Monday, January 25, 2016

Wild 90 (1968) - ES 35

What's your function, that's what I wanna know. 

Wild 90 is without a doubt the least auspicious entry that I could possibly make into my exploration of some of the best cinema that 1968 had to offer. Criterion actually lists it as a 1967 film on their site, and it was indeed shot in March of that year, but it didn't get its first public screening until the first week of January in 1968 in downtown New York City, so that's what I go with. Whichever year one assigns it to is ultimately inconsequential. It's really just a terrible film, let me come right out and say that here at the very beginning so that a discerning reader can quickly evaluate if it's going to be worth their time to read much further. If you're waiting for me to make a recommendation, don't bother. My answer is NO.

This movie is rude, pointless, degrading, totally beneath you. Have more respect for yourself than to dedicate 80 minutes of your finite existence in this world to Norman Mailer's arrogant, muddled, misguided, egocentric swill, if you have any interest in the betterment of your mind, the cultivation of a wise and benevolent temperament, or the broadening of your cultural or aesthetic horizons. There's no redeeming value to be found here, not in the ordinary sense of that word "redeeming" anyway. About the most I can promise is that you'll observe a crudely memorable exercise in off-the-cuff provocation that succeeds in offending and alienating its audience, prompting with fairly predictable certainty a feeling of exasperation in the viewer that will be expressed somewhere in the range that extends from sneering condescension and angry rebuke to awkward laughter and bewildered fascination at the sad lengths that Mailer and his pals went to make total asses of themselves.

Nothing in that opening paragraph should be dismissed as hyperbole either. I'm not straining myself in the slightest to make this film seem any worse than it factually, objectively is. My summary here is an exercise in economical appraisal that cuts right to the chase. Of the fourteen hundred or so films that bear some kind of linkage to the Criterion Collection, this is as INessential Art House as it gets.

Still, I'm not one who regrets having sat through this film, and the set that it's a part of (Eclipse Series 35: Maidstone and Other Films by Norman Mailer) on multiple occasions over the past few years. I take a bit of satisfaction having scraped the bottom of the cinematic barrel and sampled the dredge for myself, rather than have to take somebody else's word for it. And I also feel some genuine enjoyment after reading what I had to say about Mailer's initial foray into film making in my "Journey Through the Eclipse Series" review for Criterion Cast in 2012, and re-listening to the conversation I had with my former podcasting partner Rob Nishimura a few weeks later when we dissected the set for our fifth episode of The Eclipse Viewer. And I know that my current collaborator Trevor Berrett is personally grateful to have this particular box crossed off the list, which will spare him from ever having to take a close, in depth look at these botched experiments. For all I know, it was a fortuitous circumstance that happily cleared the way for him to venture forth and propose that he and I work together to revive the Eclipse Viewer nearly a year after Rob decided to focus his considerable talents in other directions. I've really enjoyed the chats that Trevor and I have had over the past couple years, so for that very important reason, I'm really glad to have gotten these potential obstacles out of his way.

But for now, that's about all I have to say about Wild 90. I sure don't have it in me to think much harder about this nonsense now than I did back then, so if you seek more in depth analysis, click through those links up above and prepare to be enlightened, chum.

This video does a great job of condensing all the best bits down into an efficient 90 seconds of Mailer going Wild.


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