Recording our history now on the bedroom wall.

Finally watched Bertolucci’s The Dreamers, which my good friend Netflix sent me long ago, and which then proceeded to sit next to my DVD player for months.

Interesting film.

Full of fucked up shit, not to mention lots of nudity. And being an enthusiastic admirer of fucked up shit (not to mention lots of nudity), I must say I was pretty riveted. Great performances, bizarre situations, and clearly lots to say. (And any fan of the Hedwig movie would appreciate this one, if for no other reason than the, um, full reveal of Michael Pitt’s many, um, assets...)

But when it ended, I was frustrated by the thought that maybe I didn’t fully get it. And as someone who has lived in Paris and actually is familiar with the subject matter of the student uprisings of 1968, I found myself wondering what someone who's not familiar with that time period might take away from the film. It’s those events that form the backdrop of the strange tale and serve to elevate it above simple account of a very sexual (and bordering on incestuous) triangle between three Parisian/American cinema-obsessed teenagers. I could see someone who doesn’t get that easily dismissing it as smut, which would be a shame.

[Though it would be hard to spoil too much about this movie, anyone who hasn't seen it might want to read on with caution...]

I liked what it had to say about the attractiveness of and yet dangers inherent in isolating ourselves from the world outside our windows (which at the end, does quite literally come crashing through, into the living room) and retreating into an alternate, purely gratuitous world of our own creation. But then again, if the alternative to that self-made isolation is rioting purely for riots’ sake and throwing molotov cocktails simply because it’s dangerous and fun, I’m not sure I can reconcile those two extremes. But maybe that’s the point.

And the girl’s extremely sudden suicide attempt really had me reeling. I mean, I get the importance and significance of the fact that it’s only averted by the aforementioned window-crashing, but the whole suicide thing really came out of left field. Even though she does declare earlier in the film that she would “kill herself” if what ultimately does end up happening were to come to pass, not only is it easy to shrug off when she says it, but it’s also extremely hard to believe that when the time comes she would attempt to take the other two characters with her. I had a hard time reconciling that with everything else we’d learned about her throughout the course of the film.

But again, maybe that’s the point.

I don’t know. But I do know that I like films that keep me glued to the screen and then keep me thinking about them long after I’ve finished watching them. Not to mention all the fucked up shit and nudity.