williamdlangton

I am completely mystified by all the superlative reviews of this unremittingly dull and poorly acted film. Maybe my expectations were too high due to my regard for Philip Roth, but it's almost shocking how bad this is, with a predictable Rothian story about a Jewish outsider in a WASP-infested college, unexplained gaps in the logical flow (?), stereotypical characters (with the bizarre exception of the "blowjob queen" Olivia, played by a fine actress who does her best with what she is given), stilted dialog and flat performance by the protagonist who comes nowhere near to Richard Benjamin's portrayal of Portnoy. It's a pale redo of familiar material that adds nothing to Philip Roth's legacy.

This is the kind of Art-house flick that people will tell you is a masterpiece even though they don't actually understand it. I don't think there's really anything there to understand and even Olmi himself didn't know what the film was about.

The only other Olmi film I've seen was "The Tree of Wooden Clogs," which seemed to me rather predictable but worth watching for the period and setting and also for the political and social insight into feudal class arrangements. I enjoy the spectacle of period pieces, but this film doesn't bother with that kind of realism. It's more of a long drawn-out fantasy nightmare with maybe some of the same elements of class distinctions transposed into the modern world. There's a thin storyline about the young protagonist who participates in a training program to become a servant at a grotesque banquet celebrating the glory of some monstrous old lady. He has flashback memories from childhood about some sort of religious imagery that seems related to present events, but all that was lost on me.

This movie is intriguing at first but then it drags on and on and never arrives at a coherent story, which becomes very aggravating about half-way through. In the end it all seems rather dated and facile and not very interesting. It's supposed to mean something deep and hidden-meaningful about society (or whatever) but it's not clear at all and by the end I was so bored I didn't care any more and was just glad it was over.

This is a propaganda movie, pure and simple, intended to address the resistance of the British populace to the presence of over a million American soldiers on British soil in preparation for Operation Overlord, the long-awaited allied invasion of Nazi-dominated Europe. Every single scene and shot in this movie and every line of dialog is tailored to the purpose of persuading the target audience, the ruffled British citizenry, to go happily to war in defense of glorious British traditions and to accept the dirty and uncultured American soldiers (from places like Brooklyn and Oregon) as jolly-good comrades in arms. It couldn't be more blatant or obvious, and the movie is of interest only as a textbook example of British propaganda. Otherwise, it's complete drivel.

I enjoyed it enormously.