“The Last Picture Show” @ BAM
My last chance to see “The Last Picture Show” was a year or so ago at LACMA. It was after a showing of “Hud” and, as anyone who’s seen “Hud” can tell you, something like that doesn’t exactly leave you hankering for another two hours in the dark. So it’s a nice sort of coda now, seeing it on a summer Sunday in a well ventilated, sparsely populated theater.
And of course, I don’t have to remind you that “Last Picture Show” is one hell of a movie. It’s greatness was so distracting, I completely forgot about Bogdanovich and his silly little scarves. In fact, I have to hand it to him – from the first scene on, we waste no time dawdling over backstories. Over the course of a year, characters are simply added to the story under the assumption that you already know, or can simply surmise, everything about them.
In many was, you can, because these people flesh out the old American archetypes so well that you completely forget the cliches: you’ve got Sonny, the quiet, sensitive loner and his hedonistic friend, Duane. There’s Jacy, a coveted beauty who trades on status and sexuality, and Lois, her faded alcoholic of a mother. We’ve seen these people before in countless other films about that morbid, small-town thing – “Picnic,” “American Graffiti,” etc.
“Last Picture Show” operates on what otherwise might be considered a weakness – the focus tends to shift in every act, never settling on who the film is “about” – but there’s something so accessible and amateur about that film that it actually works! On the surface, you could easily say it’s about Sonny and Duane, and the inevitable realization that their friendship will soon unravel. They’re living in that diorama of senior year where important things like “best friends” lose their meaning real fast.
Scratch the surface and you’ll think it’s all about Sam the Lion, who runs the eponymous picture show. The movie’s all about him, even if it’s not. Those beautiful scenes before his offscreen death are especially telling: he and Sonny have spent a day at the lake. We slowly zoom in on his craggy face, hold, and zoom out. It’s a little awkward, but effective. All the while, he recalls a crazy young girl he brought to that same spot and we, the captive audience, struggle to guess who it is (or at least, I did). At his funeral, we finally learn, and act two is over.
For the last 30 minutes or so we’re subjected to the sight of Sonny’s gradual separation from his friends and family. He takes up with Duane’s girl, the aforementioned Jacy, and quickly loses her. Duane enlists and meets and uncertain, though most likely grim fate. Finally Billy, the sweet-hearted “village idiot” and Sam’s de facto son, is killed without much fanfare. In a way, this final act is like watching him hatch. Sam, Duane, Jacy – they break off like pieces of an eggshell, soon-to-be detritus. Sonny is finally left naked – hatched and alone, and his growing pain is the pain of new life.
So, by the end of the film, we’ve gotten to the gumball center of this story – it’s friends and lovers and all that transience. The only true love these people have for each other is the love they feel in absence – it’s a town-wide game of hard-to-get. Sam’s scene at the lake – my god, that scene at the lake! – is just a hint of it.
Soon, you see Duane and Sonny come to blows over Jacy who, now a co-ed in Dallas, could care less about the boys she left behind. And Lois (Sam’s mystery girl! Surprise!) really brings it on home when she tells us it’s “…terrible to only meet one man in your whole life who knows what you’re worth.” Facing Sonny in her spotless car, they share a flask our bourbon and talk about old Sam the Lion and the origin of his nickname. “I’ve looked, too.” she continues. “You wouldn’t believe how I’ve looked.”
