A thoroughly depressing stop on the quest to watch and write about the AFI Top 100 (10th Anniversary Edition). You may recall I wanted to complete this in a calendar year. I had to take 5 months off, but I'm more than 70% through the list in a little over 7 months. That's a better pace than I needed, so...I'll get through it, but I'm extended on time.
Film 71
71. "The Last Picture Show" (AFI Rank #95)
Despite my best efforts, the distribution of films in the 90s in the AFI Rankings seems a little skewed towards the end of the job. Doesn't really mean anything, as "Do The Right Thing" and "Toy Story" are both in the 90s, and are AMAZING films, but this one...well...this one belongs on the list because of what it does as a film, but it's an incredibly depressing, difficult film to watch.
Directed by Peter Bogdanovich, "The Last Picture Show" is based on a novel by Larry McMurtry. It tells the story of a group of high school seniors as their lives together begin to dissolve, while the town around them slowly shutters. Set in the fictional town of Anarene, Texas, we are thrust into a world of death. Death of the American small town, death of generations of work, and in a couple of cases, literal death of human beings. Anarene may as well be any small town, USA. Don't believe me? My former in-laws live in Mt. Carroll, Illinois. With a once-thriving downtown, Mt. Carroll's business district is mostly empty buildings, unoccupied for years, as the children of the business owners moved on to greener pastures, or the commerce shifted to the Wal Mart or Shopko, or whatever. There are thousands upon thousands of crumbling towns like this in the United States, as populations become more dependent on big business, and less and less on the local businessman. What America must have looked like when the grocer went to the local department store to buy his dungarees, while the department store owner stopped into the grocer's for his produce, or meat, or milk, or whatever. I'm not pining for it, merely wondering what it must have been like. I grew up in Glen Ellyn, IL, as it made similar transitions. Our downtown never died, however, as there were plenty of places to work within reasonable distance for the inhabitants of our town, and they weren't dependent on each other to get by.
And that, ultimately, is the overwhelming theme of "The Last Picture Show." The film is a tale of what happens when humans stop depending on each other, and the decay that follows. It's a powerful message, and this film hammers it home constantly.
Obviously influenced by films like "The Searchers," this film asks us to fill in a lot of details as the narrative progresses. Time passes with no acknowledgement of it, just a casual reference to a new season, or month, or event. Full of running "gags," like the idea that the high school football team needs to learn to tackle, or that they lose a basketball game later on by a score of 100something to 14, this film's timeline is constantly moving forward, while very little changes for any one of the people involved. It's subtle, but the athletic achievements for the local high school are a metaphor for what's happening to the town around them. That, my friends, is good filmmaking.
Top this with some truly compelling characters, and you've got yourself one hell of a film. Our principal pair of eyes for the film is Sonny, played by Timothy Bottoms. He is...well...it's hinted at that Sonny is essentially on his own, living in a boarding house. We meet his father once, and the man and Sonny...can barely share a word. Sonny seems like a decent kid, caught up occasionally in peer pressure, but the one constant with Sonny is that he takes care of mentally challenged Billy (Sam Bottoms), a mute who walks the town sweeping the street, or the store floors, with a broom that really isn't doing anything. Sonny is constantly flipping Billy's cap around backwards, and the intimacy shared by the characters is palpable. Sonny's best friend is Duane Jackson, played by a shockingly young Jeff Bridges. Yeah, it's 45 years ago, so I shouldn't be shocked by how young he is, but damn. Duane is a good looking kid, who appears to have a little on the ball, and works, obviously, for the local oil company, and his girlfriend Jacy's (Cybill Shepherd) father. Duane has the trophy girlfriend because he plays the right position on the football team, even though she doesn't seem particularly interested in him. Jacy is a tease to Duane, using him for status, but not for his body. She has fetishes, is highly curious about sex, turned on by the idea of public nudity, turned on by strange men, but when it comes to Duane, she is ambivalent. She loses her virginity to Duane not because of some deep abiding love between them, but because if she's no longer a virgin, a rich kid named Bobby Sheen will bed/date her. She was introduced to Bobby by Lester Marlow (Randy Quaid) at a naked pool party thrown at Bobby's home, a party that she desperately wanted to attend, and one that she blew off Duane to be part of. We see Jacy, unafraid, strip naked in front of a room full of strangers, and we see her overwhelming lust throughout the scene and before it. She may be an opportunist, but she also has real desires. 
Swirling around the kids are the adults of Anarene. We meet Coach Popper, an implied pedophile with at least one boy on his team, and his wife, Ruth (Cloris Leachman - who won an Oscar in this role), a pedophile who takes up with Sonny in a heartbreakingly sad relationship that permeates the film. We also meet Jacy's philandering mom, played by the stunningly beautiful Ellen Burstyn. We meet the feel-good waitress at the local diner, played with sophisticated naturalness by Eileen Brennan, and we meet the roughneck sometimes lover of Jacy's mom, Abilene, played by Clu Gulager. But mostly, and quite amazingly, we meet Sam the Lion, played with nimble nuance by Ben Johnson, in an Oscar-winning performance. It is Sam, ultimately, who is the glue, barely holding the town together. He owns several of the buildings/businesses in town, and runs them at a loss, no doubt, but keeps them open. Sam dies about halfway into the film, and his death starts in motion the events that start the town into rapid decline, culminating with the closing of the second run movie theatre. The last picture show...
That's a lot of exposition. What are my thoughts? Sadness. Overwhelming sadness. Nothing seems to be going well for anyone in the town, and despite a generally positive attitude by the inhabitants of the film, as outside observers, we only see decay. Eventually, Timothy Bottoms comes to realize it, as he surveys the pool hall that Sam the Lion left him in his will, and sees the absolutely decrepit state it is in. We see Jacy give herself over to her mother's lover because, well because. We see Duane and Sonny fight over Jacy, the former cracking a bottle over the latter's left side of his face. We see Billy get run over by a truck, and left in the street like a dog, as adults ponder what was wrong with him, rather than be human to him. We see Ruth and Sonny carry on in a town where everyone knows they are carrying on, including her husband. We see Sonny throw Ruth aside when Jacy makes herself available to Sonny, and we see her marry him...for...well...for no reason at all. We see Jacy's mother genuinely moved by Sam's death, while she basically encourages promiscuity in her daughter. We see Duane leave for the Korean War, Jacy go to college, and the world of Anarene closes, while Sonny is left behind. We see him re-start his relationship with the coach's wife. All of this is permeated with sadness. Nothing good happens to anyone in this film, and we are left with that theme. What happens when people stop depending on each other? Everything crashes. What happens when people start depending on the wrong people for their happiness? Everything crashes. What happens when dissatisfaction pervades one's thinking? Everything crashes. The film has no other message. It begs us to examine our bonds, to feel something for our fellow travelers on the planet, and to savor every day, as tomorrow has no guarantee. Eventually, the picture show closes up, and we're left with nothing.
Acting in this film is tremendous. Bottoms is the right blend of melancholy and hero, Bridges shows the range that will eventually blossom as he became a huge movie star, Shepherd lets the camera love her, and shows us a deep cynicism in nearly all she does. The grown-ups are no less compelling. Leachman is achingly lonely (and I confess she bears physical similarities to a friend of mine, so it was hard for me not to see that), Brennan is quietly optimistic, Burstyn shows surprising depth of emotion, and Johnson, well, Johnson is the rock star. He pulls our attention every moment he is on screen, and his sentimental speech lakeside is a revelation. The man nailed it, just nailed it, and his loss from the film, because of the swathe he cuts, is felt not only from a story standpoint, but from a film standpoint. We miss him, and as such, we understand why the town goes to shit in his absence. It's brilliant filmmaking.
The soundtrack is populated with songs written outside the film, and used by the filmmaker to evoke mood. It was a relatively new invention at the time, and today's soundtracks, rife with long-standing tunes, owe a debt to films like this one. There's also nudity. It's not sexy, but it's there. Quite a bit of it. Shocking, no doubt, but again, a device that has since been used ad nauseum by filmmakers. Again, a debt is owed. I've called this film great. I've called it brilliant. It's all of those things. It's also painful to watch. Painful. Julie watched it with me and declared that she never had to see it again. I don't know that I share that sentiment, but I understand it. It's a hard watch. I'll likely view it again, just as an appreciation. I'm glad I've seen it, now, and I encourage you to do the same.
Ebert did comment on this as a "Great Movie." That's to be found here.
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