I would just like to take this time to thank God for allowing me to survive this ordeal, and send a message to my family that I love them.
Plot summary (with spoilers): So around the time your great grandmother was churning butter with a giant wooden stick and your great grandfather was getting a hole drilled into his head to ward off evil spirits, D.W. Griffith, the maker of the KKK-supportive movie Birth of a Nation, was letting the people like you know that intolerance is a very bad thing. To whit, here are four stories intercut a la Altman, reiterating that fact over and over and over and over and over and over and over again.
Story 1: Aka, the really short story. 27 A.D., Jesus in da house. There's a wedding at Cana, and they run out of wine, so Jesus keeps the party going by turning water into wine so everyone can keep getting faded. Ahh yeah, Jesus. Thanks, dawg. The evil Pharisees are intolerant of Jesus and his high partying ways and conspire against him. Jesus also saves a adulteress from being stoned to death by quoting the bible, "let he who is without sin, cast the first stone" and all the jerks about to stone her drop their rocks and run off dejected. Then Jesus is crucified.
Story 2: In 1572 in France, Catholic King Charles IX sits upon the throne. His mother, the evil Catherine di Medici and his brother the
Effeminate Monsieur La France
Hobbies: Toys and Pets
hate the Huguenots (French Protestants) and would like them all killed. The King however, only wants everyone to live in peace and prosperity and so does his sister, who is about to marry a Huguenot lord. Catherine glowers evilly while her daughter hugs and cuddles the Huguenot and her effeminate son, Monsieur La France, stands nearby with two little puppies in his front pockets while he coos and another "effeminate" dude saddles up to him and suggestively pets the puppies and makes doe eyes at Monsieur La France. Not making this up. I swear.
We also meet two Huguenots, Prosper and his girl Brown Eyes. They meet and fall in love and hold hands and stuff.
So to prevent the marriage, Catherine and La France badger and berate Charles IX, and insist that he launch a preemptive attack and kill all the Huguenots. He protests at first, then finally gives in, while pulling on his hair and flailing around the room like a fucking spaz for like ten minutes. So this leads to the St. Bartholomew's Day massacre and both Prosper and Brown Eyes are sadly killed. The King weeps at his horrible act of genocide that he was nagged into committing, and Catherine and La France cackle and are evil and intolerant.
Story 3: Ancient Babylon, 539 BC. We meet Mountain Girl. She is wild and crazy and eats onion stalks that she keeps in her pocket. She was also apparently directed to play to the cheap seats and mug like Jerry Lewis on crack. Mountain Girl's father is tired of her antics and takes her to...I dunno, like a judge or something, and says,
"Please do something about my daughter...
she has become incorrigible!"
At this time, the evil Persians led by Cyrus the Great attack the city of Babylon. They have giant mobile towers that are lifted up by guys like how you would lift a coffin, and in the tower are dozens of guys with arrows shooting at the Babylonians and their castle. A very very long battle commences, with mostly wide shots of thousands of extras running around aimlessly shooting arrows and sword fighting. The Babylonians pray to their god statue Ishtar and Ishtar lights up and gives them...extra powers, maybe?...and they manage to fight off the invading forces. Highlights include one Babylonian full-on biting a Persian on the neck, squirting blood (???) and several beheadings, which is to say actors chopping the paper-mache heads off of pinata soldiers strapped precariously to horses. After the battle is over, the Babylonians celebrate with a feast and dancing, and Mountain Girl moons over Belshazzar from afar. There is a long scene of various extras, dancing, laughing, and eating. Because at 2 hours and 20 minutes in, it's best to grind down the story to a halt and just point the camera and let the movie breathe a bit.
Meanwhile, some evil priests are intolerant of the Babylonians and their wild partying ways. They conspire to leave the gates of the city unlocked to that the Persians can attack again and win. They tell local yokel Rhapsode to deliver this message to the Persians. Mountain Girl sees this conversation but can't hear it, on account of it being the silent film era, and follows Rhapsode, unaware of what he's up to. She follows him all the way back to Persia or wherever, where he delivers the message to Cyrus. Cyrus and his men launch a full scale attack, and Mountain Girl, about five minutes ahead of them, races back to warn everyone. When she gets back to the city, she demands to speak to ol' Bels, but no one will let her into see him. Then, the Persians show up, because they were totally right behind her, and they attack the city and Mountain Girl shoots arrows at them and is killed and then Belshazzar and his wife stab themselves in the chest with daggers. The priests cackle and are intolerant.
Story 4: The "Modern Era". A group of intolerant old maids who call themselves The Uplifters seek to clean up this modern town and get back to our moral roots. To that end, they go to Miss Jenkins, the
Unmarried sister of a wealthy steel mill magnate
and ask her for funding for their cause. Miss Jenkins, currently at a party and being ignored by all the young people, is jealous and bitter and agrees with them. "We must have laws to make people good". We are helpfully informed that old maids who have failed to get a man become angry at others. Miss Jenkins convinces her brother, who apparently employs the entire town to stop his employees from dancing. OMG, it's the town from Footloose! Then, in order to fund the Uplifters, he cuts everyone's pay by 10%.. This causes a riot and the men protest and Jenkins brings in the cops and the protesters are driven out of town. Destitute men are already lined up to take the jobs at lower wages.
Meanwhile, the Dear One, a woman who lives on a farm with her father and "four hens, ditto ducks" is caught in the crossfire during the protests and her father is hit by a rock or something and dies. She must leave the farm and her four hens and ditto ducks and go to the neighboring town.
We also meet The Boy, who worked for the steel mill. Broke and desperate, he takes up a life of crime, working for The Musketeer, an evil and probably intolerant crime lord. The Boy meets Dear One by chance, and is immediately smitten. He asks her out and she says yes. At the end of the date, they go back to her apartment and he tries to go in, but she slams the door in his face and weeps. He stands on the other side of the door, not playing it cool at all, and begging to be let in. But Dear One promised her father no man would ever enter into her room. She raises her eyes to Heaven and pleads,
"Dear lord--help me to be a strong-jawed Jane!"
which I guess means I was misreading the whole thing and she's really just concerned about her ability to give a good blow job. Sorry, Dear One. Please, carry on.
The Boy proposes to her so that he can fuck her, like all good religious teens do, and she's onboard. But then The Boy goes to the Musketeer and says he's out of the bidness, and The Musketeer pretends to accept this, but then has some guys rough him up and plant drugs and a gun on him and knock him out. He's found by the cops who arrest him.
Flash forward about a year, Dear One has a kid and is a single mother. The intolerant Uplifters are taking a tour of the neighborhood, looking for people to act intolerant towards. They discover Dear One, who is in the process of giving her child a bit of whiskey to help his colic or consumption or whatever. They're furious and by the authority of the government, take the child away. Dear One is distraught and cries and cries. The Musketeer happens upon her on the street and consoles her. He promises to help her. He doesn't see his girlfriend watching him, biting her lip absurdly over and over to indicate jealousy, I guess. The Musketeer says "let's go up to your room" and discuss the (obviously fake thing) which I know about that will help you get your kid back. Dear One takes him upstairs and he tries to rape her, throwing her on the bed and then trying to kiss her, like a romantic rapist would. His girlfriend spies on him and craws outside on the ledge with a gun. Meanwhile, The Boy gets back from prison, sees this going on, and fights the Musketeer. From outside, the girlfriend shoots the Musketeer and then she jumps down and runs away. The cops show up and arrest The Boy for murder.
After a trial, he is
"to be hanged by the neck until dead, dead dead!"
according to the histrionic judge. But then a random beat cop who is Dear One's friend, (despite never having been onscreen before as we reach hour three) is suspicious of the girlfriend, who keeps lingering around looking guilty. He questions her and she admits it was her. They race off in a car to reach the governor who is on a train. They get the train to stop and tell the governor what happened. Fortunately, the governor is not named Rick Perry, and is disinterested in hanging an innocent man. So then they race to the prison where the ropes are being prepared and the priest is giving last rites and it goes on and on and on and on and on and on and then they get there in time! Horray! Dear One and The Boy live happily ever after!
Then there's a random battle between random people who are being intolerant and up in the sky, the ghosts of all the dead that came before them look down sadly, which was a pretty cool moment.
Review: It just was SO LONG. Like, I feel like I should be awarded medal or money or something. SO FUCKING LONG. Okay, to be fair and nice, it was obvious how much work went into this, some of the sets were spectacular and huge, like as big as a city block with giant columns and statues, and the battle scenes in Babylon were extremely detailed and ambitious, with literally thousands of extras. There was also a cool thing they did with the "coloring" as it were. In the Modern Story, everything was black and white, but in the French story, it was tinted blue and green and in Babylon it was yellow and purple, and in Jesus's time, it was pink. But it's clear that they were just discovering the medium of film, and cared nothing about pacing, characters, writing, building tension, or storytelling. Also, in the Olden Times apparently everyone had the fucking reading ability of a fifth grader because the title cards would stay onscreen for like 30-40 seconds every fucking time.
But it's over now.
Stars: I'm going to abstain. I don't think it's possible for a 2011 human to begin to judge this. I should clarify that I didn't hate this movie, not like I have a few others, and that I guess I'm glad I saw it, but it's not so much a movie as a very long thing that happened.
Next, "Rear Window" and then a 30's screwball comedy that I will hate, "It Happened One Night".
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