Word: film
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...film ends with a great shot. Blaze walks out of the state house where Earl's corpse lies, and the camera ascends to take in Long's old domain. Randy Newman's poignant song Louisiana 1927 -- a cracker's lament about a devastating flood -- reaches its apogee of symphonic paranoia with the line "They're tryin' to wash us away." Just then, the camera discovers the Mississippi roaring past, washing away Earl and his wily, wild, pre-TV tradition of Southern politics. What has happened down there is that the wind has changed, and for its last three minutes Blaze...
...heaven: stripteaser Blaze Starr ("Miss Spontaneous Combustion, and I do mean bustion!") and Earl K. Long, fine Governor of the great state of Louisiana. Long was too full of his princely power to be discreet about his indiscretions. Blaze could have told him -- and in this lengthy, clever, depressing film she does -- that "your political instincts are clouded by the aroma of my perfume." By 1959, when Long's campaign slogan was the forthright "I ain't crazy," his liaison with the stripper was as controversial as his tax evasion and support for Negro voting rights. He lost...
What the situation calls for is a new type of disaster, a "three dimensional invention unheard of before." Unless Wheeler can find "something unearthly" to include as a disaster in the film he is supposedly making, he'll surely rot--in wonderful shades of green, yellow and red--into nothingness right before our eyes...
What is wonderful about the film is that the filmmakers are no more willing to compromise their black comic vision of marriage than the Roses are willing to compromise their differences. Both ends are pursued to a conclusion that is bitter, surprising and utterly logical. But it is the style with which this wild farce is developed that sustains our horrified interest and keeps us laughing as the darkness gathers around Barbara and Oliver...
...kind of perverse courtship, a form of preening designed to achieve a surrender that goes far beyond the sexual. You can take or leave the implication that all marriages (and all divorces) may have that as their ultimate goal. But it would be wrong to ignore a film that blends incautious comedy and cautionary morality so expertly...