Word: men
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Dates: during 1960-1969
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BULLET PARK, by John Cheever. In his usual setting of uncomfortably comfortable suburbia, Cheever stages the struggle of two men-one mild and monogamous, the other tormented and libertine-over the fate...
...Wild Bunch is the story of a group of men whose only communal experience is killing. They whose only communal experience is killing. They are always shown alone (hence the preponderance of close-ups), divorced not only from their surroundings but from each other. Devoid of any real personal identity, they live only for the moments when they are "in action," presumably revelling in the beauty of spurting blood...
...main irony of the film that the men who so desperately try to establish an identity through their collective action become overwhelmed by it. Peckinpah's vision of battle is total chaos. Uncompleted zooms are followed by cuts to entirely unrelated images. Pursurers are confused with pursued. At the end we are left with nothing but a sense of the beauty...
These scenes of death are the only things of real beauty in Peckinpah's world. Men are incredibly ugly and women valueless except for a night's sex. The railroad controls the law and does not mind massacring an entire town. IN contrast, the battles are composed of magnificent single images, images which upset us because killing is not supposed to look that good...
Violence emerges as a primordal force, edging most of the men on and trapping the three principals. It brings us closer to blood which, after all, is the fundamental element of life. It is not, as the final track to a high angle demonstrates, a liberating force. This force of beauty is one which will not let go. At the end of the film Holden and Borgnine are dead and Ryan is left to become part of a revolution which has no meaning...