Word: powerfully
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...start of the movie, Lester Burnham (a brilliant Kevin Spacey), trapped and overly-insulated, leads a meaningless life with no sense of power or self-esteem; bogged down with particulars, he no longer knows how and when to express the proper emotions and can no longer communicate with his daughter or wife. Burnham eventually snaps this spell by developing a strong sexual fantasy for his daughter's 17-year-old friend, triggering an entirely hedonistic lifestyle in which he buys whatever he wants and smokes pot all day. This is a direct reaction to his prior condition of too much...
...power of Burnham's fantasy comes from a deep sexual frustration, which has been stimulated so greatly that it can no longer be satisfied by physical means; he wants to consume everything (Mendes also emphasizes the relationship between sexual frustration and violence throughout the film, having a character compare having an orgasm to shooting a gun, and another turn his suppressed sexual desire into violent action). When it comes time to perform his fantasy, however, Burnham realizes how undesirable it truly is, how misguided he has been. In the end, his solipsistic hedonism is just as unfulfilling as his prior...
...Burnham's wife (Annette Bening), on the other hand, has taken a career-centered path to happiness, hoping to gain power and meaning by climbing up the real-estate business ladder. She sacrifices everything for career and seems to resent her daughter and husband, whose existences have impeded her upward mobility. This, too, of course, leads not to happiness but only more frustration and more powerlessness...
...finally ends up on a desert road with his wife's head in a box. Pitt's detective had everything stacked so high against them that Fincher gleefully waits until 10 minutes before the movie ends to let everything collapse upon his hero.It's a sadistically amusing abuse of power. The Game is even better. This time, it's not just Michael Douglas who gets abused, but every single moviegoer in the audience. It's one of the only movies I've ever seen that viscerally takes you through each and every emotion the main character experiences. (If you listen...
...angst. When the New Beetle was unveiled in 1998, the cough-drop-on-wheels was touted as the ultimate antidote to the ennui of the under-40 crowd. It was deja vu all over again: here was the "Love Bug," the charmingly rotund little symbol of all things flower-power, updated for the era of power-lunches. The folks at Volkswagen hoped to invoke the freewheeling Age of Aquarius (when most yuppies were too young or to stoned to care), making every yupster on the planet nostalgic for their childhood daze free of micromanagement. Young urban professionals did flock...