Harold Pinter Connection
Try watching something written by Harold Pinter, preferably the film of one of his plays, and you'll see the inspiration for that type of dialogue. ~ PamerEldritch in Interrogation - Spoilers
I was struck by the number of similarities between the film and Pinter's plays.
The interrogation scene mentioned by perch1 could be seen as a nod toward the interrogation scene in Pinter's The Birthday Party, in which Goldberg and McCann grill Stanley, using a combination of apparently inconsequential humour and ominous malevolent threats.
In The Homecoming Ruth sides with, and agrees to stay with, her husband's dysfunctional English family rather than to return to America with him.
In 44 Inch Chest Liz Diamond appears (out of the blue and bearing no sign of her earlier beating) and takes sides with Colin's friends, even to the extent where she appears to have Old Man Peanut's head on her body.
Liz's cigarette lighting sequence with Mal echoes the glass of water scene between Ruth and Lenny in The Homecoming as well. In both cases the women are seductively demonstrating their power over the men, especially so in Liz's case, who seems to be even taunting her watching husband. Ruth similarly taunts her husband when she and his younger brother embrace and roll onto the floor in front of him.
The film's main setting, a dreary, run-down room in an almost derelict house in London, is Pinteresque as well, as is the group of Colin's distinctly individual friends, one suavely menacing; one old, ranting and profane; a nattily dressed young "gent" with the gift of the gab; a calm middle man who watches, saying little.
Not only Pinter's Goldberg and McCann, but also Max, Sam, Lenny and Joey (The Homecoming) and Foster and Briggs (No Man's Land) could be their ancestors.
I thought the witty, profanity-littered repartee between Colin's pals Meredith, Archie, Mal and Old Man Peanut was hilarious. Black, potentially menacing, but hilarious.
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