I have founded this semidocumentary about the Brooklynian way of life from an ordinary man's POV rather amusing and compellingand very sarcastic and mordant; it's studded with vaguely familiar faces (whose identities are mostly unknown to me, as I am not a frequenter of the culture in causethe Jarmusch/ Madonna brands
). The movie is, as I suggested, ironicyet _unconclusively so. It is unassuming, sometimes funny, and Mel Gorham is very sexy. On the other hand, it's not too intense or particularly successful at seizing the hidden life of Brooklyn. It has the intelligent, not really intellectual or particularly inspired look of other similar attemptslike some Mamet outings
. It's not insightful or meaningfulbut funny, light, enjoyable. It is also cruel and merciless in exposing empty livespeople to whom the Dodgers' leaving was the most important thing in their lives, etc., insipid, lifeless existences, withered humanity, banal destines soaked in ugliness. This world is wholly alien to me. This Auster intellectuality, like some Mamet mean intellectuality, seems not very far from the W. Allen intellectuality.
I guess the film is for the most part ironic; yet if it was meant to convey a certain savor of Brooklyn life, it did not succeedat least with those ignorant of Brooklyn things. The Dodgers and the Belgian waffles are part of that Americana (what Amis once stated as 'too much trolley-car nostalgia and baseball-mitt Americana, too much ancestor worship, too much piety ') that is particularly unattractive to me. In this sociological sense ,the movie describes an utterly uninteresting world and humanity. These things do not seem to me childishbut, on the contrary, senile and boring. These ingredients are particularly repulsive to me. What strikes is the artificiality and shallowness and inner poverty of these clichés. Some 60 years ago, some Europeans, many French Europeans hinted this might denote a styleand even be a stylish thing. Maybe they meant different realities, or maybe things changed too much.
I guess the film is for the most part ironic; yet if it was meant to convey a certain savor of Brooklyn life, it did not succeedat least with those ignorant of Brooklyn things. The Dodgers and the Belgian waffles are part of that Americana (what Amis once stated as 'too much trolley-car nostalgia and baseball-mitt Americana, too much ancestor worship, too much piety ') that is particularly unattractive to me. In this sociological sense ,the movie describes an utterly uninteresting world and humanity. These things do not seem to me childishbut, on the contrary, senile and boring. These ingredients are particularly repulsive to me. What strikes is the artificiality and shallowness and inner poverty of these clichés. Some 60 years ago, some Europeans, many French Europeans hinted this might denote a styleand even be a stylish thing. Maybe they meant different realities, or maybe things changed too much.