Word: poetical
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...right brain spins the story this way: it is poetic justice. A highly paid political prostitute, Dick Morris, comes to grief in the arms of an expensive hooker in Washington--a perfect moral fit. The case almost accidentally opens a door upon a disturbing side of American politics--not Dick Morris' character (who cares?) so much as the larger drama of American political manipulation in 1996, and a general atmosphere of sleaze that even the canned floral scents of "family values" cannot perfume...
...Dole's acceptance speech was big--stern, daring, even at moments Churchillian--but it was marked most by a kind of interrupted eloquence. The speech betrayed the weight of a few too many hands. Even in its strongest, most poetic passages there seemed to be something missing. When Dole stirringly pointed to the exits in the convention hall and declared the Republicans the party of Lincoln, he invited any bigoted delegates to leave, "as I stand here and hold this ground." But the way the section was constructed, it seemed as if he were telling the party it was bigoted...
Then the movie hits what's probably its high point, with a fine poetic juxtaposition. One day Manny refuses to play turbulent airplane to Lo's stewardess (Lo stands and balances on her, fidgeting) because she secretly fears for Lo's increasingly visible pregnancy. So in one swoop, Krueger has portrayed well the jarring, forced switch from pretend to inevitable real life...
This sort of narrative turnaround usually provides the pleasure of surprise, the sense that poetic justice has foiled a malevolent act. Moore quickly cuts off such easy certainties. He shows the old man examining the possessions of his would-be murderer. They include a printed statement identifying the intended victim as "Pierre Brossard, former Chief of the Second Section of the Marseilles region of the Milice, condemned to death in absentia by French courts, in 1944 and again in 1946." The statement goes on to say that Brossard was charged with the massacre of 14 Jews on June...
...middle-class desperation is that writer-director Todd Solondz doesn't think it's funny. Neither does he think it's tragic. His Dawn holds no promise. She's not particularly bright nor more than usually sensitive. You don't think her misery is grist for some novelistic or poetic gift that will one day provide her with sweet revenge on her tormentors. It is, at best, material for some future psychiatric monologue wherein she can blame her unhappiness on Brandon. Or on Steve (Eric Mabius), the high school hunk she hopelessly moons after. Or even, conceivably, on her little...