE HANGS BRIGHTLY and THE GUILD OF TEMPORAL ADVENTURES and I think you’ll find it’s quite up to snuff. Sharon Van Etten is one of the small handfuls of current musicians that appear refreshingly unsaddled by the burden of career building maneuvers. If her new label Ba Da Bing could somehow arrange a three way tour with Beirut and Dead C I’d be there faster than you could say “I’ll chip in on gas”. This is very happening stuff. Jump on it now or play ketchup.

photo by Kristianna Smith

These books, they mean quite a lot to me.

And of course the list is far from complete. No Coover, no Hawkes, no Moody, no Woolf, no Ishmael Reed, no Stein, no Vollman, no F. Scott, no Delillo, no Jones/Baraka, no Hawthorne. That's just for starters. Plus, I left out those tomes that present a beautiful unwieldiness which push them toward being perpetually unfinished: Proust, Jan Potocki, Robert Burton (though unlike everything else below, THE ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY ain't fiction). And where's Borges? You get the point. But one thrilling aspect of literature is how great books are never really finished anyway, since their greatness always encourages the desire to start again for a deeper understanding and appreciation. So that being the case, this list will remain unfinished as well.

1- William Gaddis THE RECOGNITIONS- a novel that examines human kind's propensity/need for fakery. It's sprawling, dense, frustrating, exhilarating and painfully, wonderfully human. And also very funny.

2-     Thomas Pynchon GRAVITY'S RAINBOW- epic and surreal, with uncompromising flowing language, outlandish characters, and talking dogs. Labyrinthine and acidic, weird and dark. What might seem like an elephantine mix of indulgence and lack of discipline is really just the blunt reality that the author’s smarter than you. Smarter than me, too. My advice? Just lay back and soak it all up. I’m trying to decide what sounds better: comically bleak or bleakly comic

3-     James Joyce ULYSSES- the heavyweight champion of modernism; once the code is broken, his characters and situations are drenched in truth and beauty. As rewarding as it is complex.

4-     William Faulkner AS I LAY DYING- much like Joyce,
he's unconcerned with making it easy (though this one is easier to swallow than THE SOUND AND THE FURY, which I also adore), and his situations can build to gut-wrenching levels, but that's part of what makes it so powerful and lasting, along with his lack of sentimentality and the prickly dimension that he brings to his characters and subjects.

5- Herman Melville MOBY DICK- really the beginning of modernism in America. It has a very agreeable poetic sensibility that is actually far more at home in the middle of the 20th century than at the time of its writing, and Herm is as relevant now (as is Nat Hawthorne, for that matter) as he’s ever been. To love Melville is to love language.

6-     Flannery O'Conner WISE BLOOD- what a freak-show. Southern Gothic on bad acid. Oh, the strychnine. Some of the most compelling bleakness I've read. There exists a very credible film version of this work, but if you haven’t seen it, please do yrself a favor and read the book first. The difference in quality is palpable.                                                                                                                                        

7- William H. Gass THE TUNNEL- sometimes I'm a bit hesitant to tell people that I'm drawn to novels where the characters are so bitter, dysfunctional and steeped in failure, not so much out of any concern for what folks will think of me personally, but simply because it potentially amplifies the inadequacy of the phrase “reading for enjoyment”. You mean you actually like reading a 600+ page doorstop with a main character that’s a gargantuan asshole? Yep, you betcha! This has one of the most unlikable protagonists of any book I've read, but it also presents this character trying to write his way to terms with all his pain (and the pain he's caused others) in a manner that's quite riveting. Oh, that manner: the language!!!

8-     William Gaddis JR- a lengthy expertly rendered critique of capitalism that is maddening, a little bit frightening, and often very humorous. That humor is really the key to Gaddis’ authorial presence, I think, since this book, his second, is markedly different from THE RECOGNITIONS. His first is a huge mixture of classic and modernist influence stuffed to the gills and ready to explode all over yr desk and reading room and consciousness. JR is far more obsessed with an intertwining sprawl of narrative and dialogue. An acquaintance once complained to me that Gaddis’ characters had diarrhea of the mouth, that they rarely listened to each other and that their words didn’t feel “real”. My compound retort was a) I don’t read for “real” and b) regarding the ratio of talking to listening, have you been to a bar lately? When Gaddis’ characters get a few drinks in them they often start spilling out gorgeous verbiage in a way that’s all too familiar to yrs truly. I first read this roughly six years ago and I couldn't believe how contemporary it felt.

9-     James Joyce PORTRAIT OF THE ARTIST AS A YOUNG MAN- Everything I've read by Joyce has left a big impression. Stephen Dedalus is one of the earliest and greatest examples of the downtrodden hero, a phenomenon that became quite common in fiction, some would say too much so, later in the century. Lots of folks dig Holden Caulfield, and yeah I dig him too, but ol’ Stephen Hero appealed to me more as a young man (ahem) due to his old nature, shouldering the weight of history and art with solemnity, profundity and a lack of pretense. Caulfield is surely cool, but Dedalus is complicated and fascinating.

10- Jack Kerouac BIG SUR- can be a big drag for those who are deeply attached to the transcendental gusto of the early novels. This is a book for more mature sensibilities, for people who are familiar with disappointment and disillusionment. He was drinking himself to death while writing this one. I’m tempted to sandwich this baby into a massive re-read with Malcolm Lowry’s UNDER THE VOLCANO and the works of Fred Exley, but Christmas is coming and I’m worried I might succumb to the titanic despondency and suffer a self-inflicted wound to the brainpan. Oh, I jest. Maybe. The power of literature is strong. Whoever finds my decomposing carcass has to take care of my cat, okay?

11- Herman Melville PIERRE, OR THE AMBIGUITIES- a dismal commercial failure while being an estimable and complex artistic endeavor, it's a sustained rumination on folly (both social and artistic) and the problems that arise from human interaction and desire. Ambiguity is constant in Melville's mature work, and this thorny masterpiece is the best example of the author’s need for unresolved situations and unanswered questions.

12- Mark Twain THE ADVENTURES OF HUCKLEBERRY FINN- maybe the best story (if not the best writing, though it should go without saying that his words are also great) in all American fiction.

13- John Barth LOST IN THE FUNHOUSE- short works by one the great postmodernists. The title story is an exquisite commentary on self-doubt and the strain of artistic aspiration (and the dread of failure that often accompanies it). Everything here possesses an estimable knowledge of literature and how to carry its themes into a contemporary framework. Old and new at the same time.

14- William H. Gass OMENSETTER'S LUCK- his first novel. Comes off a bit like Faulkner if he were a part of the post-WWII post-grad scene. When taken in unison with the short story collection IN THE HEART OF THE HEART OF THE COUNTRY and the slim and still brilliant mash-up of structure and visuals and of course (always) language that is WILLIE MASTERS' LONESOME WIFE, it’s damned startling just how explosive this now esteemed man of letters was out of the starting gate. Maybe the most neglected American fictioneer of the second half of the last century. And he’s still going strong.

15- James Joyce DUBLINERS- there have been thousands of short story collections since this pup was published and very few before. But the worth of these stories is far greater than just that of originality and influence; it's also the depth of feeling and the scope of human emotion that's contained within.

16-  Stanley Elkin THE MAGIC KINGDOM- about a busload of terminally ill kids who are taken on a trip to Disneyworld. And it's hilarious. Elkin is the combination of two wonderful things: a Jewish wise-ass and comma addiction.

17-  William S. Burroughs THE NAKED LUNCH- it's been over ten years since I've read this, so it makes the list due to the sheer impact that it had on my developing mind. A book that encompasses sci-fi, experimental lit, beat sensibilities, weird smut, and a thick dose of 20th century pessimism. It only takes a hard cold look at the present tense to understand that Burroughs was far less paranoid than his detractors often claimed and far more prescient than even his biggest boosters thought.

18- Henry James RODERICK HUDSON- I have some major gaps in my knowledge of James, but this is my favorite out of what I've read. The short novel's title character is a sculptor who becomes consumed by an unhealthy attraction to a young princess. But what it's really about, for me, is James' beautiful sentences. He comes up with page after page of words that positively beg to be read aloud. I've discussed James with people who totally dismiss him because he writes slow novels about rich people, but I can't get with that dismissal at all. In my estimation, it's not about what it's about (though this can surely add to the experience). It's about how it's written, how it sounds coming of the (mind’s) tongue.

19-  David Foster Wallace THE BROOM OF THE SYSTEM- out of everything listed here, this book has the most to say to me from a purely generational standpoint. It's a bit like early Pynchon, steeped in post-modern influence and absurd situations that place it in direct opposition to the brigade of realist fiction. Wallace's stuff has a looseness (a punk sensibility, perhaps) that differentiates it from his pomo antecedents: where those books positively, proudly drip with higher-learning, Wallace comes off like a disheveled spiky-haired smart-ass who can (and will) ace the test without even trying, so he just shrugs it off as no big deal. All the while, he's laying dangerous land-mines in his pages that seem to spell certain disaster, only to ultimately prove an essential ingredient in the fabric of the (master)work.

20- William Gaddis A FROLIC OF HIS OWN- Kerouac compared Burroughs to Swift, and yeah, I can see it, DO see it in fact, but the most Swiftian writer (besides Swift) that I (and maybe Sven Birkerts) can think of is Mr. Gaddis. As formidable as his prose can be purely from a standpoint of language construction (and this uncompromising style is what gets him described as simply a difficult writer by hit-and-run magazine blurbists), the emotional heft of his work is caustic satire, and the guy is absolute bulls-eye.

The Auteur Files #7: Arthur Penn's NIGHT MOVES (1975)

Arthur Penn died on Sept. 28th, and the fact that I'd not seen NIGHT MOVES or THE MISSOURI BREAKS, both key late works in the filmography of this valuable American filmmaker, felt rather neglectful on my part. So here's the first installment in my attempt to rectify that state of affairs. RIP, man. The beauty of yr artistry will be long missed.

Any chance that NIGHT MOVES had to slowly ooze its way into the film-going consciousness of 1975 and to ultimately metamorphosize into one of that decade’s many “sleeper” hits was soundly destroyed by the runaway success of JAWS, released a week later with a then novel concept: network TV commercial promotion that necessitated concurrent openings nationwide. In the era before the multiplex, when many towns had only one or two theatres with a screen each, you can be certain that substance was squashed by hype. In fact, JAWS joins together with STAR WARS and ROCKY to from a trinity of hype, a triangle of normalcy that essentially derailed the progress made toward a wide-ranging, adult cinema in the years following the end of the Production Code. Of course, freedom often meant undisciplined folly, but NIGHT MOVES was just the opposite, unfolding as an intelligent, mature, and graceful work that subtly plants its seeds of discontent. Arthur Penn’s film stands up to present-day scrutiny with flying colors, and on the basis of one viewing I feel unusually confident in calling it one of the best U.S. movies of its decade and a key “forgotten” film.

From within the well-worn territory of the detective/noir genre, Penn presents a group of characters that flitter between colorful and plain. Gene Hackman’s Harry Moseby is closest to an archetypal standard, inhabiting a role that’s not far from the land of low-rent private-eyes. Decency and vulnerability complicate and deepen this portrayal however, and one of the many joys of this film is that none of its characters register as a cliché.

In addition, Neo-noir often flounders or fails outright when it feels superior to its reference material (something it shares with Neo-westerns) so it comes as a breath of fresh air that NIGHT MOVES never falls into a condescending tone. Instead, Penn and writer Alan Sharpe have seen fit to simply update the malaise and despair of the noir model so that it fits snuggly into the creeping desolation of the mid-1970s with no straining for relevance or bouts of overzealous existential alienation. This works well with the movie’s visual style. Penn’s approach to cinematic form is quiet but strong, and unlike many films from the same era, MOVES never looks fussy, junky, gaudy or washed-out. As content and form expertly intertwine, the story gradually builds in complexity and tension, ultimately culminating in one of the more unexpected and emotionally devastating endings to have entered my filmic experience. Its final shot depicts an aimlessness that is representative of its time, yet still holds resonance and power, since aimlessness can surely curdle into something far more malignant.  Maybe it has.

Penn with Melanie Griffith on the NIGHT MOVES set