/ But you still feel wretched." writer-director Robert Towne portrays this pain as an earthquake in his adaptation of John Fante's 1939 novel. Colin Farrell plays Italian writer Arturo Bandini intent on producing the great American novel about Los Angeles.
The impetus for this grand dream is to erase the markings of his ethnicity: his dark features, his name. Towne recognizes the Fascist extension of this impulse (as signified by a blond-haired failed artist -- a minor Iago -- who aims to punish the Difference he desires, attempting to spoil the romance between Arturo and Camilla Lopez, a Mexican waitress played by Salma Hayek). However, Arturo's attempts to prove his sexual potency (challenged by Camilla's exotic sensuality in their beautifully acted-and-written tete-a-tetes) bring him, unexpectedly, to a confrontation with the sensual challenge of compassion.
After baring her scarred flesh, Jewish Vera Rifkin (Idina Menzel) seduces Arturo by playing the role of a Mexican Princess. The subplot proves reminiscent of a pregnant Fitzgerald aside, coalescing the film's themes of race and Desire, compassion and Imagination. After making love to Vera, Arturo strolls on a boardwalk, taking in the trinkets for sale and the crowds of shoppers and tourists (exemplifying the inspired production design by Dennis Gassner).
There, Arturo ruminates in literary voice-over narration on the fleeting nature of existence, of the foolhardy attempts to hold onto life. Yet, he feels above it all with his newfound sexual/intellectual confidence. Then: an earthquake hits!
It is an L.A.-symbol for the earthshaking events -- World Wars I and II, Communism, the Civil Rights Movement, Vietnam, AIDS, 9/11 -- whose tremors shaped the culture's philosophical evolution.
Towne mirrors a shot of a doll's face amidst the wreckage with Arturo's discovery of Vera (Icon)'s dead body, her countenance frozen with satisfaction. Thus, Towne visualizes the change in Arturo's consciousness through the toy transformed into metaphor -- a deeper understanding, an emblem of desire -- as by a child's imagination. Morrissey shares Towne's and Fante's awareness of vernacular culture -- signified by the doll (and, later, a children's storybook) -- providing instruction for imaginatively maneuvering through the anxieties that plague the culture.
In the second stanza of "Good Looking Man About Town," Morrissey's call means to weed out that anxiety. He then observes a challenging response, the sub-cult (specifically gay) expression of desire and symbolic faith and felicity: Are you afraid of someone alive? Are you scared to death of even looking at the flesh of a good looking man about town?
Here the gang say, "Marry me, marry me." Here the gang say, "Marry me, marryyyy meeee." Here the gang say, "Marry me.
The shift from up-tempo (call) to down-tempo (response) allows for the shift in focus from the dance responses the queries inspire to the multivalent readings that Morrissey's intonations provide to the familiar expression of Desire -- "Marry me." He transforms the meaning of the phrase from attraction as pleasurable surprise (the archaic exclamation of "marry") to personal expression (the stretched "e" vowels) to social vision (expanding the possibilities of institutional celebration of Desire). Shakespeare might approve of such felicity with language.
presents a playful gloss on that progression to the pop audience by way of a screwball narrative spin on the teen comedy. A team of screenwriters and director Andrew Fickman adapt the film's high-concept from , Shakespeare's comedy of gender errors. Through the person of Channing Tatum, whose shirtless first appearance drew squeals of delight from the audience, provides the space to unabashedly enjoy the spectacle of "a good looking man about town.
" The character's/actor's sensitivity puts a masculine ideal on display: "Are you afraid of someone alive?" Tanning conveys Duke's sexual anxiety in the presence of women, his pained expression at the fear that his friend Sebastian has utilized his uncanny understanding of women to betray him (when, in fact, Sebastian is Viola). Finally, that sensitivity extends itself into an ideal of manhood in response to Amanda Byne's uncanny portrayal of Viola's prank: that her gawky approximation of male adolescence is deeply recognizable.
He steps up to the meaning of that realization (of a shared sensitivity) with a righteous declaration (an ingenious recontextualization of Shakespeare's "greatness" speech at a high school soccer game). / But you still feel wretched.
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