An American Tragedy

Rating: 10/10 (17 January 2014)

American Hustle is a great movie. It's no surprise that it's nominated for Academy Awards in Best Picture, Best Director, Best Actor and Actress, and Best Supporting Actor and Actress. It's that good. I've fallen in love with the director, David O. Russell. Christian Bale "is" his character and though he's repulsive, forty-five minutes in you've come to care about him. By the end, you feel deeply. How he inhabits this character is the definition of an academy award performance. Amy Adams is subtle, brazen and luscious. Bradley Cooper, so manic and over- the-top, he is just nuts. Jennifer Lawrence nailed her part. I mean just jaw-dropping nailed it. Mesmerizing. All of it is mesmerizing, from the costumes to the dialogue, through plot and the ploy. Oh boy.
American Hustle is a snapshot of a cultural phenomenon that occurred in the 70's in America. Sure, it's about some con artists and a sting operation paralleling Abscam. But it's much more.
In America today, people become famous by taking videos of themselves having sex and posting them on the internet. The rest of America seems to want to watch those videos. Then those new "stars" have a reality TV show. We're in an age of the cult of me where someone is famous for being nobody and their main talent is they think are somebody.
American Hustle reflects the time when the cult of me was beginning. Unless you lived in the 50's, it's impossible to imagine how conservative America was with women in girdles, shirtwaist dresses and pumps and Leave It To Beaver and Father Knows Best representing what Americans thought was ideal. Twin beds for married couples on TV and in movies. Many folks had left rural American and come to cities for jobs but things were still pastoral and provincial. The war was over and we were living in the American dream. But it was stultifying and stresses converged. The Vietnam War, the Birth Control Pill, lots more women in the workplace, a rise in divorce and latchkey children and much more. America started having a social fit, like a snake, it began to shake off the strictures of the 40's and 50's, up pops the 60's and real social upheaval. Sex, drugs and rock n' roll cogently says it.
Our egos were filled with the right to self expression and that was the ultimate goal, to be an individual and to be free. Of course that didn't work out exactly as envisioned. This is what American Hustle reflects. This is the understory that we see, throbbing behind the plot.
Start with personal vanity. Bale's pitifully hilarious, glued comb-over. Cooper's perm-rod acquired afro, Adam's plunging, breast-revealing necklines and Lawrence's nail obsession, capped by the fruity, rotten top coat, so Freudian. The four main characters are far away from "down home, plain, no-nonsense" America of the 40's, "decent, aren't we all innocent, hard workers" America of the 50's and even from the "peace, love, turn-on and tune-out" of the 60's. They have entered "we are all movie stars or rock gods, whether wanna-be or full tilt." This is Saturday Night Fever told about adults. This is glam rock gone wild, where even the men are obsessed with their hair.
The characters are slick and smart, the dialogue "Whose Afraid of Virginia Woolf" caustic and the movie incredibly styled, successfully, from set to costume to manner. I felt transported back in time in the disco scene, reminiscent at Amy's lovely breast-teasing outfits. This was what it was really like "back in the day," though the "plot" of the con game and Abscam were not part of it for most, but certainly not so far removed either. Everything was loosened, for good or bad. It just fell where it might. That made it fascinating. That is what American Hustle so deftly depicts. Self-will run riot, damn the consequences.
I have read many reviews of the movie. Most called it a comedy. I would hardly call it that. Certainly there are comedic moments, but primarily it is a tragedy, an American tragedy that still reverberates.