July 28, 2009
"the dreamers" is classic new-wave director bernardo bertolucci's smashing hit in 2004 to anchor a tribute to the ultimate flaming passion of cinema and, of course, its dreamers that could include anyone of us who dedicate ourselves in flixster for sure. but the audience has to a...( read more)sk himself one question: have you watched any of those movies referred within this flick as its protagonists mimc in their oblivious existence fabricated by the fragments of the cinema.
a hippie-orientated american student of tumultuous 60s, the cynic period of vietnam war, on his cinematic crusade to paris, then he meets a pair of french twins who are also movie buffs, the edgy IT type with leftist politic tendency, who worship mao's cultural revolutions, deranged with their intense daring trials of sex. so the fresh-faced young american college student falls head overs heels in love with their charismatic allure of avant-gardist thinkings as well as their provocative sensuality when he sees the twins's naked sleeping poise. they dare each other to guess scenes of movies and the loser pays the price of punishments which strays an exhibitionistic masturbation and freewheeling intercourse.
undeniably sex is a massive attraction of this movie like one quote of cinema notebook mentioned within the movie that filmmaking is an art of voyeurism, like peeping your parents have sex thru the key hole, you feel guilty but rapturously aroused, and filmmaker is like a criminal who philander the audience this forbidden desire, audience naturally takes the spot of michael pitt's coy american who covets eva green and louis garrel who shamelessly dangle their lovely youthful fleshes in front of you as if it's nothing big deal, then a phallic dream is granted as pitt's got to make love to eva green and deflower this gorgeous french apphrodite, this crazy but quirky ingenune of guileless seductiveness. which gentleman in the seat wouldn't crave for that, huh? but the sex is nothing gratuitous, it torches the supremacy of lustrous passion and tender affections, especially the scene when pitt and green embraces harshly after lovemaking, and the girl's face is smeared with tears and her own virginal blood at first time. (quite touching, indeed.) the sex looks nothing dirty but innocent like kids who toy with their newly experimented genitals.
the most interesting parts would be michael pitt's philosophical dialogues with louis garrel, the angry youth who resents his highly proper and dignified father, who despises the bourgeois hypocrisy of cold war despite he's a descendant of middle class. they debate over keaton and chaplin, and the awestruck cultural revolution and its fundamental contradictions. you see posters of chairman mao hung in garrel's bedroom and he's reading the little red book so sincerely like it's a sacred bible. garrel takes it so literily that he even goes on street with a bomb to protest against the facsist french police (as he claims) while michael pitt strives to hold their faces for a quick smack of kisses to demonstrate his notion "an orgasm is better than bomb" (this slogan appears in the t shirt pitt wears in the premiere of "dreamers" as well) just like the highly welcomed hippie's idea of "free love" in 70s america: if we make love to each other instead of using our fists, the world would be in peace forever. i suppose frenches were more militant to resort to communism and sweeping revolutions while americans were more self-indulgent with their naive hedonistic beliefs. whatever happens in the world is all silmultaneous and contagious, china of the orient was going thru cultural revolution with a little mao book while the occidental country like france had various riots to echo that. meanwhile my country, taiwan, was dozing itself with a non-existent fancy pushed by governmental proganda that chiang kai-shek could retrieve mainland china, along with his american conspirators to perform his oriental "mccarthyism", which was just like mao's cultural revolutions, had all costed more real bloodshed than the occidental side of the world.
as roger ebert remarks in his professional review of "the dreamers" that the people who really change the world are not those who watch movies but those who have money and power. "the dreamers" showcased the most fascinationg period of cinematic worship when moviegoers do have a sense of political involvement with the worldwide conditions and project a true absorption of culture to the movies they watch without discriminations like "i cannot accept silents" or "black and white screen is blurry"or "oldies are intimidatingly boring"...it was the time when filmviewing was taken very seriously like the air they inhale and breathe out...but today audience watches movies with an easy expectation to "amuse himself to death" (a pun to the book witten by neil postman), there's nothing too idealstic but simply cheap fun-seeking..i wonder whether i should rejoice over this apathy even i deeply realize that dreamers truly cannot the world. somehow, in the end, does it really matter anymore? youth is a like a budding flower of frivolity and naivete, a fair blossom of dreams and hopes, you're the most beautiful when you smile with hope or frown with purist idealism because it's a utmost expression of your non-speckled humanity.
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