Travel from South Pacific to the Cuckoo's Nest aboard the Ballad of Lucy Jordan

Rating: 7/10 (20 January 2009)

Well, to be taken on such a journey really must have something for everyone, but along the way, we don't find out very much about these characters. What exactly was it on some enchanted evening that caused these two to spot one another as strangers across a crowded room? It seemed to be an artistic party, and must have been, as there was even a token black man there, something which would have been socially very unusual in the late 40s, even in NYC. So what was Frank, who claimed to be a longshoreman, doing there? Clearly April had some measure of artistic pretensions, and we flash forward and there she is 'starring' in the local small town am-dram production. Pity it's a flop, but she is already sufficiently off her trolley to take this as a sign that her entire life is useless. And we do get the impression that she is already in the habit of turning her marital favours on and off like a tap. So Frank has had enough, and pretty soon it's wombat time for him.
We ask ourselves where can they go from here? To our great surprise, it is the inspiration of a pic of Frank as a young GI at the liberation of Paris that leads April to instantly decide the cure for their increasingly troubled marriage is to pack up everything and move to that romantic city she has never visited.
And so the fantasy drags on. To try and get the boss off his back, Frank spouts some piece of impromptu bullshit, and is instantly proclaimed a genius and offered promotion beyond his wildest dreams. That's conflict point 1 with the Paris plan, and simultaneous conflict point 2 is that April gets up the duff. I think this was about the conflict point at which I began to realise I was hungry, and wondered how much longer this would all go on.
But then it got better. Introduce the local loony to upstage the lot of them, and hey, we even had a bit of 'Beautiful Mind' in there, as he had a PhD in maths! His brain had been fried by electric shocks, which had destroyed the maths, but led him to have an uncanny perception about those around him. He, as the 'fool on the hill' saw through the entire thing, and nobody liked that.
Now, Lucy Jordan, the woman who "realised she'd never drive through Paris in a sports car with the warm wind in her hair" lived then and continues to live in so many of us who eke out our dull suburban lives, raising our children, and growing old. Lucy Jordan is not new. Telling her story over is valid for us to watch and learn, and for going into that zone, and asking those difficult questions, I am prepared to raise my vote to 7/10. But where was the attempt to answer the questions?
In many ways I found myself admiring April at that point, as despite her fairly unsympathetic character she did dare to dream. I can remember the 50s, and the stifling pressures of that era to conform, these being laid down by an older generation simply grateful to be alive and free after the horror of two global conflicts. I was strongly reminded of a wonderful aunt who likewise defied that society by undertaking Bohemian travel all over Europe. Single and childless, and based in London, she had far fewer issues than April to confront, but I still think she made her important decisions upon the basis of more than just an old snapshot of the Eiffel tower, which was all that seemed to get April started. Was that how her decision was made? I did sympathise more with Frank, the brief shot of him as one of the swarm of trilby hats emerging from Grand Central was very powerful, evocative of 'Koyaanisqatsi'. Despite the numbing boredom of his job, he was knuckling down and getting on with raising his kids. And here suddenly was this notion, a brief fleeting glimpse of a seductively different life. But how was his decision made? Why did he suddenly flip from 'no' to 'yes', especially with the already growing realisation that he was married to a fruit cake? You see, in a story such as this, I expect the movie maker to really take us into some depth on the genuine conflict we face when being confronted by difficult decisions. Maybe the book explored this, but I haven't read it. Mendes cops out of it completely. So we are left with just the loony to tell us the truth.
Maybe we should listen more carefully to lunatics!