Went to see Bertolucci’s Conformist at the Film Forum last night, a theater that always reminds me of my youth. The chairs are incredibly uncomfortable, the films almost universally obscure and the crowds are just this side of insufferable. The Conformist (1970) is seldom seen in theaters and not as yet available on DVD (there’s a lousy video transfer out there somewhere, if you want to track it down) and is justly celebrated as one of Bertolucci’s masterpieces. Based on a novel by Alberto Moravia, the film tells the story of a callow Italian (played by Jean-Louis Trintignant) who — perhaps due to having a morphine addict for a mother, a father in the nut house and having been sexually molested by a chauffeur when he was young — becomes a kind of cultural-political weather vane. He joins the fascists when Mussolini is in power, and even participates in the assassination of an old liberal professor of his, now exiled in Paris, but just as quickly turns to denouncing his former friends as collaborators when Il Duce is suddenly deposed. His political confusion is matched by his sexual ambivalence; he won’t sleep with his shallow-but beautiful fiancee (Stefania Sandrelli) but gets turned on when he sees a former prostitute, played by Dominique Sanda, try to go down on her.
And who amongst us wouldn’t?
As much as I enjoy hearing aging film nerds try out their pronunciation of “mise en scene” on each other, I was rather disappointed by the level of discourse on display last night. The 7:40 screening was sold-out, of course, and I spent the moments before showtime trying to mentally prepare myself for two-plus hours of monumental physical discomfort, much in the fashion Harry Houdini readied himself to be locked in a safe and lowered into the East River. This is where all that yoga and meditation really come in handy. Sadly, the trio behind me intruded on my mind-emptying exercises. They were two men and a woman and I couldn’t figure out the configuration — was one of the men on a date with the woman and the other guy a third wheel? Were the two men dating and the woman but a friend? My gaydar always goes haywire downtown but clearly there was some unfamiliarity between the three: they were going through topics — Pirro vs. Hillary, searches on the subway — like appetizers at an Indian restaurant.
“What do you think of this woman camped out in Crawford?” one of them asked, referring to Cindy Sheehan, the mother of soldier slain in Iraq who is seeking an audience with the president. This led to a general fit of Bush-bashing:
“You know, he’s just such an idiot.”
“A robot could do his job.”
“He only does what his daddy wants.”
Ad nauseum. I take a back seat to no one in my objection to GWB and his policies, was on the frontlines of the get-out-the-vote move for Kerry (see “Scranton” on the Articles page) but folks, this is no way to mount a counter-offensive. First of all, it’s pretty much a matter of record that the elder sushi-barfing Bush (to borrow Anne LaMott’s felicitous phrase) was opposed to the invasion of Iraq. Secondly, dismissing W as a robot misses the point: a lot of Americans seem to relate to his awkwardness before the microphone, and certainly preferred it to Kerry’s. (Might be an insult to robots, too: think Jude Law in AI.) And my fellow disenfranchised dems, we could use such an idiot if we ever want to see the inside of the Oval Office again. Knee-jerk condescension won’t get us anywhere. Now is not the time for conformity.