Maridos

John Cassavetes' 1970 masterpiece "Husbands" is by far one of my favourite films of all time! I'm aware that this film divides a lot of fans of John Cassavetes. Some love it, and some loathe it. And to be honest, I can understand both sides. But I find it extremely dramatic, funny, touching, brutal, and thought provoking. Some have complained that it is too long, misogynistic, contrived, pretentious, and badly acted. You're intitled to your opinion, but I don't share it. John Cassavetes' cinema was never to appeal to mass aproval or for enjoyment. It's meant to slap you in the face silly, wrench emotions out, throw you into uneasy laughter, put you ill at ease with an uncomfortable situation, drag out scenarios pass the point of tediousness, get into your skin, get into your brain, and have you walking out of the theatre feeling like you just got off a rollercoaster. If you haven't felt this by the end, then I'm afraid you should ask your designer to input an emotion chip in the android brain of yours. Lots of film directors make great, fun, entertaining, and dramatic films. But few take on the emotional coach role. Cassavetes has you running around nerve ends exposed, doing laps around your own personal plights, guilts, and loves. Maybe I've painted an over the top description of his films, but when I think back on his films, this is what comes to mind. I have a very hard time criticizing his films, because his films abandon typical cinema interpetation. He does not follow cinema rules, therefore I cannot follow typical rules of criticisim. Cassavetes had inserted a heart into celluloid, that burns before the eyes on the cinema screen. The film "Husbands" begins with three middle age males attending the funeral of a fourth friend. We have John Cassavetes (Gus), Peter Falk (Archie), and Ben Gazzara (Harry) returning to the man-child role, as they escape from middle age suburbia on a European bender. The bender includes scenes of drunkeness, singing, basketball, gambling, picking up girls, picking on people, and often making complete asses of themselves. This film is just too thick on topics to have a simple review give it any justice. But I urge everyone to experience his cinema with an open mind, and commitment. John Cassavetes has given us this commitment in making it. He is truly a genius of independent films, and is obviously (in my book) up there with Orson Wells, Francois Truffaut, and Alfred Hitchcock as one of the greatest directors in cinema history. Be prepared to not like everything you see, because I don't think he wanted you to. He wanted an emotional reaction that sticks on your brain. I've read that he said "We only have 2 hours to change someones life", and for me...he did! May John Cassavetes live on forever! I give this movie a 10!

One of Cassavetes 3 best (along with FACES and A WOMAN UNDER THE INFLUENCE). Middle-class successful husbands turning 40 are frightened after the death of another good buddy. They carouse, drink, swear, pick up women, fly to London, and basically show their camaraderie while inside they're dying a slow death (especially B. Gazzara). All performances are phenomenal, especially Gazzara, and Jenny Runacre in London gives a lovely nuanced characterization as the woman Cass hooks up with for a night of fun.

Cassavetes was one of our best and sorely underappreciated by most Americans. A real crime! It may seem long (especially the bar scene), but he didn't make ENTERTAINMENT as he so often said. He cared about people and relationships and their frustrations and disappointments. Don't miss this one!

A common friend's sudden death brings three men, married with children, to reconsider their lives and ultimately leave together. But mindless enthusiasm for regained freedom will be short-lived.

This film brings together John Cassavetes, Ben Gazzara and Peter Falk as actors on one screen. No other film has this trio, and here we have it in spades. That alone makes the film worth watching, because the way these guys interact is quite fun to watch.

Critic Jay Cocks wrote, "Husbands may be one of the best movies anyone will ever see. It is certainly the best movie anyone will ever live through." He described it as an important and great film, and as Cassavetes' finest work. Roger Ebert, on the other hand, disliked the film greatly (despite being a Cassavetes fan in general) and Pauline Kael described the movie as "infantile and offensive."

I don't enjoy John Cassavetes movies that much, but I've watched quite a few of them because of his importance to the development of independent American cinema and because of their uniqueness. I think "Husbands" will be my last Cassavetes film. I've seen it, "A Woman Under the Influence," "Faces," and "The Killing of a Chinese Bookie," and I feel like I can put him to rest with a thorough knowledge of his style and preoccupations.

What I do like about Cassavetes is that he explored in a way few writers/directors at the time did the complexities of male emotions. His male characters don't fall into easy categories and neither do their interior lives. In what he has his characters say and do, it's like he wanted to present the male id on screen visually, in all its obnoxious glory.

But the flip side is that it makes his characters unpleasant and exhausting to be with. I went out with a bunch of guys for a bachelor party once, and one of them was talking loudly about how ugly and fat a girl was sitting at a nearby table in a bar. He clearly wanted her to hear, and it's like he was performing for the rest of us. The other guys, because they didn't want to be accused of ruining the evening I guess, or because they genuinely found it funny, played along and encouraged him. The whole experience was so uncomfortable and toxic that I left shortly after and didn't go on to do the rest of the things planned for the evening.

Watching "Husbands" is like two hours of that experience. It's watching three guys hang out and desperately try to avoid the emotions stirred up by the recent death of a fourth buddy. This means they fight, get maudlin, get drunk, get abusive, treat women like crap. We don't get to know these guys. We're just dumped into the middle of their circle of friendship and sent off with them into the night to hang out for a couple of hours. I can't relate to Cassavetes movies. I'm the same age as the guys in this movie, maybe even a little older than they're supposed to be, with a wife and kids. I don't understand the contempt and anger they show for the world, for their wives, for each other. They don't live in a world that resembles anything I've directly experienced. And since Cassavetes just observes rather than explains, I don't learn anything about it that might help me understand more. I just get claustrophobic and want to leave the party early. Like every other Cassavetes movie I've seen, this one felt more than anything else like an endurance test.

Grade: B

There's no doubting the film-making innovation of the pioneer of American independent cinema, John Cassavetes. But if any of his films were to be considered a stain on his CV, it would be Husbands. That is only because his filmography is so highly praised, and Husbands divided the critics between those who hailed it as one of the best films ever made, and those who found the whole experience relentlessly depressing and tediously long. I'm somewhere in the middle, finding the film occasionally dipping into awkward, slightly forced improvisations, while offering some quite distressing and powerful insights into men going through a midlife crisis.

After the death of their friend, three middle-aged men - Harry (Ben Gazzara), Gus (Cassavetes) and Archie (Peter Falk) - find it difficult to cope. We follow them over the course of two days, where they drink heavily, play basketball together, and have a boisterous singing contest with friends and family. After returning home from his binge, Harry is thrown out by his wife, and shortly after announces he is flying to London. Seemingly with nothing better to do, Gus and Archie decide to join him, where they indulge is more drinking, gambling, and womanising. Gus finds himself with a much younger woman named Mary (Jenny Runacre), who is wild and unpredictable.

In the same vein as Faces (1968), Cassavetes adopts a cinema verite style, while taking the story and characters to almost hyper-reality. This is not quite the world we live in, only it feels like it. It's a more extreme world, where everything is just a little bit more depressing and the inhabitants are always loathsome in one way or another. It's as if Cassavetes wants us to take a real look at ourselves, whoever we are, and be repulsed. Harry, Gus and Archie are despicable, taking no second thoughts when committing adultery, and ultimately being loud, angry and disgusting when in the presence of others. They are also empty, devoid of any real emotion, only finding any real solitude in each other's company.

Judging from the title, Cassavetes uses the film to summarise a broad idea as to why men must go through this at some point in their life. The trio are little more than wild children, only with sexual experience, and the camera, as usual, is close, capturing the slightest facial movement, almost to the point of infringement. It's a depressing, brutal experience, where scenes go on for much longer than they should, making us want to get away from these characters. But maybe that's the point, and Cassavetes takes it to the extreme to push his point across. The final scene is certainly worth the wait however, managing to depict a character in one simple close-up as both tragic and pathetic.

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