Word: squalorous
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...dynamics of the military are merely extensions of politics, the film is an indictment of the general social situation it depicts as well. Kubrick's camerawork brilliantly expresses the varying cultural vacuums in which his characters trek, from the vertiginous ballrooms of the military elite to the squat squalor of the trenches. And the acting he evokes from a cast largely composed of has-beens and second-rates is exemplary...
...egoism to which even the petty cruelty of schoolchildren is preferable. There at least is a coherent ethics, compared to which Richmond's counterculture is a veritable jungle. The sexism is vicious, the community is haphazard, and the allegiance is nil. Still the author insists on romanticizing the squalor, to the extent where any of its exposure begins to look like the work of the reader. The sexism, in particular, was quite certainly not intended as such, and while I found it sick, and not even good pornographically, there is no doubt in my mind but that Richmond has only...
...Volkswagen, Fiat or Citroen. He is almost certain to have a TV set (black-and-white, not color). He almost certainly has a savings account; and if he is lucky, he lives with his family in new, subsidized housing-architecturally undistinguished, but more comfortable than picturesque squalor...
...This nadir of decadence...this feast of carrion and squalor...this Sodom and Gomorrah gone wild before the fire... this is one throat that deserves to be cut." With that, Manhattan Criminal Court Judge Joel Tyler ruled: "I readily perform the operation in finding the defendant guilty as charged...
...manages to watch her with sympathy. Lighting the film in greenish blues gives touch rather than drip to the melancholy forced by the heavy language of the play. Unfortunately, Newman is a prisoner of his material. It is Zindel's tiresome play that sends the movie floundering in sentimental squalor...