Monday 29 November 2010

Mommie Dearest
(1981)

80%

Star is Born

Like many unwanted children who never find themselves as adults, the Joan Crawford presented here is a perfectionist who craves attention and, when she discovers that others do not need her attention, desperately tries to psychologically-destroy them in a battle of wills that only - ultimately - destroys any chance such people have for happiness.

Faye DUNAWAY gives an unnerving performance as a profound neurotic who cannot empathize with others and so lives as an emotional autistic. The most telling moments come when her daughter copies her private behavior and she sees it as a paranoiac would: An attempt to belittle her rather than as simple childhood mimicry.

DUNAWAY brings home Crawford’s sense of others being a constant threat to her skewed sense of self-esteem by seeing her daughter as someone to compete with, who must be labeled imperfect because she does not provide the love for which she was adopted, in the first place. Her obsessive/compulsive nature focuses on dirt & cleaning; leaving her daughter to try and solve the psychiatric problems of the single parent, rather than the other way around.

Looking like The Joker in The Batman, DUNAWAY teeters on the verge of self-parody, by playing a woman obsessed with growing old, losing her looks and stalling in her career. She understands the power-complexes of those who think emotional blackmail is how relationships are made, because their entire emotional life is centered on themselves and their needs; giving them nothing to share with others. She wants her children to be her biggest fans and to offer her the self-respect she lacks.

You feel for the essential emptiness of her life as a film star but, when she starts taking out her frustrations on her kids, you quickly learn to dislike her intensely because she is an actress who never stops acting - even when the cameras stop rolling.

The only real problem here is that too much focus on the cause of the children’s pain - rather than the effect - blunts an otherwise highly-impressive narrative.

Posted by Frank TALKER™ at 16:41
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Science:



No science is immune to the infection of politics and the corruption of power.



Jacob Bronowski… (1908 - 74), British scientist, author. Encounter (London, July 1971).


Sleep of Reason:



The dream of reason produces monsters. Imagination deserted by reason creates impossible, useless thoughts. United with reason, imagination is the mother of all art and the source of all its beauty.



Francisco José de Goya y Lucientes… (1746-1828), Spanish painter. Caption to Caprichos, number 43, a series of eighty etchings completed in 1798, satirical and grotesque in form.


Humans & Aliens:



I am human and let nothing human be alien to me.



Terence… (circa 190-159 BC), Roman dramatist. Chremes, in The Self-Tormentor [Heauton Timorumenos], act 1, scene 1.


Führerprinzip:



One leader, one people, signifies one master and millions of slaves… There is no organ of conciliation or mediation interposed between the leader and the people, nothing in fact but the apparatus - in other words, the party - which is the emanation of the leader and the tool of his will to oppress. In this way the first and sole principle of this degraded form of mysticism is born, the Führerprinzip, which restores idolatry and a debased deity to the world of nihilism.



Albert Camus… (1913-60), French-Algerian writer & philosopher. The Rebel: An Essay on Man in Revolt: New York: Vintage Books, (1984; page 182.)