The Second Coming of Suzanne

This movie is hardly ever brought up, but when it is I feel the need to fervently defend it. But that is not an easy thing to do when faced with the reality of quality of the film. I have no problems with slow films, in fact I love films that are delibrately difficult and slow paced, I consider it athlectic movie-going to watch things like Syberberg's "Hitler", or things like "Out 1" "Berlin Alexanderplatz", or movies of conventional length but maddingly slow like "The Disappearance" or the films of Bresson or Terrance Malick. This film is slow, and I can't take any points off for that, but at times it does feel like there is no purpose to the pacing. The most used word to describe the film is pretentious. There is not doubt the film "flirts" with pretension, but I feel there is validity to the idea, the plot and the story, but I can understand why people might be turned off by it. It is frivolous in its poetics, and if you are a person concerned with the immediate or the political, you'll probably hate this movie, but if you like loose or experimental narrative and ambiguity of motive this film will appeal to you. Two things the film has going for it is one; the acting. It's uniformly strong, and Richard Dreyfuss is in it more than most people will tell you, but he isn't the start as the box art would lead you to believe. And two; the use of music. Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne" is use to great effect in the film, and in a way that is the truest visual representation of the meaning of that song. But above all the greatest thing about the film is the concept it plays with. A man obsessed about making a film about the second coming of Jesus, but as a woman. it is fascinating to watch this unfold, but I do have to adimit the pay off is disappointing. In the hands of someone like Nicholas Roeg, Bunuel, Bresson, or Malick this might have been one of the greatest films of all time. As it is now it's an interesting film, and an infuriating viewing because your left wondering what could have been.

Richard Dreyfuss is, indeed, in this flick, but in a rather small part. He is NOT the "obsessed" filmmaker - he's the group's business manager/accountant. Even the box describes the film inaccurately. There are no erotic scenes with Sondra Locke, as advertised, unless one uses the term "erotic" quite loosely. I would not have considered viewing the film without Richard Dreyfuss being in it as a major character. I might have, however, had I realized that the famous 60's anthem, Leonard Cohen's "Suzanne," was an artistic influence. Other than the brief recitation of lines from the end of James Joyce's "Ulysses", and an interesting visual reference to the end of Ingmar Bergman's "The Seventh Seal," I found it a poor attempt to meld symbolic elements and moods immortalized in films like "Last Year at Marianbad" and "Un Chien Andalou." If you like the idea of the eccentric artistic troupe, there are many superior films, ranging from "Bye, Bye, Brasil" to "Cecil B. Demented."

One of those post-psychedelic burnout non-movies which emerged from the avant-garde independent cinema fringe in the early 70s. The hazy, Gordian narrative concerns three men obsessing over a dove-like and rather pasty-looking Sondra Locke, who has been cast as a female Christ figure for an indie film production. Chockablock with specious arty imagery and pseudo-spirituality, the most troubling thing about this movie is its smug air of self-importance. Truth is, this film is an oblique, audience-divorcing pipe-dream which struts embarrassingly through its duration with impudently splayed tailfeathers. Credit due, it does exhibit some bold editing technique and camerawork, and sets itself afloat with a lovely folk ballad by Leonard Cohen.

Honestly, I have never seen such a wide load of unharnessed grandiosity in all my life. I think it's safe to assume that median viewers will find themselves picking little fuzzballs off their sweaters withing fifteen minutes.

3/10

These quotes are from The Good, The Bad & The Very Ugly; A Hollywood Journey, by Sondra Locke (1997). "The script of his (Barry's) upcoming film had been inspired by Leonard Cohen's haunting song "Suzanne" and was the story of three men- an artist and a director and a newsman- who all love Suzanne and are all changed in some way by her innate goodness and purity. The screenplay was quirky and dreamlike..." (123).

Locke was brave to take part in this abstract vision, and to risk possible injury in the shots captured from a helicopter. She shared her beautiful physical form with the world in two shots with Paul Sand, and these are very special now considering what Locke weathered later on in her personal life.

Instead of simply complaining, do a little research now and then.

Woefully 'ambitious' low-budget sludge concerns a filmmaker and his hippie troupe involved in the production of a new-fangled religious saga, with a woman cast as Christ. Independently-financed drama, a would-be dream-like parable (apparently inspired by Leonard Cohen's song "Suzanne"), is so meager in budget--and so sloppy in execution--that the results are nearly unintelligible. After a promising start in films, Sondra Locke lost her way as an actress before Clint Eastwood rescued her career; this is the worst movie she ever appeared in (ditto Richard Dreyfuss, looking embarrassed in the small role of a production associate). Writer-director Michael Barry openly apes Bergman and Antonioni, but he either needed more finance to expand on his (ahem) poetic leanings to bring this picture off or he simply had to be told "No!" The finale, wrong-headed and ridiculously bizarre, strains for "meaning", while the threadbare budget hampers any chance the actors have of sustaining interest. NO STARS from ****