'If you ever lived with or were a alcholic this movie is so realistic its chilling. Alcholics see the world in black and white anestitied to any true feelings. Coburns role was so uncanny it remined me of my own father growing up and his sickness of a bent brain. Down our street and one block over was his father sitting at a bar crying in own shot glass. Two ships in the night pickled to reality. Two stunning actors playing roles they might know something about'.
When I saw this movie in 1997, I felt the same way. Having been raised in a family that contains plenty of boozehounds, some of them violent, Coburn's performance seemed frighteningly real to me, and some of the scenes of the family gathering, with Coburn becoming increasingly drunk and anti-social, were so recognisable that it almost hurt to watch them. I also saw some of my own behaviour in Nolte's performance (and my dad's behaviour too), and the theme of how this type of behaviour is passed down from generation to generation really struck home.
The scene in which Coburn says 'I know you' to Nolte, after Nolte has hit his daughter, was also immediately recognisable: it's Coburn saying, 'You've hated me and loved me, and you're in the process of becoming me, and there isn't a damned thing you can do about it: it's inevitable'. I've experienced similar moments with my own father, when I've seen him express a slight sense of pride or achievement when I've sided with him on a topic that, in my youth, we might have argued about, or when I've done some macho nonsense that at the back of my mind I know I really shouldn't have done, like lash out at something in anger or bully someone out of frustration.
'What does it matter what you say about people?'
Touch of Evil (Orson Welles, 1958).
reply
share