Nov 26, 2016
Movie Meltdown - Episode 373
This episode we discuss
The Rules of the Game the 1939
French film directed by Jean Renoir. According to many, including
The Criterion Collection, it's considered one of the
greatest films ever made. So The Meltdown Gang decides to
watch it and see if it lives up to it's hype and
reputation.
And while we admit that the awful
thing about life is... everyone has their reasons, we also come to
new realizations about... Brian De Palma, is this a parody of the
genre or is it just that bad, experimental theater, Hack-O-Lantern,
pouty, the 80's porn scene, Hi, Mom!, The Forbidden Room, Tolstoy,
it feels like you're apologizing for reading, Chuck E. Cheese,
mimicking farce, a lot of it is successfully bleak, that was the
eleventh herb and spice, Pre-Columbian art, Akira Kurosawa's Ran,
Howard Dean meets Charles Laughton, Friends with Benefits, more
movies in the VHS world, well it seemed like the floor was very
slippery, Dinner at Eight, Robert De Niro, Wake in Fright, a square
married guy, maybe... it wasn't popular because it's kind of about
what... popular audience are... and that's just not that
flattering, it's the closest thing I've ever seen to watching a
dream, not romatizing the working people, John Wayne meets Mister
Rogers and Liberace, Henry: Portrait of a Serial Killer, she's not
into her marriage, he said he could feel the audience hating it...
that's my favorite thing, popular audiences aren't really looking
for the mirror held up to nature, even for something to be a comedy
there has to be a certain fantastic element to it, Idiocracy, it's
like... this is the lives of the rich people, oh by the way they're
exactly like the lives of the poor people. Oh by the way, they're
also just totally empty, mimicking movies that haven't been made
yet, I always like to mention my favorite Inuit action picture,
that Gomez grin, growing up on one hour serialized dramas, a
snapshot of Los Angeles, petulant, I guess I'm just not ready... to
dislike all of humanity, the fact that I haven't been murdered in
my sleep is a testament to the human spirit and - oh cool a
squirrel!
Spoiler Alert: Lots of
spoilers contained for The Rules of the Game, so go watch
it beforehand for spoiler-free listening.
"I mean I think we're kind of
making a mistake if we're trying to connect to any of these
characters on an emotional level... because it really is just a
bunch of bored people trying to fill their lives with meaningless
distractions... like that's sort of all the movie
is."