Ivan Reitman’s
Dave has by now, I should think, shed considerable light on the problem
faced by Ebert and Canby, though the latter was dimly able to perceive, if that
is not too strenuous a word, the outlines of the work.
Dave placed a political meaning on our interpretation
of the past, in all but the words of Auden’s (and Stravinsky’s)
“Elegy for JFK”, whereas I Love You to Death is certainly
more straightforward in its cynicism toward a certain form of latter-day
assessment, and as if that weren’t enough, it’s founded on a news
account, leaving the critics high and dry. The tragedy is they missed some of
the best comedy around.
When the husband
enters the living room, shot clean through the thorax and bleeding from the
head, his wife recoils startled and marks time for a moment on a stack of
record albums piled on the floor (there is some slippage in the direction, too,
as this gag and one or two others are perhaps not filmed perfectly—compare
Dobie Gillis and his girl “walking on air”, as the voiceover puts
it, while a cut gives their feet treading just over the pavement). The scrungy
subcultural types engaged to finish the job gawk at him, and as he’s led
back upstairs his pajamas fall to his ankles.
It’s all an
instantaneous comedy transcending its technique, and shows actors like William
Hurt, River Phoenix and Keanu Reeves to be expert farceurs, matching Joan
Plowright, Tracey Ullman and Kevin Kline in an amazing ensemble, which explains
a great deal.
Mumford
The artist’s
apology (cf. Wild Strawberries). It is rendered necessary by the satiric
material involved, the kindly doctor apologizes for the prick that deflates the
balloon of nonsense. He has shaken off “the primordial ooze of drugged
brains” and is now a reflecting mirror of the town’s crazies, they
make up a veritable cross-section of the society in which he lives, though at a
small-town remove.
The absconded sex
fantasist, the Brad fan, the ultra-acquisitive wife, and most enchanting of
all, the billionaire skateboarder who employs most everybody else at his modem
factory, where he labors on a mechanical companion. Love finds Mumford in the
shape of a chronically fatigued divorcée. The two other shrinks in town are a
classical portrayal of academic quiz kids. What are his credentials? The judge
finds he has none. A deputy transporting him to the pokey for a brief stay asks
his advice en route, despite the judgment.
A specific remedy
is suggested by the doctor’s self-analysis applied to a certain juncture
of memory and job history (filmed as a pushed-color flashback). He has been a
tax investigator, “for the people the bard is grace, not cark.”