brilliant and difficult

Rating: 9/10 (30 October 2012)

an iconoclastic book crafted into a brilliant but difficult movie; obvious cudos to nicholson (back when he was acting), screenplay, direction; shooting is average; oddly, was recently shown (nov '12) on tcm as part of their series on handicapped, disability in film; the strange take being that films showing demented people (or crippled people, or otherwise disabled people) are somehow off, not true, not up to par; the PC culture reigns supreme- even, according to tcm, for movies set in the 17th century, like bedlam; as though best years of our lives should not have shown homer with no hands- even though the book it's from showed him with a horrible series of much more disturbing problems; so if you approach the movie with that PC view in mind it's so flawed; on the other hand it's a tight look at the individual versus the system, the loner versus the crowd, what you think you should do even when everyone says you should not; the late 60's-early 70's message, unfortunately, is that you lose- as though it presages the coming of the nanny state, the transposing of jfk's what you can do for your country to obama's what can your country do for you;though there are many movies about asylums and dementia, this one stays almost till the end on the edge of sane or not; that's what makes it interesting