The World Socialist Website is Trotskyite. I started my own "review" of this movie with an anecdote about a woman who hoped her novel would be her ticket out of poverty. I didn't mention that she was in the Communist Party, USA. That must have been forty years ago.
American Movie was a little like Of Mice and Men or Midnight Cowboy, about two friends in financial straits who have (almost, sort of) no one but each other, but are of no help at all to anyone. Borchardt was clutching at straws. I've gone through the same thing and know others who have, with no trade and no education, trying to find a way out, trying to be writers rather than filmmakers. It hasn't worked for anyone I've ever known. It did work for Borchardt, surprisingly enough. It was because of Chris Smith's documentary, not his own movie, but that counts, too.
Borchardt made his film in 16mm before digital video took over. He wanted to sell 3,000 copies. I read at the time that he sold fewer than a hundred until the documentary came out, then he sold over 4,000.
Some think digital video has made things worse, that the world is awash in zero budget movies, but Borchardt's initial experience trying to sell "Coven" seems to disprove that theory.
If he shot on video, selling 100 copies might have been enough to turn a profit.
Questions about Chris Smith's American Movie
...We are faced at once with genuine human hope and with a degrading coping mechanism; with a pressing and continued consideration of matters of social justice, and with the renewed legitimization of the grotesque inequalities of capitalism. Borchardt provides a poignant reminder of the absurd and nevertheless real power of the American dream.
...
Mark's brother states in a resentful tone that Borchardt really ought to abandon his illusions and work in the local factory. This is the other side of Borchardt's American dream. The fuel of Borchardt's artistic drive is not simply ambition, but fear that he may never get out of his present condition. Borchardt's early remark that “The American Dream stays with me each and every day” assumes its more properly dark tones once we plunge more deeply into his existence. His condition is tolerable to him only to the extent that becoming a rich filmmaker remains even a remote possibility. Borchardt bitterly complains about having to clean filthy bathrooms at the cemetery. He repeatedly forces himself to confront his personal condition, “Is that what you want to do with your life—suck down peppermint schnapps?” But this merely serves to fan the flames of the unlikely dream that sustains him.
As the Green Bay Packers are shown winning the 1997 Superbowl on the TV screen of his parents' small and messy living room, a mildly intoxicated Borchardt storms out of the house ranting against the “motherf___ing factory workers.” “Never” he exclaims with a raised fist (!) as he vows not to remain trapped in the conditions of working class life. These kinds of contradictions emerge with occasional vividness in Smith's documentary. Amidst the cheap laughs and trivial moments, Smith's work reveals flashes of the tragedy of a man trapped not just in the harsh reality of his social condition, but, more importantly, in its ideological negation.
Read the whole thing here.
No comments:
Post a Comment