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Teenagers in 1951 come of age in their dying Texas town.
Starring Timothy Bottoms, Jeff Bridges, Cybill Shepherd, Ben Johnson, Cloris Leachman, Ellen Burstyn
Written by Larry McMurtry, Peter Bogdanovich
Produced by Stephen J Friedman
Duration 118 minutes
I can’t talk about THE LAST PICTURE SHOW without starting with Stephen King.
In his novel Lisey's Story, titular protagonist Lisey has recently lost her husband, Scott, and is going through his journals. She learns from them that when her hubby used to stay up late and drop off in front of the TV, he would fall into a catatonic state and be literally transported to a magical alternate universe, where he found peace and healing from his debilitating mental health issues.
But it wasn't any old programming that used to whisk him away. The Shopping Network or repeats of Magnum PI wouldn't do it – in order to travel to that wonderful healing place, Scott had to be watching his favourite movie, THE LAST PICTURE SHOW.
(And if you think I’m going to now delay getting to the actual review by going off on a tangent about Stephen King books, constant reader, you’ve got another thing coming. So not my style.☆)
Now, I can't be sure exactly why King gave this particular film the power to mentally teleport people to a far away land; he never makes that explicit. But since the reason Scott would embark on those journeys was to recuperate, 1950s-set coming of age classic THE LAST PICTURE SHOW is therefore portrayed as a vessel with which to break free from inner torment.
So, is this movie ‘escapism’? I've always found that a bit of a limiting term, usually eluding to fantastical, good vs evil battle stuff, or love-wins-in-the-end fairy tales.
Forget your troubles and immerse yourself in something idealised and totally
removed from reality for a couple of hours.
But there’s another kind of escapism: a wallowing kind, when you reach out for something that affirms the pain you’re going through. Diversions like
the type in the previous paragraph can feel like they’re taking the piss by portraying
something unobtainable; what you really want is a Radiohead album
on repeat and MELANCHOLIA or REQUIEM FOR A DREAM playing with the sound off.
In the case of PICTURE SHOW, it doesn’t put the viewer in a world of orcs and elves or shiny romcom land. But it does take them somewhere: back to the ’50s, that lost time of Boomer nostalgia so frequently visited by the generation of King (most notably for IT), Robert Zemeckis (BACK TO THE FUTURE), Steven Spielberg (THE FABELMANS), and many other creatives born following WWII. But PICTURE SHOW'S tone is far from carefree and enchanting; instead we get moribund, ennui-laced melancholy. The opening goddamn shot is a pan through a deserted town with dust blowing everywhere, a place that makes the shithole from LAST MAN STANDING look cheerful and prosperous. The very first words spoken are "you're never gonna amount to nothin’!"
The local kids we meet are thoroughly disillusioned. They have none of the collegiate spirit that their elders expect, shirking tackles on the football field and only singing the school anthem mockingly while driving away from it. They pass the time making out in the back row of the town’s only cinema, being sure to take out their chewing gum first. They experience fleeting liberty by skinny dipping at unsupervised parties, in a famous scene with Cybil Shepherd that discloses to the viewer the exact moment when director Peter Bogdanovich decided to ditch his wife (who was working on the crew!) and run off with her.
It’s a not a film that's heavy on plot. It’s more of an atmosphere piece punctuated by minor incidents, a few shattering events and a whole bunch of loaded exchanges heavy with unspoken
emotion, moving forward like the unhurried flow of
water, lapping over you and soaking into your bones.
That Ben Johnson and Clois Leachman bagged acting Oscars for so little screen time (10 and 16 minutes respectively) tells you all you need to know: as we all learned in Physics class, pressure equals force over area. Their strong performances delivered within such brief pockets of time create a huge impact, and I'd say the effect has only ever been bettered by Judi ‘eight minutes’ Dench in SHAKESPEARE IN LOVE.
What I’m getting at is that the movie is dreamlike – at once intense and casual, amorphous yet precise, and, ultimately, transporting.
I think I see now what King was going for.
Five stars out of five.
☆ … What? OK fine, since you won’t stop going on about it. The masterpieces are IT, The Stand and the Dark Tower series; other personal favourites are 'Salem's Lot, The Dead Zone, Firestarter, Roadwork, Pet Sematary, Misery, The Dark Half, Duma Key, and pretty much all of the short story collections.
Valid use of the
word ‘last’? That’s how the movie finishes: the town cinema that was one of its few features is forced to close down due to lack of
business. Final screening: RED RIVER, starring John Wayne and Montgomery Clift.
What would a movie called THE FIRST
PICTURE SHOW be about? Same thing as Scorsese’s HUGO? Something about Georges
Méliès, certainly.
Previously: FERNGULLY: THE LAST RAINFOREST
Next time: THE LAST TEMPTATION OF CHRIST
Check out my books: Jonathanlastauthor.com
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