Rating of
4/4
A Savage Cannibalistic Thirst for the Amer Dream
Topher - wrote on 08/18/07
Just as in those foul years of Nixon, ours is a time for the Politics of Fear and-- let there be no mistake, my friends -- the Boss has learned quite of few tricks since then. But so have we, ho ho, thanks to Hunter and Gilliam and others with Vision.
Hunter, like Mark Twain and Philip K Dick, is one of the very few writers who have truly mastered the American Idiom. He was also the most important political writer of 20th century America, and Gilliam's film does him justice.
Drugs,yes, are an integral part of this film, but let this not be dismissed as pure hallucination. The crude deformations of the familiar, the general atmosphere of vileness, yea, even the most obscene and savage depictions of American lust degenerating -- seen here through an acid lens -- come closer to a real truth than a thousand pundits and a private army of photographers employed by Ted Turner ever have.
Raoul Duke's actions are excessive because his appetite is fierce and insatiable. But his hunger is our own and so is his grimace: here, in caricature staring back at us, stumbling around like a ether-freak on a binge of deplorable behavior, is the ugly face we've seen so often in the mirror -- that savage, cannibalistic thirst for the American Dream.
