Tuesday, August 21, 2012

Western #8 - McCabe and Mrs. Miller (1971)

I could live a thousand years and still not understand the 70's fascination with filming everything in real time. It baffles me. What do we gain by watching that man walk from is car through the street and into the building. Nothing. We gain nothing. We don't learn anything about him or his quest or his character. It doesn't help the movie at all, ever. Not even in 2001: A Space Odyssey. I will stand by that opinion. That movie is too long. 

But it's all over the seventies. All over it, I say. Who started this? Was it Andy Warhol? It was, wasn't it? Why were people okay with this? Why are they still okay with it? People all over the Internet talk about these movies and they say "Oh, he's such an unusual and exciting character," and "Oh, it subverts typical Western tropes," and here I am and I can sort of remember that happening in the movie, but I didn't connect with it emotionally at all. I don't see how people do at all.

I say that the seventies aren't exactly a golden age of cinema. If someone wants you to watch s movie made in the seventies and it isn't Star Wars, say no. You won't regret it, honestly.

The point is, McCabe and Mrs. Miller is about a crook and a madam who start a brothel and then...Die? I don't know. It sounds exciting, or at least interesting, but it's not. It's a long, slow, boring look at northern California, and this same 70's folk song plays through literally through the whole movie. It's awful.

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