Produced by Marty Scorcese, eh? Isn’t he tired of this disheartening prospect? I know I am. Enough, already! That said, the setting for this same old story is strikingly new. In addition to depressing nihilistic naturalism, we also get considerable methodological (how they all go about their dirty business) and sociological value. So I guess we learn.
Each of the five interweaving, interdependent episodes have interest and, ultimately, poignancy. I’m trying to decide here. Is this a complex, Robert Altman-like compendium? Like I think it wants to be? Or is it just gleeful violence, with a post-Pulp Fiction/measured and mannered incoherence to boot (à la you, Sr. Iñárritu?)? Some of you, of course, quite like Pulp Fiction and AGI. Well, you’re all helping us to realize that the world is a rotten place, and that there’s no place for women and no hope for the innocent. You get corrupted, you say, or you get eliminated.
There’s proof, there are innumerable proofs of that assertion, aren’t there? Must we keep asserting it? Yes, naturalism and modernity and the statistics and body counts and all that.
On that subject, and yet so not, I am challenging you all to read Mr. Dickens’ Little Dorrit. Learn that. Keep this!