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Stay Puft
12-04-2007, 06:38 AM
All That Jazz (1979, dir. Bob Fosse)
rec. dreamdead

This review is not really finished. I need more time.

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One more time from the top - six beats - Gideon coughs six times, puts drops in his eyes, takes his pills, smokes in the shower. This is his life. This is his music. This is his movie. Goodbye, Joe Gideon, goodbye.

In the editing room, death is in. Anger, denial, bargaining, depression, acceptance. Intercut Angelique, waiting for Gideon to die. Internal dialogue and reflection of events past ramble concurrent with the editing of Gideon's film - is Fosse's film - rambling in its assembly, incomplete and autocritique. More music, more pills, more coughing, more showering - it's show time, folks. How many times do we have to look at this? Until Gideon gets it the way he wants it. Until Fosse gets it the way he wants it.

What does this amount to? A musical. Airotica. The assemblage of Gideon, expressed through music, through dance, through the body and work of others - Gideon's best work! (Is sex all he thinks about?) To be the director of a collaborative art, to be its author - to function the same, to die the same, but to die properly as one lives, fragmented and elusive. Musical numbers on the operating table, on his death bed; Gideon directing Gideon. Here are the pieces, the sights and sounds of All That Jazz. The assemblage of a cultural artifact, self-reflexive - the art reflects itself? Yes, the expression of the form of expression. The death of its author.

Acceptance. Two million two over the original budget (I'm dying). It's time to stop, it's time to let it go. (At those prices who can afford to live?) All That Jazz illuminates an ecstatic truth. The search for truth, for meaning, for a dream, the ideal - frustrated, unsatisfying, always incomplete (I accept). The art is never finished. Over budget, over schedule. It's better, but never finished. And who are we its authors? (Wait, a real dead body.) Scrambling for truth - sum total of our relationships, our metaphors. We are not who we make ourselves. Frustrated, unsatisfied, always incomplete. This is our life, our music, our movie. Goodbye, Bob Fosse, goodbye.

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baby doll
12-04-2007, 03:34 PM
This movie seriously bummed me out. Maybe I would've liked it more if the protagonist at least had the opportunity to turn his life around, but as it is, it's a film about a guy who does a lot of drugs and dies. Despite the superficial resemblance to Fellini's 8 1/2 (where Guido/Mastroianni could change his life), it's actually closer to Bergman's The Seventh Seal with Jessica Lange as the Grim Reaper. Also, the concert film he's editing looks awful; I suppose that's the point, but it's not a bad movie in an interesting way (think Singin' in the Rain).

Derek
12-04-2007, 04:17 PM
Also, the concert film he's editing looks awful; I suppose that's the point, but it's not a bad movie in an interesting way (think Singin' in the Rain).

The film he's editing is a carbon copy of Lenny, the film Fosse made before this one.

lovejuice
12-05-2007, 08:33 PM
i think all that jazz is wonderful. it's about a man who lives hard and dies unregretting, so i don't think the character's turning around is that necessary. it's fosse's tribute to his own life, a vanity project you can say, but a glorious one. i haven't watch 8 1/2, so i don't know whether approaching all that jazz as a remake will make it less or more.

Derek
12-05-2007, 08:44 PM
i think all that jazz is wonderful. it's about a man who lives hard and dies unregretting, so i don't think the character's turning around is that necessary. it's fosse's tribute to his own life, a vanity project you can say, but a glorious one. i haven't watch 8 1/2, so i don't know whether approaching all that jazz as a remake will make it less or more.

I think Domino is right that the resemblance is only superficial. In 8 1/2 the crisis is related more to creative impetus, whereas All That Jazz has more to do with addition and overconsumption. The leads are similar in their attitude towards and treatment of women, but I don't think the similarities go too far beyond that.