Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 01/13/24

A blog formerly known as Bookishness / By Charles Matthews

"Dazzled by so many and such marvelous inventions, the people of Macondo ... became indignant over the living images that the prosperous merchant Bruno Crespi projected in the theater with the lion-head ticket windows, for a character who had died and was buried in one film and for whose misfortune tears had been shed would reappear alive and transformed into an Arab in the next one. The audience, who had paid two cents apiece to share the difficulties of the actors, would not tolerate that outlandish fraud and they broke up the seats. The mayor, at the urging of Bruno Crespi, explained in a proclamation that the cinema was a machine of illusions that did not merit the emotional outbursts of the audience. With that discouraging explanation many ... decided not to return to the movies, considering that they already had too many troubles of their own to weep over the acted-out misfortunes of imaginary beings."
--Gabriel García Márquez, One Hundred Years of Solitude

Saturday, January 13, 2024

How to Get Ahead in Advertising (Bruce Robinson, 1989)

Richard E. Grant in How to Get Ahead in Advertising

Cast: Richard E. Grant, Rachel Ward, Richard Wilson, Jacqueline Tong, John Shrapnel, Susan Wooldridge. Screenplay: Bruce Robinson. Cinematography: Peter Hannan. Production design: Michael Pickwoad. Film editing: Alan Strachan. Music: David Dundas, Rick Wentworth.

The satire in How to Get Ahead in Advertising is as obvious as the pun in its title. Denis Bagley (Richard E. Grant), a Type A advertising executive, has a breakdown under the stress of coming up with a campaign for an acne medicine. He suddenly realizes the venality of his profession: trying to sell things to people that they don't need and which probably don't work. He quits his job and in a fit of manic behavior almost destroys his house. What's more, he develops a boil on his neck, and in a few days the boil comes to a head -- quite literally -- and begins to talk to him, muttering the advertising slogans and clichés he is determined to put behind him. His distressed wife, Julia (Rachel Ward), tries to help him and sends him to a psychiatrist (John Shrapnel), but things only get worse when a medical accident turns the second head into the primary one. Borrowing from "body horror" movies, Bruce Robinson's screenplay sets up a promising situation, but doesn't have a way of resolving it successfully. Only Grant's terrifically frantic performance, as both Denis and his pustular alter ego, keeps the film going, but the hilarity feels a bit strained toward the end.