Word: conrad
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...this monstrous myth into flight. Yet, at the end he fails because he abandons it. Making myth isn't enough for Coppola, he has to lay bare Evil. But a behemoth--like Marlon Brando, fingering his pate in semi-darkness and blubbering out The Hollow Men isn't Evil. Conrad knew that Evil isn't shown, but alluded to, when he wrote "The horror, the horror". Isn't that why we have myths and symbols after...
This emphasis on reality, or ontological authenticity, accounts for the strong documentary texture of the film. Avoiding the hermetic environment of the studio, Conrad and Dall shoot on location in Cambridge, Boston, Somerville and Framingham. The world seen through the camera--Park Street, Government Center. Ambassador-Brattle cabs, and tired triple-decker houses in bleak neighborhoods--is tangibly familiar and particularly relevant. Sally rides the T. and her friends write messages on her copy of The Harder They Come. Although written two years ago, the script remains timely in its content. This augments the realism; for example, the state...
WHILE THE ESTABLISHMENT of an authentic base makes Sally's portrait refreshingly convincing, Conrad and Dall animate through the imposition of various cinematic devices. The first segment of the film, in prison, moves at a brisk pace--cuts are quick, shot-counter-shot and reverse angle sequences accent confrontational situations as in her appearance before the parole committee. When it comes time to cope with the outside world, the use of rapid zoom makes us actively feel the threat of her new environment. In filming elegant clothing, (objects of Sally's material aspirations), Conrad and Dall deliberately place the camera...
Upon rare occasion, the effects of directorial interjection whet our appetite for issues that are never examined. Dall and Conrad rely on a conventional flashback series, first depicting Sally arriving at Framingham as a bellicose, hand-cuffed delinquent, then as a demure young lady applying make-up to her eyes, which cast arrogant glances on those of whom she disapproves. She has undergone a metamorphosis that is never explained or justified during the course of a cursory, several shot treatment...
...furnish the stage on which his strange cast converge, Stone takes his cue from Joseph Conrad, who set Nostromo in an imaginary South American republic called Costa-guana. Stone squeezes Tecan and its more progressive neighbor Compostela into a fictional space between Nicaragua and Costa Rica, and then provides topography and politics. The land here is racked periodically by earthquakes; when Holliwell arrives in Tecan, he senses the tremors of revolution as well. The local dictator, propped up by U.S. support and sadistic National Guardsmen wearing reflecting sunglasses, may have finally pushed his brutalized subjects too far. He is driving...