Misfortunes of Imaginary Beings: 09/02/24

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

Monday, September 2, 2024

The People vs. Larry Flynt (Milos Forman, 1996)

Woody Harrelson in The People vs. Larry Flynt

Cast: Woody Harrelson, Courtney Love, Edward Norton, Brett Harrelson, Donna Hanover, James Cromwell, Crispin Glover, Vincent Schiavelli, Miles Chapin, James Carville, Richard Paul, Larry Flynt. Screenplay: Scott Alexander, Larry Karaszewski. Cinematography: Philippe Rousselot. Production design: Patrizia von Brandenstein. Film editing: Christopher Tellefsen. Music: Thomas Newman.

The People vs. Larry Flynt succeeds as a message movie, demonstrating that even the most obnoxious among us -- and Larry Flynt was certainly that -- deserves the protection of the First Amendment. Of course, the movie didn't have to do that for us; the Rehnquist Supreme Court did it, unanimously. (I have to wonder if today's court, with so many justices appointed by a president who railed against the news media as "fake" and referred to the press as enemies of the people, would do likewise.) Where the film falls down is in its efforts to be a biopic as well as a message movie. We get a glimpse of Flynt's backwoods Kentucky boyhood as a bootlegger who tries to keep his father from drinking up the profits, and we see how Flynt moved from strip club owner to magazine publisher, but none of this sheds enough light on how the flamboyantly defiant personality came together. Too much time is spent on Flynt's short-lived conversion to religion under the guidance of Jimmy Carter's sister, Ruth Stapleton (Donna Hanover), without tying it either to his past or to his emergence as a champion of free speech. But the portrayal of Flynt's relationship with Althea Leasure (entertainingly played by Courtney Love) does give us an insight into his mixture of rebellion and convention, as the two decidedly promiscuous people decide to get married. Nothing but love, it seems, can tame the beast. Certainly not the law. Woody Harrelson gets a chance to go over the top in the courtroom scenes, and he takes it wonderfully. Edward Norton is good, too, as Alan Isaacman, the Harvard-trained lawyer who has to put up with this yahoo. The People vs. Larry Flynt might have held together better if Flynt's story had been told from Isaacman's point of view instead of the somewhat glossy, somewhat reticent, somewhat too admiring account the screenplay gives us.