"I'm gonna go mad!" (x2)
***John Cassavetes smoker laugh***
This movie is dense and a lot of what it has to says is no laughing matter. Despite it being a comedy about "life, death, and freedom" as the tagline suggests, this is your typical Cassavetes vehicle with incredibly dark undertones as the masculinity of the 70's and that Cassavetes himself exuded in the 60's, is challenged with a triple threat of baring performances from the very, very unlikable leads. While extremely easy to write off as glorifying such behavior due to the extreme extended nature of each scene, as in most Cassavetes films after Faces, one should know going in that Cassavetes is deserving of much more credit than that. The extension of each scene past a logical conclusion creates a gorgeous and frustrating portrait of what these three men's friendship with each other does to them, their families, the people they meet, and nearly everything else they do. This is evidenced further by the fact that we're never without at least one of the three for the near 2 and a half hour runtime. As frustrating as it is to watch these characters self-destruct and equate themselves to such pathetic lows, it is undeniably powerful to see such vulnerability in actors like Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara who channeled such unique humanity in each of their performances, that you can't fully hate them because of how utterly real the characters become, thanks to the respect of his actors that Cassavetes so clearly and deeply has. (Or you totally could hate them, these guys are real disagreeable)
This movie is dense and a lot of what it has to says is no laughing matter. Despite it being a comedy about "life, death, and freedom" as the tagline suggests, this is your typical Cassavetes vehicle with incredibly dark undertones as the masculinity of the 70's and that Cassavetes himself exuded in the 60's, is challenged with a triple threat of baring performances from the very, very unlikable leads. While extremely easy to write off as glorifying such behavior due to the extreme extended nature of each scene, as in most Cassavetes films after Faces, one should know going in that Cassavetes is deserving of much more credit than that. The extension of each scene past a logical conclusion creates a gorgeous and frustrating portrait of what these three men's friendship with each other does to them, their families, the people they meet, and nearly everything else they do. This is evidenced further by the fact that we're never without at least one of the three for the near 2 and a half hour runtime. As frustrating as it is to watch these characters self-destruct and equate themselves to such pathetic lows, it is undeniably powerful to see such vulnerability in actors like Cassavetes, Falk, and Gazzara who channeled such unique humanity in each of their performances, that you can't fully hate them because of how utterly real the characters become, thanks to the respect of his actors that Cassavetes so clearly and deeply has. (Or you totally could hate them, these guys are real disagreeable)