José Raymundo Corona vs. Jassiel Amador & Jesús Cristian Orozco vs. Miguel Ángel González Díaz RBR

Got done with Faces about a half an hour ago, and I'm half hour into Husbands. Faces was improvisational, raw, gritty and bleak as ****, but relentlessly fascinating. Seeing a young Seymour Cassel was incredibly off-putting, since he looked like an old man trapped in a young man's body, almost like he had low key progeria.

Husbands I'm digging the hell out of, it's like a much better and more well acted version of The Hangover.

 

This is my review from the Lounge of Opening Night.

Opening Night (1977), I've been putting off watching this film for almost a half a decade, not because I didn't want to watch it, but because I was afraid it wouldn't match the incredibly lofty expectations I'd set for it in my mind, after being utterly blown away by A Woman Under The Influence. Which was the husband and wife duo of John Cassavetes and Gena Rowlands previous collaboration. Words cannot properly express just how brilliant Rowlands performance was in that film, about an addict in the throes of a full blown nervous breakdown, while it may sound likes I'm being hyperbolic, I'm not. It may well be the greatest performance ever given by an American actress, and top 10 ATG in general. So that's quite the high bar to set for their next collab. While I'd made a few attempts, and jumped around through Opening Night in the past, and could see how promising it was and how great she was in it, I was still super apprehensive to take the plunge. But last night, I finally bit the bullet and watched it, and wow.... not only did it meet my extraordinarily high expectations, but exceeded them. Which is not an easy feat when following up a masterwork like A Woman Under The Influence. But not only did it reach that high bar, it managed to surpass it, because I can say without a doubt, that of the two, I ended up liking Opening Night more. While Rowlands performances in both are exceptional, and she comes close, she didn't quite top her turn in A Woman here. However, as the director John Cassavetes very much did, because while this film is a tough watch and incredibly harrowing at times, it's still more in my wheelhouse and overall a more enjoyable experience. Apparently at the time, critics mostly ignored this film, because either it went over their heads or they didn't think it was a worthy successor, but over time, it's grown massively in the estimation of the critics and viewers alike, developing a cult following.

Plot wise, it's pretty barebones. It's about a film and stage actress named Myrtle Gordon, who takes a role in a play called The Second Woman. But coming out of their first rehearsal, she encounters an obsessed and very emotionally fragile female fan, who subsequently chases Myrtle's car, and gets sideswiped by an oncoming car and dies. Which sends Myrtle into something of a midlife crisis induced meltdown, which eventually leads to a full-scale mental breakdown, which includes her hallucinating and seeing the dead girl's ghost. All of this is incredibly frustrating to her fellow cast and crew, because while it's apparent that something is going awry with her, she's almost incapable of articulating it, and most of them don't have the proper tools to help her regain her footing and save her from her downward spiral. All they can do is stand aside and witness her slowly falling apart, which of course will upend the production. So they're caught in the middle, they want to fire her, but she's a huge star with top billing. So during the rehearsals, they just grit their teeth and gut it out, hoping something along the way will click and she'll get better. There's her slimy charismatic director Manny Victor exquisitely played by the always slimy and charismatic Ben Gazzara, who she's had a relationship with in the past. There's Maurice Aarons played by Cassavetes, who's the lead actor, who also seems to have been in a relationship with her, who she shares a bit of a professional rivalry with. There's the gruff broad writer of the play Sarah Goode, played by a still radiant Joan Blondell, one of the icons of Pre-Code films in the early days of Hollywood's Golden Age. Paul Stewart plays one of the producers named David Samuels, while Zohra Lampert makes one hell of an impact as Manny's wife Dorothy, in a brilliant damned near film stealing scene in their bedroom. Even Lady Rowlands and Katherine Cassavetes the mothers of Gena and John, put in appearances as a spiritualist and a psychic.

So while the plot is nothing to write home about, of course the real power of the film is the psychological deepdive that it gives us of Rowlands deeply troubled character. Which is as unsettling and gut wrenching as it gets, but it's also a probing genuinely feminist examination of how fragile the female persona can be, and how easily it can wither under the duress brought on by the aging process and the debilitating level of denial that sometime comes along with it. This breakdown which was set in motion by the girl's death, triggers Myrtle deeply, because she sees herself in that young girl. Once upon a time, she wasn't a cynical hardened by life dead inside washed up has been, she was a ingenue that could easily access her emotions which weren't buried far below the surface. But the girl's death symbolizes the death of her own youth, and moving into middle age, becoming the titular Second Woman she's playing in the play. So it's a combination of both being gutted by the tragic death of one of her fans, and also coming to terms with her own mortality, and the passing away of her own youth, and attempting to reconcile all of this, which is being hampered, because she's drunk off her ass 50% of them time. Even the name of her character is symbolic and autobiographical to an extent, which is Virginia. Gena's real name was Virginia, with of course Gena being the nickname she gave herself early in her acting career, which most likely tied back to her childhood. There's always that point in life, when you have to put away childish things, including silly nicknames and graduate to being an adult, but in the world of acting where people's youthful exuberance, looks and access to raw emotions is a major asset. Growing up can be a career derailing, which is why most actors seem perpetually caught in the Peter Pan Syndrome. So while yes, this is a showcase for the absolute powerhouse that was Gena Rowlands to show out, John Cassavetes was also at the top of his game, making the film feel almost improvisational at times. But all the while keeping the narrative tight, the cinematography as languid as it is fluid, the score sparse but effective. All the while, staying at a distance, making the film very observational bordering on voyeuristic, like we're a ghostly unseen member of the audience of a real life play we're not supposed to be seeing. While the journey that Rowlands takes veers wildy from depressing, disturbing, distressing, shocking and gut wrenching, to haunting, moving and even triumphant. They truly don't make them like this anymore. 9.8 out of 10.

 

They uploaded Husbands too. Which is what I'm currently watching.

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Faces (1968), 1968 really was quite the watershed year for Independent Cinema in the United States. Sure you could make an argument that many of the Nouvelle Vague and Neorealist films coming from France and Italy at the time qualify as Indie films, and they do. But Independent Cinema as we know it, was truly born in 1968, with not only George Romero's Night of the Living Dead being released that year, but also Faces. Of course there were several cheap independently produced films that came before, including Shadows from Cassavetes as well, but none of them were genuine crossover sensations, like Night and Faces. Both of which predate what many people consider the true beginning in 1969, with Easy Rider and Midnight Cowboy. Faces carries over the same freeform jazz like improvisational filmmaking style he utilized in Shadows, but to far greater effect, due to the skill level of the performers involved, which greatly elevates it's quality. It's not filled with a bunch of film school graduates, no... most of the people involved were seasoned pros. Which lends the film it's genuinely bleak, raw, gritty, immersive and all encompassing quality. All it is is a bunch of middle aged people hurtling headlong into brutal midlife crises, but it's done with such a high level of craft, with the actors bringing such a level of intimacy and earnestness to their roles, that it makes the film a truly uncomfortable watch. It's also quite apparent that Robert Altman isn't the only man Paul Thomas Anderson steals from. It's mostly centered around 4 actors, Gena Rowlands, the genius wife of Cassavetes, as Jeannie, the mistress of the film. John Marley, who's etched into most people's memories as he abrasive assholish producer Woltz, who wakes up in his bed with a horse's head in The Godfather, who plays Dickie Forst. While Lynn Carlin plays his wife Maria, Fred Draper plays his best friend Fred, while a young and oddly still old looking Seymour Cassel plays Chettie, who bizarrely enough is supposed to be the young stud in the film.

The film takes place over the course of 2 or 3 days, and the cinema verite style makes you feel like you're a fly on the wall, sitting on the couch watching everyone in the film spiral out of control. Even though the stark incredibly harsh black & white style of the film lends itself to making the film feel incredibly realistic, the structure of it, which is basically a series of dialogue heavy set pieces at times makes it feel like a stage play. Dickie is the chairman of the board of some important finance corporation, who's grown distant from his wife Maria, of around 13 years. He's depressed and starting to go out of control, so he and his college age buddy Fred spend the nights at bars, trying to pick up younger women, that's where he finds the much younger Jeannie, who's a call girl. We follow them as they go back to Jeannie fairly nice apartment, and they ramble on extemporaneously, all drunk off their asses, making fools of themselves. Seeing these old men, desperately trying to recapture their youth is not only sad, but cringey and embarrassing. Of course when drunk people are involved, feelings usually get hurt and the night ends with regret and shame. So he makes his way back home to Maria, who wants to go to the movies. Dickie is worn out, she nags the hell out of him and is angry because he doesn't want to eat dinner. So the next morning, he springs it on her that he wants a divorce. So he heads off to a club and then to Jeannies house, where he finds Jeannie with her friend Stella, entertaining two more businessmen just like Dickie, who are just as drunk, unlikable and abrasive. So instead of comprehending the situation, Dickie and the new suitors get into it, because somehow Dickie has convinced himself he means a lot more to Jeannie than he actually does. Meanwhile Maria and her circle of friends, who are all sad 40 something desperate sad housewives, go to the club, make asses out of themselves, pick up Chettie, who's a dumb as a rock hippy dippy lothario. But they're so enamored with him, they forget to act their ages, take him home and fawn all over him. Which leads the somber desolate finale, which is straight up depressing, painful but also a ruthlessly accurate portrayal of the dark underbelly of loveless middle class marriages, crumbling under the weight of living up to some unrealistic lofty ideal that most of them will never come close to achieving. Unpleasant gut punch of a film, but fascinating and compelling throughout. 8.9 out of 10.

Husbands (1970), while of course the style of Cassavetes contributed to their greatness, A Woman Under The Influence and Opening Night are masterpieces because of raw, stunning, exposed nerves performances of Gena Rowlands. So they can be viewed as collaborative efforts. But with Husbands, all of that greatness rest solely on the shoulders of John Cassavetes himself, which is not only a continuation of the improvisational jazzy style he used in Shadows and Faces, but represents that style at its absolute perfected apex. This is a masterpiece of existential dread and is a bellicose, raw, ugly, bittersweet, uncompromising and darkly humorous paean to toxic masculinity. Again, seemingly the primary focus of much of Cassavetes work, centers around middle age people trying desperately to come to terms with the aging process and the passing away of youth, and this film is the zenith when it comes to exploring those themes in regards to men. The film centers on three friends Harry (Ben Gazzara) Gus (John Cassavetes) and Archie (Peter Falk), who after a heart attack claims the life of their Stuart, they embark of a days long odyssey of alcoholism, singing, dancing, debauchery, cheating, generalized foolishness and making asses out of themselves. They don't know where they're going, but they just want to escape the humdrum existence of their day to day lives, they want to recapture their youths, they want true unadulterated freedom, and they're not going to stop drunken revelries and spiraling out of control until they achieve it. They play basketball in a high school gymnasium, have foot races on the sidewalks through crowds of people, puke their guts out and then hang out philosophizing in a filthy public bathroom.

But the real humdinger of the first half, is a bravura sequence at a bar, where they sit around the table with some of their friends, and engage in a damned near hypnotic singing contest for the ages, which is reminiscent of the wedding at the start of the Deer Hunter. Midway through the film, they attempt to go back to their normal lives, which goes horribly awry, because Gus hates his day job as a dentist, dealing with nutty housewives, Archie is drifting aimlessly but things really fall apart when Harry gets into a violent dispute with his wife, which prompts them all to head off to the UK, where they spend the night, pissing their money away gambling while trying to hone their very rusty game with several sad lonely broads they meet in a casino. Eventually leading to their renting three hotel rooms, and with varying degrees of success, attempting to hook up. But they're all so out of sorts and out of practice, they mostly end up crashing and burning in spectacular fashion. But still they cannot bring themselves to go home. Because as pathetic as their behavior is, it still represents the freedom they've been lacking in their suffocating marriages, even though deep down they love their wives and their children.

All three of the male leads do a splendid job, Gazzara (Brad Wesley from Road House) of course is the abrasive a-hole of the bunch who is devoid of introspection, that the other two struggle to deal with his erratic violent and aggressive outbursts. Cassavetes is as aloof as ever, who stutters and bumbles his way through almost every encounter, in endearingly embarrassing fashion. While Peter Falk, who of course is legendary in his career defining role as Columbo, plays the brooder of the three, who is struggling to even put his finger on what it is that feels wrong, but just knows something is off. Their camaraderie and chemistry is genuine, while their journey is very much like a hybrid of The Hangover if it were written by Clerks era Kevin Smith. With a heavy helping of improv, at times it seems like they might've just came out with some of these scenes from scratch, with no real structure ahead of time. But I doubt it, because the film, which increasingly starts to feel like a fever dream as it progresses, like one of those films about buddies pulling an all nighter, which the haze finally breaks at dawn, feels heartfelt and intentional at the start, but gradually sanity, logic, reason and their own words begin to fail them as the film progresses. Leading to what feels like abject insanity at times. It's captivating, depressing, messy as ****, uncomfortable to watch, but ultimately a brutally honest tribute, deconstruction and exploration of themes that so rarely get discussed in films. Primarily the need for male bonding and the insecure anxieties brought about from male fragility, desolation and loneliness, because they can't quite work out what their families and society expects from them and have a near impossible abiding by and living up to the standards hat society sets for us. Another Cassavetes masterpiece. 9.6 out of 10.

 

Good to hear, because that KO and aftermath was worrying, I've been checking on X and Facebook throughout the day, with no update to be found. But to hear it from the horse's mouth is reassuring.