Things changed so quickly in the sixties, it was as if each year, even parts of each year, had a distinct look. This film is a time capsule not merely of "third-quarter of the sixties" London but of 1966 in specific. By then The Beatles had been huge for three years, the mod look had taken over, but longer hair and the more specific hippie look had not yet taken over. It is amazing to me how the look seems, as here presented in static context, as if a snapshot of a specific moment, and with an internal coherence, when in actual terms it was a transitional period that was, in terms of its own coherence and specifics, rather short lived. If filmed even a year after, or a year before, the look would have been rather different.
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PrometheusTree64
10 years ago
Things changed so quickly in the sixties, it was as if each year, even parts of each year, had a distinct look. This film is a time capsule not merely of "third-quarter of the sixties" London but of 1966 in specific. By then The Beatles had been huge for three years, the mod look had taken over, but longer hair and the more specific hippie look had not yet taken over. It is amazing to me how the look seems, as here presented in static context, as if a snapshot of a specific moment, and with an internal coherence, when in actual terms it was a transitional period that was, in terms of its own coherence and specifics, rather short lived. If filmed even a year after, or a year before, the look would have been rather different.
Yes, precisely right. It really is a photograph of 1966.
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Non-sequiturs are delicious.
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PrometheusTree64
9 years ago
I love the feel of the film as much as anything else. It is very much of the sixties, but in a way it speaks to all times, what with the smug/interesting/busy/self involved protagonist finding out his assured understandings and ways do not serve him with such an outside the box experience as coming across a murder.
I enjoy it more and more every viewing.
And, perhaps for all the above reasons, I find the movie weirdly soothing.
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LBJ's mistress on JFK:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WcXeutDmuRA
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kenny-164
8 years ago
"I find the movie weirdly soothing. "
Hm. Can't say the same. The only thing soothing about it to me is that I did not have the experience Thomas had. I think it must have been profoundly unsettling to him. even little details like his encounter late in the film with Verushka at the party, after their erotic photo shoot earlier and her saying she was going to Paris, and her answer to his question. Or the nature of the relationship between his artist neighbor and his wife.
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