Word: surrealness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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Entering the rent control debate can sometimes be like departing for an alternative, surreal universe, where one little number is reason enough to put one's life on the line--or, if that doesn't work...
...from sounding similar ("Close Shave. Chess Leave. Clove Leash." etc). But it doesn't sound like nonsense to me. While any one song might not have a coherent "plot," such as boy-meets-girl or man-hit-the-road, which can get kind of boring anyway, Malkmus' songs are surreal glimpses into a sensibility to contemporary American life that could only be characterized as genius. He sings about history and culture, and dying, and love, and open wounds. "Take me down to the ridge where the summer ends/We'll watch the city spread out just like a jet's flame...
...when Bonnie gets homesick and stops in to see her mother, she gets a very different reaction. In a surreal set of scenes that are clouded with an overexposed haze, the mother quickly turns away after kissing her daughter and somberly says, "Goodbye, you better keep on running." It's each to his own, just like in the days of the wild, wild West when rugged individualism was the name of the game...
Leonard Maltin's review of this film tagged it a "sure bet to become [a] cult item over the years." The surreal disconnection of its random events does give the movie a flavor similar to cult director David Lynch's work (presumably why it has been billed with his "Eraserhead"). But Polanski, both as actor and director, lacks the energy and abandon that have made Lynch's films so successful. Instead of being exhilarating, Trokovsky's illogical behaviour is simply frustrating. For those obsessed with the surreal The Tenantwill be an intruguing period piece. For the rest...
...reaction to the surreal sight of Rabin shaking hands with PLO leader Yassir Arafat that day was very different. We, like most Israelis, knew of Arafat's murderous history of terrorism, and his tactics of choosing children as targets and shopping malls as battlefields...