Word: viewers
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...List." By using real news clips in the film's opening scenes, then using fake news footage of his actors later to advance the plot, Van Peebles jeopardizes his credibility as an historian. Already treading a tightrope between fiction and reality, this method of "historicizing fiction" puts the viewer on guard. Although the fictional documentary footage is noncontroversial and works well as a device to sum up Panther activities, its contribution to the effect of a documentary is somewhat duplicitous...
...Communist influence behind the Panthers; the one black FBI agent is a robotic mouthpiece for integrationism. Like the Black people of Oakland, we can't fathom what fuels their intense hatred, and can only accept the police as an omnipresent menace. The film's interpretation depends on the individual viewer's ability to conceive of law enforcers as a malignant force...
...Better)." But pictures allow Crumb to tell his own truth. To him, as to any artist who ascends deep into the bizarre, his work looks like reality. With care and wit, he draws his own demons and goddesses. One thing he never draws is conclusions. That is for the viewer to do, and be horrified or edified...
...movie's weakness lies in the fact that interactions between the characters, especially between Jade and her younger sister Pearl, sometimes seem forced. The viewer is constantly plagued by the nagging consciousness that the actors are acting, rather than actually inhabiting an alternate world. This failure seems a result of a discrepancy between the director's expectation of the rapport that the characters should share and the actual quality of their interactions...
Despite its apparent fragmentation, Chelsom's directing soaks the film in an amibiance of insanity and tragicomedy, with the assistance of assorted morgues, haunted houses, circus tents and chorus girls. His unconventional and unsettling angles clutch the viewer in a graphic documentary style. A soundtrack of Bayou blues and French sailor songs as forgotten as the stage acts they accompany complements the screen action, and assures "Funny Bones" a place in the cult film firmament...