A few weeks back, the New York Times' film critic, A. O. Scott looked at Roman Polanski’s 1974 film noir “Chinatown.” Mr. Scott calls the film, which explores corruption in 1930s Los Angeles, “much more than the sum of its parts.” He says that Mr. Polanski “pushes beyond the conventions of the genre to give us a stark encounter between a powerless individual and monstrous evil.” Please share your thoughts on “Chinatown.”
-- L.G.
(photo credit: cinemaisdopedotcom.)
although mr. scott is a well-considered film critic, he is also, through no fault of his own, an east coast critic and can't help but view the west coast through that lens. new york born and raised, harvard educated, it cannot be helped that he only understands the LA of "chinatown" the way a foreigner sees another country they have previously only read about in books. and it's no different than the way new yorkers complain about the old new york movie sets built in california.
ReplyDeletetowne is a native angeleno, and the "chinatown" trilogy was his love/hate letter to his birth city. ("the two jakes" being the second film, the third will never be made for a variety of reasons.) yes, yes, power struggles, watergate and how the mighty are fallen, the politics of water... all of these elements are there, but it's also a film about hollywood, about how even the hardboiled detective fictions of chandler and the seaminess of nathaniel west were too much for entertainment audiences of the day. "chinatown" is the film hollywood wished it could have made back in the 1930s - and if it had, it would have been "the hurt locker" of its day in terms of showcasing the extent to which the forces in control completely operate outside the boundaries of what society understands as truth and democracy.
so scott is half right, it does show a brutal encounter between the individual and the larger, corporate evil, but it is an encounter specific to los angeles and its people. it is the secret history of a place, the reality lurking just behind the studio facades, the man behind the curtain creating the oz-like image of los angeles. the movie is the heartbreak of seeing your history exchanged for a sack of worthless beans, the title becoming a euphemism for letting go to idealistic hopes.
forget it, jake. it's chinatown.