"You can't eat the venetian blinds..."

Rating: 10/10 (31 March 2011)

Something borough me back time and again to Chinatown...I didn't know what it was, for a start I couldn't understand the plot, and the beige was almost sickening...but I couldn't resist. Maybe I just wanted to decipher it, maybe it was Gittes' smart mouth, maybe it was that massive bandage keeping his nose together. After about 20, god knows, how many watches I finally got it...this is possibly the best pastiche ever made!
But wait! before you kill me for calling this a simple pastiche, hear me out, because this isn't just a simple pastiche. Whilst much of the new American film makers at the time were making excitingly different, youthful films (for a laugh lets say 'two-lane black top') Chinatown seems to be a look back at the times of old film making - the P.I., Howard Hawks, Bogy and so forth. But this, as much as any film made in this brilliant period, breaks with the old.
Its entire structure, its whole fabric is laced with a kind of uncanny wrongness. Its construction is built to fall apart, to tear and reveal that beige colour, that badly timed joke, that plot which unravels before our's and our 'heros' eyes. Chinatown is beautiful because, well, it isn't. Its charming yet devastating, funny yet worrying. There is something just not quite right about this film's homage...
And so to conclude with some kind of coherence: Chinatown is a film I had to work at (and perhaps this is why i like it so much). The plot is labyrinthine, its characters are often generic, and Gittes is a far from a admirable - even likable - hero, but these are what makes this film. Listing its flaws is tantamount to listing its qualities. And this is a quality film in many ways. The plot subtle and enjoyable (if you cant work it out - see, 'The Big Sleep'), the performances are very good, the script is quick and witty (in many ways).
So not a simple pastiche. This is a very clever and (dare i say) profound homage to the detective film. Very strongly recommended to anyone interested in American cinema and to everyone else too.