I'm a writer too and I love this film. The play is better, but duh, that's usually the case. Still, they did an excellent job with this film, the characters all talk in a totally believeable fashion considering the social rank and education levels of all the principal cast. The problem with making any movie about an exclusive society is that people outside of those circles don't tend to get it- and Six Degrees is about a very specific social set. So it was bound to have a limited audience in that regards.
I for one think the kids are all great in this movie and have some of the best lines: they're exactly what they're supposed to be, over-educated, over-priveledged, selfish, confused, sacrastic nuisances to their well-meaning but clueless and overly-indulgent parents. One of the things I like about this film is that it's a rare example of a movie where youth isn't king but is depicted quite acurately as, well, kind of annoying and self-absorbed. Which most people are when they're in college. Particularly people with these kind of backgrounds, which was the point of the film.
And yeah, to the guy who was a writer... if you don't see why this is good writing I'd question what you think is...
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bookfinders
17 years ago
I just finished watching this movie and I agree with most of what everybody is saying.. pro and con. I, too, have mixed feelings about the movie, but thought it interesting and worth a future second or third viewing just to see some of the connections I missed. (Did you know that 6 degrees of seperation is an astrological term? It is used in Astrology as the furthest distance one "planet" has on another before it looses influence).. Anyway.
Will Smith's Character obviously had rehearsed his speech, which was why it appeared rehearsed. So that is not a flaw in the movie; it was meant to appear that way. There was one of those many excellent cut away shots in the middle of one of his speeches, where "Paul" is seen in a different dress and place saying the same things in the same way> (hard to notice, like most of the stuff going on) and then back to the living room. (Tarrentino uses this method in R.dogs, during the story Mr.color tells his gangster friends) Thus we are being told that he HAS rehearsed those things he was going to say.
There is a lot going on in this movie. Like does the author imply that we are all connected in some way to John Hinkley? or J.D.Salenger? A child to Matisse? and a penthouse apartment to Van Gogh's shoes (It's not that far!)? A white South African business man having dinner with a black Ameircan street hood? Maybe, but that is about as abstract as any modern art ever is. So maybe it's time to just enjoy the show for what it is? ART... A montage of modern lost life? Or found life? Lies revealing truth... or our truth is a bigger lie than that of a con-man's? Or crime can be a call for help? What is first is last? And what is great can be hidden in seemingly insignificant stuff. I don't know, and that is the point.
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eds-poofed-hair
17 years ago
YES! Thank you. What people don't get is that this is not just a movie, it's a piece of art. Like Ouisa said in the conversation at the end, there is color but no structure. The structure of the movie itself is scatterbrained (although ingenious). I've seen it probably six times and I still love seeing it...I always notice something new, meaning in an actor's expression, or a development in the complex relationship between Ouisa and Paul that I never noticed before (it starts in the kitchen, when she first sees it, there's a spark...and if you pay attention as the movie keeps going you can track the increasing intensity of her interest in him...not a love interest but as a mother to child, a relationship she doesn't have herself). Yeah. But I probably wasn't the film's targeted audience at all.
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norman-dostal
10 years ago
youre assuming Smith was directed like that instead of seeing it as a poor job of acting-either could be true
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